2019 NALCS Summer Finals Preview

S. Samek

Two heavyweight contenders enter the ring for the championship and a number one seed at worlds. The loser still gets a worlds birth,but in the second position.

These two fighters are Team Liquid and Cloud 9. NA’s best performing teams throughout the entire year.

Team Liquid comes in with a combined regular season two split record of 28-8 after having matching 14-4 regular splits. During both of them they earned the number one seed for the playoffs. The took advantage of it in spring to win their third split in a row and set themselves up for a forth. They knocked out Clutch gaming in the semi-finals to advance to the finals after a bye in quarterfinals.

Cloud 9 finished second at 14-4 during the spring and 12-6 and tied for second in summer. They finished with an overall record of 26-10. They won a tie breaker over CLG to take second place for the split and earn a bye. They then defeated CLG in semi-finals to advance to the finals.

During the regular summer split Cloud 9 took down Liquid in both of their matches during week 5 and week 8. Giving C9 the recent head to head advantage.

Yet Liquid is firing on all cylinders with all of their players in top form. Four of their players made it into the first team NALCS for summer 2019. The lone player not too made the second team and that was jungler Xmithie.

Doublelift and CoreJJ were also both in in the top three for MVP of the split with CoreJJ coming in second.

Not to say C9 is going in unarmed. They do have the MVP of the split and the only other play on the first team in jungler Svenskeren. Nisqy and Licorice made the second team in the middle and top lane, while Zeyzal finished on the third all pro team in the support role.

Liquid has the stronger bottom lane. Doublelift and CoreJJ are te best duo in NA if not the best players in NA.

Top and middle are closer, but I do think Liquid has a slight edge there too. First teamers going up against second teamers should yield an advantage for the first teamers.

Jungle is a C9 advantage. You have the best jungler in NA doing his thing against the second best in NA.

While Liquid did fall to C9 in the regular split I see this being a different animal. I think Liquid is going to be coming in with the chip on their shoulder to finish first and not have the split be a bust.

C9 does have a chance though. If you can leverage your jungle advantage into lanes you can wins games. That and if you beat them before even as recent as three weeks ago why can’t you do it again.

Both teams should be giving it their all though. Even with no real penalty other than finishing as the second seed for worlds I don’t think this is a match both teams want to win.

I think it goes the full five games and goes 3-2 to Liquid. Giving them their forth split win in a row.

Who do you think wins this split? Check it out Sunday August 25, 2019 to find out.

Pittsburgh Penguins All Decade team

S. Samek

ESPN named all-decade teams for each NHL team. Lets check out who made the Pittsburgh Penguins team.

Sidney Crosby, Chris Kunitz, Phil Kessel, Kris Letang, Brooks Orpik and Marc-Andre Fleury made the team.

None of these are too surprising. All of the have won Stanly cups if not multiple in their time with the Penguins. Crosby and Fleury being faces of the franchise for the lonest time too you absolutely have to name them to this list.

Evgeni Malkin did not make the team. What a snub that is. The Crosby and Malkin core has played really well despite rumors at varying point the may break this duo up. However they both have played well enough to earn their high draft positions.

I don’t know of any one other than Malkin that missed the list who should be on it. Check out the rest f the team lists here.

XFL Logos Announced

S. Samek

The reboot of the XFL is coming and now we have some team names and logos.

Eight squads will strap up for the first year of the league.

The first of these teams is the Dallas Renegades. This is a name and logo I really like.

Second is the DC Defenders. This is another logo and name I really like.

Then we have The Houston Roughnecks. Its a cool name, yet like a lot of people have said prior the logo looks like the Houston Oilers old one.

Forth is the Los Angeles Wildcats. Honestly this is a terrible name. Like really another wildcats name. Like getting something orginal.

Then we have the New York Guardians. Its another unique and well done logo. I like it.

Then we have the St. Louis Battlehawks. Th logo is cool with wings and swords and a silver color. Yet its the Battehawks, another hawk theme name so boring.

Then we have the Seattle Dragons. I don’t kind of mixed on this one. Like its ok,but I feel like they could have thought of a better one. It looks like UAB’s logo a bit as well.

Then last and least is the Tampa Bay Vipers. O boy another snake team. So original.

I think they needed to do a better job with the team names. Maybe go for more local themes. In the case of the Vipers, Dragons,Battlehawks and Wildcats they missed by a mile.

The other four have a little bit of local flair with a decent logo. Not much to complane about there. I personally think the best logo and name combination is the DC defenders. Its go a super hero themed vibe that also goes well with a football tie in. It has a standard DC red, white, blue color scheme and just looks like the most complete set.

Check them all out here.

2019 NALCS Summer Playoffs Semi-finals Recap.

S. Samek

Lets take a look at the semi-final matches from this weekend.

Starting off we have CLG and C9 , the second and third seeded teams.

Game 1 wasn’t close and C9 won with ease. Nisqy shined on Qiyana racking up a 5/0/1 kda.

Game 2 was a bloodbath. C9 racked up 25 kills with Nisqy contributing 10 on Sylas and Licorice chipping in eight kills of his own.

Game 3 CLG fought back in a much closer game. They were able to win in order to stay alive. Powerofevil showed his carry from with a game-high eight kills with Qiyana.

Game 4 was a battle. It last 47 minutes and went 25-18 in kills. A teamfight after an elder dragon take were enough to propel C9 to win the game and the series. Nisqy did it again with Sylas racking up 10 more kills and pretty much being the main carry for C9 this series.

The other semi-final pitted Clutch gaming vs. top seed team Liquid.

Game 1 was a bloodbath has well. It went 26-10 in kills score with Team Liquid winning that number. They pretty much took every other category too and won the game. Jensen and Doublelift combined for 18 of Liquid’s 26 kills and both looked good in the winning effort.

Game 2 was similar to game one with the reverse result. Clutch did not back down and scored a 25-13 kill win of their own. This lead to a gold lead of 9,000 and a win to tie the series. Damonte wielded Qiyana to a 9/1/10 performance to led Clutch.

Game 3 was Liquid doing Liquid things. They dominated. 12-4 in kills and 10,000 gold leads put them ahead 2-1 in the series.

Game 4 was moderately close. Yet Clutch was able to ride the Cody sun train to victory in this one. On Sivir he went 7/1/6 to tie the series up at two with a strong individual performence.

Game 5 was a slower paced game. Yet Liquid still managed an easy win and double digit kills. Using the infamous Sona/Taric bottom lane they were able to win teamfights and win the game.

This was a pretty fun series to watch. It wasn’t expected to go five games,but Clutch did pretty well to compete with Liquid. Coming off this series and the quarterfinals win against TSM, Clutch should be confident heading into reginal finals.

This sets up Liquid and C9 for the summer spilt title. Should be a good one.

Even More Sports Pops 2019

S. Samek

Fans of sports themed funko pops can rejoice. Over the past month we have had a few new sets coming.

First is a soccer set.

Second is an NHL set. These look good and i’d recomend pick them up if you like any of the players.

Then theres a college mascot set. Pretty much all powerhouse teams.

Then you have an NFL. This come just in time for football season.

Lots of new options for collecting funko sports themed to your favorite sport.

UBA Battle Bowl 10

S. Samek

This blog is no stranger to the uba. Many post have been written about this awesome league/organization. I feel like it makes bowling sound more fun and accessible to all than traditional leagues.

Of course the signature event of the UBA season is battle bowl. This year is the 10th edition of battle bowl.

It happened last week the 8-11th of August 2019 with a full slate of events. Including the championship finals of the season tour.

The season tour has been won by DGF,or Da Garden Foundation three years in a row. Yet they wont’t be defending it in 2019.

They failed to make the elite eight matchups that will occur at battle bowl. Out Rage,Synergy, Westgate Warriors,X-treme Chaos, Menace II Society, X-Men,lane crashers and strike city make up the elite eight. This means one of them with get their first world championship in franchise history.

It just seems odd to not see DGF in the finals after three ears of winning. Oh well makes for a more interesting storyline.

I’ll be sure to find out who won when we get the results to give you all the heads up. Yet for now be aware a new squad is holing the UBA tittle for 2019.

Cincy Rookie Digs the longball

S. Samek

The Cincinnati Reds are struggling this season. They sit in next to last place in the NL central and see their playoff hopes drop game after game. They sit 7.5 games out of first in the division as of this writing with a record of 58-65. May not seem like a team wirth watching unless your a Cincy fan to start with.

Heres a reason to start watching the Reds, or at least their highlights. Aristides Aquino was called up August first. All he’s done sense being called up is hit the ball over the fence.

The Rookie slugger has 11 home runs in 17 games as of publishing. He just keeps hitting them at a rate no rookie as ever done before. His mark was faster than Rhys Hoskins of Philadelphia in 2018, who hit 10 homers in 17 games.

Yet Mike Schmidt has him beat hitting 11 homers in 56 at bats, while it took Aquino 58 to reach 11 longballs.

The longballs seem to be continuing from triple a where he had 28 homers in 78 games. He just keeps sending the ball over the fence no matter where he is.

Hopefully he can continue the pace as its fun to watch.

Best Speed Pitch Prize

S. Samek

Its a common game at amusement parks, fairs, festivals and even just in the fun zone at your local baseball teams games. W’re talking about the speed pitch machine. You see how fast you can throw with the chance to win stuffed animals, inflatable bats,or even just the house record and pride for fireballing faster than your buddies.

A fan stepped up and tried his luck at one such game. Then he hit 96 mph on the gun in a speed pitch game. The video of him doing so went viral.

His prize for this effort. The Oakland A’s called to offer him a minor league contract. Its a bit unusually, but how awesome is that. Like an average joe finds some luck and gets to take a run at making a dream come true to pitch in the major league.

Nathan Patterson is the name of the pitcher and he has been assigned to a team within the Oakland Organization and has seen some game action. He struck out the side in an inning of relief for the Arizona League A’s team.

Its a feel good store worth sharing and I wish him luck.

2019 NALCS Summer Spilt Quarterfinals Recap

S.Samek

Last weekend the playoffs got in full swing. There were two best of five series going on between Clutch and TSM and CLG and Optic.

Clutch and TSM had TSM coming in with a lot of questions. With a substitute jungler and an underachieving roster that played worse than in spring where they finished second. Clutch improved a good bit over a ninth place spring to reach playoffs in fifth.

Well they didn’t play like a fifth place team. They dominated games 1 and 2 to sit at a 2-0 lead. TSM fought back taking game three with a highlight pentakill from Zven on Xayah. That was all the reprieve they got those as Clutch went back to work in game four and took the series 3-1 in commanding fashion.

Cody sun played really well to lead Clutch. He only died twice in the whole series and had 24 kills. He was on fire.

This was defiantly not the series I saw coming. Clutch did have a chance. yet I was expecting a 3-1 win in such fashion. Clutch played well and should be proud of a solid series win against a higher tier TSM.

Next was Optic and CLG. CLG won game in a fairly close match. Game two CLG turned on the jets and won in crushing fashion. game three was more of the same as Stixxay had six kills matching Optics team total by himself.

This series went pretty much as expected. Yet Optic can be happy for making the playoffs for the fist time ever.

So after the first round Team Liquid was able to select who they played in the semi-finals. They chose to play Clutch. That puts the other semi-final as CLG and Cloud 9.

Tune in this weekend for it.

Pirates Prospect Finds Power Stroke in 2019

S. Samek

With the Pittsburgh Pirates all but eliminated front the playoffs, the season is short of good news.

Yet there is some if you go down to the minor leagues to find it.

Mason Martin, the number 19 Pirates prospect is his name and hitting it far is his game. The third year man has clubbed 29 home runs as of this posting. He only hit 14 last season and 11 the year prior. Heck he hit 23 homers in 82 games, in single a before a call up to advanced a. He’s gone yard six more times in 28 games as of this writing. He is on fire.

The batting average is up as well. it sits at .261 across two level against a .220 last season also at two different levels.

Its reassuring to know that some decent players are on the way, even if the current crop is struggling. A power bat is something the Pirates really need and if Marin continues he could be just what the Pirates need.