Some of you may know that this game (Buzzerbeater) is a (not so subtle) adaptation of the soccer simulator Hattrick to basketball. (Indeed I first came to BB from learning it from the Hattrick forums, back in season 3, and then shortly thereafter dropped Hattrick.)
One of the mechanics that was imported from Hattrick is the enthusiasm system (Tie/normal/Crunch Time). Except in Hattrick what we call “Crunch time” is called “Match of the season”.
Ladies and gentlemen, the match of the season arrived … and it was a dud. (NB: no one crunch-time if I had to guess) JCW did what they do best and empowered Sargent to score (with some help from Garces de Marcilla). After a tense first quarter, JCW broke through the Cassville defense. For their part, Cassville was plagued by offensive flow problems and could never get scoring going in the non-garbage part of the game.
I have been joking about Motorcity shootouts, but come on!! 143-163!!! That is an absurd scoreline. I think some perimeter defense is very much a necessary addition. Two O’s top 3 scorers scored 103 points!!!
In another world, my match against X Dominate X would have been the critical match of the Great 8. We had been trading wins and losses: since our match in the first game of the season we had beaten exactly the same teams in both the initial round and the inter conference round. But Dominate decided to fold the season and set up an impressive training program after their loss to Cassville last week. This completely changed the dynamics of this match, which became an easy win for me.
Ashkickers grabs a good win @ Crows which keeps them just behind the Big 8 leaders. There is an interesting situation brewing in the relegation battles. I think all 3 big 8 teams have good chances, but the *ideal* relegation match is to catch the falling botified Doctors or the soon-to-be-bot BlackSheep. I believe Doctors will fall to #6 and BlackSheep to #7. So the Big 8’s 5th and 6th position will be extremely valuable.
In this race, Hoosiers gets a big win against Scrap Heap. Winning away matches is always important. Winning against someone who is ahead of you doubly so. Unfortunately I think this won’t help them all that much because catching up a 2-game deficit is difficult when there are many stronger teams ahead of you.