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8am: #8w Pikes Peak vs #9w Duke City

The Pikes Peak team that comes into this bout is probably looking forward to erasing all memories of their last Western Regionals appearance way back in February 2007 -- then, they were dominated by Bay Area in a 198-15 blowout.

This year, though, looks to be different. After losing the first six WFTDA games of their existence, the league from Colorado Springs has met with considerably more success in 2008, going 8-1 with their only blemish being a respectable 31 point loss to tough Rocky Mountain. After a surprising upset over Tucson in June, they shot from #27 to #16 in the last ranking period -- tying them for the biggest single-quarter leap in rankings history with Detroit.

Albuquerque's Duke City has had a relatively sedate bouting schedule in 2008, having played three WFTDA bouts and putting their local-team schedule on a year-long hiatus while seeking a new venue. On the other hand, they're 3-0 on the year, with two of those wins over fellow tourney teams Denver and Dallas.

Duke City and Pikes Peak have faced off once before, with Duke City claiming a 137-78 win -- but that match was in March 2007, ancient history by derby standards. As a possible point of more recent reference, both teams recently had blowout wins over Salt City -- Duke City thumped them 224-29 in a neutral-ground bout in Las Vegas at August's Rollercon, while Pikes Peak sent them away with a 194-41 loss just two weeks ago on September 20.

While Duke City certainly has its share of speedsters  (notably Muffin, Tronsexual and Kamikaze Kim) their success relies greatly on some of the most vexing defense in the sport, known to occasionally make normally placid jammers show clear frustration after too long trapped inside DCD's best pack work.

With these two teams apparently fairly evenly matched, this early-morning bout may come down to which team adjusts to the unfamiliar location and start time first. Duke City may have an advantage here, in that they're quite familiar with the road -- they've never played a ranked WFTDA bout at home.

The winner here goes on to face Kansas City at 6:15pm Friday night.

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9:45am: #7w Tucson vs. #10w Dallas

Tucson entered the 2007 Western Regional as the #2 ranked team in the nation and very nearly claimed that tourney's championship, advancing to the final bout but losing to Rat City in a narrow one.

However, Tucson has had something of a rough road since then, losing often and sometimes by epic margins -- though, in their defense, they've consistently gone up against the best of the best, battling six of the top ten teams in their 2008 season (many of them arguably the most-rapidly improving teams in the sport today.)

Hard-hitting Dallas is looking to make the next step as a league with this match. Their 2008 has been a series of threatening to knock off top-20 competition but falling just a bit short --  they played Boston tight for the opening 30 before Boston took over in the second half, they hung with very tough Charm City back in January to lose by a respectable 28 points, and, in the biggest heartbreaker, came within a mere point of defeating Duke City in May.

While they are 3-3 on the year, all of their wins have been blowouts of unranked or lowly ranked teams (75 points over Northwest Arkansas, 96 points over Angel City, and, just two weeks ago, 128 points over West Texas.) A victory over Tucson on this stage would certainly be Dallas' biggest win to date.

The winner here goes on to face Rat City at 7:45pm Friday night.

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11:15am: #5w Rose City vs. #12w Denver

Denver is the only team in this year's Western Regionals that wasn't among the original 30 founding WFTDA leagues. Their low seed gives them the toughest test of the opening round, but they're not new to facing down high-level opponents. While they lost 5 straight to kick off 2008, their strength of schedule -- taking on top-fives #1 Kansas, #2 Gotham and #4 Carolina, along with strong mid-level teams in Duke City and Madison -- managed to get them just under the rankings cutoff for the tourney.

It wasn't until late August that Denver got their first win of the year -- 86-53 over No Coast, but then they finally got their long-attempted upset win of a tournament-level team when they defeated Minnesota 89-57 in September.

Rose City did not start their travel season until May, but in the amount of time this all-star has been going around they've made some impressive waves -- hanging close in games with top-ten talent like Philly and Bay Area and dominating tournament level Minnesota.

Of course, for close observers of derby, their most noteworthy act of the summer was utterly dismantling a mixed team from #3 Rat City in an unsanctioned expo bout. With Rat City not sending a significant amount of their experienced tournament players to that match, the outcome led to some controversy among fans as to whether it was an accurate gauge of Rose City's strength -- but Rose City's performance  this weekend should go a long way towards answering those questions.

The winner here plays again at 8am Saturday morning against Bay Area.

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12:45pm: #6w Rocky Mountain vs. #11w Houston

Houston will have their work cut out for them in this matchup. Rocky Mountain, a team known primarily for impressive endurance of their jammers and their very physical yet still savvy pack play, had another impressive moment by losing to Windy City by 39 points in early September. Normally, a 39 point loss is not something that would be a cause for celebration, but they managed to be the only team not utterly dominated by WCR in their last four outings -- #1 Kansas City, #13 Tucson and #18 Minnesota all went down by +100 points against Windy City.

Rocky Mountain went 5-2 in 2008, with their season bookended by losses to Charm City and the aforementioned Windy City. Their run of 5 wins in a row featured a standout defensive performance against Providence, when they shut them down 137-9, and a very hard-fought 111-93 victory over Boston at June's ECE. The Boston win was truly a testament to RMRG's Colorado-bred endurance -- it was very close in the first half, but the difference seemed to be that the Boston jammers ran out of the energy to take advantage of their opportunities in the final 15 minutes, while Rocky Mountain was still operating at near peak capacity.

Houston's bout history seems somewhat unpredictable -- at May's Roll for the Cure tournament, they had a very respectable 99-54 performance against top-ten Bay Area, but were then crushed by Rose City, 154-44. Likewise, they lost by surprisingly large margins in both their ECE bouts, getting steamrolled by Charm City (214-62) and Boston (114-38) -- but then turned around the following month to pound #35 Northwest Arkansas 176-79.

The most highly ranked team Houston has ever taken down was a (then) #21-ranked Dallas back in September 2007; this year, their biggest victim was Northwest Arkansas at #35, so they'll be looking for a huge upset against Rocky Mountain here.

The winner of this bout takes on Texas at 9:45am on Saturday.

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