2022 GMBA Basketball Tournament “Clash of the Classes” REVIEW

Author, written by: R11, Scarlett

Last Saturday, 26th of November 2022, we once again welcomed the GMBA’s basketball tournament, “Clash of the Classes”, at Da’an Sports Center brought to you by GMBA Alumni Association. This year we also invited NTU EMBA and NCCU IMBA basketball teams so even before the tournament had started, the audience could sense the strong competitive atmosphere between the four teams. The format of this tournament was straightforward: A total of 4 teams, Tai-pan VS NTU EMBA, and Slam Dork VS NCCU IMBA, compete against each other to determine the top two and bottom two teams. Then these parings would then form the playoffs for the final match to determine which team would bring the first prize home.

The event started with the players’ entry announcement from each team with loud applause from the audience. Later, Edward Wang, President of the GMBA Alumni Association and main organizer of this event made a short speech. He also made thank you speech to our event sponsors: TGI Fridays, Texas Roadhouse, and XXL Basketball Magazine, and welcomed the guest teams. The first game started shortly after the speech. The two teams competing at the first game were Tai-pan and NTU EMBA. EMBA team led the game in the first quarter, and the Tai-pan team followed up later. The game ended with a 30:21 score, and EMBA won the first game. The second game was Slam-Dork VS NUUC IMBA. For this game, Slam-Dork was leading first, but NUUC turned the table around and won against the Slam-Dork by 38:27. The playoff for Bronze came after which was Tai-pan VS Slam Dork. The players played intensely although they were tired from the first game. This time Slam Dork won Tai-pan with 40:33. The remaining two teams gave all their best to compete for the first prize, and the game ended with a very small margin: 33:38, which the NCCU team won. The final result was as follows: 1st: NCCU IMBA, 2nd: NTU EMBA, 3rd: Slam Dork, 4th: Tai-pan.

In the following awarding ceremony, all players received their respective individual medals and a team trophy. The winning team furthermore received 3000 NTD worth of gift vouchers from TGI Fridays, and the second place received 2,000 NTD gift vouchers from Texas Roadhouse. The special award for the “GMBA Most Valuable Player” was given to Allen Lee of the Slam Dork, who had shown several strong plays and got scores throughout the competition. The event came to the end with the speech of Professor Edward Hsieh and with awardees and players taking photos together.

The event started and ended professionally and successfully with the support of the referees and assistants. We got female and senior citizen players in each team however the intensity and competition were not any less. That was a very inspiring and fun yet competitive event. We once again thank all the sponsors, participants, and staff for making this event happen. Also, we really appreciate the GMBA office for the assistantance and Director Audrey Hsu for supporting the event. Last but not least, thanks to Professor Louis Chen for being our basketball team counselor and Professor Edward Hsieh for kindly staying till the end to award our winning teams their medals and trophies.

We are looking forward to the NTU Presidential Basketball Cup on December 17-18 in which team GMBA united forces to represent our program for the first time against Ten elite NTU basketball teams.

For video/ photos, please check with the following link (HD photo in “camera” folder):
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-6eQuF8je2Mjc0r6TLmkKrr10bJtuWBd

Here are the videos first For recordings of 11/26 tournament to recapture your awesome moments: