Seems like we missed the recap for Gameday 7. As we travel through our three game road trip, it can get hard to get to business.
The Visionaries winning streak is alive and expanding, and just about to be tested on Tuesday.
Everyone has noticed that, after Act 1 of the season, there are nine (!) teams with 3-4 records. There is something slightly deceiving about the figure of course: some got there with three home games, rather than four. Others got there despite losing at home to the league leaders, while others (like us) just had to face them at their home and so still have to pay that particular tribute. But there is no denying that there is substantial parity in the league. This makes the race for the underbelly more interesting than the race for the title.
The race for the title itself is pretty simple: the interconference games (aka Act 2) will tell us more, but if Visionaries makes it out with the home-court lead, you ain't catching them.
In the middle, the most interesting game was no doubt EBW @ Big Gulp. In the discord, I said something to the effect of, gotta pick and choose your away normals, because nearly all of the time it isn't enough. Having looked at the game more carefully, though, I think EBW's decision to normal was the right call. Setting aside the fact that they had higher ratings (RP can lead to slightly depressed ratings), I think EBW caught a really bad roll of the dice here. According to PP100, Kiser was expected to score about 17 points and went for 24, Duff/London had similar expectations (about 17) and also combined for 22 points. Conversely, EBW's SF position was expected to yield 24 points but yielded only about 20. In retrospect, I think this [I]was[/I] a winnable away game, and they just got very unlucky. And the Reverse Patient itself didn't really work, producing only 104 pp100 and 18 shots for the target guy.
Enough for me (the reporter) changing my mind. We knew we (the Black Light team) were TIE-ing all the way and also making some sub-optimal line-up decisions for training. But we were a bit emboldened by the fact that we'd been crushing the Alley-Oop Allstars in scrimmages. And indeed we were staying close until late, but then, in the last quarter, the recently reinforced Warroad just had more to give (and HCA) and it got out of reach before we got somewhat closer at the end. It would be nice, if there was an option to calibrate what counts as "out of reach" for the purposes of garbage time, so that your team could raise the white flag a bit earlier and optimize minutes.
I was so focused on the underbelly sweepstakes that I didn't notice the most amazing result of the week until now. Rhino's Rage trounced Deronimo at their arena. When I looked at the box score I thought "hmmm .632 3FG% and 37 points in the same quarter: they probably landed a 3pt barrage in the first quarter, and then coasted". Wrong. The initial lead was built largely without 3pts, and then once established it got blown up by the 3pt shooting. Tremendous(medium) outside score rating will take you places, and in this case it took Rhino's to a 30pt lead, before garbage time. Deronimo hit the highest Buzzer-manager rating in the association at 178, but that will be hardly consolation. It is good to be reminded that despite the air of inevitability, there is, very occasionally, a game that is won on good tactics.
Last edited by Coco at 10/13/2024 10:29:11 AM