This past Saturday, March 16th, 2019 - Max's All Stars won the 20th Annual Full Court Charity Challenge Corporate Division Championship held at the Boston University Fitness and Recreation Center. Our team went 5-1 en route to repeating as champions! Branden Gibson, Corey Orgias, John Simmons, Kaheem Davis, Marvin Billups Jr, Nikola Djurdjevic, Shereef Taylor, Spencer Smith and William Davis played hard, sacrificed and worked together to earn this title. After winning the first two pool play games with relative ease against Raptor (38-21) and Pay2Play (54-41), it looked like Max's All Stars would coast to another championship. However, a loss in the third pool play game against CTE-4-Three (37-33) served as an important wake-up call for our team that helped us refocus and lock-in. In the fourth pool play game, Max's All Stars defeated Cross Insurance by a final score of 58-50. At the end of pool play, three teams were tied for the top-2 seeds with a 3-1 record. Brickhouse earned the #1 seed, leaving Max's All Stars and Instinet to shoot it out for the #2 seed. The tiebreaker was a three-point shooting contest. Instinet shot the ball first and made it. Spencer Smith matched that made three-pointer. Then Instinet shot the ball a second time and missed. Spencer calmly nailed a three-pointer to clinch the #2 seed and all-important bye straight to the semifinals. In the semifinals, Max's All Stars defeated Cross Insurance for the second time by a final score of 49-28 to earn a spot in the championship game against Instinet. In 2017, Max's All Stars suffered a heartbreaking double-overtime defeat in the semifinals against Instinet. Two years later, we avenged that loss with a victory against Instinet in the championship game by a final score of 49-43. Winning vs Instinet definitely made this championship victory so much sweeter. Marvin Billups Jr and Spencer Smith were named co-MVP's. This is the first time in tournament history that two players shared MVP honors. It was tough to name one MVP because everyone contributed and was a huge part of this championship. This was truly a total team effort. Thank you to all the players for making the trip and leaving it all out on the court. Thank you to Bob Forlenza for organizing a great tournament as always. Big thank you to
ARTEMIS, Inc. for sponsoring our team. It is an honor to compete in this tournament in support of the
Nashoba Learning Group and the
MGH Lurie Center for Autism. Also, shout-out to
Boston University Fitness and Recreation Center for hosting this great event. Ten years after Hofstra Club Basketball made their first trip to Boston for the NIRSA NCCS Regional Tournament, Max's All Stars continued the tradition and brought another championship back to New York. This is the fifteenth championship in team history.
Click here to watch highlights of Max's All Stars from the 20th Annual Full Court Challenge.
Click here to see photos of Max's All Stars at the 20th Annual Full Court Charity Challenge.
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Max's All Stars
20th Annual Full Court Charity Challenge Corporate Division Champions
William Davis, Corey Orgias, Spencer Smith, John Simmons, Marvin Billups Jr, Kaheem Davis, Max Margulis, Nikola Djurdjevic, Branden Gibson, Shereef Taylor |
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Post-tournament awards banquet
John Simmons, Kaheem Davis, Nikola Djurdjevic, Marvin Billups Jr, Branden Gibson, William Davis, Max Margulis, Corey Orgias, Spencer Smith, Shereef Taylor, Bob Forlenza |
