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Quarter Finals Recap
No surprises in last night's quarterfinals matchups - higher seeds all advanced (no Cinderella performances this year)!

Game One: Big 8's Mighty Moose Rockets (4) vs. Scrap Heap Low Posters (4)
Scrap Heap defeated Mighty Moose, but because of the effort difference, it required a bit of work! Scrap Heap found themselves down 9 coming into the final frame, with Jean-Louis Fleurent leading their Patient charge with 34 points after 36 minutes. With 6 minutes left in the game, Scrap had reduced the lead to 3 with Horyza (spoiler alert) having scored 38 of his 52 points on the night. Two minutes later, Scrap heap led by two, with Chiodarelli sinking two free throws for Moose to knot it up. PF Doktor tied it ten seconds later and the Low Posters never looked back, outscoring Moose in the last quarter 39-17.

Both teams shot well from the field, with Moose hitting 9-21 from three, but the real difference came in free throws, with 36 attempts by Scrap Heap and only 7 coming from the Rockets. After the game, Moose's manager, Hutch44 could be seen screaming with outrage and the vast difference of foul calls against his team (29-10). Later, on social media, Hutch44 deleted a tweet alleging 2 of the 3 refs had at least $10,000 on the game.

Game Two: Big 8's Lion Rebels (3) vs. Philly Dribble (2)
Dribble had the Rebel's number all season, and last night's matchup was no difference other than the Rebels jumping out to a 6 point lead after one quarter. By the half, that lead had been erased and the Rebels found themselves at a 5 point deficit. Interestingly, even though Philly was running and gunning and the Rebels employed a Patient tactic, the Rebels took 13 more shots, but shot a woeful 29% from three, with their leading scorer Carrillo (26 PTS, 14.0 RTNG) missing 8 of his 10 threes. Philly, on the other hand, had a much more even display with three of their starters in double digits scoring and two of their backups scoring 10 or more points each. Philly easily defeated the Rebels 102-83 with the game never in question after the first half.

Game Three: Great 8's Dallas Bomskwad (4) vs. Gremlins (1)
Bomskwad's reward for eking past Chewy for the fourth place spot in the division was the number 1 seeded Gremlins, who took care of business 103-86. Dallas tried to focus on the low post for the evening and while they were only down 4 at the half, the Gremlins dominated the third quarter enroute to victory. Though Dallas shot better than 50% from three, they only hit 37% of their overall field goal attempts while the Gremlins matched their three point rate and percentage and scored over 50% from the field as well. The Gremlins inside defense was the major difference maker in this game, holding Dallas below their own average points per game on the season. PF Penalver led the way with 26 points in 37 minutes on 12-18 shooting, including three of the teams eight blocks on the night.

Game Four: Miami Cleo (3) vs. The Ashkickers (2)
In the final quarterfinal game of the night, The Ashkickers defeated Miami Cleo at home 82-73, with Ashkickers' PF Colomina having a night, scoring 40 points (17-22 from the field, including 6-6 from FT), hauling in 18 rebounds and blocking three shots. Miami's SF Maurin had a decent effor, scoring 23 points (11-24 from the field) to go along with four steals, but his -6 point differential wasn't enough to make up the ground required to eliminate Ashkickers. The 2nd seeded Great 8 team just had too much of a inside defensive advantage, coupled with the fact that they only missed one of their 14 free throws, while Miami missed seven of their 11 free throws. Ashkickers took a 9 point advantage into the half, and while Miami was able to bring that back down to 5 by the end of the 3rd quarter, Ash took those four points back by the end of the game.

Notable Relegation Matchup Recap
With two minutes left, Chewy led SuperSonicz 105-97. Chewy's SG Sebastian GFojin fouled Antonio Gobber, who made both FTs to pull within 6. Center B. Gansler then threw the ball out of bounds with 1:35 left and SuperSonicz SG M. Whitney scored from the wing to bring it to 4. Seattle's SF N. Ferriz intercepted the ball and on a fast break layed it in. Whitney then intercepted a pass, but turned around and let Chewy's backup SF M. Shipp take it back; MVP candidate Christopher Wood tried a lay up but missed because Ferriz fouled him. Wood hit the first free throw to bring the difference to three, and then after a series of substitutions puts the Chewbaccans back up 4 with 38 seconds left. Whitney scored from the top of the key to cut it to two and with 10 seconds left, C. Wood again is fouled on a layup by Ferriz. Wood hits the first free throw, substitutions occur again, but Wood misses the last free throw and SuperSonicz immediately call a time out after SG Whitney secures the rebound.

Down three, with ten seconds to go, Ferriz forces up a three but misses, but SuperSonicz PG Muncy grabs the rebound and hits it out to Whitney who makes the three to tie it up with two seconds left. Unfortunately for Supersonicz, they weren't able to foul quick enough, as Whitney fouled backup SG A. Roland with 0 seconds left. All Roland needed to do was make one of his two free throws since they were in the bonus. He made the first and while he missed the second, that's all they needed to win the game, 109-108. All in all, Supersonicz had a valiant 11 point run in the last two minutes but couldn't pull it off.

You do have to wonder about some of SuperSonicz coach's substitution changes, however, as their SG and SF had point differentials of +5 and +11 in their respective 39 and 34 minutes. Particularly in Ferriz's case, whose backup, R. Brannon played 14 minutes and had a point differential of -12. The other juicy deets about the final seconds of this game, backup PG A. Roland, who averaged 16.8 mpg to go along with 5 ppg was only shooting 27% from the free throw line this season (3-11) and was already 0-2 on the night before hitting the game winning FT with no time left (and missing the second to finish 1-4 on the night).

Should be an interesting relegation series to watch play out!

Dude,

Awesome job with these stats and reports! Thanks so much for helping make the season more interesting.

I could have sworn I heard a ref in first quarter of my game talking to his bookie during a TV timeout and I thought the fix was in against my team! :)

Thanks man - got a little bored at work and this sounded more interesting to put together!

I've looked at that third quarter four times now and I have yet to figure out how we had such a collapse from some usually reliable players. I've seen it happen in real life but usually I'm also screaming the words fools, idiots, morons and some form of what the [blank] are you doing

At least I have another season here to figure it out.

It is certainly very bizarre, especially when you consider for the game your team's rebounding and offensive flow were both better rated than Hutch's. I didn't actually watch the 3rd quarter, but comparing numbers, what's craziest to me, is typically you see a team that runs Patient ends up having one player focused more than the others. In that quarter, for Mighty Moose, that wasn't the case - they had 6 different players take 21 shots, hitting right about 50% of them, with some additional free throws in there. Your guy Louis Alberto Baiao was 3 of 12 with only two other players taking 3 total shots (missing all of them).

The other thing that stuck out to me from the stats of that quarter was the rebounding difference. Your guys gathered in 6 total rebounds with 1 offensive, while Hutch and them boys pulled in 14 total rebounds, four of which were offensive. And I mean that in the offensive way, as in your momma's so phat...

Regardless, it was a super weird quarter - the only thing I can come up with is maybe an overall enthusiasm difference coming into the match that would have played into it.

But as you said, fortunately you've got an easy relegation matchup, so you get to stay. The only question now is are you going to throw game two so that you get another round of domination against Tropicana?!? ;)

MVP Results
Well, you can't argue with the MVP voters...

Jokes. Must admit, I was pretty surprised that Armstead was voted first with 31 of the votes...I'm a little unclear on the MVP voting process, but it looks like Armstead had 32 total votes while Gabriel Horyza had 30 total votes, Tommy Kang had 29, Ramón Peñalver had 27, and so on. I guess those other votes could have gone to players not in the top 9 MVP vote getters and we just don't see them, but seems unlikely that the 2nd highest vote getter would have had one voter NOT vote for them as at least 5th place. But I digress. Here's a quick comp of the players with some primary statistics displayed:

Rank Name MPG FG% REB AST PTS RTG
1 Terry Armstead 38.7 48% 16.3 4.6 17.3 15.6
2 Gabriel Horyza 30.8 53% 3.3 3.8 22.8 16
3 Tommy Kang 35.1 48% 4.1 4.8 23.1 13
4 Ramón Peñalver 35.8 57% 11.1 1.1 21.6 13.5
5 Walenty Kofan 31.7 53% 12.6 3.3 17.1 15.5
6 Dwayne Nava 40.5 45% 4.3 6 17.9 14
7 Su Xiuying 32.6 56% 16.7 3.3 10.2 16
8 Jean-Louis Fleurent 30.9 49% 8.6 2.9 20.3 14
9 Bruno Pappalardo 32.1 49% 4.1 5.5 14 15.5

Horyza & Kang were the pure scorers of the group (with a fair amount of assists), while Armstead, Peñalver, Kofan, Xiuying, were the bigs vying for rebounds and points, and Nava, Fleurent, Pappalardo were more of the combo guards, pulling down boards, dishing the ball, and scoring as they could.

Scrap Heap led the league with nominees (4), while Mighty Moose and Gremlins each had two, leaving Armstead as the lone Rebel in the list. If we're arguing true "Most Valuable Player" for the team, I think I can see where Armstead wins, because without him, Lion Rebels wouldn't probably win a relegation series in this division, let alone promote into this division, while Scrap Heap (who appear to be on their way up to Div II - Sorry Gizmo - I am interested to see how the rest of the series plays out after Gremlins took it easier in the first matchup of the championship series!) had four dynamos averaging 70 points per game for them (splitting the MVP votes up) and you could argue similarly with the Gremlins and Moose Rockets Big Two. But in the end, I do think that Kang stole votes from Horyza, who could have, without Kang's 23 points per night contribution and additional 4/4 rebs/asts, been a swell MVP winner. Armstead was certainly the most efficient player in the league, but Horyza and Xuiying were definitely the highest rated.

All in all, I think it shows the decent competition amongst our league. Curious if anyone else has any thoughts on this or the upcoming championship matches!

*EDIT: Damn BB and the formatting...my rankings looked all nice and pretty when posting but then it squishes it all together!

Last edited by Baine at 4/14/2022 4:24:57 PM

Championship Game One Recap

Game one of DIV III.11's championship featured the Gremlins (managed by Gizmo) on the road against Bayard Forrest managed Scrap Heap Low Posters. The 18-4 Gremlins were underdogs coming into the series, even though they led the league in scoring this year on the backs of 4th place MVP finisher PF Ramón Peñalver's 21.6 PTS/Game and 6th place MVP PG Dwayne Nava's 17.9 PTS/Game (and league Assists leader with 6 APG [and a tremendous 6-1 assist-to-turnover ratio]). They're underdogs, because of Scrap Heap's large point differential on the season (2nd highest in the league, allowing only 79.5 PTS/Game and scoring nearly 105.

However, from the outset, the Gremlins looked like they were going to cause Scrap some trouble! The Junk Yard was packed to the brim, and the Gremlins came out spreading the scoring around, making 9 FGs, including two three pointers in the first 12 minutes to take a 25-20 lead into quarter number 2. Only two things looked bad for the Gremlins - the first was C Wu Chan Kiew (top 20 player in the league in rating/efficiency) being injured when he tried to take a baseline jumper and Scrap Heaps C Su Xiuying was assessed a flagrant foul, apparently kicking Kiew directly in the cajones as he's out for the remainder of the season with a "pulled groin". The second prescient moment of the first quarter was SG Roc Pedrosa (averaging 17.1 PTS/Game) going 0-4 enroute to his poor shooting night. On the other side, Scrap Heap wasstruggling, seeing many of their shots clang off the hoop, hitting only 6-16 FGs - fortunately, they were able to make it up by shooting 8-10 from the charity stripe to keep the game close.

They rolled into half time with the Gremlins holding on to their 5 point lead (45-40) with SF Rene Tuvike scoring two more three pointers for 13 overall points, and back up center Juanma Campino holding his own against the vicious Xiuying, having gone 4-6 in the half with another 3 free throws made and pulling down 8 total rebounds. However, fouls and turnovers were a problem for them as they approached the break. Scrap Heap held steady for the 2nd quarter, matching Gremlins' scoring output, again with their added free throws, having scored 16 of their points from the line, keeping the Gremlins in sight. SF Demyan Charykov contributed 6-6 from the free throw line and finished the half with twelve points.

The third quarter would bring to light the difference in effort on the evening, with Scrap Heap vaulting ahead, outscoring Gizmo's crew by 16 points, pouring in 32 total points with Charykov scoring another six, while the MVP Runner Up Gabriel Horyza coming on strong with another 10 points and 3rd place MVP Tommy Kang bringing his scoring total to 14 in 31 minutes played. Interestingly, Scrap Heap took no free throw attempts in the third quarter, while the deficit at center for the Gremlins started to show its wear. Heading into the final frame, Gremlins found themselves down 11 and the nearly 20,000 Junk Yard fans began to get raucous.

The Gremlins tried to keep pace in the 4th, but got outscored by 4 in the last quarter, and Scrap Heap cruised to a relatively easy 15 point victory. Even though Scrap Heap clearly put in more effort, this commentator's not sure that Gizmo's Inside crew has enough to stand up to the likes of Doktor and Xiuying as it appears Bayard Forrest's tactic is to ground and pound the inside and not concern themselves with Gremlins' hopes to Golden State Warriors it up from outside.

Relegation News
Here are your relegated teams for DIV III.11:
- Big 8's BOT Tidals
- Great 8's BOTS Solana Tides & Tropicana Flamingos
- It looked like x DOMINATE x had given up on tanking for a few weeks, but then shifted gears and didn't give much of an effort against the War Birds, with the Birds shutting down the series after two games.
- The big surprise was Chewy's decimation by the SuperSonicz - Seattle put in more effort in Game 1 to only lose by 1, making an eipc comeback after being down 16 after three quarters. And then, they switched from their Motion strategy to a Patient offense and in games 2 and 3 ended up winning by a total of 50. Chewy had sold 35 year old PF Ben Gansler after game one of the series and bizarelly played 25 year old PG Vern Becker at SF who only pulled down a 3.0 rating in the game (though, he did score 9 points, all on three pointers).

At any rate, if the championship series goes the way I think it will, the Big 8 will have 2 new teams, while the Great 8 will have four new teams...unless the Gremlins pull off the upset! Great, fun season everyone!

Great Analysis Baine as per usual.

On my situation I have been AWOL the whole season because RL commitments.
I logged back on after Allstar week and with two bots on my side, I realized I was a few games back from being in the playoffs.
So I bought a few good players who if I got their game shape up, added to my homegrown players, could have taken me deep into the playoffs.
That early loss to Chewy (when my GS was shot) kind of sealed my fate.

I bought the 4 players for $100k and sold them for over $400k, so it worked out ok.
I wanted to be relegated so I didn't have to do much next season, and probably make a run the season after.