After snapping a franchise worse five-game losing streak in week 11, The Plaza found themselves back in the loss column, at the hands of The Sauce Squad 1764.80-1397.90.
The Plaza’s record is back to 0.500, two games better than the seventh seed Giannis Akumpo by two games. The boys better bring their A-game in the final two matchups, or they may see their chance at the post-season slip away.
For just the fourth time this season, 4 Penn Plaza outscored their original projections, and we still lose. In week 11, we scored 22.64 and lost. We achieved a whopping 73.64 points over our initial predictions this past week and still lost 366.90 points.
Despite the loss, we can take a small victory away from the matchup as we held our opponents to 49.77 points under their projections.
The Sauce Squad leapfrogged us in the standings after week nine, and they made sure we didn’t return the favour a few weeks later with this crushing defeat.
We’ve played through 12 matchups, and for only the second time all season, we got shutout on the daily scorecard. You’d have to go back to week six against Caldwell-Pope Mobile to find another week that we failed to hold the lead at any point of the matchup. That was the beginning of the five-game losing streak, so let’s hope history doesn’t repeat itself in the final two weeks of the season.
The matchup was pretty close for the first two days. We even cut into their lead on Tuesday, but scoring just 126.70 on Thursday night sealed our fate for the weekend. The Plaza was never able to recover and ended up losing by 366.90 points.
We averaged 199.70 daily points, with three of the seven days coming in under 200. We also failed to score over 300 at any point during the matchup. The daily matchup deficit was 259.57, the second-largest daily deficit in a loss on the season.
With another loss in the record books, our team statistics took a hit as well. After dominating the rebounds category for the entire season, we finally lost our spot at the top and now employ the second-best team in the league. We could substitute that top spot with a different one, one we have been chasing all season. Even with a loss, we became the best team in the league in regards to turnovers. It may have taken 11 weeks to get there, but we have now given up the least amount of turnovers.
In regards to the four other statistical categories, nothing else really changed. The Plaza remains near the bottom in points scored and assists while maintaining a top-three spot in steals and blocks.
When we look at the standings for the 2020-21 season, there is only one playoff spot and it 4 Penn Plaza’s opportunity to lose.
We may hold a two-game lead over Giannis Akumpo (7th) and Shooters Shot (8th), which means that we need to win our two final matchups and hope that our opponents lose out.
The schedule may be in our favour since we play Shooters Shoot and Ooga Booga to finish the regular season. Both teams have a combined 4-20 record which means we have a good shot at finishing 8-6 and locking up the sixth seed. As the lowest playoff team, we will draw Damn KD, who is on pace to finish the season 13-1 and clinch the first overall seed.
The Plaza has managed their bench pretty well this season, leaving just a handful of points scattered through 11 weeks. The only reason Domar DeDorzan didn’t get into the starting lineup was that he was out for personal reasons and was a game-time decision. Instead of substituting him into the lineup, we left him on the bench in the event he didn’t play. He then collected 28.70 points, which wouldn’t have impacted the final score since we lost by 366.90 points.
As 4 Penn Plaza struggled to fill the lineup with healthy players, we added free agents Jaylen Nowell (Minnesota) and Tomas Satoransky (Chicago). We had hoped that any points would be good points; however, the two failed to produce in their starting roles, 77.20 points combined over four games, which wasn’t enough to stay on the team.
Weekly Move Total: 2/5
Season Move Total: 17/50
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