Nationals predictions
Well, I'm not sure it would be really appropriate for me to try and make predictions before nationals when I'm one of the participants, especially for my pool. After all, who wants to provide bulletin board fodder? However, this will be more of a wide-ranging discussion on my thoughts on the high-level contenders for actually winning. Let me be (not necessarily) the first to say, I believe DoG can win.
However, the stars are going to have to do some serious aligning for that to occur. We could also fail to make the pre-quarters. I am unused to that level of uncertainty, and this is the first time since I have been at Nationals since '92 that there is even a doubt of making the quarterfinals (semis back then), much less the pre-quarters. And to win, I don't mean that certain teams are going to have to lose games so that we end up with some cherry power pool (assuming that we make it, of course). What I'm trying to say is that if are able to bring our best game then we can contend with any team at this tournament. The problem is being able to sustain that BEST game for 4, 5, or even 6 games. While not impossible, it is going to be very difficult. And it will be interesting to see how we handle a non-elimination defeat. Will we come out fired up for the next game, or take it as an accurate representation of our seeding?
Just looking at our pool, we clearly have to beat PBR coming out of the gate. If we don't, that just makes things really messy, because then we not only have to beat Chain Lightning, but we would probably have to beat them by a lot to avoid going to the loser pool with PBR with a loss in hand. If we beat PBR, then the next game will be Chain Lightning. We lost to them once this year at double game point, and had a pretty tough pre-quarters against them last year at Nationals. Everybody seems to think they are a team on the rise, we are a team on the way down, and that they will win this game. Hopefully we can use that as our own bulletin board fodder. If we win the first 2 games, then the Furious game is important because I think we will have a brutal power pool, assuming C holds seed, at least for the top two. Sockeye and Condors should have been 1, 3, or even 1,2 if they had been able to properly win their regionals. Instead, we get them, AND the actual NW regionals winner in our pool. Wonderful. This pool will be a bloodbath, and hopefully (again, if we make it) we will contend.
As for teams that have the composition to win it all, I would say that the top 9 teams COULD win it all if their respective stars align, but realistically, I only see a few teams that will be able to overcome poor play, or a poor half. Or as I have said numerous times to people, a bunch of teams can win one of these big games, but there are very few teams that can win 3 of them (I'm talking quarters/semis/finals). And frankly, it helps having been there, and I'm not talking about DoG right now, because there aren't too many of us left that have been there. I'm talking more about the years that Condors had to knock on the door, that Furious and Sockeye had to knock on the door before they won. This puts Pike in an enviable position, while Ring has more of an institutional memory/advantage. This hurts Bravo and even DoG right now, and almost cripples Chain and Subzero. The last time Subzero made noise was in 99, when they made semifinals and we JUST missed playing them in the finals.
So, if I were a betting man, I would have to put money on one of the Northwest teams winning it all, but then again, that is why they make us play the games, isn't it?
However, the stars are going to have to do some serious aligning for that to occur. We could also fail to make the pre-quarters. I am unused to that level of uncertainty, and this is the first time since I have been at Nationals since '92 that there is even a doubt of making the quarterfinals (semis back then), much less the pre-quarters. And to win, I don't mean that certain teams are going to have to lose games so that we end up with some cherry power pool (assuming that we make it, of course). What I'm trying to say is that if are able to bring our best game then we can contend with any team at this tournament. The problem is being able to sustain that BEST game for 4, 5, or even 6 games. While not impossible, it is going to be very difficult. And it will be interesting to see how we handle a non-elimination defeat. Will we come out fired up for the next game, or take it as an accurate representation of our seeding?
Just looking at our pool, we clearly have to beat PBR coming out of the gate. If we don't, that just makes things really messy, because then we not only have to beat Chain Lightning, but we would probably have to beat them by a lot to avoid going to the loser pool with PBR with a loss in hand. If we beat PBR, then the next game will be Chain Lightning. We lost to them once this year at double game point, and had a pretty tough pre-quarters against them last year at Nationals. Everybody seems to think they are a team on the rise, we are a team on the way down, and that they will win this game. Hopefully we can use that as our own bulletin board fodder. If we win the first 2 games, then the Furious game is important because I think we will have a brutal power pool, assuming C holds seed, at least for the top two. Sockeye and Condors should have been 1, 3, or even 1,2 if they had been able to properly win their regionals. Instead, we get them, AND the actual NW regionals winner in our pool. Wonderful. This pool will be a bloodbath, and hopefully (again, if we make it) we will contend.
As for teams that have the composition to win it all, I would say that the top 9 teams COULD win it all if their respective stars align, but realistically, I only see a few teams that will be able to overcome poor play, or a poor half. Or as I have said numerous times to people, a bunch of teams can win one of these big games, but there are very few teams that can win 3 of them (I'm talking quarters/semis/finals). And frankly, it helps having been there, and I'm not talking about DoG right now, because there aren't too many of us left that have been there. I'm talking more about the years that Condors had to knock on the door, that Furious and Sockeye had to knock on the door before they won. This puts Pike in an enviable position, while Ring has more of an institutional memory/advantage. This hurts Bravo and even DoG right now, and almost cripples Chain and Subzero. The last time Subzero made noise was in 99, when they made semifinals and we JUST missed playing them in the finals.
So, if I were a betting man, I would have to put money on one of the Northwest teams winning it all, but then again, that is why they make us play the games, isn't it?
posted by Alex de Frondeville at 8:04 PM
2 Comments:
Crippled? We still have 5 guys on the roster that were on that 99 semis team. And 3 of them had previous semis experience w/ Z. That is plenty o' experience.
That is all we need...
I think we did make noise in 01. It was very loud on Thursday. And by Friday, the noise was gargled b/c we were drowning. Saturday, we were very loud in the consolation bracket.
See you in sota.
So crippled was a little strong. But DoG still has 18 national championships distributed among 7 players (granted, 12 of them with Jim and I), but we have still had an high turnover rate, and a lot of players that haven't been there. It just makes it a little harder, although hopefully we'll be hungrier
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