Run It Up cruises to the Arizona Draft Tournament championship, earning Christian Bower his third draft title

Run It Up, led by captain Christian Bower (16)

The final Arizona Draft Tournament of 2019 came to an end last night, with Run It Up stomping Rim Jobs 104-72 in the championship game.

Run It Up put on an offensive clinic to secure the title, shooting 55% from the field and 56% from deep. They had four players score 19 or more points, and all four of them shot 50% or better from the field. That scoring effort was led Davawn Peterson, who had a game-high 31 points on 13-20 shooting from the field and 3-4 from deep. This dominant showing in the title game exemplifies how Run It Up has played this entire season, as the four players that went off (Peterson, Christian Bower, Jalen Richard and Bahaad Russell) all averaged 20.3 points per game or more this season.

Run It Up went through the 23, 26, 2, 19 and 8-seeds on their way to the title, winning those five games by an average of 14 points. They knocked off the defending champions, Free Smoke, 99-95 in the Elite Eight, and followed that up with a win over Derio Parker (who won the summer title with Free Smoke) and Team Alkaline 101-92 in the Final Four.

It was a great title journey for Run It Up, and it was an especially impressive showing for the Tempe Draft League. Tempe had 12 teams in its league this season, and half of them made it to the Elite Eight. Those six teams had range, as the 1-seed Big Booty Buckets made it, as did the 29-seed Effortless. Both of those teams lost in the Elite Eight, but the Final Four featured four teams from Tempe, ensuring the club would win its first draft tournament title in 12 tries.

Not only was this the first title for Tempe, but it also ends a three-season championship run for Palm Valley teams. Run It Up is the first non-PV team to win a draft title since the Fall of 2018, which was won by Gilbert’s Drip Too Hard…a team that was also led by Christian Bower.

This is a significant title for the history of the tournament, it’s a significant for Tempe, but to me, the largest significance is what it does to Bower’s legacy. He’s already been recognized as one of the best player’s in UH Arizona (and all of UH), but this title really elevates that. He and Adam Bickerstaff became the first players to win back-to-back draft titles in the Summer and Fall seasons of 2018, but this title makes Bower the first player to win three draft titles; and it also proves he can win one without Bickerstaff. It has some parallels to Shaq winning in 2006 without Kobe, or Kobe winning in 2009 without Shaq (with the biggest difference being that Bower and Bickerstaff are friends and don’t hate each other like Shaq and Kobe do).

Bower has now made it to six draft championship games, winning half of them. No one else has been able to lead his teams to as much success as Bower has, and he’s done it while putting up crazy stats along the way. He put up averages of 30.2/6.4/10.6 with shooting splits of 63/47/80 in Tempe this season. These weren’t the culmination of a few boom-or-bust games either, as these were Bower’s lowest single-game totals in a few categories this season:

Points: 16

Assists: Eight

Shooting percentage: 50%

He’s now played in 156 career games in draft leagues, putting up averages of 28.2/5.7/9.4 with shooting splits of 58/43/78. You combine that with the three draft titles and it’s clear he’s the G.O.A.T. of Arizona draft leagues.

He’s now played in 293 career games, making him seven away from being eligible for the Hall of Fame. There are players in Arizona that have been around much longer than he has, so he’ll have to wait for his time, but there’s no doubt in my mind he’s done enough to be deserving of an induction someday.