When the final buzzer of the championship game sounded, University of Florida’s Zeta Beta Tau (ZBT) had been dethroned as Fraternity Basketball League champions for the first time in three years. They lost to a Beta Theta Pi (Beta) team that they had handled relatively easily just two weeks prior.

ZBT went into the game undefeated, and got off to a horrifically slow start, scoring just eight points in the first half. Three after three clanked off the rim, while an array of wild layups often missed the rim entirely. The freakish athletes of ZBT ran back and forth up and down the court, while the one man that could have, and should have, led them to victory, slouched away on the bench. This man, of course, was 6 foot 5 inch Andrew Soll.

Soll is now a sophomore at the University of Florida. He grew up in Cherry Hill, New Jersey and attended Cherry Hill East High School. There he played JV basketball for two years, before making it onto the regional-powerhouse Varsity squad. His senior season, Soll averaged 5.5 points, 5 rebounds, and 4 assists per game, and was nicknamed, “The Half Triple Double” by his teammates. He showed an uncanny ability to make his move around bigger defenders in the post, and feasted on teams that did not have anyone big enough to guard him. But even in the post, Soll is a guard at heart and is always quick to find the open man, and rack up assist numbers.

Soll, nicknamed “Trunk”, because of his great mass and resemblance to a tree trunk, brought those attributes with him to the pickup courts of Southwest Rec Center, the main University Gym.There he dominated, often toying with defenders who stood no chance. Fellow ZBT basketball player Cory Baach recalled, “When I got to school I thought I was pretty good at ball. One game against Andrew Soll made me reevaluate myself as a player. He was completely dominant. I would be lucky to get a point off him [in a one on one game to eleven].”

Both Baach and Soll made the ZBT team as freshmen, but neither played many minutes, as the head coach, Zak Elfenbein, played mainly upper-classmen for the majority of the games. This, as shown by the championship game, was a mistake. Andrew Soll has the one thing you can’t teach, height. And in the fraternity league, a big man that can take you to the post is a relatively unstoppable force. ZBT should have realized early, or at least by half-time, that they needed to put a big body in the middle, and feed the beast. Soll would have been able to control the game, and would have more than likely brought home the crown.

Next season, we will have the opportunity to watch the Jewish Shaq dominate the fraternity league. And in a few years, Soll, a three-time league champion, will probably look back and wonder about the game that got away.