THE DREAM LEAGUE
Asian American / Open Basketball Leagues
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2009 Winter/Spring AL-Open/A.L. (Oak/SF/SJ/RWC) |
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AL-O standings thru 3/29 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
AL/AL-O: Five Ten 53, Oakland Rams 51... Andrew Lee with 22 and 8. Karl Gusner miss a 3 at the horn for the win. AL/AL-O: Pandas 46, Mile High Club 39 AL/AL-O: Prodigies AL 74, ballin' 57 AL/AL-O: sf lions 76, 2449 squad 67 AL-O/AL: BA Blazers 79, All Day 70 AL-O/AL: Hibachi 73, zerone 70 AL-O/AL: Snipers 65, Got-Em 62 (OT) al-o/al: dark knights 74, dragon rouge 48 al-o:pure foods 87, snipers 76 Pretty exciting slate. Pure Foods clinched double-elim status (remember I cut them short with 7 games since one AL-O team had to end up with 7 due to the geographical cross-league with A.L.). And that actually may have helped them with a higher seed. We'll never know because maybe they would've won their 8th regular season game had they had it. Trybe had a very impressive resume, yet finished behind Ballin'! I think Trybe's losses were all really, really close games. Yet, the loss the SF City proved to be the tiebreaker against Ballin'. Finally, the Oakland Rams played tough, but ultimately Five Ten prevailed and, woah, SWEPT the entire AL-O. Considering the parity here, that's pretty impressive. But yeah, I'm still saying any team 4-4 or better can beat Five Ten any given sunday. That's the nature of AL-O. And I personally never liked going into the playoffs with an unblemished record, although obviously it's hard NOT to try to do that. Too bad I missed that Snipers-Five head-to-head. Would've like to see the Snipers' Mosi Zuberi and Five's Roger Cox go at it. Talk about Shaq vs Shaq. Only way that happens now is if the Snipers upset SF City in the 1st round to advance immediately to face Five Ten. Anyways, I've put all the playoff matchup stuff above in the Playoff section. TUE 3/24 (10:45AM) -- I didn't use the normally-exhaustive tiebreaker to find out which team was "better" (for the time being): Ballin' or Bay Area Blazers. So all I did was take head-to-head point differential, in the interests of time. Ballin' won by 10 while BABz won by 6, so Ballin' gets the top spot in the standings this week. Again, this is not the normal exhaustive NFL wildcard tiebreaker process we adopt. Secondly, Mile High beat SF Lions (albeit by forfeit), so there's your tiebreaker there. That produces the most-interesting AL-O vs AL matchups for 3/29, which will be discussed in the AL-O roadmap below. Here are the scores from 3/22... AL-O: bay area blazers 83, Sf city 67: Wow, 16 pts? I dunno, maybe SFC just isn't quite there yet a la the Atlanta Hawks or something. AL-O: five ten 64, ballin' 62: Finally got to see Five Ten this season. Big man 6'5" Roger Cox is the anchor in the middle. Then you've got talent surrounding him. When Johnson Bui is dishing out his one-liner jokes from off the bench, you know this roster is strong. Thus, I'm not surprised they are undefeated even in the cut-throat AL-O. Seriously, they are like the Bay Area Blazers (chemistry, one import who is the engine of the team), only bigger. Ballin' played tough though. Shin Iwata's got the quick-fire gunslinger Wild Wild West release. I dunno, maybe they were missing another shooter like Mike Vu (not sure why he wasn't there) to balance out the floor more. Ballin's got their own tall guy import, but quite frankly I'm more impressed by the K-Perk-like rebounding of Ralph Pierre-Louis off the bench. They might wanna consider going small and starting Pierre-Louis. Funny thing is, on paper and from what I've seen, Five Ten is supposed to be way stronger than a team like Ballin', but Ballin' only lost by 2. AL-O: pure foods 58, dark knights 54 (2ot): Honestly, I can't believe last season's hot-off-the-gates Dark Knights are now 3-4 and merely fighting for double-elim status. Yikes. I haven't seen them play yet this season, so I don't know what's wrong, but maybe everyone's figured out Sohrab Alem's crossover? If so, I tell you what. Sometimes what happens in the NBA happens in dreamleague. You know how a new kid on the block makes a splash, then the rest of the league adjusts to him the following season, all of a sudden he's not as big an impact as before and he needs to adapt. AL-O: rams 73, lions 47: Well, it was no surprise that the Lions got blown out, with all-star machine Jon McClain out on spring break. But the Rams, man, are they really only as good as their 4-3 record? They have a new import like everybody else, but I've yet to see him in person as opposed to a name on a scoresheet. Look out AL-O, the playoffs are about to start soon and the Rams have Karl Gusner on the squad! AL-O: snipers 52, hibachi 46: Hey yeah, this was the Warriors vs Grizzlies matchup of the week, but you ultimately can't succeed at this level without paying your dues. Hibachi is actually a pretty tall/big team, but I think they are just lacking a little speed in the backcourt. They're the reverse of all the other teams in that their import is their point guard, albeit he's like 6'5". He just needs to adapt to the style of play in the AL-O where the backcourts are quickish/smallish, or Hibachi needs to get a player like that and they'll be fine. Oh, and Hibachi also needs another outside shooter. Sorry I don't have anything to offer off the top of my head since I don't get to see them play much and I don't know the names by heart (yet). The Snipers are all hustle and inspirational man-in-the-paint Mosi Zuberi is doing what he can to rally these guys, but they are just so inexperienced at this point, making those rookie mistakes. I think they are on schedule to hit .500 on a consistent basis in maybe 2 seasons if they keep this team together. They've got promise, but right now they are just going thru growing pains. AL-O: trybe 65, mile high club 54: Didn't see this, but nice to see Trybe take care of business. Point guard Vic Jacobs is only like 18 years old and if he doesn't go anywhere far away for college and keeps playing in dreamleague, he will become the premier point guard of the league. One thing about Trybe is that they hustle. You will get that every Sunday, period. That alone gives them a chance. The surrounding cast is capable, but it really does revolve around Jacobs, kinda like CP3 for the Hornets. He can take them to the next level, but it's gonna take MVP-like performances to upset the cream of the crop. Unfortunately I haven't seen Mile High Club much, so I simply don't have any info at this point. Sorry guys, maybe McClain and Freddie will have some stats up soon. Hopefully I'll see them play at some point. TUE 3/17 (12:45PM) -- No recaps from 3/15 yet. No update for 3/22 yet. MON 3/9 (7:45PM) -- Here are some recaps from 3/8 and an outlook primarily focused on Trybe... AL-O: Mile High Club 2, SF Lions 0 (fft) -- I know that Lions captain Jon McClain, who is supposed to be in charge of tons of stats this season, went out of town, so maybe that's all she wrote for the Lions this past Sunday. AL-O: Trybe 2, Pure 0 (fft) -- The auto-win for Pure's non-payment of just 2 slots, since Mark Sapinoso is covering 3 slots with his scorekeeping, gives Trybe 3 wins and they only need 1 more for double-elim status, at 3-3. With the Dark Knights at 3-2, Trybe escapes a standings-based matchup vs mighty Five Ten (5-0) on 3/15. But they draw the surging Oakland Rams (2-2). To add to the drama, the Rams have a double-header makeup on 3/15 vs the Snipers as well, and since the Snipers always seem to want early games (which I make happen since they scorekeep for me), chances are Trybe will face the Oakland Rams as the Rams' 2nd game of the day on 3/15. On 3/22, Trybe will face its cross-town SF standings-based rival, excluding the Bay Area Blazers and SF City. So Trybe's 3/22 opponent would be, if I had to make a guess and with things pointing towards a Five Ten vs Ballin' matchup that day, either Mile High Club or the SF Lions. Bottom line: I think Trybe has a good chance to win its 4th regular season game on either 3/15 or 3/22 and clinch double-elim status. On 3/29, Trybe has a bye facilitated by the matchup vs SF City at the beginning of the season while the remainder of the AL-O closes the regular season out. |