The community liked both of these B-Teams, with them ranking NIP 4th and MB8 in 6th. Considering NIP made the Buperball last season and has made it in two of the past three seasons of its existence, the expectations are high for this group. For MB8, the community liked T-Swift and the depth there.
I ranked NIP 2nd, but I put MB8 at 11th due to my grievances over the defense, in that I didn't think SB12/Gleg would be good enough.
Was I right or wrong? Probably wrong, let's see though.
NIP won the first two games quite easily, and then sort of gave up on their third game, which allowed MB8 to at least get some points on the board. There were a lot of position switching going on this match, with Cobra playing O, juke juice playing D, Homer Jay and Spheroid filling in on defense for MB8 when one of SB12 or Gleg had to sit out. It was interesting to see because two-way play has always fascinated me. We saw with the Jerryball strat or just 3O / 3D in general that being able to play both positions competently can drastically improve your team, so I wonder when captains start focusing more on two-way players or at least coaching their rookies and players to be proficient at both positions. That's just food for thought, anyway.
victor messi led the way for the NIP offense, with a 90.9 ONISH, seven caps, and 416 hold. The rest of his offenders did well too, with Cobra and juke juice getting five caps each, and xyzes getting three caps and 203 hold in his rookie debut. Nice job xyzes! For MB8, T-Swift was their best offender, matching victor's seven caps but getting more hold than victor with 426 seconds. Spheroid and Homer were decent supporting partners, with a combined ten caps and 680 seconds of hold. When it came to the offenses, it definitely seemed like NIP had the upper hand here. That Cobra / victor offensive duo was pretty strong, and I hope that that the victor / JSwan duo has the same firepower.
On defense, lukemoo carried the team, with a 97.4 DNISH and leading his team with 50 returns and 454 prevent. He had juke juice play with him for a half and he did fine, but the rest of his defensive depth were fine. STINK, FrodoBallins, and ErectChris were decent, and with all three still rookies / sophomores, these were solid debuts for them. On the other hand, the SB12 / Gleg defense wasn't that bad. Gleg really impressed me, with the 89.6 DNISH and over 680 seconds of prevent. SB12 was a little pedestrian but if Gleg can maybe keep this level of play up, then maybe this defense might have some promise after all.
NIP's defense really shined through in this match, leading the week in tags and returns. They had 104 more tags and 67 more returns than MB8, which is insane, considering in that third game the returns and tags for both teams were pretty similar. That means that this huge disparity took place in the first two games. They also had 61 less pops and 26 more pups than MB8, so this seems like total domination. MB8 did have some good categories from Table A, like 54 good handoffs, and a 0.368 P/HA, both numbers being near the top for the week. But, MB8 were dead last in tags, returns, and pups, the exact same categories that NIP were near the top in.
For Table B, you could see how the NIP defense's impact effected the stats, as NIP came 3rd in team KD, 1st in quick returns, and 2nd in returns in base. Meanwhile, MB8 had the 2nd worst KD, 3rd worst NRTs, 2nd worst NDPs, and 2nd least long holds. The third game really helped shore up MB8's stats though, with an amazing P/R number and decent Chain%, RIB%, and QR% rates, all of which were mainly due to the 12-2 win in G3. NIP had a really good Spark% as well, leading the week with an 85.60%, which is always nice. The NIP offenders seemed to do well with those solo grabs, but they probably also had a ton of pups to help them out with that.
CONCLUSION
A great two games for NIP saw them dominate the stats against MB8 and avenge the two games that NIP's A-Team lost the day before. MB8 did good to win that last game though in order to get those three points, so congrats to them. While the MB8 defense wasn't as bad as I expected, there were still holes in it, considering they had the least amount of returns and tags for the entire week, so that's something to work on. For the NIPs, they'll get JSwan and SOGEKING back next week, so it'll be interesting to see how the lineups play out now that they don't have juke juice and Cobra playing both positions. Good performance from NIP overall though.
