It's that time of the year again. When everything that you looked forward to in the year is over. You are terribly bugged and experiencing a hangover of sorts. You tend to look back and think of how you got to where you got. You tend to look at what you wanted to achieve and whether you did. You think about whether you justified all the work that you put in. You finally boil down to whether you are happy with what happened or not. Before you think I'm getting really philosophical, all I'm thinking of is just reviewing how Inci went from the viewpoint of my team.
People said our team wouldn't be any good. Every now and then we heard 'Oh - What will your team do without him?', 'NITK team is not that strong this year right?' etc. We wanted to set and end to all that. The way we trained changed, the way we played changed. And the results showed just that. We've made a few friends, a few enemies as well in the course of the year. But all that seemed worth it. Until last year we were known as a team that plays fairly well at home, a team that has some great shooters and not much else. A bit of that changed when we went to PESIT this year, and all of it was about to change during Inci.
We were a little apprehensive while making fixtures this year. Because the standard of the tournament was going to be so high, we had to take on a semi-decent team in the quarterfinal league itself. After lots of speculation and arguments we decided to put PESIT and MVJCE in our group. Our debut game was against PESIT. Although we beat them by 20ish we had a big team talk after the game because clearly we could have played a lot better, and wouldn't get away with the tougher teams if we played like that. Next day our previous captain arrived with the idea of helping us in the form of a coach. Apart from that we went out with the intention of seeing to it that we did not make the same mistakes as we did the previous night. Also, we had no idea how MVJCE were and usually not knowing the opponent has always worked to our favour. A nearly perfect game was played that night by us, resulting in another 20 point win. Now for the hurdle of semi-finals that we hadn't cleared ever in the previous five years of our home tournament. RNSIT did us a favour by beating Ramaiah, Jain and Josephs would meet in the other semis as we had planned it out earlier. The prospect of playing RNS was scary, yet comforting. Scary because they had 2 huge 6 foot 5 giants and a good defence. Comforting because they are a poor offensive team and we are one of the best defences in the tournament. Come Saturday evening, we had a good chance to finally break the jinx and reach Inci finals for the first time. The first semi between the two powerhouses Jain and Josephs was a humdinger of a game. A buzzer beater three pointer to settle it says it all. That was followed by arguably the best dunk contest performance ever seen live for us here in college. A little tension was in the air, but that had to be gotten rid of. Smart play and some sweet shooting by our star shooter made sure of another 20 point win. Finally, we were there. A hurdle for all these years had been passed. There was so much joy that it felt as if we were content enough to have got this far. But we wouldn't let that ruin a golden opportunity. We could feel the nerves even before the game began. A tough game, after which a little inexperience probably showed but a lot of character was also shown when we lost to Jain, Basketball royalty in the state just by five, thus bringing to a close, by far the most successful year for our college's basketball team.
As, I reflect back upon these memories, I only wonder of what's to come next year. As of now, I'm just sitting, wishing and waiting.
