SavojarSports.sj - inside reports from all Savojarna
Welcome to the Mikkel Nielsen Show, Part II
Welcome to the Mikkel Nielsen Show, Part II
For yet another time, Savojarna came very close to 30 goals despite its usual defensive stance, even if they did once again not manage to crack the magic border. After the 12-point-victory in the group stage against Devonta, the Savojars went into their octofinal rematch as the big favourite, and they largely lived up to these expectations even if the victory was not as clear again - which is quite an amazing thing to say in itself after having won a quarterfinal with 29-23. Devonta did improve after the first encounter and was much more prepared for the Savojar counter-attack game, leading to them being much more careful on the defence. But what the speed of Pyotr Khabarov could not do anymore, the shot of Mikkel Nielsen and the brute force of Ville Jokarinen could easily achieve. Having played the Northlights before, Devonta was apparently not impressed by their hard-hitting defence, and the pattern of "mark physical presence to have a quick counter and goal" failed in this instance. The Devontans even took the lead in the beginning and Savojarna could not get ahead until the 4-3, which fell after a magistral pass across the court by centre-back Alex Pedersen. He saw a gap between the Devontan defenders through which he bullet-passed the ball right into the hands of Jokarinen, who scored on a monstrous jumpshot.
Nevertheless, the game remained tight. A first momentum shift towards Savojarna occurred at the standing of 7-6 for our guys, when Captain Jonsson was a bit late against the Devontan right winger and caused a penalty shot for charging when the Devontan was already getting ready for the shot. Jonsson received a yellow card, but Johan Bromstö managed to stop the penalty and launch a counter. Following a 4 v 3 attack, the ball was loaded off to Khabarov, who dribbled past Devonta's right back and beat the goalie in the near corner. Mikkel Nielsen contributed to a further shift when he got a ball in the back and charged forward, breaking through the defence of Devonta and smashing the ball into the net to put the score to 12-9, the first three-point-lead in the match. This was the lead that Savojarna would indeed take into the break, as the match continued with one goal a side until it was 14-11 and the ref blew the whistle. In the first half, the game was relatively tight but the Savojars seemed to increasingly control it, with Devonta not finding a way to stop the slow grind of the Savojar defence machinery and their patient build in the offensive department.
A match of attrition was always going to be slanted towards the physically excellent Savojars, and Devonta would have had to unleash some kind of holy fury in the second half in order to turn it around. But this didn't entirely work, even though the Devontans did indeed manage to reduce the gap to 15-14. They would not come closer, however, as our team started to exploit the openings that came up as well as the upcoming problems with Devontan over-motivation. At the standing of 18-16, with Savojarna looking to open the gap to three points again, Devontas centre-back pushed over Lindback and got a two minute penalty. Mikkel Nielsen scored two goals during this penalty, together with one by Krister Bengtsson and only one by Devonta, setting the score to 21-17 and forcing Devonta to heavier attacks. This opened the space up for Savojarna, and thanks to two more goals by Nielsen before he was replaced by the more defensive Denis Bjarnsson and quick counters by both Jokarinen and Khabarov, our team carried the game home to go on to the HWC20 semifinals.
In the semifinals, we will unfortunately not be playing our great rivals from Juvencus. The Juvens lost their quarterfinal with 28-24 to the Kalactinians. Northwest Kalactin had won their group and is unbeaten like us, even though they didn't really shine all that much. Their first game was a very tight affair against the Quintilian team, a squad that went out of the tournament with only one point. Kalactin won the game only in the final seconds and bared great holes in their defence, something the Savojars will want to exploit. They then went on to beat the Alpine Union and, somewhat surprisingly, Drawkland in relatively tight and not too spectacular matches to win their group and move on into the octofinals against Kosovakia. This was the only truly convincing victory of Kalactin as the Kosovakians fell completely apart and lost 32-20. Against Juvencus, they also played very decently, racking up some goals but once again showing a possible opening in the defence. The Savojars will go into this match as favourites, but they have to be wary of the Kalactinian offence.
The major threat for Savojarna is that they have been hardly challenged so far as the previous victories had all been relatively easy. The closest victory so far was the 24-23 against Humaliwo, in which many key players were not playing at all. Aside from that, all the victories were rather easily obtained aside from some starting problems, something that could be problematic if Savojarna gives itself up once they may be behind against Northwest Kalactin. But this is also not extremely likely after we've seen their reaction against falling behind on Devonta, and Savojarna clearly remain a top favourite for the title.
