Moeller House Basketball Season Recap

This year’s Moeller House Basketball Tournament was full of crazy games and unexpected losses, with Pillar House taking the “W” and house points in the end.

Teams with loaded rosters struggled at the beginning of the season, but fortunately their coaches were able to put some pieces in the right places and get their teams playing at their best going into the playoffs.

Last year’s champion, Trinity, looked like they were going to go back-to-back this year after entering the playoffs as the number one seed, with an impressive regular season record of 4-1. However, Trinity ended up taking their second loss of the season to Pillar in the playoffs, spoiling their shot at a repeat win.

Head coach Donovan Mukes spoke about his team during the season and the devastating loss to Pillar, “All year, we played great team ball and prided ourselves on the defensive end. We were all bought in and were trying to achieve the same goal which was a championship and unfortunately we came out flat and didn’t hit the shots we normally do. At the end of the day we have to live with it and move on.”

 Pillar proceeded on to the finals while Zaragoza and Zheler battled down to the wire. Zaragoza ended up pulling away down the stretch to advance to the finals where they played Pillar. Head coach of Zheler, Eli Turner, talked about the ups and downs of their season. “We started the season off strong 2-0 but then we finished with a record of 3-2-1. We did not have the most talent but consistently my guys went out there and played with heart and grit. We came in semi-final game with the expectation of winning because of beating them earlier in the year but came up short.” It will be hard to replace senior talent like Conlon Daniel and Sam Klosterman.

Zaragoza and Pillar, two of the most talented teams, struggled early on but managed to squeeze their way into the house basketball championship. Pillar started the game off with an alley-oop and took momentum from the start, and it was hard for Zaragoza to get themselves back in the game. Pillar ended walking away with the 2022-2023 house basketball championship. Head coach of Pillar, Carson Brown, spoke on what it takes to win and his teams early struggle, “My team was very slept on but after we came together as one, we started to achieve greater things. Going into the tournament, we were 5th out of the 6 teams. We started playing together and played hard. We won two games against two very talented teams which boosted out confidence. Going into the championship, we had so much confidence there was no way we lost. We started the game with an alley-oop and that was the end of it."

The Moeller house basketball tournament was far from boring and plenty of more ball to be played next school year.