WEEK 10 POWER RANKINGS

NUMBER ONE TO NEPHI: THANKS FOR VISITING! WILL WE EVER SEE YOU AGAIN?

A mere 3.5 games separate the Gators and the Trojans for the final playoff spot in the Wasatch.

With the end of Week 10, the 2008-09 WFBL season is now officially in its second half, which means we're starting to get rematches from earlier in the season. Time for some teams to man up and start their last-gasp playoff runs, and for others to try and fend off the up-and-comers. It's not quite time for the Iguanas to implode just yet, but we'll be looking forward to that in about a month.

Team, Rank, (Previous), Overall, (Last Week)

1 (3) 55-33-2 (5-4-0)
The Iguanas crawl back to their perch atop the Power Rankings. Normally a 5-4 victory over a team like Udorn wouldn't be enough to vault a team from 3 to 1, but the Igs won this thing on a 5-game disadvantage, not to mention while starting a third-stringer at PF and getting only 1 of 3 games from their C.

2 (2) 50-37-3 (4-4-1)
Maybe Park City is 1a to Maracaibo's 1. They didn't lose to Rigby, but they didn't win either. And we'll be darned if we move a team up to #1 after tying a below-.500 team, we don't care if Rigby is on a roll lately.


3 (1) 52-35-3 (1-7-1)
Still no lower than third place, the Strats suffer a humiliating loss to the Wasatch's last-place SnowBees. If it makes Nephi fans feel any better, the Power Rankings still think the Strats are legit; losing while your starting PG is out all week is better than losing with him starting.


4 (6) 47-41-2 (5-4-0)
Ok so the A-Boms are definitely the class of the league not named Maracaibo, Park City, or Nephi. The Power Rankings has insider info that Coach Barnes is livid that his team didn't win by more than 5-4. A manageable schedule looms for Zermatt: at Bayside, at Udorn, New York.


5 (5) 46-43-1 (4-5-0)

Seems the "didn't quite get manhandled but still couldn't pull out a victory" version of your 2008-09 Richmond Butchers showed up. The good news is that they aren't out of the playoff race at all, still up 5.5 on Udorn, and play the A-Boms again, the last week of the regular season.


6 (7) 42-46-2 (4-4-1)
Rigby can only wonder if Sheed hadn't have sat out those final two games, would they be riding a 3-week win streak instead of a 3-week unbeaten streak? Either way, only one team has beaten the Sundancers, so coming close to being that second team, coupled with their Iguanas win, and the Trojans are one of the hottest teams in the WFBL.


7 (4) 46-43-1 (4-5-0)
Disrespecting the Gators sure comes easy during a losing week. Twin Falls gets the drop mostly because of Rigby's gutty performances the last few weeks. Loss to U-Dogs not a good sign;too bad the Gators can't play New York (6-3 victory) and Udorn (7-2) every week.

8 (8) 39-51-0 (6-3-0)
Great way to finish off the pre-gauntlet set of winnable games. Kings get stuck at 8th place, however, and now enter their toughest stretch of the season. Again, at only 7.5 games out, a playoff spot is not entirely out of the realm of possibility.


9 (10) 40-49-1 (7-1-1)
Break up the SnowBees! In arguably the biggest regular-season upset in WFBL history (more surprising than New York's streak stopper over St. George a year ago?), the SnowBees now have what experts call a "win-streak". Can Salt Lake possibly defeat Park City this week too?


10 (9) 41-49-0 (4-5-0)
After back-to-back 6-3 victories, the Jai-Rai have now lost four in a row, none more frustrating than their 5-game advantage heartbreaker against the Igs. Calling the Richmond series this week "must-win" may sound a bit harsh, but at 5.5 games back with New York breathing down their necks, we don't think so.


11 (11) 38-47-5 (5-4-0)
Their 5-4 victory over the Gators—snapping a 4-week winless streak— notwithstanding, St. George stays put this week. The bad news: you are now tied for last place in the Wasatch. The good news: you are only 6 games out of a playoff spot. Stranger things have happened, like a team dominating the entire season and then getting upset in the playoffs. (Hey, so maybe the 5-4 win last week is in some way revenge for last season's playoff upset! I'm sure the U-Dogs feel things are even now)


12 (12) 33-55-2 (3-6-0)
Bayside sucks.

THIS WEEK IN THE WFBL: WEEK 10

SNOWBEES STOP STRATS, CLEARLY BEST TEAM IN WFBL; A-BOMS DON'T LOSE; TROJANS AND 'DANCERS FIT TO BE TIED

An injured Brandon Roy reacts to the 7-1-1 loss handed to his Nephi Stratagem in his absence.

SNOWBEES PULL UPSET BUT WON'T BE GETTING CREDIT

NEPHI, UT (AP)—When the large-of-stature Nephi Stratagem took the floor against the underachieving Salt Lake SnowBees last week, it was billed as a matchup between the team that has captured the imagination of basketball fans everywhere versus the team that has captured our apathy; the heartwarming rags-to-riches story versus the stomach-turning riches-to-rags story; the 18-wheel semi-truck rolling down the 1st-round playoff bye expressway versus the cockroach that didn't look both ways before crossing. Yet somehow it was the cockroach that handed the semi its first loss of the season by a count of 7-1-1, in one of the most stunning upsets in WFBL history.

"This one victory clearly establishes us as the elite team in the league," proclaimed Ted "Beekeeper" Barnes, whose SnowBees, even with the win, remain 9 games below .500 and dead last in the Wasatch Conference. "It's a testament to my skills as an owner, frankly. I'm just really good at owning things. It's almost unfair to the other owners, but that's what they get for not being as great as me."

Injured Strats guard Brandon Roy, however, isn't quite ready to jump on the SnowBees bandwagon. "Really, it's more of a testament to my value to my team," Roy said from a hospital bed in Salt Lake City, since Nephi, though it does have a professional basketball team, does not have a hospital. "Without me, our guys played so crappy that we would have lost to a team of plastic forks.

"But give the SnowBees credit. They sure knew when to schedule us—during a week when even their pitiful play would be good enough for a win. What's that? The SnowBees had no control over their schedule? They were just lucky to get us during our down week, you say? Well then, no, don't give them any credit."

"He's right," agreed SnowBees forward Dirk Nowitzki, who made a surprise visit to the hospital just in time to respond to Roy's comment. "We can't take any credit for this win. In fact, I'd say the EBP of the series should be whoever injured Brandon Roy.

"I mean, we'll take the 7 wins; don't get me wrong. I'm just saying this doesn't change how we feel about ourselves as a team. We'll go into next week's series with Park City just as tentative and distracted as we always were. But who knows? Maybe Amare Stoudemire will get injured and we'll have a chance. That would be nice, because then I won't have to guard him. Man, he runs fast."

A-BOMS GET CLUTCH VICTORY, LENGTHEN LEAD OVER BUTCHERS TO 1.5 GAMES

ZERMATT (AP)—The Zermatt Abominables came into their match-up with the Richmond Butchers with a mere half game separating them from their conference rival. Thanks to some clutch misses from the field and some key turnovers, the A-Boms won 5-4, widening their lead to a surmountable 1.5 games.

"Coach told us coming in that this would be a chance to really put some distance between us and our nearest competitor," said Chris Paul, who had 7 turnovers on Saturday. That's right, 7! "So we took that challenge to heart, and, well, you can see the result."

With 10 weeks down and only 8 to go, the Butchers now face the daunting task of chasing the defending champs for the rest of the season, hopefully, for them, chipping away slowly at the 1.5 game deficit. If they can't, then the season-ending rematch in Richmond may be for nothing.

"We can't let this loss affect us too much," said a morose Butchers forward Josh Smith. "We had a chance to take control of second place in the World, but we blew it. Now, things look grim. I'm not really sure a team has ever come back from 1.5 games out of second place and gone on to take second place. But hey, there's a first time for everything, right?"
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AROUND THE WFBL

Sundancers 4, Trojans 4, Everybody 1
The week after Christmas, the Sundancers and Trojans both looked as if they were suffering from a post holiday hangover. Amare Stoudemire? Even though he was returning to the starting lineup after a rare week off, he decided to extend his vacation by getting ejected twice. Rasheed Wallace? He hates Christmas. Oh, please don't ask why, no one quite knows the reason. It could be, perhaps, his shoes were too tight (causing him to miss two games with a foot injury). Or maybe his head isn't screwed on just right. Yeah, let's go with the second one. Nate Robinson? Plum worn out from making all those toys for Santa. Vince Carter? Still sulking over not getting that coveted Red Ryder BB Gun, he used his field goal percentage as a way to prove that he couldn't shoot his eye out even if he tried. Hedo Turkoglu? Played like someone had shoved a handful of stuffing up his... uh... nevermind. In the end, both teams agreed that they should just call it a 4-4-1 draw and never speak of these games again.

Iguanas 5, Jai-Rai 4
Los Iguanas de Maracaibo, fresh off their stunning loss to up-and-comer Rigby, narrowly escaped another shocking upset, this week at the hands of the lowly Udorn Jai-Rai. It's not surprising, then, that Iguana fans around the world used the close victory as proof of their team's "dominance". Given that the Igs were able to win with a third-stringer at PF, while getting only one game from their center, being able to escape with a win is obviously better than the alternative. As is the custom, let's hear what coach Hopkin had to say about his team's chances now that we've entered the second half of the season: "We see how the graduations of the energy undervalue the Igs this week! We are ready to take in any assistant, and oh, on purpose Abominable, good luck takes that us for first! It has has!"

Kings 6, Tigers 3
Don't look now, but the New York Kings have a two-week winning streak. And next week's opponent, los Iguanas de Maracaibo, had better watch out, because it looks like owner TJ Barnes has finally found the formula for success: keep rookie Greg Oden as far away from the starting lineup as possible. Oden, the 20-year-old man-child, "attended" Lawrence North High School in Indianapolis, Indiana, with TJ's mother and probably dated her (who wouldn't?), and he may have even gone to Homecoming and the Spring Formal with her—we may never know for sure. It's also worth noting that Oden was "admitted" to The Ohio State University, where he majored in basketball with a minor in social dance, and because he was so studious he finished his coursework in only one year. But the reason this is noteworthy is because Ohio is the home state of TJ's grandmother. Yet there he sits at the end of the New York bench, proving that blood is not thicker than the Kings' won-lost margin.

Underdogs 5, Gators 4
The always hot debate about how the WFBL selects its champion just got hotter, as the lower-echelon St. George Underdogs pulled out a surprise 5-4 win over upper-echelon power Twin Falls. Coupled with Salt Lake's shocking upset of Nephi, the U-Dogs' victory adds to the ever-intensifying argument that crappy teams deserve a chance to play for the WFBL championship. "The WFBL playoffs have been a 'good teams only' club for too long," says U-Dog forward Lamar Odom, who played collegiately at Rhode Island, a non-BCS school. "The teams with high winning percentages have been locking out the rest of us, and it has created an unfair monopoly. All three of the top teams in each conference—ALL THREE—get an AUTOMATIC berth in the playoffs every year, often in favor of teams with more tradition and wealthier boosters. Well, it's time for that to stop. As we have all learned from watching college football over the years, the won-lost record is not the only—or even the best—way to judge the merits of a team. I demand that one of those automatic berths be given to a team from the lower echelon, perhaps the team with the most red in their uniforms or the team with the most tattoos."
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WEEK 9 EBP WINNER
Kobe Bryant, Twin Falls