LIONS Videos...

...courtesy of the Commish. They're a bit raw, but it's better than nothing! You can view the rest of the clips here (bits and pieces from teams across different divisions).

The snippets of dialogue captured are pretty amusing to say the least.

The display box for them is a bit oversized, so it overlaps some content on the right of my page. Sorry about that!

Commish's Playoff mini-recaps from 3/11 posted

3/11 @ Potrero Hill (SF)
(rest of 3/11 recaps here)

#1 Hyphy 76, #14 Lions 68 (boxscore)

• Not an eyewitness account here, but Jon McClain was a DNP for the Lions. On paper, it's amazing they lost by only 8 points.
  
  
• Lions kept it close throughout. Big-time step-up by Vince Morales who had 24 points. Maybe the absence of 6'3" Nate Dungca for Hyphy helped out.
  
  
• 16-and-12 by Hyphy's Conrad Mendoza and 30 points for Mike Payongayong, but the Lions actually led on the boards, 33-30, and had three guys with double-figures.

My notes: Unfortunately, both Jon and Eric were DNP's due to spring break plans. The outcome probably would have been much different had they been present...I don't necessarily think it's amazing that we "only" lost by 8. It's a testament to our improved chemistry and play. We really started to gel as a team towards the end of the season...props to the Commish for giving me a shoutout. I finished w/ 24 points on 71% FG (12-17), 8 boards, 3 assists and a steal. I personally don't think Nate Dungca being out made much of a difference. He's not much of a defensive post presence as he likes to operate from the high post...Hyphy PG Mike Payongayong (3-4 3pt, 12-18 overall) was lights-out throughout the game despite ballhawking D from Lic and was draining NBA-range 3's. I guess it was just his day...a bit of erroneous info on the recap - we actually had 4 players in double-figures, not 3 (Derrick, Rob, Lic and myself)...Derrick had a "typical" game by his standards: 12 points on 55% FG (6/11), 2 rebounds, 3 dimes and 2 steals. Scoring just comes naturally to him...Rob had a strong game w/ 15 points on 58% FG (7-12), 9 boards and 3 assists...while Lic didn't have his greatest shooting day w/ 13 points on 35% FG (6-17), he pulled down 9 boards (pretty remarkable considering he's our PG), dropped 4 dimes and had a steal.

Commish's Playoff mini-recaps up for 2/25 & 3/4

2/25 @ Potrero Hill (SF)
(rest of 2/25 recaps here)

#14 Lions 64, #6 Ole Dirty Bastards 28 (boxscore)

• No Kelvin Yip, Jimmy Chen, and Ryan Dang for ODB, no chance.
  
• 12-2 first quarter lead which stretched to 22-5 by the Lions and it was over. Jon McClain had 10 of his 23 in the first, including 3 rebounds and 3 assists. He finished 9-for-11 from the field and sat out the 4th quarter.

My notes: As we joked, this was probably the first time the entire team showed up - not that surprising based on everyone's schedules and whatnot...a bit of an off game for Eric as he shot 36% (4-11)...with his jumper not falling, Simon contributed in other ways with his game-high 5 dimes and 9 boards and adding 2 steals to boot...Rob put up an all-around line w/ 9 points on 100% FG (4-4), 5 reb., 3 dimes, 3 stl and 3 blocks...Lic also had a solid game (as usual) w/ 12 pts (63% FG, 6-8), 4 boards and 2 assists.

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3/4 @ Ira Jinkins (OAK)
(rest of 3/4 recaps here)

#14 Lions 82, #10 Big Gamerz 74 (boxscore)

• 24-9 1st quarter by Lions, thanks to Jon McClain's 12 points.
  
• The Lions led 45-23 at halftime as Eric Fernandez and Derrick Camerino joined the Lions' bucketfest. Fernandez had his best career game.
  
• Kelii Woosley led a Big Gamerz comeback with 13 points in the 4th. The Lions gave up 15 points in the onslaught, but held on with decent shooting in the 4th.
  
• McClain ended with 35 points. He was a force throughout.

My notes: Lic and Jason racked up a "DNP" for this game...Derrick brought his trademark "instant O" w/ 15 pts. on a blistering 70% FG (7-10), while also chipping in 3 boards, 2 assists, 2 steals and a block...the story here was Eric and Jon's lights-out performances. Eric went 5-9 (56%) from 3-pt. land en route to 21 points, 8 boards and 2 dimes. Jon went BANANAS- going 14-21 overall and 4-6 from 3 (an identical 67% for both). He also added 8 reb., 2 assists and 3 steals for good measure.

Updated brackets up (as of 3/14)

As you can see, we play the Big Gamerz this Sunday. If we win that matchup, we're going up against Hyphy again 30 minutes later.

It sure is gonna be good to have Jon and Eric back again this weekend.

I'll have a playoff synopsis up on the Dream League AAA-P site by Friday. Watch out for it!

AAA-P Playoff update by the Commish

MARCH 6, 2007 -- Hyphy remained undefeated and the Lions stayed on their tear in the playoffs, setting up a much-anticipated battle between the "die hard" Lions led by strong forward Jon McClain and pointman Chris Liclican, and the runnin-n-gunnin Hyphy led by versatile tall guard Marco Escalambre and the hard-nosed ballhandler Andrew Matawaran.

In the Losers Bracket, San Miguel staged a 4th-quarter comeback against the Ole Dirty Bastards, then carried the momentum to a 28-10 lead against #2 SVU, only to see Jim Wang shoot the lights out and end the San Miguel dream. Got-Em beat Aball, which beat Grey Goose.

This means we have #2 SVU, #3 Got-Em, #4 SFFA, and the #10 Big Gamerz in the Losers Bracket. Even though the highest seed is supposed to play against the lowest seed in the Losers Bracket, SVU has already played the Big Gamerz in the playoffs, so to mitigate the irrelevancy of that first meeting, SVU will play against the next-lowest seed, SFFA, which leaves us with Got-Em vs Big Gamerz. The winners of these games will play against each other, from which on 3/18 the winner will play the loser of Hyphy vs Lions in the Last Losers Bracket game, from which the winner will then play the winner of Hyphy/Lions for the championship. If a repeat championship is needed, it will be played on 3/25.

Wow...I can't believe SVU came back from a 28-10 deficit to beat San Miguel. Since San Miguel was coming of a doubleheader, did fatigue kick in later in the game? Or did they just not respect the shooting skills of SVU? Man...I've said time and time again, SVU can straight-up shoot. That Jim Wang guy lit us up when we played them (and we were playing man on them!).

In other league news, Kurruption defeated SloJams in the Lower Bracket Championship capping a 3-game win streak in the Playoffs. I don't know much about them other than they're made up primarily of a bunch of young, Filipino players...but I've gotta hand it to them for knocking out the #1 and #2 seeds on their way to winning it all.

New Dream League article up

Check out the Playoff Push Pt. Deux.

Playoff Update for 3/4

Straight from the Commish:

FEBRUARY 26, 2007 -- Click on the Playoff Bracket links above. In the Lower Bracket, Kurruption upset Das Boot to earn the right to face SloJams in the championship. SloJams gets the homecourt (SF).

In the Upper Bracket, the Big Gamerz upset SVU. We now have six teams left in the Losers Bracket, which means the bottom four seeds have to battle each other, then face the top two seeds. You can see how San Miguel's path to the present has been an arduous one, nevertheless here we are and more empty bracket spaces will be filled after 3/4 (and others eliminated). This also means SVU and Got-Em get homecourt in the Losers Bracket, which means all these games are likely to occur in Oakland.

Wow, a #14 vs #10 (Lions at Big Gamerz homecourt in Oakland) and a #4 vs #1 (same homecourt for Hyphy and SFFA) in the Winners Bracket. February Madness! More info later this week.

Taking my predictions into account, I went 4/8 in the Upper Bracket and 1/2 in the Lower. Not bad I guess. The Big Gamerz pulled off a huge upset over SVU and we are set to face them next Sunday in Oakland. As stated in an earlier post, SFFA beat Aball as I predicted...Hyphy also advances after their contest w/ Grey Goose.

My picks for the Lower Bracket didn't pan out as great. I correctly called San Miguel's win over Ryusei, but didn't pen them in to beat S.F.F.D. Maybe I was biased by my pickup ball experience last week running with their dominant postman Joe Chan at the USF Koret Center.

As before, I'll go into more detail in a forthcoming piece before Friday.

Monday Morning Dream League Updates

Yes, those are actual jerseys worn by members of the AAA-6 Ft. and Under team Sqad Up.

And yes, the whole gym broke down in laughter when the sassy, veteran Oakland refs called them out for fouls. You just had to be there.

***

Anyways, as pointed out by Simon, yesterday's game was (amazingly) the first time we actually had the entire squad in attendance. Actually, it's not that hard to fathom given the fact that 1 or 2 players are out for various reasons from game to game.

So...my thoughts about the LIONS finally at full strength? Simply put, a force to be reckoned with. We defeated ODB convincingly and even had time to rest a bunch of starters towards the end of the game.

Jay Chai emails me again today (I guess it's going to be a routine Monday morning thing from now on?) w/ the news that they downed Aball (as I predicted in my last column). Now it looks like they play the winner of Grey Goose/Hyphy while we play the winner of Big Gamerz/SVU. Should be interesting to see the updated bracket sometime this week.

New Playoff article

I have a new article up on the Dream League website regarding the Playoff happenings in AAA-Premier. Check it out here.

I also forgot to post my pre-Playoff outlook chat w/ AAA-P's other blogger, AMac.

Sorry!

Bracket/Zito update

Just heard back from Jay. Turns out the Free Agents continued their surprising inaugural run and took out the Benchwarmers at Potrero last Sunday (they had the dreaded 9:30am tipoff time). They will face Aball in the 2nd round next weekend.

Speaking of the Benchwarmers, it turns out their team has a blog going.

In other news, Barry Zito is freaking out the Giants already:

"Pitching coach Dave Righetti went as far as to say the tweaks Zito made this winter -- seen by the team for the first time Thursday -- could cause him to lose his dominant curveball and wear down his body. Zito has never missed a start in his seven-year career."

I hope this "tinkering" is just that...harmless, Spring Training tinkering. There's no need to fix what ain't broke right? Plus, the words of warning coming straight from a respected veteran pitching coach should be heeded. The scary thing I sensed from the articles I've read was Zito's conviction in sticking to the change.

Dream League AAA-P Playoff notes

I've been checking on the Schedules/Scores page for the past few days now and it seems like the results of this past Sunday haven't been posted yet. I figure the Commish has just been swamped with his Vegas Tourney stuff.

These are the only two results up as of today:
#14 Lions 66 @ #3 Got-Em 63 (upper bracket)
#5 Bay Area Snipers 52 @ #4 Kurruption 57 (lower bracket)

My very own #14 seeded Lions came up big against the #3 seeded Got-Em on Sunday at Bushrod. It was a really well-played game by both sides...with great guard play on both sides of the ball and lead changes aplenty. In the end though, we were boosted by Jon's return and the lights-out shooting of Eric and Chris (the Chris Paul of Dream League, as dubbed by the Commish).

I randomly bumped into Gaylen Fong of the San Mateo Ryusei at Safeway and he informed me that they lost a really winnable game vs. Aball. He said that they were up 14 at one point, but let Aball get back in the game.

Captain Jay Chai of SF Free Agents shoots me an email today wondering if I could post the latest scores/update the bracket. I tell him that I'm not in charge of that and that we're basically in the same boat. Looking at the upper-division bracket though, it looks like the winner of his matchup (SFFA vs. Benchwarmers) will face Aball next weekend.

I was bummed to receive news from A-Mac that Wat Would Wat Do? had lost their first round matchup against Run F.O.B. I was really looking forward to watching his team play at Potrero after I got back from Oakland.

'Workmanlike effort'...I love it

Check out my bro Ralph getting some love in the Fastbreak NYC Asian B league in NYC:

"FAS, however, shot only 52% from the line, and could not chip in PS1's lead any further. FAS (F) Ralph Morales contributed a workman like effort with 6 points and 8 rebounds while filling in for a short-handed FAS frontcourt."

Keep it up man!

The rest of the game recap can be found here.

I think it's cool that Fastbreak incorporates video highlight clips (low quality, but what can you do?) into their website content. It would be dope if Dream League could showcase a similar feature as well. I'll have to talk to the Poor Man's Commish about that one.

Random note 1: My bro thinks that the comp in his league is below that of AAA-Premier in Dream League SF. His feeling is that the top Asian ballers are competing in Dream League NYC. Very intriguing stuff. On the surface, it seems that the top players choose DL over Fastbreak even with all it's cool 'bells and whistles.'

Random note 2: I love his team name - The Free Asians. Classic.