Regionals Preview

http://upa.org/scores/tourn.cgi?div=124&id=6094

The UPA Club Southwest Open Regionals are this weekend in Scottsdale, Arizona. We are seeded about where I figured we would be at 6th overall, 3rd in our pool. Johnny Bravo(1) and Streetgang(3) are the two seeds above us with Monsoon(8) and Sunburn(9) below us. Sadly the tournament has dropped down to 9 teams now, down from 12 at the beginning of the week. It's very unfortunate that the SW region can't consistently (read: ever) put together a 16 team regionals tournament while almost every other region never has a problem fielding a full tournament. But oh well.

This will be the first tournament that Monster will have our full roster of 26 ballers. Our top 10 can hang with anyone at Regionals (save for Johnny Bravo) so I'm pretty excited to say the least. That's not to say that the rest of the team isn't up there, because I don't mean that at all. Everyone on our team made big plays at Sectionals, and I expect more of the same at Regionals. We are going to surprise a lot of people (and probably ourselves on the way.) Anyways, this is turning too much into my own pump up instead of the preview I meant to write.

So. Preview time. We have game-bye-game-game-game. We play Johnny Bravo after our bye (after they play Monsoon), and we play Streetgang last. Should be a fun day. I'm kind of glad that we are in the pool with 5 teams instead of 4. With our huge roster it will help us more to have more games. At the end of day 1, I see Pool A holding seed (sad.)

Pool B on the other hand is a different story. All 4 teams are very strong. Sprawl is the bottom seed and they took 2nd at Desert Sectionals with their only loss to Sweet Roll on DGP. And now they are the last seed in their pool. Brutal.
We got shellacked by Condors at sectionals in our worst game (and their best game from what I heard) of the weekend. They are a good team who has fought through a lot of personnel losses to remain a strong team. They might surprise Sweet Roll (who only got seeded above them late this week) but I don't think they'll be able to take down Strike-Slip. They got trampled at Sectionals in a very one sided game. Anyways. The Sweet Roll - Strike Slip match up will be interesting, but I still see SS taking that pool. Strike-Slip battled through a lot of early season losses, but finally seemed to have put all the pieces together when it matters. Or at least for Sectionals. I'm hoping they still have what it takes for when it matters this coming Sunday. We'll see.

Back to us. I keep looking at possible paths to the game to go. (I know its a very long shot, but I think that people underestimate our potential... and it is fun to see the possibilities.) Anyways. Assuming all of the seeds hold (long shot, but its a hypothetical situation anyways) then we will face B4 in the first round on Sunday (Sprawl). Very winnable. After that we face the loser of the 1st place semis (likely a SoCal Sectionals rematch between Streetgang and Strike-Slip). Possible upset there. We do have the surprise factor. And I would love to play spoiler to one of those teams. Obviously I would love to see Strike-Slip make nationals. I have a lot of close friends on that team. But how sweet would it be to ruin their shot. I mean come on. The 'B' team beating the 'A' team. Anyways, lets get back on track here. After that win (hypothetical) we'd play the winner of the other 2nd place semi's who would probably be... Sweet Roll. No idea what that team is capable of. They had sweet jerseys last year (John Wayne's face on the front). But yea. Then we play the loser of the finals. Very far-fetched, but hypotheticals are fun.

So yea, I'm excited for this weekend. I'm driving out with a bunch of cool people. I'm staying in a bombass hotel for super cheap that is only 1 mile from the fields. The fields in Scottsdale are awesome (at least they were last time I was there.) So yea, just need to get through the next two days.

Do work Monster.