Bookstore Basketball XXX: Top-ranked Five Reasons rolls over Check Your Head 21-7
By KATHLEEN O'BRIEN
Senior Staff Writer
Five Reasons Your Girl Left You could have given itself another name: Five Reasons We're Going To Dominate You.
Dominate is what No. 1 Five Reasons Your Girl Left You has done all through the tournament. It did it once more Thursday night, running past Check Your Head 21-7.
"In my mind, we have the top guys in all five positions," said Five Reasons' Dan Reidy. "We're the best at all five positions — I mean, that's why we put the team together."
The game might have been a little closer if Check Your Head, the 16th-seeded team, hadn't had to play without its top player. Six-foot-10 varsity basketball player Hans Rasmussen, left Thursday for a camp for pro prospects in California.
"It makes it a totally different kind of game without having Hans," said Check Your Head's Aaron Crall. "They were just a lot bigger than us. Size was a big factor because most of the shots they got were tip-ins or off of rebounds."
Reidy, Dan Lustig and Kevin Muempfer all came to Five Reasons from the dismantled Franchise team. The three Franchise transfers were basketball junkies, the guys seen every afternoon playing pick-up games at Rolfs. With Franchise's best player Steve Craig gone to graduation, they began scouting out replacements in the fall, hoping to put together a championship-level Bookstore team.
The first new player cemented on Five Reasons' roster was Pete Ryan.
"Dan [Reidy] and I always wanted to play together," Ryan said. "Last year, we played against each other, and we eliminated his team to go to the Final Four. That's when I played for Majestics. So he was like, well, we're not doing that again. We're going to play on the same team next year."
Ryan, at 6-4, is an all-around athlete. He captured four straight Bengal Bouts titles as a captain of the Boxing Club. With his older sister a Saint Mary's graduate, Ryan's been watching Bookstore since early in his high school career, counting down the days until he could compete.
"My brothers are the ones that give me a hard time about it," Ryan said. "like I should be a RecSports athlete of the year, but I'm not quite varsity athlete material."
Ryan had another request for the team — his roommate Paul Raih, a 6-8 Irish Guard member who missed Bookstore last year while studying in London. Raih made Check Your Head pay last night, as his younger brother, John, was a sophomore on the other team.
"Today's his birthday, too," said Paul Raih. "I had to beat him up on his birthday."
Five Reasons has been beating teams up all tournament long.
"We've scrimmaged against the top teams," Lustig said, "and we know what's ahead of us. I haven't known one person who we've played against so far."
Reidy, a senior, is a midsize player who can hit from inside or outside. He's gotten more than his share of time in scouting out his competition as a head Bookstore Commissioner.
Lustig, a 6-4 sophomore, brings an inside presence to the team. The Irish Guardsman from Alexandria, Ind., turned down a host of offers from Division II and III basketball programs to come to Notre Dame. It wasn't a difficult choice.
"I'm the sixth one in my family to come here," said Lustig, who is the sixth of nine children.
Muempfer, a junior and the team's point guard, took his playing beyond Rolfs this year. He practiced against the Notre Dame women's basketball team, along with No. 2 Versatility's Chris Dillon. The daily grind kept Muempfer's game at a peak.
"If their starting team played Bookstore," Muempfer said of the women, "I think they'd be a teen seed probably. They're really good."
Muempfer, like Lustig, chose to follow a family tradition of attending Notre Dame rather than play basketball for a Division II or III school.
"My dad and my sister came here," said Muempfer. "That's the only application I filled out was Notre Dame."
So far, it looks like Five Reasons has put together the dream team of the tournament — Check Your Head was the first team to score more than five points on Five Reasons. The team to beat still considers the tourney wide open, though.
"I think, personally, the tournament is up for grabs from here on out," said Lustig.
All Sports Stories for Friday, April 27, 2001
