HomeNewsArticle Display

38th CEIG overcomes odds for base championship

  • Published
  • By John Parker
  • Staff Writer
TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. --  By lots of measures, the 38th CEIG Honey Badgers shouldn't be the 2015 Tinker intramural basketball champions.

For starters, even though some of its players have been shooting intramural hoops for 20 years, CEIG has never made the playoffs.

They're old. The most senior player, Dung "Not So Young" Nguyen, is 55. The youngest is around 30. The team with an average age of 48 routinely plays opposing rosters of with the likes of 19-, 20- and 21-year-old pistols.

CEIG stands for Cyberspace Engineering Installation Group. In other words, they're the nerds.

But 2015 was CEIG's year. After losing the first game of the tournament, if they lost any more they'd be eliminated. Despite the odds, the Honey Badgers engineered six wins in a row, including a 55-53 overtime upset of 507th Maintenance Squadron to win it all.

How did they pull it off?

"Well, this was it," a grinning player/coach Dan Gulbranson said. "We're pretty much getting to be 50 years old. I mean, do or die. How many years do we got left?"

Of course, there were a lot more reasons than that.

Just making the playoffs motivated players to do their best, Gulbranson said. Plus, as a CEIG unit whose members are often called to travel at any moment, having a roughly two-week tournament with most team members around was a boost.

"We didn't play that regularly in regular season," Gulbranson said. "The chemistry was all there, so when we started playing a lot of games in a row it helped us improve each game."

With several players who are youth coaches, the CEIG team had smarts on their side. Their game emphasizes on-court communication and defense --often rattling younger, quicker players by causing mistakes and turnovers.

"We're older and we kind of understand It's not about the glamorous shots you make," player Dwayne Gipson said. "It's about being in the right position at the right time and doing the right thing from a discipline standpoint, not from a heroic standpoint."

The team also agrees that picking up four key players after the season started was a major boost to their playing level. Steven Alexander, Willie Currie, Marcus Hines and a player known only as DJ weren't on a team before joining the Honey Badgers.

Alexander and Currie are both Oklahoma high-school all-staters.

"When they showed up, it was a match made in heaven that inspired us all to play better," Gulbranson said. "We went from a record of 1-2 to win five straight games to finish 2nd in our division with a 6-2 record."

The march to the finals had its challenges, including losing Hines in the quarter finals when he was ejected.

But the victories piled up until the Honey Badgers faced their last opponent -- the 507th Maintenance Squadron. CEIG had to beat the undefeated 507th in two separate games to claim the championship.

Alexander hit two free throws in the last seconds of overtime for a 2 point lead. The game ended with a 507th player missing a 3-pointer at the buzzer.

Gipson said foul-outs and infighting hurt their opponent. "I think our mental ability to stay together kind of helped us out, where they kind of imploded."

Steven Alexander, a youth coach and a top scorer, said he was inspired by older players on the team who were determined to contribute.

"With the type of team we had, we just kind of felt like if we were able to stay in the game with defense, then eventually we would get some offense going," he said.

Currie added, "We needed everybody, from rebounding to coach, to Steve and his being wise on the court and keeping our heads cool. It was a team effort and God is good."