Last night in 4.5

First of all, I do have to eat some humble pie. I totally underestimated the Black Sheep team and have been underestimating them all year. I knew their singles were tough, but really thought they would be outclassed in the doubles, but they stepped up to the plate....big time.

As expected, Lukas Jendek made quick work of Ryan Cooper. Jendek has been very solid all year. Luckily for the Black Sheep, he has been spared the same fate that befell his teammate Fukunaga. That one-two punch could have been deadly for some of the other playoff teams this year.

Humberto Alzate gave Andre Dafel a battle, but came up just short. I was puzzled by the Jedi Knights decision to use Eric Kuo last night, but I don't know the availability of their other players. Kuo did not play well and the Knights dropped line one to Ristau and Dimitrijevic.

The Knights needed to sweep the last two lines to avoid the "upset", and I left Lee Leclear last night expecting them to do just that. The Black Sheep surprised me...they came close to taking BOTH of the last two lines. Veteran Chad Shaw and Tochi Mochizuki won the clincher with a third set victory over fiery Tom Caine and Tom Courson. While the Black Sheep lost the other doubles line, they did put up a battle and got a good contribution from a player, Chris Roberts, who had not seen much action this season.

The Jedi Knights will face Kingwood on Saturday morning. In this format, with just three teams in a round robin group, it's DEFINITELY within the realm of possibility that all three teams could finish 1-1, so the Knights are still in the hunt, but will have to play better to put a dent in Kingwood. The Black Sheep now have control of their own destiny...but if they are truly without Jendek on Sunday they will be in deep trouble.

The Hangovers-Sugar Creek score has not been reported. The Hangovers went with a singles lineup of Deluca and Rios against Sugar Creek's Bedient and Cooney. Erik Bedient fought gamely despite a shoulder he injured doing pullups. He was unable to hit topspin forehands and basically looked to chip and charge at every opportunity. It was a very athletic match with Deluca running down balls and Bedient quickly covering passing shots, but Erik didn't have a chance. I think the score was 6-2, 6-2. Jody played well and is hitting his backhand better than in past seasons (when he really didn't have a consistent topsin backhand).

Jason Cooney fought gamely, consistently returning powerful forehands from Don Rios and having his moments in the second set. Rios looked to be steamrolling Cooney at one point early on, but Jason hung in there and made Don work. Rios won a fairly long match, though I'm not sure if it was straight sets or went to three.

The first doubles match on was a good one: Benzon/Whitsett and Day/Burrmann. As has been mentioned here, Day and Burrmann are one of the top 4.5 teams in the city. Those who mentioned John Day has having one of the top kick serves in the city were on the mark. He consistently came up with service winners late in the second set and in the third set tiebreaker. Whitsett was having trouble with his backhand return. It was an even match but Day and Burrmann were just a little better in the clutch and pulled out the tiebreaker.

I left while the other two matches were just getting underway, but it's fairly safe to say that the Hangovers were heavy favorites to take at least one of them. Thach Ho and Tim Marco took on Tim Green and David Guy, who made a rare doubles appearance. Ken Douds and Stephen Epstein battled Andres Ballesteros and Peter Hansen.

I have to give some props to Green and Burkhart (assuming they pulled out one of those last two doubles matches) as they managed to work in several players who I thought might not get into the lineup this weekend. I have a feeling they'll use a stronger doubles lineup against Ssshhhwing on Saturday, though it wouldn't shock me if they went with the same singles duo. Both of those singles guys looked to be on their games last night.