The Fordham 3 on 3 Basketball Tourney kicked off as a fierce competition on April 15 with 7 teams vying for the title as Lincoln Center’s best squad. When the dust had settled it was Josh Tarpav, Forham College at Lincoln Center (FCLC) ’15, Tristan Paguio, FCLC ’15 and Yuta Kobayashi, FCLC ’15, who came away as tournament champions.

The three ballers have had a lot of time to mesh their games since they first met seven months ago. “Basically I posted in the freshmen Facebook group at the beginning of the year,” Paguio said. “I asked everyone if they wanted to play and Josh responded. After that Yuta came and we’ve been playing together ever since September.”

Paguio felt that the length of time that the three have played together played a pivotal role in helping them claim the championship. “We’ve been playing with each other so long, we know what each of us is good at; we’ve developed a great chemistry on the court,” Paguio said.

The team of Tarpav, Paguio and Kobayashi won three games en route to their matchup in the finals. The three champions got off to a slow start and fell behind 9-3 in the final round. “We went down and Yuta made a couple of jumpshots,” Paguio said. “After that we just fed the hot hand and tied it up 10-10.”

The rest of the game was a close battle, but the 7-1 run really helped the champions snatch momentum. They fed off of the run to win the final game 21-18.

“We just went out and played,” Tarpav said. “Competition-wise there were a lot of people we had seen around. It was more about winning against them than just we’re freshmen and that’s why we wanted to win.” Paguio added, “I was really hyped after we won.”

One positive aspect is this tournament had a bigger outcome than the last 3 on 3 tournament that was held earlier in the school year. However, for a campus with about 1800 students, 21 students is a very low turnout.

“I would have liked to see a lot more teams play,” Paguio said. “Seven teams is too low and it would be nice if some girls played. However I would rather people play who are passionate. I would rather people who care about basketball than a lot of people who casually know about it because I like competition.”

Tarpav added, “There was some good teams. At Lincoln Center you don’t expect a lot of basketball players but a lot of people came out. Everyone was ready to play and it was a lot of fun.”

When asked about the size of the competition, Tarpav felt that it could be even bigger. “The message needs to go out further,” Tarpav said. “A lot of people didn’t know until two to three days before. Maybe if we had some more posters around Lincoln Center.  Also we have a heavy commuter population and if we can get the message out to the them, we can have a bigger tournament.”

The champions were excited about their win and would be happy to do it all over again. “We are definitely going to keep the squad in tact and come back next year to defend our title,” Tarpav said.