With the men’s basketball team getting into the bulk of its conference play, the intramural basketball season is about to commence with similar hype and excitement. After registration began last Wednesday, 300 teams signed up in attempt to join one of the most popular intramural groups on campus.
Matt Seibring, assistant director of intramural sports, will be a main coordinator in the annual second semester tradition. Although obvious restrictions limit the amount of teams the league can manage, Seibring said the interest to participate comes as no surprise.
”For basketball, just like all of our other major sports, we have a lot of participation,” Seibring said. “Our team numbers are already at its max. Within the first day or two, we get our 200 plus teams registered. We had around 300 teams register this year, but unfortunately we just can’t take that many.”
As with most intramural sports at State, there is an opportunity for everyone to play within their desired division. Regardless of which grouping the players have decided to play in, nights at Carmichael promise to be bustling with activity on the hard court.
”We’re going to be playing five hours a night on six courts to get people in,” Seibring said. “We have different divisions people can play, so that includes the women, co-rec, sororities, fraternities.”
While the formatting for basketball IM will not change a considerable amount, there will be several rule changes for 2011, with time-keeping being the most prominent.
”We’ve changed up the timing a little bit this year,” Seibring said. “Instead of stopping the clock during free throws and things like that, we’re just going to have a running clock with extended time. Game play will be the same amount of time, but will be a little easier for people to understand when it’s going to start and stop.”
Another change that some players will certainly enjoy is the ability to dunk. While hanging on the rim will not be allowed, the new equipment has enabled the league to make dunking a possibility.
”Players will be allowed to dunk this year,” Seibring said. “Now that the gym has new facilities, we have the new basketball hoops. The retractable rims are made for that kind of thing, so we can have that now.”
With the NCAA basketball season coinciding with the intramural season, basketball IM will be continuing play all the way through March.
”We’ll play the regular season basically right up to spring break,” Seibring said. “Come playoff time we’ll be starting right after spring break, so it’ll be a pretty good length to the season.”
After captains meet in order to decide the teams, play will begin on January 30. Three months after play begins, the National Basketball IM tournament will be hosted on campus. With no traveling necessary, Seibring said the Wolfpack could be represented in multiple divisions.
”That’s a big tournament,” Seibring said. “We usually get a couple teams playing in that. Hopefully we will get multiple teams that want to play in our tournament, especially because we are hosting it and there is no traveling or housing cost. It’s a great opportunity to go out and play against competition that they have never seen.”
