Bout recap: Charm City Intraleague: Night Terrors 96, Speed Regime 49
Posted by Justice Feelgood Marshall on September 17th, 2007
In a surprising game, the Night Terrors handed an uncharacteristically flat Speed Regime team their first defeat of the season and their biggest defeat to date, building a massive 51 point lead in the first half and coasting to a 96-49 victory in the end. Speed Regime’s look had changed a little bit since their June meeting with the Night Terrors, with hard hitters Buzz Kill and Berzerker no longer on the season roster. The Night Terrors were still missing Minerva Vavoom with a rotator cuff injury, and had also lost rookie Blind Banshee for the season to a broken ankle suffered at practice, but did have breakout rookie Marzipain skating after having missed the June bout.
Night Terrors pivot Mibbs Breakin’ Ribs tries to remove the Speed Regime’s Deathany from Marzipain’s path. Photo credit: globalglenn
At first, it looked like it was likely to be a traditionally narrow matchup for the two rivals, with the Terrors’ Joy Collision kicking off the bout with a 4-2 over Flo Shizzle, Pixie Rocket and Pistol Whip battling to a 4-4 draw on the second jam, and Flo Shizzle managing to squeak out a 2-1 win over Rosie the Rioter (abetted a bit by Rosie, believing she was lead jammer, losing some time trying to call off the jam from the ground.) That brought the score to Night Terrors 9, Speed Regime 8, but the Terrors stepped on the gas on the next series of jams. Marzipain ran up an 8-0 jam on Stormin’ Mormon, who first found herself on the wrong end of a thunderous block from Mibbs Breakin’ Ribs and then found herself trapped behind a tenacious double team from Joy Collision and Rolling Blackout. Next up, the Terrors’ Dr. Skabs managed to outrace the speedy Psycho78 to notch a quick 4-0 score, and Joy Collision managed to pick up a 9-2 on Regime captain Pistol Whip when Pistol went to the box during her first scoring pass. Rosie the Rioter followed that by dropping a 7-4 jam on Pistol, and suddenly, the Terrors were up 37-14 — already the biggest deficit the Speed Regime had ever faced in two seasons. While the Regime tried to strike back with a 5-0 jam for Psycho78 over Marzipain, the last five jams of the period were a nightmare for the war machine. The Regime defense was consistently unable to keep the Terrors jammers from grabbing lead jammer status, and double-digits jams for Dr. Skabs and Joy Collision helped to widen an already substantial gap. The Night Terrors ended the half on a 35-2 run and had taken lead on 10 out of 13 jams throughout the half, leaving the scoreboard showing a startling 72-21 advantage for the presumptive underdogs.
Night Terrors Cheeta Torpeda (pivoting) and Frenzy Lohan team up to make life tough on Speed Regime jammer Large Marge. Photo credit: epmd_derby
The second half was better for the Regime, with their defense no longer allowing the double-digit jam scores that had killed them in the first half, but their offense still couldn’t get anything significant going until very late in the half. The first two jams went to the Regime by small margins, with Regime blockers Pistol Whip and Deathany joining forces to stymie Terrors jammer Rosie the Rioter and letting Regime jammer Psycho78 put up a 3-0. Flo Shizzle followed that with a 4-2 over Pixie Rocket, but then the momentum swung back to the Terrors. In the following 7 jams, Speed Regime only got on the scoreboard once, with Psycho78 managed to put up 4 points to 6 for Pixie Rocket in an intense two-minute jam that left all participants gasping for air. At the end of that 7 jam series, the Terrors had been on another tear — 18 to 4 — that left the score at 96 to 32 with about seven minutes left to play. Perhaps not wanting to let their rivals hit the century mark, the Speed Regime finally seemed to start clicking at this point, not allowing another point for the Terrors and managing to put up 17 unanswered points going into the final jam of the night. But that jam, in a way, seemed to be a microcosm of the whole bout — although Joy Collision, jamming for the Terrors, was sent to the box just as her opponent Flo Shizzle was declared lead jammer, the Night Terrors defense bottled up Flo for so long that she chose to call off the jam at 0-0 rather than let Joy get back on the floor. The final score was Night Terrors 96, Speed Regime 49.
Joy Collision yet again led all scoring with 42 points on 9 jams, running up a jammer point differential of +38 and getting lead of 7 of her 9 jams for a very impressive lead jammer percentage of 77. Psycho78 led her team’s scoring for the second bout in a row, picking up 16 points on 7 jams. The Night Terrors were slightly more penalized than the Regime, with the Terrors picking up 50 minors and 5 majors while the Regime was assigned 42 minors and 4 majors. The lead jammer battle was crucially lopsided in favor of the Night Terrors, who picked it up on 14 jams against 9 for the Regime. In 26 jams, there were just 3 with no lead jammer. Marzipain was chosen as her team’s MVP after the bout, while the Speed Regime gave the honor to Deathany.