Team on The Edge of The Playoffs

Back at the site of the original midget tossing, The Ship headed into Week 13 fighting for a playoff spot. With only 4 points separating 3rd through 6th place, The Ship has a strong chance of making the playoffs, with even an outside shot at a 3rd place finish. However, with a BYE week in the last week of the season, The Ship does not control its own destiny, so it needed a strong showing in its last match.

Despite the huge group of fans that were to show up during the evening and a full roster on hand, Rich started the night out early by rolling to an easy win in front of a crowd of none. Fred and Meredith lost close matches, and despite a Ton-25, Dave nearly lost to a chucker before pulling out a win. Nikki continued her dominance with her third S501 win in a row and fifth in six games this season. Not used to playing in a new age bracket, The Birthday Girl lost the last match, and we were tied 3-3 after S501.

The steamroller that is Rich / Fred piled up 2 wins to open up the Cricket round. Mindy / Eric ran into a buzz saw in their first game, but came back to play a strong second game before losing by 1 bull. Jen / Nikki played two strong games, including 3 R5s between them, in earning a split. With another 3-3 tie, the match was even at 6-all after two rounds.

Dave / Mindy started things off in D501 with a win, completing Dave's undefeated D501 record (even though Mindy carried Dave by doubling in and out). Jen / Meredith played a great game and looked to have their match locked up before losing a double-1 contest. As always, the match came down to the final game, and The Birthday Girl stepped up to the line. The Edge doubled-in first and jumped to a 200 point lead. But Rich / Holly battled back and got down to double-out first. The Edge got stuck on 5, and refused to get an even number, leaving the door wide open for Rich / Holly. As the clock struck 12:30A, Holly blew out the candles on a long evening, nailing a double-1 and giving The Ship a 10-8 victory.

Playoff-wise, here's the deal. We are currently 3 points ahead of DAMMIT, who will get 0 points for their BYE next week, so they will finish in 6th place. With 9 BYE points next week, we will end the season with 100 points. The Imports have 82 points, and they played Road Rage this week and the Huckleberries next week. So, against the top 2 teams in the league, the Imports need to average 9 points each week in order to tie us for 4th place. If not, we make the playoffs. (FYI, in their 2 matches earlier this season, the Imports scored a total of 13 points against these teams.) If they get exactly 18 points, we head to a tie-breaker. However, in our 2 head-to-head matches this season, we won 11-7 and lost 7-11, meaning the tiebreaker is tied, and therefore we would need to play a "special match" sometime after January 7 to battle for the last playoff spot. If that match ends in a tie, then a game of 1001 is played (SI/DO) using 6 players per side (no, I'm not making this up) to determine the winner.

Props:
Holly - For giving all of us a present on her birthday.
Rich - Sweep.
Dave - An on-time arrival, yielding 2 Wins, 235 AS points, and a fight with the scorekeeper.
Nikki - There are no I's in Nikki.
Whitney, Mark, Jeff, Sam, Christine and everyone else who made the trip downtown - Thanks for comin'.