The San Quentin Wild Cats basketball team won the first ever Intramural League basketball championship in a three game series over the San Quentin Kings.
After getting hammered in the first game, the Wild Cats rebounded to win back to back comeback games on game winning shots. With seconds left in game two, Richard “Mujahid” Munns buried a three pointer to win the game. In game three, Aubra McNeely drained a left corner three pointer with 19 seconds left in the game, which proved to be the game winning shot.
“We stepped up when nobody thought we were going to win,” said guard Asa Punefu. “We came back from a large deficit to win the game at the end.”
end.” Trailing big in the second half of game three, Munns realized that he had to make an unpopular decision to motivate his teammates. “I knew something drastic needed to happen in order to overcome a 21 point deficit, so I took the big tech to get the attention of my teammates,” he commented. “We came together and they never gave up. It was really sweet victory as an underdog.”
“I felt like in an elimination game my attitude and my teammate’s attitude was that we refused to lose. The pride and the heart of our team would not let us be eliminated,” said Daniel Wright, the leading scorer during the regular season for the Wild Cats.
The Wild Cats finished the regular season with a 7-7 record and was an underdog in every game. Coach Vihn Nyugen expressed his confidence in his team going into the playoffs. He said, “I felt good about our chances. I noticed during the season we had talent, it was just a matter of can they play as a team. I maintained confidence after the loss to the Kings. We just needed to communicate. We weren’t playing as a team. We came back to win playing as a team.”