I figured this season to give us small things to talk about or piggy back on... I would bring back the III.7 5-Hot 5pot... Basically 5 observations from the week. so lets begin
1. Last year Recap.... We wanted to give a public Congrats to Danbury on winning the III.7 Championship last season. Playoffs were interesting as always. In first round games Scrap & PuffPuff both advanced on the red side while champion Danbury and Baker Street advanced on the blue side. In the Semi's only close game was PuffPuff & Scrap and then in the final Scrap found one of their key players injured making Danbury's final games to a title way more favorable than even he would have expected. Now lets see how he does in D2
2. New members... This year as always there are new members to the league. First one "new member" isn't all that new. Rhino Rage was formerly a member and champion of this leaguue... Our new new members are 4 teams all up following championships of their own in D4. Neither team has a salary that screams superstar, but 3 of the top scoring performances came from guys playing their first game in the league! So looks like they're up for the challenge.
3. Speaking of New teams on the blue side BOTH new members squeezed out single digit victories. One that really stood out was the Donner game vs Baker... Being a veteran Baker guessed correctly on Donner's offense focus and pace, he ran a defense designated to beat outside offense, he also ran an offense designed to attack the defense that Donner elected to play. Baker fouled less, made more FTs than Donner even got to attempt... Yet lost by 5 in overtime. Hats off to Donner who took the 3 ball route but it does raise Game engine questions? if you pick offense and defense that counters your opponent, and guesses properly and both play same enthusiasm and your opponent doesn't play a guy over 20k salary and you only have 1-2 under 20k salary... HOW DO or DID he LOSE the game? I guess Donner would say 3 ball was the killer. But seems odd to the league.
4. Points Points Points Points... Now maybe its just week 1 game 1 so things being figured out but WOW the point output on saturday was crazy of 16 teams... 11 teams scored 100 points or MORE, and 3 more teams were right there near the 100 point mark themselves. so either this league is loaded with scorers or NOT many teams have guys with high OD or ID ratings.
5. Look ahead... Rivals meet week 1.. of course the game doesn't waste time having the longest running Rivalry in III.7 play each other. These teams have met the most of any teams in the playoffs and of course twice every season in the regular season. Both start with losses and look to avoid the opening week 0-2 start. Also there will be an EARLY "1vs2" game on the blue side.
Predictions... winners (Rogue, Rhino, Baker, Incompl... Red side Mof, SVJ, Sparta, Puff)