Weekend Preview

At the request of posters, and because I’m tired of seeing the Caddyshack theme, a quick and dirty preview of this weekend.

4.0

Bazan by far has the easier path to Sunday morning, and I actually would be surprised if he doesn’t make it.  He starts off Friday morning playing QT-Laredo.  From what I can tell from Tennislink, this is the only team from Laredo, and qualified by playing a team out of Wichita Falls 3 times over a 2-day period.  That was all their whole season was comprised of.  In addition, they only have 9 players on their roster.  Laredo is a long way from Dallas, and wouldn’t be surprised if they are defaulting a line or two Friday morning, much less the rest of the weekend.  Bazan steamrolls them.

Their next match is Waco who historically has not put together that tough of a team.  They won their flight back in 2010, but outside of that, have typically ended up at the bottom of flight play.  While I wouldn’t fully discount them, I think if Cary gets through Friday, I say his chances of playing Sunday morning are looking good.  The only caveat here is that their match is at 2 PM on Friday at the peak of the sun and a very hot time.  But his guys should be well rested as Laredo is just a warm-up.

Saturday morning is North Houston (NOHO), who my guess, will be their toughest competition in flight play.   However, if they had any really good players, they would be playing for Freeman, so NOHO is the city’s leftovers.   Since it is a morning match and not too hot, I think this favors Cary and give the edge to Dallas.

Their last match is Wild San Angelo.  While it will be at the pinnacle of heat at 5:30 pm at LB Houston, it will be a cool down match and time to prepare for Sunday morning.

What’s nice for Bazan, is misery for Tony Le as he faces Houston right out of the gates Friday morning. His hope here is that all of Freeman’s boys can’t make it first thing on Friday in Dallas, which might give Tony an edge.  I don’t know all of Freeman’s players, but they had fairly easy wins in flight play, and the “grapevine” reports that he has a fairly stacked team.  Given the struggles Tony’s super-team has had this past season, I think he has a tough battle ahead of him.  That said, if he does pull off an up-set, his next toughest match in flight play won’t be until the end of Saturday against NETX.  In between, he has the Valley and Wild NOHO, which he should easily handle.  NETX went undefeated in flight play and looks solid on paper, so Tony can’t ease up here, unless he is already out of it with a Houston loss.

Sunday morning I think you see Bazan facing off against Fort Worth or Wild Austin, and Houston playing Austin on the other side of the bracket.  At that point, you need to come out and root for our home team to help them get through to the finals and heckle Freeman and squad.

4.5

Since this is so far out of my league, my insights are limited, but here you go. 
What is bad luck for Tony at 4.0, appears to be good luck at 4.5.  At least for flight play.  His 4.5 team has NETX, Midland and NOHO of which I think Le easily gets out of his flight. 

HOWEVER, and that is a BIG HOWEVER.  Fort Worth sits on the opposing flight.  Mind you, this really isn't a Fort Worth team, but rather another "Super-team" comprised mainly of Dallas ringers led by no other than Marc Roussouw himself.  (No wonder why he has been so silent on this blog!)  They appear to have tougher flight play with Austin in their flight.   While I think Austin is tough and gives them a battle, I think Fort Worth pulls through.

This then leads to probably the most exciting match of the weekend, which should be Tony Le's Dallas 4.5 team vs. Rossouw's 4.5 team in the Semis.  What a match.  I won't even try to speculate on who takes this one, but it should be good, and maybe filled with a little drama?

The winner of this will most likely face another Freeman team in the Finals.  Whoever wins, I hope a Dallas/Fort Worth team can take Freeman at 4.5, as I think Freeman will be walking away with the 4.0 title.

Regardless, best of luck to all of our Dallas teams!!

Disclosure:  The above is merely postulations and guess-work based on quick and rash analysis from Tennislink and on biases from past years’ results of cities which are no true indicators of future results.    It is no way to be deemed accurate or relied upon for purposes of placing wagers or the like.