SpW5: Chicken vs. Pillow

Week Five – Thursday – Riverside

Pillow Talk and Chicken and Waffles enter Thursday’s tilt at the bottom of the MUD Standings. Chicken & Waffles are 2-10 while Pillow once the league darlings, find themselves at 4-7. These are certainly difficult times. Pillow Talk enters on a 5 game downward spiral, Chicken & Waffles look to avoid one. Each team needs a momentum shift.

Marquee Matchups: Phil Hospod vs. Eric Shoemaker and Phil Yates vs. Jerald Isseks and/or Jon Read were the matchups of the game. Chicken & Waffles‘s Andrew Segoshi and captain Alex Schneider also had good games, but almost no one on CW could match up with Pillow’s Nate Mandel, Sara Cornish and captain Jake Hall.

First half: Sam Linton to captain Schneider with a sweet toe-the-line grab over Shaq Fu, 1-0 C&W. Cornish puts into the sky for Dan Nelson over Yates, 1-1. Mark Chen throws the game’s first turnover to Schneider or Hospod (neither can get to it). Segoshi gets the D back for CW. Maor Ben-Gur finds Chen with a lefty break, 2-1 C&W. Captain Hall to Zeb Hermann ties it at 2-2. Therese Zosel-Harper drops it, but then Hermann drops it. Hospod tries a hammer that sails too far. Schneider then gets a poach D in the lane, and Yates finds Hospod for the Phil connection, 3-2 C&W. Next point, Segoshi has a huge dive in the dirt for a dump D but he misses. Nelson throws a weird one up to Hall, 3-3. Hunt Clark is on the sideline discussing new centurion Bob Suvanich’s long career in MUD, and at the mention of one of Bob’s former, “bad” teams, captain Alex perks up and defensively asks “you talking about me?” Last place is a paranoid burden. In the game, Pillow Talk gets a break as captain Jon Read finds Nelson, 3-4 Pillow. Mandel gets a dump D on Ben-Gur’s throw and then shoots it to Read to go up another break, 3-5. Schneider gets a pretty throw to Yates but he can’t stay in-bounds. Hall then hucks it out of bounds. Chen finds Zosel-Harper despite Pillow Talk’s sudden backhand force, 4-5. Hunt trusts his captain’s baggage, launching one deep to Cornish who gets a monster sky over a well-positioned captain Katherine Cole, 4-6. With the backhand force favoring his lefty flick, Ben-Gur easily gets it to Casey Markenson, 5-6. Hunt misses Ariella Rosen on the next position, and Chen puts a sweet huck to Sam Linton. Linton finds Zosel-Harper to tie the game, 6-6. Hall shows off a nifty OI shot to Hermann who brings it down over Schneider, 6-7. Cole drops it. Hunt throws it away, but then he gets what should have been a callahan on the dump D. He squeezes one into Bryn Tulip amid Linton laying out, 6-8.

Halftime: Before the half Pillow’s Zach Wasser showed up without shorts. He subbed in having borrowed Josh Schaffner’s. Eventually Zeb Hermann offered his to Wasser, and Zach chose Zeb’s in order to be wearing all red. Schaffner gets his clothes back while Hermann played the remainder of the game in steel-grey boxer-briefs. Schneider reminded his team that they’re still in this and it was recently tied.

Second Half: Newly splendid in red, Wasser throws it away. Jared Lenow does the same. Hermann, feeling cheeky, puts up an amazingly bad huck. Nelson Ds Schneider’s throw. Abby Murray, who showed up at the half and added yet another woman to C&W’s line, gets the D with her back. Murray then drops a score after Rosen makes a D bid. Cornish can’t resist an up-the-line cut from Wasser, but neither can Nelson and the two fellas collide as the disc hits the ground. Murray can’t quite get to a throw on the line. Hermann has a hot IO break to Mandel. Cornish throws it away up-the-line again. Mandel gets a poach D, feeds it to Hermann and takes off. Hermann puts up a chancy, bladey huck to Shaq Fu? No it’s to Mandel, 6-9 Pillow. Jake Hall screams “Bookends, baby!” Segoshi asks, “That was only the first point after half?” Yes. Second point: Schaffner and Cornish sandwich Mark Chen to D a Schneider huck. Then Pillow turns it. Ben-Gur gets stuck on the line and confuses the protocol for a high stall punt when you also have a wide open swing, sending the swing way over Chen’s head. Hunt throws it away. Alex finds Nora Sheridan, 7-9. Yates yells “Yeah Chick Wafs!” Jerald Isseks boosts it to Cornish, 7-10. Schneider throws it away. Hall jumps about 20 feet in the air to catch his team’s swill, lands, and guns a hammer to Danny Nelson, 7-11, play of the game. Mandel sees a huck on the next possession, leaves his man, runs about 30 yards and gets the D. Tulip hucks it to Nelson, 7-12. Segoshi finds Hospod, 8-12. Mandel turfs it. Chicken gets it to the line and then Ben-Gur throws it away. Yates wonders, “have we ever scored when we’ve been on the end line?” The scale of his “ever” is unclear. Shoemaker almost brings down a nasty score sky over Hospod, but then he gets a nasty D sky on the other end. Hermann throws it away. Zosel-Harper can’t hold on. Mandel gets it to Shaq Fu, 8-13. KCole gets tired of this nonsense and finds Lenow who pulls it in as Tulip bids, 9-13. After Cornish’s throwaway, KCole hucks it flat and far to Segoshi who skies Tulip, 10-13. Looking like Chicken is on a run, Chen Ds a Hermann huck to Cornish. Or was it to Schaffner? But then Murray drops it. Wasser puts a pretty one to Cornish deep, but it clangs off her hands. Hospod hucks it too far. Pillow gives it right back. Hospod misses Chen this time. Isseks puts up a baby huck to Cornish, but Markenson has her boxed out. Cornish calls a foul! Contest! Back to Isseks who this time gets off a money break to Mandel, 10-14. Pillow causes another turn and Hermann looks at Mandel in traffic. What kind of country is Montana? Over Yates and Schneider. Game Pillow, 10-15.

HERE’S WHAT MATEO DON’T GET: Though Chicken & Waffles could match up evenly against plenty of Pillow Talkers, they didn’t seem to have a solution for Jake Hall, Sarah Cornish and Nate Mandel besides “hope they make mistakes.” Chicken’s star handler Josh Kent who engineered their most recent victory (against Pillow Talk) was not present. The captains of Pillow Talk admitted after the game that Chicken & Waffles is like a bunch of pieces that don’t clearly connect, except when Kent is there. So what’s this guy doing missing games? Alex and Katherine have officially made a winning season impossible and there are still nine games left. They don’t have to play The Funeral again, but they do face the Good Guys three more times. This Sunday however, they play a leaderless Quiet. It’s time to turn things around.

This Game of the Week graciously provided by Mateo Mead.