Boasters League
Quarter Finals~~
Amazing how things change once the finals come around.
Suddenly there is a level of commitment and interest not seen during the
regular season, players actually going out of their way to get matches done,
making an extra effort to get that bonus point (mostly), captains crunching the
numbers, calculating their mathematical chances, communication amongst each team
increases 100-fold, I’m receiving e-mails about future possible opponents… it’s
certainly refreshing to see. I also think that if this level of dedication was
demonstrated through the season, who is in the finals may be different…
I did hear one of the captains of one of the eliminated
teams last night mention that if only 2 of his team members turned up twice on
a Wednesday, they would be in the play-offs. That’s all it can take. Every
point counts. Even that random bonus point that was missed from round 2 for
example. But that’s all water under the bridge now.
For the teams that extended their season at least one more
week, this is what happened:
Nick at Night v Foss
Nation
Can anyone say “bonus points”? If anything was going to be Nick at Night’s Achilles heel during
the play-offs, it would be their ability (or lack thereof) of collecting bonus
points. During the season, the most they picked up in any one week was 9. But
come play-off time… and last night they accumulate 13! Remarkable! Foss Nation matched them on this count,
which is great news since the winner of this match-up would now be decided on
court.
I did predict a Nick
at Night victory this week, and based on win percentage over the season,
they won 18% more often than what Foss
Nation did. However, of the 16 matches played (out of 17) the two teams
split the wins 8 apiece. The difference being was how many 3-0 wins one team had over the other.
In arguably the most exciting match of the evening, Tom MacEachern (Foss Nation) had his work cut out against Riley English (Nick at Night).
Riley has beaten Tom 6 times in a row leading up to this encounter, the last
time Tom actually won was in October of 2017. So a mental hurdle was securely
in place, but Tom wasn’t having any of it. Although after the first game, he
would have been getting the repeating familiar feeling of déjà vu all over
again as Riley did his usual sprint from corner to corner, to mezzanine, to
parking garage, to keg, to Tom’s drop-shot. Somehow, it didn’t discourage Tom
terribly much and he took the next 2 games (was the 3rd 15-14..?)
and ended his losing streak. It was a reversal of the 3-0- pounding Tom took
back in round 7.
There were 3 other reversals that took place. Renee Fershee (Nick at Night), took sweet revenge on her round 7 loss to Peter McGrath (Foss Nation) last night with a 3-0 win. Brendan Fossee (Nick at
Night) followed very closely in Renee’s footsteps and did exactly the same
thing against John Markus (Foss Nation). Turning 1-2 losses into
3-0 wins is in reality a 4 point turnaround. Makes all the difference. The
third reversal went Foss Nation’s
way this time, with Niko Ahee
avenging his 1-2 round 7 loss to Tripp
Kennedy winning 2-1 this time.
As I said earlier, it wasn’t the amount of wins overall that
made the difference here, but the amount of 3-0
wins. Nick at Night had 7 of them.
That’s a 21-0 deficit that is devilishly difficult to overcome no matter what
way you look at it. Of the 8 wins that Foss
Nation secured, they only had two 3-0 scores, it simply was not enough. Nick at Night keep their engine pumping
at full speed and move onto the semifinals with a resounding 42-32 win.
Butter Nutz v Wardogs
So did bonus points make a difference in this one? Well, it
didn’t exactly help the Wardogs as
they managed to collect only 9 of them. That’s low for a final, but I suppose
luckily for them, Butter Nutz didn’t
take full advantage of it as they only picked up 11 of their own. If they could
have hauled in 14 or 15, they would have put the result to bed early.
This turned into a struggle for the Wardogs from the get-go anyway. Four matches were played early and Butter Nutz won 3 of them, so by the
time the quarter-final had officially started, Wardogs were already 4 points back. As it turned out this night for
them, wins were difficult to come by, especially of the 3-0 variety. They had
only one. Jordan Dean took care of
business against Matt Peleman, with
a much needed but awfully rare 3 game victory. On the other side of the field,
3-0 wins for the Butter Nutz weren’t
exactly coming in thick and fast either, as they only mange to record two of
them. However, Butter Nutz were on
the positive side of the 2-1 results a lot more often.
Score reversals from the round 7 match-up… Peter Ulbrich (Butter Nutz) avenged his 1-2 loss to David Pontes (Wardogs)
taking this one 2-1 – also making it the first time Peter has beaten David in 5
tries. (Must be those lessons…?) Scott
Beals (Butter Nutz) shook off his
0-3 loss to John Perkins (Wardogs) with a 2-1 win here – this is
also the first time Scott has bested John on the squash court – perfect timing
I suppose! And Max Franklin (Wardogs) managed to get even with Jason Currie (Butter Nutz) winning 2-1 on this occasion, Jason doing his best Riley English impression of running
from corner to keg to locker room to BAC to Max’s backhand rail… and then
losing.
As the Thursday sun up (an hour late again), we still did
not have a clear winner. With 3 matches still to be completed, Butter Nutz held the advantage but Wardogs were mathematically still
within reach. Although that reach was at the very tips of their fingers, and
wouldn’t take much to have it be completely out of their grasp. In the spotlight
first was Josh Gershonowicz (Butter Nutz) and Joey Gaylord (Wardogs).
Josh beat Joey 2-1 in round 7, Josh’s only win in 4 attempts. Joey needed to
win 3-0 to keep his team’s hopes alive, but none of his victories over Josh in
the past were 3-0. It certainly didn’t help matters for Joey that he also
carried a dodgy knee into the match. Taking nothing away from Josh, the result
could very well have ended the same way, but Joey couldn’t keep up with the pace
required and had to regrettably bail half way through the second game. Josh’s
3-0 win gave Butter Nutz the unassailable
lead and the ticket into the next round. Final score: Butter Nutz 38 to Wardogs
26.
Semi Finals… We have Nick
at Night v Winky-Dinks. A round
3 match-up had the Winky-Dinks on
top 34-29. All but 2 matches were played, but neither team picked up many bonus
points so that could be a factor. I’m leaning Winky-Dinks here, but Nick
at Night are clearly no push-overs. Should be close either way.
Then we have Butter
Nutz v Mongoose. Back in round 4
Mongoose squeaked out a 31-30
victory. All but 3 matches were played and all but 2 results were 2-1. On this
occasion and Butter Nutz picked up 3
more bonus points. I’m predicting a Mongoose
win here as well, but I also think they will win by a greater margin – maybe by
6 or 7 points. Of course, now that I have said that, it won’t happen.
