COMING ALIVE IN ROUND FIVE

Boasters League round 5~~

The day before the Classic. The quiet before the storm. The nervousness of the release of the draws. The worry of having practiced enough… being ready for the unknown… or, as John Mann so honestly admitted, the candid anticipation of ripping into the Thursday’s taco bar like a child the morning of Christmas. Yes, yes, we all have our favorite parts of the Classic…

But that starts today. Yesterday was the final opportunity to get some fine-tuning match practice done, hone those silky skills, stay up late and watch the Rocky movies for motivation, down 4 raw eggs for breakfast and go and punch up some frozen slab of meat. Boasters league continued on its merry path, and believe it or not, we are less than a month away from the finals.

In a surprise twist, Butter Nutz was at the lower end of the performance scale this week. Not counting the Nicker Ballers who had the bye, Butter Nutz picked up the third lowest amount of points this round with just 20. It was only Nick at Night and Wardogs who accomplished worse with a skimpy 16 and 15 points respectively. (Nicker Ballers almost scored more than that!) And even though they remain on top of the standings, Butter Nutz’ blunder certainly helped the chasing pack.

Mongoose came alive this week and picked up a league’s best 34 points for the round, are now 4^th, just 1 point off second placed Winky-Dinks (who also did well this week with 32 points) and only 7 points off first place. On the Rocks kept pace and maintain 3^rd spot, and Foss Nation are slowly moving upwards and are only 1 point off 5^th place.

Handing out some gold stars for the week… Paul Van Tol (Winky-Dinks) remains undefeated with his third 2-1 win of the half. He frustrated all the hair out of John Perkins (Wardogs) with his unorthodox style of dinking as many shots as possible. It is very difficult to play well when your opponent takes all the rhythm out of your game and Paul has a knack of doing just that.

Greg Baker (Wardogs) handed Tom Fabbri (Winky-Dinks) his first loss of the half, taking him down 2-1. The long reach of Greg no doubt surprised Tom at times when he thought some of his winners were just that: winners. But it’s a dangerous trap to fall into when you don’t think your shot will come back. As I often tell people I coach, you can admire your shot all you like, just do it from the ‘T’ and be ready for the next one!

As I mentioned earlier, the finals are close at hand. We only have 4 weeks to go before the play-offs start. If you wish to be a part of it, you better make sure your team finishes in the top 6… otherwise it’s bye-bye and thanks for coming. Nick at Night and Vivio’s need to giddy-up! Foss Nation also have to very careful as they suffer the bye week for round 6 and it will be tough to get too many make-up matches done this coming week with the tournament taking up all the court time until Sunday afternoon. It won’t be easy. You know what else isn’t easy? Winning at ‘Paper, Rock, Scissors”. I am terrible at that game. Or putting together a chair from IKEA. Damn those tiny wooden pegs. (Thank God for Gorilla Glue!). Or the Detroit Lions. There is nothing easy with that franchise…