Winter 2016: Franchise League Champs: A47

THE SAUCE finding their stride as postseason about to begin
The Corporation 71 Mulhollandaise Sauce 79

This one wasn’t a blowout, but no interesting play-by-play to report here.  Swecker showed up late into the game and Mul Sauce held a 35-30 lead at the half.  A Mazz layup would give The Corp a very brief 40-39 lead and a glimmer of hope, but Mul Sauce unleashed an absolute barrage of 3 point makes going on a quick 9-0 run to a 48-40 lead and then I felt like I blinked and the score was suddenly 67-50 in favor of The Sauce.  Right around this time, I heard BRob ask in disbelief, “Are we really down 14?”  Yep, you were.  It was nuts Vladi, Joe, Scott, and Kerr (x4!) all made 3’s in this stretch while The Corp went kind of cold.  The game got kind of close towards the end, but Chanel would calmly knock down 4 1&1’s to help put the game away.

Is Mul Sauce going to become the new Jerk Store?  They’ve got one title already and are in decent enough shape for a second and they have a lot of pieces in place to resign for next season.  They aren’t like Jerk Store in terms of franchise success *yet*, but mostly it’s that this team has so much damn fun playing with one another.  Their chemistry is terrific.  When one of them makes a weird cut on offense, they laugh it off instead of screaming at him.  Vladi was casually joking around with Joe in the midst of a defensive possession in a close first half game.  I re-read that sentence and almost breezed through it, but re-read it again and visualize that in your head.  Then later in the game, you could hear Joe from the bench heckling Vladi calling him out for travelling.  And of course, the whole team shits on Joe any time he heads to the free throw line.  

Swecker -> Marcel was a nice connection going in this one with several feeds for buckets.  Marcel has quietly had a very nice offensive season in Franchise scoring 14.6ppg on a low scoring squad and one of only two players on his team (Mazz) with a TS% over 40%.  It’s no secret that Swecker has been damn awful shooting the ball lately in Franchise.  And by lately I mean like half the time I’ve known him.  But this is his second teammate on a somewhat bad team (Hexx the other) that Swecker has had legit VERY good chemistry with and has made them a better player.  Like one of my under the radar top 5 pairs of chemistry in the league both seasons.  But it’s another team that he doesn’t handle the ball a ton, so it’s tough to notice unless you watch a lot of his games.

Mul Sauce had incredible defensive activity in this one with hands everywhere.  Everybody on the team had 3 steals except Scott’s 2 and he probably had a hand in more than that as Scott had what I felt to be the most active hands on his whole squad.  His defensive instincts are truly terrific.  Scott was credited with 4 blocks and might have had more than that too.  Even Vladi managed to find the ball fall into his lap 3 times!  Mul Sauce also had great offensive balance with all 5 players scoring double digits.

Another ridiculous offensive rebounding performance by Buckley with 7 this week.  Do I even need to type this anymore or is it just assumed?  Dan is the only player in the league to average more offensive rebounds per game than defensive!  Which is pretty crazy and almost makes no sense to me.

Scores, Box Scores & Write-Ups

Playoff: week 14

Click For Previous Weeks: 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Franchise Draft W16 Basketball League