By Justice Feelgood Marshall, Last updated Fri Aug 20 2010 6:01pm

Friday

#2 Gotham 187, #14 Bay Area 58 -- Bay Area kicked off their impressive run at Hometown Throwdown by playing a surprisingly strong first half against powerhouse Gotham, down only 63-46 at the half, but Gotham utterly dominated the second half 124-12 to score a 129 point victory in the end.

Over the opening seven jams of the half, the score was either tied or the lead changed on each frame, with Gotham only leading by a point at the end of the sequence, 16-15. After a 0-0 jam between Bay Area's Ivy Profane and Gotham's Bonnie Thunders, Gotham took strong advantage of Bay Area jammer Astronaughty getting sent to the penalty box twice in the same jam. With her penalty spanning to the next, Suzy Hotrod put up 8-0 followed by a 14-0 for Bonnie Thunders, and Gotham established a 38-15 lead.

For most of the rest of the half, Gotham ran a two-jammer rotation of Bonnie and Suzy, but were only able to put up one more double-digit jam. However, Bay Area could only really draw blood when Gotham lost their own jammers to the box -- Chantilly Mace went 10-3 over Swede Hurt and Astronaughty took 10-0 over Suzy Hotrod. BAD finished the half strong by pulling back-to-back leads and a 8-0 for Astronaughty while BAD's pack had a lockdown on Suzy Hotrod, and they went into the half only trailing by 17.

Gotham came out for the second half looking like they'd completely dissected Bay Area's strategy, though -- and it didn't help that BAD suffered jammer penalties in the first and second jams of the half. The one-two punch of Bonnie Thunders and Suzy Hotrod dropped 10-0, 19-0, 7-0 and 13-0 over the first four jams for 49 unanswered points, nearly doubling Gotham's first half score in about 7 minutes.

From that point on it was off the races for Gotham, who blanked Bay Area on 12 of the half's 16 jams, and they were able to finally move Bonnie and Suzy into the pack as blockers and mix in supporting jammers Hyper Lynx, Papierschnitt, Em Dash and first-year all-star B. Zerk. Bay Area wasn't able to to break into double digits on the half until the very last jam of the bout.

Archived textcast // Unofficial box score

#7 Rat City 155, #6 Rose City 111 -- Rose City came into this one having won the last two meetings with their Seattle rivals, but Rat City took the lead at about the mid-point of the opening half and never let it go, leading by as much as 61 points on the way to the win. Powerjams were particularly huge in this bout, with 97 of Rat City's points coming on jams in which Rose City was missing their jammer for part or all of the jam (and 54 of Rose's points coming on the opposite.)

There were relatively few powerjams in the first half, with Rose City losing their jammer twice and Rat City never doing so -- but Rat City turned a 22-12 deficit into a 32-22 lead on the first, as Carmen Getsome rolled to 20 points over Soulfearic Acid. Acid got half of that back on a 9-0 run on the subsequent jam to make it a one-point game at 32-31 Rat City and Scratcher in the Eye followed up by squeezing out a 2-0 to give the lead back to Rose City 33-32, but the Rose City offense went ice cold for the rest of the half.

Back-to-back 9-0 jams for Primp Daddy and Ann R. Kissed pushed Rat to a 41-33 lead, and then a jammer penalty on Rose City's Scratcher in the Eye gave Rat's Jalepeno Business the time for a full-length 14-1. When Rat City followed up by a 10-0 and 3-0, they'd gone on a 45-1 run over the last six jams of the half and led 77-34 at the break.

Two jams deep into the second, Rat City had extended the lead to 94-34 and seemed to be on the way to a total rout, but Rose City got it turned around -- this time, with the powerjam bug biting Rat City. Rat jammer Ann R. Kissed had a penalty spanning two jams that went 16-2 for Rhea DeRange and 8-0 for Wreck Deckard, and suddenly Rose was on a run.

With about 15 minutes to play, Rose had narrowed it to 103-72, but they lost their jammer Rhea DeRange at the very end of the jam and then it was time for Rat City to lower the boom. The next jam went 5-0 for Rat, and another two-jam penalty on Rose City's Scratcher in the Eye led to a 15-0 for Rat's Primp Daddy and then a huge back-breaking 24-0 spot for Carmen Getsome. That 44-0 run put Rat City up by 61 points at 147-72 with only about 10 minutes to play.

Surprisingly, though, Rose City had one more comeback left in them, once again on the back of jammer penalties. On the following three jams, Rat lost their jammer twice and Rose went 15-0, 7-0 and 15-0 to make it 147-108 … but there wasn't enough time left for Rose to complete the comeback. Notably, the final score of Rat City 155, Rose City 111 was a 44 point margin … exactly the amount of Rat City's late game powerjam run.

Archived textcast // Unofficial box score