NPPL Miami Commanders Cup
Verfasst: 05.11.2005 15:36
Von PB.com gibts eine Zusammenfassung vom gestrigen Spieltag:
NPPL Commander's Cup Friday event report
coverage by Young Choi
The last and final NPPL Super 7 event is finally upon us. The final event of the year is the Commander's Cup in honor of Maurice Gibbs. As most of you know, Mr. Gibbs passed away a few years ago and the NPPL chooses to honor him with this event. The Commander's Cup is held in Miami, Florida this year. The first Commander's Cup was in Miami and the second (last year) was held in San Diego, California. This event sold out in less than an absurd 45 minutes.
The venue, the Bicentennial Park, is between Miami and Miami Beach. Due to the hurricane that blew through here last week I have to say that Miami is still recovering. Power is still out in some places and debris is still every where. I was told that it was much worse earlier in the week. The venue layout is spread apart. On Friday there really wasn't all that many spectators around. Maybe the aftermath of the hurricane had something to do with it cuz this venue was billed to be as packed as Huntington Beach. We'll see as the weekend progresses.
The schedule was changed somewhat, the Super 18 Pro Division was changed drastically and everyone started play at 7am, bumping up play an hour earlier to combat teams from playing into the night. Teams still played into the night as it got dark around 6pm with the schedule ending the last games of the day at 7pm.
ESPN has camera crews every where. The NPPL field is sandwiched between two sets of bleachers capable of holding up to a 1000 spectators. With the ESPN cameras all filming there was a change to the Super 18 Pro teams. All of the Pro teams played their preliminary games on Friday instead of the usual Saturday afternoon. On Saturday, eight of the qualifying Super 18 Pro teams play a quarter-final round. Each of the eight teams play each other three times for a total of 21 quarter-final games. On Sunday, out of these eight teams, the top four will go to the semi-finals round which will be a best two out of three. The finals will be a best three out of five games for the $50,000 and the Commander's Cup.
The eight Pro teams to move on to Saturday are, San Diego Dynasty, Sacramento XSV, Portland Naughty Dogs, Orange County Bushwackers (if these guys do well they may retain their Pro spot next season), London Tigers, Stockholm Joy Division, Chicago Evil, and New England Hurricanes.
For six teams, three Super 18 Pro teams will be demoted to the Semi-Pro Division and three Semi-Pro teams will switch placed. This event will determine whether they will be either promoted to Pro or demoted to Semi-Pro. Pittsburgh Smoke, Toulouse Ton Ton, Orange County Bushwackers, and Manchester Shockwave are all in danger of being demoted to Semi-Pro for not accruing enough points to stay in the locked in Pro Division.
The Semi-Pro teams that have a chance to be promoted to the Super 18 Pro Division are Ironmen (this Dye team are already locked in and have won the Semi-Pro Division Series Title), Shock (Aftershock), Shockwave Canada, Bob Long's Assassins, Dynasty Dynamics, and XS NRG (XSV sister team).
There are reports that some of the European Super 18 Pro teams may sell their spots due to the expense of playing this series in the United states. I can honestly see Bad Company, All Americans, Docs Raiders, and Strange buying up a spot. We'll all have to wait and see come this offseason.
Stay tuned for more coverage as the weekend progresses. Oh yeah, here's a juicy tidbit to fan the rumor flames... Planet Eclipse may pick up an NXL team to shoot their Egos next season... and they don't speak english fluently.