The road to Assembly Hall starts here

A few locations come to mind when thinking of basketball towns: Chapel Hill, Durham and of course, Bloomington.\nThe success of the IU men’s basketball team has trickled into the minds of the 40,000 students on the Bloomington campus. Four hundred twenty-four teams signed up for intramural basketball this season, up from 412 last year. Last year’s Division II tournament champions Rule XXIX, headed by captain Donovan Garletts, is one team looking to repeat their trip to Assembly Hall this semester. However, Rule XXIX is taking a rather unorthodox approach to reclaiming the title.\nThe team moved up from Men’s Division II to Men’s Division I after some pressure was unleashed upon Garletts by his friends from several Men’s Division I squads. Moving to the upper echelon of teams will be quite an adjustment, but Garletts is confident that a few new players in addition to his full-court press defense will bode well in Division I.\n“It’s still our core five,” Garletts said, “but we picked up a few new players who played on Bloomington South’s final four teams in high school – including Kyle Walters and Ryan Woolery. Division II was a walk in the park for us. We were beating everyone by 20 – no one could compete.”\nThe team that will be giving Rule XXIX the most trouble will be reigning Men’s Division I champion UMAD. UMAD is off to a solid 1-0 start after an impressive opening game over Fort Wayne’s Finest, 70-52.\nAlongside the basketball tournament, the annual ISC 3-point shootout will take place Wednesday, Feb. 20. Students involved will have the opportunity to shoot five basketballs from five racks and will have two opportunities to shoot. The top eight men and top six women will go on to participate in the playoffs during the Intramural Basketball Championships, also to be held at Assembly Hall.