THE DREAM LEAGUE
National Basketball Tournaments
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2008 LA Showcase Tourney ELITE (Los Angeles) |
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Matchups for ELITE for Saturday 3/1 |
| 2/27/2008 8:00AM |
| FEBRUARY 27, 2008 (8:00AM) -- Welcome to Hollywood! Alright, it's really not so much Hollywood, but LA. Alright, it's really not so much LA, but the West Covina area. Depending on our gym situation, it could even be Pomona or Bell Garden if you're in the 6FT or INT divisions (see the 2/27 posting on the LA Showcase info page). For the Elite (aka Open) division, I have actually finished the schedule for the 3-pool-game format on Saturday (read on or scroll down), which is basically a round-robin in each of the 4 pools. Then on Sunday, we take the top 2 teams from each pool and they will play in a separate 8-team single-elimination bracket. The bottom 8 will play in their own separate 8-team single-elimination bracket. The winner of the top bracket will be crowned champions of the Elite. The winner of the lower bracket will be crowned "Consolation" champions. However, the 3-pool-game format could be blown up into pieces if the gym situation turns sour. Don is working on getting a 3rd and 4th gym after the previously explained Walnut HS debacle, but if for some reason he can't, then we may need to cut it down to 2 pool games and revamp the whole schedule. We have determined that all Elite games on Saturday will be at Nogales HS, whether or not we go with 3 or 2 games. There are 2 courts at Nogales separated by a partition (kind of like Tice Valley back in the Bay or Tarkanian in Vegas, from what I hear). The "auxiliary" court is slightly inferior in that there are "double-rims" -- I guess you'll see that when we get there. We will use NBA-style rules. Read up on them or stay calm during the game and take it as it comes. I should be there at Nogales all day if you have questions. Here are the matchups for Saturday in one of the courts (haven't figured out which yet). Games are listed in chronological order, but I've left out the tipoffs on purpose because this is not yet set in stone... Pool W : Arizona Desert Jade at Stockton Ballers Pool Y : Long Beach Beatrock at California Shockwaves Pool Z : Bay Area Wizards at Fo' Show (Seattle) Pool Y : Dream League Bay/East at Long Beach Beatrock Pool Z : Davis Dynasty at Fo' Show (Seattle) Pool Y : LA Blaze at Long Beach Beatrock Pool W : Runningunz (Sacramento) at Stockton Ballers Pool W : San Diego 619ers at Arizona Desert Jade Pool Y : LA Blaze at Dream League Bay/East Pool W : Arizona Desert Jade at Runningunz (Sacramento) Pool W : Stockton Ballers at San Diego 619ers Pool W : San Diego 619ers at Runningunz (Sacramento) Here are the games listed in chronological order, on the other court... Pool Z : Fo' Show (Seattle) at Hotshots Pool X : East Bay Cardinals at Central Cali Cagers Pool Z : Hotshots (Hayward) at Davis Dynasty Pool X : Las Vegas Aces at East Bay Cardinals Pool Z : Hotshots (Hayward) at Bay Area Wizards Pool Y : Dream League Bay/East at California Shockwaves Pool X : Central Cali Cagers at Las Vegas Aces Pool X : East Bay Cardinals at PacRimSports Pool Z : Bay Area Wizards at Davis Dynasty Pool X : PacRimSports at Central Cali Cagers Pool Y : California Shockwaves at LA Blaze Pool X : PacRimSports at Las Vegas Aces Btw, here are the special tipoff requests we got. These were not easy to schedule and I think I missed the Vegas Aces' requirement by one hour. Well, what can you do with such limited gym time. Everybody's gotta suck it up... DLBE >12p LVA >1p SD6 >4p Rgnz >3p Blz >1p Pac >12p Wiz >11a Stkn and AZDJ made requests that were too late, after these matchups/timeframes had already been set and irreversible And here are the pools (with team abbreviations and listed in alphabetical order), which are explained in detail below... Pool W AZDJ - Arizona Desert Jade Rgnz - Runningunz (Sacramento) SD6 - San Diego 619ers Stkn - Stockton Ballers Pool X CCC - Central Cali Cagers EBC - East Bay Cardinals LVA - Las Vegas Aces Pac - PacRimSports (LA) Pool Y Shox - California Shockwaves DLBE - Dream League Bay/East Blz - LA Blaze LBBR - Long Beach Beatrock Pool Z Wiz - Bay Area Wizards DDyn - Davis Dynasty FoSh - Fo' Show (Seattle) Hot - Hotshots (Hayward) The pools were primarily determined by making an educated guess on the rankings, then swapping teams in the same tier of ranking based on matchups that have already occurred recently. For example, it would be silly to put the East Bay Cardinals and Dream League Bay/East in the same pool as the players practically see each other on a weekly basis in the Bay. Similarly, DLBE has recently faced Wiz in the Fairfield tourney in December. PacRim knows LBBR all too well. So do the Wiz and Stockton. Runningunz knows the Shox from IndoPak ball. The list goes on. The only one that might raise a red flag is the Hotshots being in the Wizards pool, since after all these years of course the veteran players on the Hotshots (aka Uptempo) know the players on the Wiz. But then again the Hotshots is a newer generation of Uptempo. Anyways, I studied the Fairfield tourney matchups and I don't think they played against each other in December, so there you go. Also, the IndoPak contingent: LA Blaze is sort of new on the scene, so actually putting them in the same pool as Shox is a new matchup. I hope to do a writeup in the next 24 hours about my guess on the rankings, or at least how each team looks coming into the tournament. I'll take that opportunity to also list out the rosters as we requested from you last week. Meantime, let me go help Don put out some fires pertaining to 6FT and INT. The structure of the Sunday playoff games will be as follows, for each 8-team bracket. The Lower bracket will start first at 10am, then insert the Upper bracket in between the Lower bracket games, which is needed anyways to avoid back-to-back games at any given round... 10:00AM quarter-U -- this will occur in 4 simultaneous gyms (Nogales and to-be-determined) 11:00AM quarter-L -- this will occur in 4 simultaneous gyme (Nogales and to-be-determined) 12:00PM semi-U -- this will occur in 2 simultaneous gyms (probably both at Nogales) 1:00PM semi-L -- this will occur in 2 simultaneous gyms (probably both at Nogales) 2:00PM champ-U 3:00PM champ-L |