OPEN:

 

Brantley:

Brantley vs Coogan

Well well well….How the turntables have turned….

I’m sure many of you were “entertained” by Capt. Coogan’s write up last week.  If you missed it, you may have heard about it at Walkon’s or maybe even Hooter’s during lunch.  I don’t blame anyone for counting us out.  I guess you all just thought Randy and I would go out quietly.  The cute little write up was all we needed to start our villain era.

Where to start.  Unlike the last game against team Coogan, we did not start out slow.  Team Brantley came out with a chip on their shoulders from hearing the same old thing all season long.  “Yall suck.  Probably couldn’t win a game in legends.  What were you thinking when you drafted that team.”  Team Brantley’s man to man defense was suffocating.  I’m not sure what Pearce whispered in Coogan’s ear before the start of the game but it definitely had an effect. Coogan was scoreless for the entire first half.  With his Father in law taking beautiful pictures of the game, Team Coogan was shell shocked from the get go.  Let’s address some of the guys that were written about in last week’s write up.  Let’s start with Pearce.  For someone that was said to not have a “Basketball Bone in his body”, he was a defensive BEAST.  That was his lane Sunday night.  If you dared to drive into it, you got your shit tossed to half court.  There was also something said about Pearce scoring ”6 pitiful points”.  It’s fitting that this is the exact amount of points that Pearce held Coogan to.  6 pitiful points.  Pearce outscored most of team Coogan with 9.  Jmart made it a point to double his points and shit talking from last week but soon realized he needed to save his shots for the second game.  Reed, Chatelain and Harger played intense defense, grabbing steals and rebounds while mean mugging the competition.  And as Coogan did in his write up, I have saved Randy for last.  Maybe it was the part that said it would be his last game this year.  Maybe it was the part that said Team Coogan would be Randy’s “shining light” for the end of the season.  Well, yall definitely forgot who you were talking to.  Randy straight up cooked Team Coogan.  My dude dropped 32 on them without breaking a sweat.    It wasn’t all bad for team Coogan.  Faircloth tried everything he could, after making a seven hour drive the night before, to help his team by scoring 22.  Tim George was their second leading scorer with 11.  If this dude is a 5th round pick again next year then shame on the captains (Secretary edit – he should go 6th round).  Lastly, I would like to show my appreciation to all of you that came up after the game, texted, posted on Facebook and Teamsnap.  I don’t think it was so much to congratulate my team, but more to just thank us for knocking Coogan out of the playoffs so you wouldn’t have to hear from him until Volleyball.

 

Brantley vs Haf

You would think that Team Brantley would be satisfied with that one little win over a very good Team Coogan.  We were not.  It all finally clicked.  Defense, smart passes and shot selection was the key to this game.  Team Haf came out in a 2-3 zone with an emphasis on stopping Brantley and Guillaume from shooting 3’s.  Great idea right?  Wrong…. Jmart and Reed came out hitting!  Three trips down the court and all of a sudden we were up 9-2.  We never looked back.  Playing man defense again made it difficult for Team Haf to get a quality shot off.  Thanks to the early shots going in, their zone stretched and allowed for Pearce to have himself a day.  There was no answer for him down low.  Team Brantley had four players in double digits with Reed and Chatelain also adding to the total.  Harger continued to piss the opposing team with his tenacious defense. Team Haf tried to claw their way back into the game but their shots just didn’t fall and Team Brantley made free throws to close it out.

I guess we all have plans for March 9th after all.  Hope to see you all out there.

 

Wall: 

Team Aillet, despite having to play their second game of the night, delivered a short-handed Team Wall their fourth defeat of the season. Unfortunately for TW, having a 6’7 former pro athlete and four other guys who at least played for their high school basketball teams just wasn’t enough to overcome the absence of first-round draft pick The Good at Sports Sumner.

Oh, wait, sorry, that wasn’t a recap of the game, that was just the prediction of some of the brightest basketball minds in the club: Davenport, Haf, Cal, Chuck, Coogan, Holaway, Hood, and Past Presidents 35 and 41. Congrats to that crew for going 1-5 on Sunday night, by the way (shout out Hood, doing all the heavy lifting on that stat).

Anyway, it turns out the team that had six guys scoring 8.5 or more points per game (50% more than the next closest team, for the record) had the depth to overcome missing the elder Sumner as he traveled to Miami to follow his dreams of trying out for the next season of The Real World (oh, I mean: “to go on a bachelor trip”).

TW was led by an absolutely dominant performance from Captain Sponsor, who put up 22 points in the paint and 14 more from the free throw line. Matt “Mad Dog” Desselle did his usual defensive menace thing, holding the non-shorts-owning rookie phenom Zack West to six points (not counting the technical foul free throws TW graciously provided). Aillet managed 14 of his own while being hounded by Vic the Pickpocket (6 fast break points on 3 steals), meaning he and West combined for 23 total points compared to their usual 43.6. They were lead by fellow rookie Ben Kitto, who scored 15 (I think, I dunno, 41’s hand is covering up that side of the score book in the photo I’m using).

While the primary battle in the paint was Wall vs a bunch of 6’ tall guys, the secondary paint battle was a thriller too. In the end, Matt Walker and Miguel Sanchez ended up with four points each, though Miguel managed his without fouling and Matt fouled out of the game, so I think we all agree Miguel took the victory in that head to head.

Fun facts: Sunday night was the second time all season that Team Aillet lost when West was present (previous loss: 2/2/25 vs Team Wall). It was also only the second time this season someone besides Aillet or West lead their team in scoring (previous instance: 2/2/25 vs Team Wall).

Tough going from here out for Team Wall as we have to play The People’s Favorite coming out of the bottom half of the bracket (lucky for us, “The People” are Davenport, Haf, Cal, Chuck, Coogan, Holaway, Hood, and Past Presidents 35 and 41). If we manage to pull out a win against game plan savant Kyle Hebert, we’ve got Number One Overall Pick Korey Salmon or Team “Biggest Chip On Our Shoulder of All Time” Brantley waiting in the championship. Fingers crossed that Scott will be fully recovered from whatever degree burn you get from spending a week shirtless in Miami in time for a fun night of championship hoops.

 

 

LEGENDS:

 

Goscha:

Life Lessons:

  1. Don’t disrespect men like Ryan Babin…….Faircloth benched him in the playoffs last year and now has the negative Babin Effect upon him.
  2. Don’t underestimate your opponents….Coogan, the write up from last week was perfect right up until you and Faircloth got hammered.
  3. I think Dixon or someone like Dixon should do interviews during and directly after playoff games. Just think of a good Faircloth/Coogan interview that is on a live Facebook feed and just full of pure rawness.

Fun Facts:

Goscha shot a higher free throw percentage than Clint Smith this season. WTF Smith?

Ryan Babin begged to guard Tim Roussel prior to the tip and then proceeded to score twice over the top of him…..Not good for Babin’s Turner career!

Babin has more playing time in his one Legend playoff game than he had with Faircloth all last season…..Faircloth and Coogan are out by the way.

Rookie Jim Young has never won a game in BRAAS. 0-11 in basketball and 0-10 in Football. Hang in there Jim we know this is emotionally unsettling.

Zero open league guys made it to walk-ons after team Brantley ran rough shot on Team Coogan and Team Haf.

The night at walk-ons featured a first-time guest in Tim Roussel. Tim has been traveling back and forth from Houston to participate in games as a key member of team Smith. While he only made 50% of the games his dedication to the team was inspiring. Clint actually rewarded him with six passes in one playoff game. In addition, we found out that Lane Pitre from Team Ourso will be spending his entire off-season making whoopee. A tough loss for Team Ourso after dropping 77 the weak before then they only scored 24. Lambert played it very smartly by placing Leveque on Lane. I personally think this is a brilliant idea and one they should carry into the future. Put Johnathan on one of our guards……

The Goscha/Smith game was close for the first 10 minutes, within striking distance at the half and over after the third quarter. Team Smith had the pieces to win the title, but team chemistry appeared to be missing. Tim Roussel (13 points) on six shots, is one heck of a player and was a great person to battle with on the inside. Hopefully he can wrap up his project in Houston and fall to Goscha next year in the draft. Clint scored (13 points) on the night while Patrick Thompson (6 points) made both of his shots on the night from 3-point land. Possibly Patrick and Bueche should have gotten more shots. The thought of Roussel falling to Goscha feels far-fetched until you realize that 7 people passed on Boyce this year; so stranger things have happened. Speaking of Boyce, he had 14, Ledoux 13, Esposito 12, Goscha 10, Lato 6, Babin 4, Landry 2 and Fruge led us in assists. Team Goscha scored 21 points in the third alone. Happy Mardi Gras to everyone and Team Lambert live it up on Fat Tuesday. The more you drink the more you have to repent on Ash Wednesday.

 

Lambert:

Playoff basketball! Grind it out with defense and play smart! We came out smoking in the first half with 15 and 15 in the opening quarters. Mulkey was on fire the entire game! Leading us with 21 points! Levesque put the clamps on their best offensive player, containing the “fountain of youth” warrior, Pitre, making him work for everything. Trevor chipped in with 6 timely pts, Lockwood hit a dagger 3, Dan the man with energy and crushing picks, and Barbay dominated the boards. Team Ourso was short handed, (missing a couple of key players in Reitzel and Snow), but as always did give good effort with limited resources. We caught them on a good day! We will take the win!

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