2024-2025: Week 4 Player Reports

Game 1: Team Orange vs. Team Red

-The inevitable 5 on 5 games are quintessential HatchetBall. If you can’t get excited about playing forty full minutes in a cage match to the death, then you and I can’t be friends. Team Red had a clear advantage in terms of the players that did show up, but they did their best to try and squander what should have been an easily winnable game. Between Keaton, Declan, and Kamba, not a single outside shot went in, despite probably a couple dozen WIDE OPEN attempts. I get this, to a certain degree. When teams are understaffed and the game is pretty loose, I also have a hard time shooting. It’s such a jarring, awkward difference to shooting against actual game pressure. But eventually, with such ample time to line it up, some of these should fall. They didn’t. Red rightfully blitzed Chris throughout the second half, leading to all sorts of gaffes from his teammates when they got the ball. Carter showcased contacts for the first time, which may have been another blunder his team couldn’t afford. Still, it was good to see Team Red’s core unit (mostly) playing together, as they remain the mysterious dark horse so far. On paper, lots of talent, but they are small, apparently injury-prone, and apparently can’t shoot for shit. Their strength will be speed and relentless aggression; some experience and momentum will help them optimize those strengths. We’ll see what happens. Orange doesn’t need to dwell on this one and needs to focus up for their battle with Team Blue in Week 5.

Game 2: Team Green vs. Team White

-With their captain absconded to an international hideout, Team Green continues to sputter. They don’t seemingly have the basic talent to compete in these games. There’s some occasional flashes of the individual skills you think might be useful, but literally zero team basketball is being played, which means everything is a struggle on both ends of the court. Kennedy continues to plow ahead, scoring another 40 points in this one, but it can’t be fun getting trounced every week. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but they need Troy back. They need Harley to show up. And they all need to pretend to be basketball players. White coasted in a breezy win. The Rob/Finley/Chuck trio did not respond well to their only challenge of the season thus far against Team Orange, but they play Red and Purple in back to back weeks coming up. Those matchups will feature lots of guards and wings duking it out. White’s Big 3 better be ready to play.

Game 3: - Team Yellow vs. Team Pink

-Offensive balance and defensive balance are two different things and it’s hard to draft for both. Often, targeting one skillset (say shooting, for example) will be accompanied by some type of other weaknesses at the other end of the court. The concern for Yellow coming into the season was going to be how they would guard teams with dynamic perimeter players. Mark is a hobbled version of a slow-footed defender and Konrad is undersized to matchup with the larger wings. A duo like Ed and Paul would seemingly give them a lot of trouble. But, to their credit, at least Yellow didn’t do something silly and try to put the defensive burden on the role players to figure out. Ed played well and got a lot of good opportunities getting downhill. Paul got open shots, even if he had an off night against his standards. But Yellow’s individual defenders and team communication was good enough to make things difficult at times for Pink, allowing them to lead for almost all of the game and win by a comfortable 14 points. I think that’s the best strategy for Yellow in this regard: bend, but don’t break. These are long, forty minute games. We’re going to get beat on straight-line drives and give up layups, because we don’t have a speedy, physical team that can constantly cut off those driving lanes. But we seem to be playing hard, stopping what we can and working together, particularly on rebounds. If our team truly does have defensive liabilities, holding the other team to a single shot per possession is going to be a huge priority, and we are doing an adequate job clearing the glass so far. On offense, Yellow looked great, setting lots of screens, moving the ball, and attacking the gaps. Our offensive balance will continue to pay dividends as the season progresses. Pink has the opposite problem. If Ed or Paul has an off night, there’s really no way to make up the production. Paul had his worst game so far and every guy is going to have certain matchups that give them problems. So what’s the adjustment? How do you compensate? As constructed, Pink needs more scoring out of Bradley and Pete Les. They’ve both been playing hard, but getting wins will require more out of them, as the only viable secondary options on the team. Pink falls to 1-3 heading into the BYE week. Yellow surges to 3-0 before a huge showdown with Team Purple.

Standings

Team	Captain	Win	Loss	Record	Win %	Streak	PS	PA	DIFF
YELLOW	MARK KOLL	3	0	3 - 0	1.000	W3	215	171	44
ORANGE	KYLE GARMES	2	1	2 - 1	0.667	L1	204	175	29
PURPLE	MATT VITALIANO	2	1	2 - 1	0.667	L1	197	161	36
BLUE	LUKE A	2	1	2 - 1	0.667	W1	164	162	2
WHITE	ROB KNAPCZYK	2	1	2 - 1	0.667	W1	193	201	-8
RED	STEVE DUDEK	1	2	1 - 2	0.333	W1	176	209	-33
PINK	MATT KOLL	1	3	1 - 3	0.250	L1	285	278	7
GREEN	DAVE TROY	0	4	0 - 4	0.000	L4	238	315	-77