2024-2025: Week 9 Player Reports

Game 1: Team Green vs. Team Yellow

-There have been many years where the “steadiest” team ends up on top after all of the variance and chaos shakes itself out as the season progresses. This doesn’t mean it’s the “best” team or the team that even “plays the best.” It’s more of a testament to the value of stability and continuity in a long season. It’s possible Team Yellow has emerged as the steadiest team thus far. Their core players come every week and they’re very balanced from a scoring perspective. As expected, they’ve had some matchup issues and late game struggles against the other top teams, but they don’t allow their shortcomings to affect their weekly effort and focus. With Team Purple now vulnerable without their best player and Orange looking erratic from week to week, Yellow might be the safest bet to compete each week. No one is going to come in and run them off the court, which should give them an excellent opportunity to secure one of the top seeds and the coveted first round BYEs that come with them. In this one, Yellow buried Team Green early, because that’s what they were supposed to do. There wasn’t any sluggishness or “playing down to your opponent” which is a good sign of a strong team. Green continues to play with a confusing mix of frenzy and laziness. At times they want to play fast and their team is constantly leaking out for fast breaks. But everything they do well seems to come at the cost of something else. It’s been an ugly first half of the season for Green, but at least it can’t get any worse, right? Cue the dramatic music and Dave Troy crying like Adam Morrison on the court.

Game 2: Team Orange vs. Team Pink

-It can get depressing over time thinking a team could be better, but for whatever reason, you just never actually see it happen. Team Pink was one of the teams that pretty clearly underperformed in the first part of the season. So it was gratifying to a degree to seem them put it together for 40 minutes and beat one of the top teams. The headline of this was certainly that Ed plays his absolute best against his butt buddy Chris. He hit his shots, got to the line, and also kept Chris in check. That’s a tall order. We’ve seen glimpses of Ed being this type of player, but not every week. If he can even bring something close most weeks, Team Pink would be a real problem. They have enough experienced guys to pick up the slack if Ed has a slightly off game and “cover” for him to a degree. It’s worth remembering they do have a player on the way who will provide an extra body and some size if nothing else. If Ed can ramp up his consistency, the rest of the team should be in position to get wins in a hurry. Still, due to their rough start, they’re already behind the eight ball. They need to go a win streak right away. Team Orange looks vulnerable after a strange month of roster fluctuations. Their core of shooters have been flaky and getting exposed on defense while Stan is scoring baskets for the other team. Expect them to recover from this loss and for Chris’ usage rate to go sky high.

Game 3: - Team Blue vs. Team White

-White fielded one of their worst teams to date, playing without their top three draft picks, which might be unprecedented in HatchetBall history. Daoud continues to MIA, leaving them extremely short-handed from week to week. Is this still a good team on paper? Sure, I guess. But, even in games where they had their top guys, we really haven’t seen what they were supposed to be. Also, it seems unlikely Rob will be 100% at any point this season, which is yet another setback they seemingly can’t afford. Blue took the easy win and the easy stats to stay right in the middle of the pack where they belong. Blue has a couple huge games back to back against Pink and Yellow in the coming weeks. If they have any ambitions of ascending the standings, they need to find a way to at least split those games. With their track record, expect the games to be close.

Standings

Team	Captain	Win	Loss	Record	Win %	Streak	PS	PA	DIFF
PURPLE	MATT VITALIANO	6	1	6 - 1	0.857	W4	450	372	78
YELLOW	MARK KOLL	5	2	5 - 2	0.714	W2	511	419	92
RED	STEVE DUDEK	5	2	5 - 2	0.714	W5	455	432	23
ORANGE	KYLE GARMES	4	3	4 - 3	0.571	L2	455	452	3
BLUE	LUKE A	3	4	3 - 4	0.429	W1	425	404	21
WHITE	ROB KNAPCZYK	2	5	2 - 5	0.286	L4	399	500	-101
PINK	MATT KOLL	2	5	2 - 5	0.286	W1	473	472	1
GREEN	DAVE TROY	1	6	1 - 6	0.143	L2	442	559	-117