Smackdown at Monday Night League
Posted 5 years, 5 months ago on Monday, February 3rd, 2003 under Billiards · No Comments ·
Ok, maybe it wasn’t a smackdown per say, but given the odds, I’m going to run with it. Our team, made up of myself with only two BCA-style in house league sessions under my belt, Dean, also with two but with far less table time, Matt with no league experience, and Craig also with none, beat the first place team tonight. I didn’t expect us to be anywhere but last place, honestly. I put the team together to have fun, not win. Given the pressure in place on my Thursday night APA 9-ball team, I really just wanted to have a league night where the biggest worry was whether the cute little bisquit of a waitress was going to remember my water. Out of 11 teams, we’re in fourth, bordering on third place. How’s that for a happy turn of events?
Tonights win has an extra special flavor to it also. Two weeks ago, we lost to the next to last place team. When I say "lost", what I really mean is "were hit in the face 18 times with our own cue sticks and left to drown in our own blood and tears." It was horrible. It was shameful, and it was disheartening. To a man, they weren’t as good as we are, but as has been said "the balls roll funny for everyone." They got the rolls, we didn’t. I could wax on forever about who and what is or isn’t to blame, but I’m just going to leave it at that. We had a bad (horrible) night, and we learned from it. The next week wasn’t so bad. We got beat by a similar margin, but it was by the second place team.
Tonight, however, karma and the Gods of Pool gave us a little bit of a handout. It was a bad night for the guys on the first place team. We got the rolls, they didn’t. Hell, my first time at the table was a run out. He broke, I ran. 10 - 0. Just like that. It wasn’t the most difficult of run outs, but after the ast couple weeks, it was a joy to behold. All told, it really was only an average night for us. I only got 40 out of 60 possible points. I won 3 for 30, and got 3, 6 and 1 for my others. Not that great, really. I don’t feel bad about the 1, though. He broke and ran, so there really wasn’t anything I could do, save bodily tackle him and break his stick. They frown on that sort of thing there for some reason, so I held back. As for the others, I made the shots and safeties I wanted, they just got out better than I did. Simple as that. What really helped was the fact that when I did win, I won big. 10-0, 10-3 and 10-3. While I didn’t win everything, when I did I kept their points down. Much to the opposing team’s chagrin, my teammates had similar experiences.
It wasn’t a rout by any stretch of the imagination. If it weren’t for the points given to us each round, we would have only one 3 out of 7 rounds. As it was, we won 4. Take away the handicaps though, and we would have only lost by one point. That’s saying something when they’re the top ranked team, and we’re a team made up primarily of newbs.