Last Saturday, 27th of November 2021, was a special day for all basketball fans: GMBA’s internal basketball tournament called “Clash of the Classes” was held for the very first time in NTU Sports Center. This event, like many others, had already been planned for the middle of this year, only to be postponed by the COVID-19 outbreak.

        The format of this tournament was straightforward: A total of 4 teams (GMBA Loungers, Slam Dorks, Tai-Pans, Team Watchout) would play against each other in 3 round-robin games to determine the top 2 and bottom 2 teams. Then these pairings would then form the playoffs, the final matches of the day to determine which team would be able to claim 1st place.

        The event was started with a short opening speech by Edward Wang, President of GMBA Alumni Association and main organizer of this event. A second short speech was given by Prof. Hu, Dean of College of Management, and after this, the games were started.

        The first games were incredibly fast-paced, and it became clear that none of the teams wanted to take the tournament lightly, even though it was a friendly competition. Although the speed of the game slowed down a bit in the subsequent matches, the level of play remained high during the whole tournament. There were even moments of drama: Team Watchout had the unfortunate handicap of having the smallest number of players actually showing up. This meant their players had to play without any break and so they quickly recruited a walk-in spectator to help out playing for them. In the end it was little use, because the competition was just too fierce, but it was certainly nice to see this moment of GMBA team spirit unfold.

        It became clear quite early, that the teams were a bit unbalanced, with Tai-Pans and Slam Dorks effectively crushing their opposing teams in the first match, so the question soon became: Which of these two teams would take home the trophy for 1st place? In the round-robin game, the Tai-Pans managed to defeat the Slam Dorks with 53-35, so it would appear that they could easily win the whole event. However, due to the format of the tournament, the playoffs would decide the final winner, meaning that both teams would need to give it all they got in their last game. It turned out that the Slam Dorks had probably used this knowledge to conserve some energy, as the final game was much closer and ended with the Tai-Pans winning only by a small margin (final score: 29-27). The final result of the tournament was as follows: 1st: Tai-Pans, 2nd: Slam Dorks, 3rd: GMBA Loungers, 4th: Team Watchout.

        In the following award ceremony all players received their respective individual medals and a team trophy. The players of the winning team furthermore received a 2000 NTD voucher for a barbeque restaurant. The special award for the “Most Valuable Player” was given to Robert Flewelling of the Tai-Pans, who had shown a numer of  very strong plays throughout the whole event and who had certainly played a big part in the teams success.

        The event was coming to an end with all of the teams captains giving a short speech. All of them emphasized the importance of team spirit not only in their team of the tournament, but in the whole GMBA family. To underline this, several photos were taken of the individual teams, but also of all the players together as “Team GMBA”.

        The whole event was set up very professionally, with referees and assistants who knew what they were doing, no major injuries or troubles, quite a number of spectators either from GMBA or family of the players, and last but not least a meaningful but not overboarding selection of prizes and trophies. It was great fun to watch and I hope that this type of event can be repeated sometime again in the near future.

Written by: Marten Dreger 戴明

Thanks again to all the players and individuals who made this event happen, it was a Team GMBA effort!!!

All photos avaliable for download via google drive link (thanks to our GMBA photographer, Markus): All – Google Drive

Link to Opening ceremony:11.27.2021 NTU GMBA Clash of the Classes Basketball Tournament Opening Ceremony – YouTube

#GMBA

#alumniassociation

活動招集人: 臺灣大學GMBA校友會-理事長 王德鼎