Playoff Predictions: S2 Quarterfinals

Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood's picture
Submitted by Hadrian Mertins... on Wed, 2019-04-10 15:36

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Playoffs got off to an exciting start this week with three games decided by just one goal. How did Vegas fare and who are the favourites heading in the elimination bracket? Read on!

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Week 9: Prequarterfinals (April 8)

[Pre-QF] Wu-hoo! (Heather) vs. TooTrains TootFurious (Al)
Prediction: 25-21 | Result: 23-24 ❌

[Pre-QF] S2: E9 Bedlam in the Big Top (Rachel) vs. Tied Pod Challenge (Jon)
Prediction: 20-21 | Result:15-19 ✅

[Pre-QF] Live Free or Tie Hard (Travis) vs. #TimesUp (Kindha)
Prediction: 29-18 | Result:19-18 ✅

[Pre-QF] Shantay, You Stay (Laura) vs. Pad Tie (Nat)
Prediction: 16-12 | Result: 22-15 ✅

[Pre-QF] Higher Seed (Jaime) vs. Even (Adam)
Prediction: 24-17 | Result:18-17 ✅

The Effective Ratings-based methodology goes a respectable 4-1 in the first week, although the goal predictions/spreads were generally off by wide margins. I've corrected a spreadsheet error that was exaggerating the differences between teams, so we'll get tighter predictions in the future.

The one upset was 2Toot over Wu-hoo in a high-efficiency game that saw only 38 combined turnovers (trust me, that's low!). Al's team won on the strength of its depth: seven different players had four or more goals+assists and four players racked up $100k salaries.

Fortunately for Heather, her playoff hopes are still alive. Only Rachel and Adam were eliminated from championship contention this week.

Week 10: Quarterfinals (April 15)

[QF] TooTrains TootFurious (Al) (21) vs. Tied Pod Challenge (Jon) (22)
[QF] Live Free or Tie Hard (Travis) (19) vs. Pad Tie (Nat) (18)
[QF] Wu-hoo! (Heather) (25) vs. #TimesUp (Kindha) (21)
[QF] Shantay, You Stay (Laura) (21) vs. Higher Seed (Jaime) (17)
[5th play-in] TBD (Rachel) (20) vs. TBD (Adam) (17)

Heather (#1 seed) and Laura (#2) should breeze into semis, but the #3 and #4 seeds could be in trouble this week. Travis (#5) vs. Nat (#4) and Al (#3) vs. Jon (#9) will both be tight games, but I give the edge to Travis and Jon respectively. If Jon pulls it off, it'll be the biggest seeding upset in either Parity session this year.

In the loser bracket, the league's two most ephemerally-named teams do battle for a chance at 5th. Poor Adam's woes are projected to continue... and he'll probably lose the game, too.

 

Chris Sullivan

Wed, 2019-04-10 20:58

Although I'm on record as giving the ERb a hard time, 4-1 kicked my ass this week. Nice checkmarks too.

I was wondering about the turnover ratio in the 2Toot Wuhoo game and am not surprised that it was a high efficiency game. And a lot of the turnovers were well played misses too.

I am going to stick with Adam until he actually succeeds. (perhaps this will be a lifelong relationship). TootToot's record in one point games is fantastic. One victory came with a series of swings one metre away from our endzone until time was called with us up by 1. Team Horseshoe Forever. Toot wins this week.

Time to start getting excited about the leaderboard. Schigns, Bisang, Theriault for Ds and Calontonio, Pindur, and Theriault for throwaways. Nick T has the obvious advantage of being able to generate D/TO opportunities by excelling at D/TO. Sometimes he looks like Dennis Rodman banging balls off of the rim from 1 foot away to rack up a quick 5 rebounds. I expect him to sweep both categories. It's my LOCK of the week.