Saturday, June 4, 2011

Honky Tonk Stomp V Recap: Knoxville vs Nashville

This was effectively the championship bout of the Honky Tonk Stomp. Both Knoxville and Nashville came into it with one win and no losses. While Knoxville was predicted to do better than Memphis did, few expected them to walk away with the win. While they put up a valiant defenses in the first half, Nashville recovered and played more to expectations in the second half, bringing home the win, and the trophy. Nashville 225 - Knoxville 61.

This match-up saw Nashville's famous Ramb0 Samb0 line up against Knoxville's DDG on the first jam of the game, and DDG pick up the lead and a single point before calling it off. In the second jam Knoxville's Goblynn and Nashville's Slammy Lou Harris went skate to skate, but Goblynn took the lead with Slammy close behind. Goblynn picked up two points, resulting in a 3 - 0 lead for Knoxville after a tight three minutes. Knoxville appeared to be hot from their previous game, and managed to continue their top performance. Hard Knox continued the game with a series of very slow pack starts. These worked well for them so Nashville began using fast kneeling starts to get the ball rolling. Ramb0 Samb0 got a major back block just as she called off the jam, giving Hard Knox a power jam. Knoxville played a smart slow pack, and Rambo came back out just as the jam clock expired. Knoxville retained their lead with the points at 12 - 7 after almost 7 minutes. After a referee time out Nashville was awarded a power jam and they chose Slammy Lou for the honors. After just picking up a few points Slammy Lou got her own back block major giving DDG another power jam. 10 minutes into the game Hardknox's lead had closed to just 2 points. Goblynn and Slammy Lou fought each other all the way through the pack, but Nashville's recycling kept Goblynn in the pack while Slammy Lou picked up two grand slams. With less than 10 seconds left on the jam clock Nashville's Slammy Lou picked up another trip to the box.

This time Knoxville started with a power jam, and the score at Nashville 22 - Knoxville 33, after some of the hardest fought 12 minutes of the tournament. Even when Slammy Lou got back in, Knoxville's blockers stayed all over her, knocking her out of bounds and skating backwards on the track to keep things slow. The result was a 1 point lead by Nashville. After a 30 second clock burn that let Nashville pick up 4, both teams decided to just stand on the track, this time burning off a full minute before the jammers got a chance to go. Goblynn fought her way through the pack and promptly called it off scoring no points. Despite the lack of progress from the amazingly slow starts, both teams continued the trend of spending more time standing still on the pivot line than skating in circles. With 10 minutes left in the half, and the score at 34 Nashville - 31 Knoxville, Nashville finally started kneeling starts to get the action moving.

Several scoreless or near scoreless jams left Nashville's lead at just 10 points with only 6 minutes left in the half, and at 14 points with less than 2 minutes left. Every time Nashville didn't do a kneeling start they likely regretted it since Knoxville seemed perfectly happy to camp out and burn up time. Nashville finally got into their groove with the last jam of the half. Rambo Samb0 jammed against Knoxville's Evil Lucia, but a track cut gave the power jam to Rambo, resulting in a 30 point power jam, and a half time score of Nashville 77 - Knoxville 31.

The second half started with Nahville picking up 4 points after a tough two minute jam. In the second jam of the half Goblynn was sent to the penalty box twice, while Nashville's jammer went once. At the end of that power jam madness Nashville had picked up 15 points, to leave the score at 96 to 31 in Nashville's favor after 4 minutes. After that, Nashville continued to rack up points and retain control of the pack, having clearly regrouped at halftime, and quenched Knoxville's heat. With 17 minutes left on the clock the score was Nashville  137 - Knoxville 47.

Despite both teams playing a solid defensive game, the big difference in the second half was who was able to capitalize on power jams. Whereas Knoxville would pick up 5 to 10 points on power jams, Nashville consistently picked up 20 to 30 points. As a result with just 10 minutes left in the game the score was 174 to 49 in Nashville's favor. Knoxville went back to slow starts in an attempt to stop the bleeding, and managed to pick up their fair number of leads, though the gap never really closed any further. With two minutes left until the after party, Nashville's Slammy Lou picked up a fast lead over Goblynn and both jammers piked up a handful of points. Nashville, however, lengthened their score into the second century: Nashville 203 - Knoxville 61. The last jam of the game started with just a minute left on the clock and Rambo jamming against Evil Lucia. There was no lead, so this one went for the full two minutes, with Rambo picking up multiple grand slams to end things up at Nashville 225 - Knoxville 61.

No comments:

Post a Comment