By Justice Feelgood Marshall, Last updated Tue Jul 13 2010 6:02pm

Saturday

#1 Gotham 164, #13 Boston 82 -- Coming into this contest, Boston looked like a huge underdog, having lost both of their 2009 bouts to Gotham by over 100 points and Gotham just having dominated the higher-ranked Windy City on the previous night. Although Gotham ended up winning very big, Boston kept it respectable for almost the entire bout, with a significant part of Gotham's winning margin being built up in the final 15 minutes.

As usual, Gotham jumped out to an early lead in the opening minutes, taking a 25-4 lead after 8, but Boston managed to ride Krushpuppy and Claire D. Way to a closer score of 33-21 by the 18 minute mark. That early run by Krushpuppy, though, would prove to be her most effective of the first half - through the opening 30 minutes, she was bedeviled by jammer penalties, going to the box 4 times before the half ended. Gotham exploited those powerjams effectively, and built a 90-30 lead late in the half, with 55 of those points coming in jams where Krushpuppy was sitting as jamming in the box.

Once Boston got some other jammers on the floor, though, things got a little more even -- they outscored Gotham 17-8 for the remainder of the half to make it 98-47 at the halftime break.

Boston seemed to adjust the jammer lineup in the second half, sending first-year all-star rookie Lil' Paine to the jam line more often, and it paid off -- over the first 13 minutes of the half, Boston actually outscored Gotham 22-17 but was still behind 127-69 halfway through. There was a scary moment there, as Gotham star blocker Beyonslay went down with an ankle injury that paused gameplay for about 8 minutes and eventually saw her removed from the track on a stretcher -- she did not return to play and the extent of her injury is currently unknown.

Gotham seemed to get a little fired up after the loss of Slay, outscoring Boston 39-13 over the final 15 minutes. Though Gotham rolled to a 82 point victory and was never really in danger of losing the bout, the end result -- especially considering the dominations that Gotham had put on #11 Charm City (126 points) and #9 Windy City (141 points) earlier in their season -- seemed to be a bit of a moral victory for the Boston squad.

#22 Bay Area 234, Providence 65 -- Bay Area wasted little time demonstrating that they weren't the same squad that had a wobbly performance at February's Wild West Showdown tournament. They buried Providence under an avalanche of points in the first 20 minutes of this one, out to a 96-9 lead. A fair amount of jammer penalties on Providence afforded Bay Area the opportunity to slow the pack speed to a crawl and rack up big points on unopposed jam. Right at the halftime break, they used a 10-0 jam from Burlybot to break the triple-digit margin at 133-27.

Providence kept that margin at about 100 points to about halfway through the second half at 152-51, but Bay Area turned on the jets in the final 15 minutes, dropping 82 points to just 14 for Providence.

Dutchland 132, Hammer City 79 -- Dutchland looked like they were on their way to an huge rout halfway through this bout, but Hammer City played them perfectly even in the second half to score a bit of a moral victory.

The game was tied 17 minutes at 18-18 when a 15-0 powerjam for Skid Ho began to give Dutchland the separation they needed. That jam significantly changed the nature of the half -- over the remaining time in the half, Hammer City only picked up 6 more points while Dutchland piled on 59. A 12-0 late in the half for Nash Villain was the biggest single jam, though, as Dutchland took most of their jam wins on single-digit passes. At the half the score was 77-24 Dutchland.

Although Hammer City was never able to get genuinely close to Dutchland, they did a much better job of handling power plays in the second half, and with 2:46 left on the clock and the score 109-72 favoring Dutchland, it looked possible that they might make the final score look close. A big 20-0 for Nash Villain there, though, ended up giving Dutchland a little more margin at the end to win by 53 points. Both teams scored exactly 55 points in that second half.

#24 Montreal 288, Dominion 27 -- Steadily improving Montreal had absolutely no trouble with Dominion in this one, out to an overwhelming lead before Dominion ever got on the scoreboard. The score was 88-0 before Dominion's Speed Stick finally got a 4-0 -- partially with the help of Montreal jammer Bone Machine taking a hit that put her into the announcer's table and wrapped up her skates in cables, keeping her out of action for a lap.

Dominion only scored on one other jam in the half while Montreal continued to dominate. At the end of the first half, the score was a stunning 165-8, and there was little different in a second half that Montreal took 123-19 for a 261 point victory.

Montreal was hitting on all cylinders -- their blocking consistently pinned Dominion jammers in two-skater traps, while their jammers barely needed offensive help. Some poor jammer awareness meant that Montreal got some uncontested passes, and nasty jammer jukes meant that Dominion blockers either whiffed or fell when they did see them.

Notable jamming came from the usual suspects in the extremely speedy and agile Iron Wench (who picked up a 30-pointer in the first half) and Ewan Wotarmy, but with Georgia W. Tush not available for the weekend, there were a few jammer turns for usual blocker Romeo, who showed off some nice dodges of her own.

Suburbia 170, Harrisburg 60 -- Suburbia seemed mostly in control of this one from the start against a Harrisburg team that looked a little disorganized in comparison to their opponents. A second-jam powerjam for Lesley E. Visserate made it 20-0 for Suburbia quickly and the Suburbia lead got to 31-0 before Harrisburg finally got on the board.

Most of Harrisburg's offense came on big jams for ace Asuka the Ouch, who didn't need too much offensive help as she juked her way to a few lopsided wins. With Suburbia running away with it at 65-14, Asuka put up a big 22-6 jam, but that single jam represented almost half of Suburbia's points. At halftime Suburbia was up 103-45.

Things didn't get any better for Harrisburg in the second half, as Harrisburg jammer Zinammon Crush was stifled while Suburbia's AWOL scrambled for a 20-0 on the second jam. Though the first half was relatively clean, penalties began to seriously rain down in the last fifteen minutes, including a somewhat comical sequence that saw HARD's Neve Cannibal hit the box as a jammer three times in two jams while Suburbia jammers Smashing Pumpkin and AWOL went once each over the same period.

Going into what appeared to be the final jam with Suburbia up 170-66 and 30 seconds left to play, Harrisburg caught an unfortunate break when key jammer/ blocker Skate Edge went down immediately with an apparent knee injury; she had to be helped off the track and it's currently unclear whether she'll be available for tomorrow's Harrisburg vs Dutchland bout.

Naptown 100, Maine 96 -- Maine leapt out to a second-jam lead in this one and appeared to be opening up a significant lead at 26-7 after about 10 minutes, but Naptown changed that all in a hurry with 15-0 for Racer Xtasy. As it turned out, that'd be the story of the game -- Maine starting to pull away and then Naptown denying them a big lead.

At the 15 minute point, Maine was up 40-24, and had it at 55-38 with seven minutes in the half -- but Naptown ruled the last few jams, capping it off with a 15-0 to Amooze Bouch that put Naptown in the lead for the first time since the first jam of the game. At halftime Naptown had a narrow 3 point lead at 60-57.

Maine took the lead back on the second jam of the second half, but over a series of extremely narrow jams, that lead was under 4 points all the way to the 15 minute point. With the score 72-71 favoring Maine, they finally got some separation there -- 15-0 to Olive Spankins, 4-0 to Grim D. Mise, and 5-0 to Olive Spankins again. At that point it was 95-71 Maine with just over 11 minutes to play, and it looked like they were on their way to the win.

Naptown charged back just in time, though, nicking away with narrow shutout wins to 95-78 with 6:24 to play. That was followed by a 10-1 for Maiden America to make the score Maine 96, Naptown 88 with 4:35 to play … but the point that Maine got on that jam was the only one they scored in the final 11 minutes. Racer Xtasy had to race hard to pick up 8 points on the subsequent powerjam, which tied it at 96-96 with 2:12 to play.

The second to last jam would be the game winner for Naptown -- a 4-0 win for Amooze Bouch, who was able to pick up lead and the scoring pass with the help of Maine's jammer Grim D. Mise still being stuck in the box to start the jam. Maine had one more chance with 48 seconds left on the clock, but when Naptown's Maiden America took lead jammer, it was just a matter of running out the clock, and Naptown completed a 29-1 run to escape with victory.

#17 Nashville 117, DC 86 -- The final score in this one didn't really reflect the flow of the game, as the two teams were neck and neck for most of the first half and DC led for the majority of the second before Nashville finally got things under control in the final 8 minutes.

Nashville pulled a 11-0 lead to start, but that was the biggest lead they would hold until relatively late in the game. Effective blocking from Free Radical and Gun'Her Down was able to hold Nashville jammers to low point totals while DC's relatively new addition Small Frye was a revelation as a jammer, using her tiny frame to duck under many of the Nashville players' hits.

With 12:07 to play in the first half, Nashville's lead was again 11 points at 39-28, but DC strung together three jams wins to tie it up at 41-41 with 6:45 left and again at 46-46 with 1:50 left to play. DC took a surprising halftime lead at 48-46 on a 2-0 jam for Sookie Slaughterhouse.

For most of the second half it looked as if Nashville would not be able to take the lead back, although DC's lead was never much more than a couple of jams worth of points. Their largest advantage was 74-57 with 20:30 to play, and from there Nashville slowly chipped away, helped out by sudden penalty pileup on the DC side.

Nashville got it to with one point at 82-81 with 10:10 left, and finally took over the lead at 89-86 with 7:05 to play on a 8-0 jam from Maulin' Monroe. DC did not score again in the bout, unable to have much success in lopsided pack situations, and Nashville escaped with a win that looked very much in question for most of the bout.