Upsets (3 Jun 2013)
While for the most part yesterday's matches featured more lopsided wins, day three marked the first appearance of the dreaded upset in Altador Cup VIII. Perhaps the least surprising of those upsets came in the Vaeolus bracket, where FL finally earned their first YYB victory against MT after going winless for the entirety of ACVII. The score was essentially tied for most of the battle, with one side or the other briefly in the lead until the other team answered with a point of their own, but in the end it was the Faeries who managed to mount a furious final drive to win the game 5-4. FL put up a noble fight in the other three games, but their energy had been entirely spent winning YYB and MT wound up pulling a sidegame sweep. "Queen Fyora herself must have been smiling down on us today," a grinning Delma Harrence told reporters afterward. "We're a little disappointed we couldn't win any of the sidegames, but this win is huge for us. We'll take it."
The second upset came earlier in the day, where TM shocked MQ by winning a 6-5 YYB game that wasn't as close as the final score might indicate. MQ looked uncharacteristically sluggish for the first half of the match, and TM took advantage by quickly running up the score to 4-0 before MQ even had a chance to respond. There was less than one minute left to go when MQ finally woke up, and despite their best efforts TM's early lead proved to be insurmountable. "Everyone was doubting us today," Osielle Lidel said of the win later. "Seeing how no one believed we even had a chance against MQ really lit a fire in the team."
The final upset came in one of the earliest matches of the day, where the up-till-now dominant Kikos faced off against a surging DC squad. Both teams looked to be evenly matched throughout the course of the game, but it was DC's experience in the Cup which ultimately gave them the edge, and they were able to score the go-ahead point when KL began to tire under their unrelenting onslought_ KL did their best to pull out some sidegame wins, but DC proved to be too tough for the Kikos, who only managed to earn a single win in SS.
The rest of the day's games went pretty much as expected, with RI, TY and AD all racking up their third day in a row of sweeps, MD repeating their triple victory over KD and KI improving to a sweep over HW, and LD taking every game except SOSD from the beleagured Islanders.