Alumni and students meet and compete at hoops

Frank Zornado, building supervisor, sports center

The 14th annual Reed College basketball tournament championship game this past spring was
a “Ding-Dang-Doo” good time as the Cowboys From Hell beat the House Husbands (an alumni team) in the final, 27–25. Both teams took different paths to make the final. The Husbands won their first game by forfeit. Their opponents, the Pseudo Intellectuals, pulled a no-show. They need a new title: The “Pseudo Basketball Players Who Can’t Tell Time.”

In the first game for the Cowboys, their spurs and shooting were very sharp as they carved open their first victim, the glamorous, dolled-up Ball Hogs, 49–10. It was a slaughter. The poor Hogs weeble-wobbled back to their sty, to talk to their mentor, Arnold Ziffel from TV’s Green Acres. Arnold was not happy with their play. He squealed at them, “You hogs played like pigs tonight.”

In the semi finals, the House Husbands upset the talented No Namers 38–27. The No Namers played for the Reed basketball team this year, but those pesky House Husbands used their pots and pans to block shots and their frilly aprons to blind their opponents’ eyes.

In the second semi final, the Cowboys’ boots started to drag as the Elder Griffs (a faculty and staff team) played their hearts out in hopes of an upset. The Elder Griffs kept it close until time and age and creaky bones and bad knees and mortgage payments and life insurance premiums and phone calls to Dr. Kevorkian took their toll. The Cowboys put the Elder Griffs out to pasture, 24–17.

So it was now the finals, and Cowboys From Hell started yelling “Yee-haw, Rawhide” as they squeezed out a barnburner, 27–25. The win should have an asterisk, as the House Husbands had so many people foul out that they had to play the final minute with just three players. Again the House Husbands were sent home to their wives. They would have to try to explain another loss or just bake tollhouse cookies. The Cowboys went out to celebrate. They had no place to go so they mounted their horses and wagons and drove them into a circle. The last thing they shouted was “Look out for that circle!”