More Sweeps (2 Jun 2013)
The domination of the Cup by a few select teams continues, as once again over half of all of yesterday's matches were sweeps. In the Alabriss bracket, defending champions KD were unable to follow up their day one sweep with a victory, and ended up losing three out of four games in a hard-fought battle against ACVII bronze holders MD. Things were even worse for the two other losing teams in that bracket, as LD was unable to muster more than four points in any game and MI wound up being swept for the second day in a row. It was very much the same in the Vaeolus bracket, where RI scored their second sweep of ACVIII against FL and AD continued their unlikely run for the cup with another dominating performance, this time against SK. MT vs VP provided a little excitement, with both YYB and SS being won by a single point. At first, it looked as though the YYB match was going to be a high-scoring affair, with both teams bumping the tally up to 4-3 within a minute of the start of play. A quick time-out from VP gave both defenses time to regroup, however, and once the clock was restarted the game transformed from an offensive battle to a defensive match. Neither team was able to score more than once in the remaining two minutes, and when a last-second desperation shot from MT's Tulah Kisner was denied by VP's Goltron Mk I, it became obvious that VP was going to earn their first victory of ACVIII. The Moltarans did come away with two consolation wins, one in SS and one in SOSD, though they were unable to earn even half the points that VP did in MSN.
The only bracket not to feature two sweeps was the Minitheus bracket, thanks to HW's come-from-behind win in MSN. MQ vs BV was perhaps the most evenly matched battle of the day, where both teams won two games and every event other than SOSD was decided by a single point. The lone sweep came from the unexpectedly surging Dinos, who not only won all four games against TM but also took the Mountaineer's best game, SOSD, in a convincing 8-5 fashion.