Miami is coming off a 2-1 series win over Weed the People, in which they moved up one spot in the community power rankings.
Meanwhile, MB8 lost two games against the NIP squad, with that G3 win coming against the subs of NIP. They actually moved down a spot in the community power rankings, so that's interesting.
In a battle of #6 (MIA) vs. #7 (MB8), who will prevail?
MIA won two halves, tied one half, but lost all three games as the Master Boaters got the sweep and nine points. MIA won or tied every first half, but MB8 took the second halves with ease and got the wins. I've seen this before, back in S18 JIB, where we'd always let teams come back in the second half. My team motto was "If we have a lead, we're gonna lose it". Nice to see that that's carried over here.
On offense you had Spheroid and T-Swift showcase their exceptional talents, combining for 19 caps, 868 hold, and averaging a 96.8 ONISH, which is amazing. Homer Jay played offense and defense this game, but his higher positional NISH was on offense, where he had the 56.4 ONISH, three caps, and 303 prevent. For MIA, IcePlat, astor, and J24gordon combined for eight caps, 977 hold, and averaged a 68.6 ONISH. The MB8 offense had the advantage here easily.
On defense SB12 and Gleg were a solid defensive duo, combining for 87 returns, 1059 prevent, and averaging a 78.8 DNISH. Homer Jay's defensive NISH was 51.3, with 305 prevent and 33 returns as well. On Miami's side, you have Mueller leading the pack with a 70.5 DNISH, 626 prevent, and 35 returns. Considering Gleg had a 74.4 DNISH and SB12 had a 83.3 DNISH, that doesn't bode well for MIA's defensive stats. Gospel after having a great W1 against WTP, sort of came back down with a 65.4 DNISH, while llamatron had a 62.8 DNISH. Tavore Pavan brought up the rear with a 38.5 DNISH. MB8 had advantage here as well.
The stats don't favor MB8 as much as the NISHs did, but they still paint a nice picture of what MB8 excelled at in order to get the sweep. While MB8 had low hold, tags, returns, prevent, and good handoffs, they had 101 less pops than MIA and had a 14.00% score rate. MB8 came first in pops and Score%, by the way, also coming first in H/G with 7.74 seconds, QR% with 37.97%, and in NDPs with just 89. They rarely flaccided, were efficient with their hold, and usually scored, all while avoiding getting gated or spiked or killed by a TP. MIA didn't do any of those things.
When it came to the percentage stats, MB8 actually came dead last in Chain% with 58.05, but they were near the top of the week for Spark%, at 72.05%. MIA was either league average or below average in all four categories, with their best performance coming in Chain%, which was just average. Their worst categories were Spark% and RIB%. MB8 had a 6% increase in RIB% and 6% increase in QR%, so good job on them. MIA had a bad F/G ratio, which makes sense because they also had 57 more grabs than them, but MIA did have a solid P/R at 13.10, actually leading the week. Unfortunately, they also came dead last in team KD at 0.79, so that kind of balances it out.
I'll give this card to Spheroid, because when I watched the games, it just seemed like MIA couldn't even tag him at times. He was tied for the most caps this week at 11, and he came 6th in hold. He was also very efficient with the flag, coming 2nd in H/G with 10.82 seconds per grab, but also having the 5th least flaccid% at 18.18%. He was the best offender on the tiles and one of main reasons why MB8 got the sweep.
CONCLUSION
One last haiku to round this all off :
Ballphins win first half
Boaters then win second half
Boaters get the sweep
That is all.
