Today's Action: Day 12 Results!

Game 1:

Chunder Brigade (Gnatty/Joel) vs. The Chug-A-Lugs (Guido/Voss)

I played in a band in college and after we shambled through our first gig at high speed, the reviews were mixed, as tends to happen after a debut. Buried amongst the requisite politeness and false praise was a three-word review from the cafeteria breakfast jockey that shined like a diamond: sloppy, but hot. We couldn't have asked for more than that. Those three words were more than enough encouragement for a rag-tag bunch that probably needed little encouragement to begin with. We used that momentum to thrash through two more years of questionable music making.

Which brings us to today's game. It seemed like a one-to-one ratio (and correct me if I'm wrong), but for every botched play there was a brilliant shot that we hadn't seen in the tournament before. There was a preponderance of both. As our patron saint Charles Dickens once wrote, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." Easy shots blown by being overly cautious and ridiculous shots that didn't seem possible. Joel went nearly horizontal at one point to return a Guido shot that was headed towards no-man's-land. Gnatty had a slam, as did Guido and, heaven forbid, Voss. It was a geometry fan's delight as the ball caromed around at all sorts of funky angles and rotations. Sloppy, but hot. We couldn't have asked for more than that.

The scores remained pretty close. The Brigade stayed on the Lugs' tail, sometimes falling back, but only to mount a comeback and ratchet up the adrenaline. In the end, though, Guido and Voss' "p-tink, p-tink" style was just too solid to overcome. They toyed with the Brigade for the last three points in a manner that was more insulting than my paycheck, but finally closed the book on Joel and Nate.

The Chug-A-Lugs over Chunder Brigade
21-14