Battery Shock Pittsburgh: From Louisville Wreckage to Redemption

Welcome to Cannon Crew, a weekly podcast discussing the Charleston Battery. Your host, Granite, will be joined by other defenders of the fleet from the Black and Yellow supporters section. And together they will help fortify and conquer. They are the Cannon Crew. Welcome to the Cannon Crew. I am not Patrick, but Patrick's joining me. I'm Granite. Patrick, how are you?

Great. Tired, out of town, dealing with little storms here. I don't think that has anything to do with the random hurricane that was not coming to town now, but. Yep, yeah, I'm, I'm great. How are you? I mean, Premier League's back, so.

Oh, let's, let's not talk about that yet. We'll talk about that later. The storm is kicking up some killer waves. My son said he went out to Folly, took his board with his buddy and he said he looks at the waves about 10 foot and he said, nah, I'll just sit on the beach. Yeah, his buddy does some surf comps, but like local stuff. So, you know, used to like three, four foot waves, even out twice and got thrashed around. So he come back in.

I will say he was a little disappointing. This all happened a very big event. I don't know if you are aware of it, but Surfers Healing was supposed to happen today. And my wife is a speech therapist for special needs, really for everyone but special needs and pediatrics. And it's a big day for all of them where all the therapists and ots and everybody gets to go out and see these kids just enjoy themselves and catch a wave. But unfortunately it got pushed for all the rip currents and stuff like that, so a little disappointing, but yeah, the show moves on. They'll be in Florida and all that, but a huge event that a lot of people have marked on and coming to town for. And I'm sure a few of our listeners are aware of it.

Yeah, I have a good friend who's in the military with Nate Bowman. His daughter has autism and he started taking her out to that event many years ago. And it's just like something they look forward to every year and just a fantastic thing. The other person that I know it's connected with is Jason that you might have met, sits stands in front of us. He is a surfer and he goes out there and helps him out. He said it's a really cool group of people, professional surfers that just, you know, go out there and just have a blast with the kids. And he says it's amazing. Kids would not want to get in the water and they're, you know, because they're just all the sensitivity to everything else going on around them, and they get out there, then all of a sudden, they just fall in love with it. So it's amazing. Amazing thing. So that sucks. So hopefully they'll come back around, you know, when the water's a little calmer, a little glassier.

Yeah, little. Just a little disappointing because they are scheduled and a traveling show, almost like a circus, in a sense. So, unfortunately, they can't reschedule here until they hit all their stops, and at that point, it's a little too late. And, you know, it's tough for everyone to rebook their hotels. So shout out to everyone who didn't get to enjoy that, but hopefully you got to go to the beach and get in the water a little bit and at least do something today in place.

Yeah, hopefully. Hopefully watch some good surfing. I imagine the washout was the place to be. Liam was saying there saw a couple barrels and people riding through them and everything like that. So hopefully everyone enjoyed the surf. Everybody's safe. You know who's not safe? Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is not safe.

No. River hounds aren't good in saltwater, apparently, so.

Apparently not. So I. I did. I don't think I realized this. This is the first one we've had up there since 2018.

Yeah, I think certain things like that you just block out. You don't let in your brain.

And then we had to face Augie, and Augie is. Is still. Man, he still got it.

I don't.

It's just. He's everywhere, it seems like.

Yeah, it's another one of those things you just kind of block out because it's a little farther removed than it was last year, being so new. But I think we're seasoned on this divorce now, and we don't care. Go off, enjoy your new. Your new family. It's amazing for you. We're doing way better.

Yeah, we're rolling right along. So it. The starting lineups. That's. I want to talk about first. And this is kind of last podcast we talked about. I was very vocal about. It was a coaching failure. I think you were very vocal about. It was a player failure. And the. The missing man here was. I don't know what he said. Well, anyways, if you look at the starting lineup, Pittsburgh compared to Loose City, there's a couple notable. Not just changes, but two players that weren't even. I don't know if they didn't go up there. They weren't even listed on the roster, and that is Juan David and Joey, they weren't even on the bench, so I don't know what happened. Coach laid down the law, taking things in, making sure these young men are serious, I guess. And then, even then, there were some changes, as you saw Cal, Jenny sitting on the bench, Nate and Laundry sitting on the bench, starting out. So it sounded like there were some.

I think. Let's just touch on the first one. Let's touch on Joey, which I believe from just a coaching standpoint is you've been in good form. I have no reason to drop you. I saw you in a match. You gave me plenty of reason to drop you. And now we got the boys back. We got Archer, we got Smith, who both of them may be coming back slowly from injury, but I think now is the tipping point where we start to see this duo kind of solidify almost. I mean, we did see Edwards come off the bench, come in, get some minutes, but I think we're going to revert back to what works and stick with it and build that. I mean, this is. This is one aspect of a team you don't really need to mess with is center backs. If they're consistent, which Smith and Archer are, you should be able to rely on them. If they have a little bump in the road, you shouldn't take them out for the next game. Maybe you sub them out 60 minutes. But yeah, until Joey or Edwards does something so incredible in a game where they're getting goals or set pieces, I mean, let's not forget Leland. His main threat is on the other end as well. He gets goals for our team, so it's hard to drop a center back who also contributes up on the other end. So, I mean, that's what I think. Joey, kind of. He's. He hasn't had a reason to be dropped, but after Louisville, that was it. I'm not sure for everyone else, but.

We talked about that. We talked about him having a hard time distributing the ball out of the bag. It seemed like they were pressuring him a lot and specifically keying on him. And he was struggling back there. And we can't struggle when it comes to teams like that because when we're struggling back there and not keep staying calm and in possession of the ball, that hurts us. Like four goals hurts us.

Yeah, I will say, I don't know what. Yeah, we did. We did touch on like a casa, too, just being a jolt to energy. I think I was the most surprised he got on this team. Just like I like him, but he is a big switch up from what we're used to what's going on with Juan David.

I don't know what happened. Did he come off at halftime? I can't remember when he come off last match, but I thought it was halftime or right around there. And so I don't know if something happened in the locker room. I don't know if he was injured. It was just an odd thing and I think I just kind of didn't really dwell on it in my head because we were getting our asses kicked and. But he wasn't. He wasn't even picking the in the to sit on the bench. So whatever Joey and. And Juan DAV did, hopefully the coach is working out of their system and getting them straight again. So we did see people like Douglas Martinez come in and play a little bit. What'd you think about his participation in the match?

I thought it was decent. I think the players stuck a little too much to a long ball game plan which hurt us because we saw far too many let's dump it over the top. And you're playing on turf like it's going to bounce and skip. The ball just moves faster. So we saw a lot of unnecessary turnovers while in possession of the ball in the first half and I think that kind of led to him not looking as great. But I think that's more of a coaching like we worked all week on this. This is kind of what we want to do and try and open them up. And you have a guy like MD Yeah, he's good up top, but he is not the. If the ball is going to skip away, track it down and go get it and bring it back. Like if it's just the wrong half step of his movement, he's not getting that ball.

Well, except for the goal we scored. But anyways but and I think Martinez. So Martinez hasn't had a whole lot of playing time and so it didn't seem like he was hurting us too bad except for the first goal. That just the collapse of everything and I think horrible goalkeeping again.

I mean this goal is starting to become an issue. I mean Louisville, I think people blocked it out of their mind because there's so many goals. But they had the similar goal where just where is defense? Where is midfield? Everyone looks lost. A guy should not be cleaning up his own shot.

Exactly.

So with that I like I don't know if I was the coach I'd be raising hell in training and being like, I don't want to see a single one of you on your heels. When a guy shoots the ball, there should be movement.

Yeah.

Bare minimum. You should get on that guy. If he got that shot past you and just put your arm out and block, I'd much rather be like, fine, we got a penalty. Then a. No one gave a. And just watch this guy dribble it in.

Yeah. And that's almost exactly what happened. And it took took place 11 minutes. And I kind of felt that collapsing feeling again, kind of like I did the week before. But it seems like we're pretty much control after that.

Yeah, I think maybe it was like 30 minutes in that we finally decided to stop playing the ball. Like these little chip balls or like balls in the air is our passing on the ground and just slowly building it back up. Maybe we saw too many of these, even from Malloy, a five yard pass away, and it's like hitting it up in the air, like, just controlled on the ground. And then we started to flow a little bit more.

Do you think that was deliberate? They were trying to chip it over? Trying to move the ball a little faster, a little more direct attack, or is that just an artifact of the ball bouncing a little bit?

No, I think the players just won. A game plan was to play the ball over top. So we solved those long balls, but like, shorter passes under. I'd say shorter passes to me is under 15 yards. You should not be blasting the ball up in the air at all. You're a professional. You should be able to hit that hard on the ground. It shouldn't skip. You're not playing like in the middle of Rwanda, where you have rocks in the field that'll make the ball bounce. It should get your teammate on the ground and he can trap it and be okay to move it. But yeah, I mean, after about 30, 35 minutes, we started to do that and our play looked completely different. Started to control, we started to dominate. A little more possession, become a little more attack oriented. And not just back and forth. What it kind of seemed the first, like 20, 25 minutes.

And I was sending out a WhatsApp message to somebody to do. Now I've totally lost my train of thought of where we were, where we're going. So let's talk about a couple other players because we called it last week about Emilio. He comes in, he plays that kind of other part of the double pivot where we see Chris Allen used to play and he brought that energy.

Yeah. So coming in, I think was. I didn't expect it, but it was what we needed for sure. I think it was a boost to not Only MD up front just having this guy who worked. But also I would say yeah, I saw your text as well. Stopping.

Hey, so let's. Because it's hard for me to tell. Would you stop talking? And I feel like I'm talking over your lot or we're in the same thing. Probably for you because we're pausing wait for the other one because we thought the other one was going to talk. What do we do? What do we do?

I don't think it's terrible. I think if you just stop and then I'll come in but then I'll. Can you tell? I'll give like a hard stop. I won't just do my open ended butts and well, I.

But still, but still. Then like right there, your face stopped moving but your voice still carried on. It was like quiet. Then all of a sudden it picked back up.

I'll do the York as Yorkie as the rest of the pod.

Okay, let's. Let's just fight through it and if it comes out bad at the other end, then it comes out bad and we'll try.

We could do it again tomorrow. Not a big deal.

Yeah. Okay. So let's. The quietness. So Ikaza, he was, we talked about him the week before, said maybe he's the energy we need to come back in and get that, get the ball rolling in the right direction. Come in where usually we usually see Chris Allen, where we usually now recently see Landry, that who wasn't even picked for the team come in and he added a lot of energy and fluidity and in moving the ball.

Yeah, he's one of these players that when he doesn't play for a while you forget that spark he brings. And when he's on, he's on, he contributes, he distributes the ball, he's sprinting back on defense. But I think where he really opened us up, which unfortunately for Landry is just those slight five yard movements and quick balls up to the forwards which eventually we got a goal from. And just a lot of. He takes a lot of attention away from other players which is so helpful when you're trying to score.

It's the hair. It's the hair. And he's so good looking. It's that flashiness that everybody just like, oh, we got to take care of that guy. And I think he was much more helpful on defense. He didn't seem, you know, I love the way Landry plays most of the time and he's kind of got some ability to get around people, but I think I Cause. Is a little more disciplined in his play. Even though he's just as quick, but he's. He can move the ball, turn around 360 and distribute it out. He made a couple passes that went. Were fantastic. That helped get the ball out of bad situations. He also did kind of the header, trying to clear it out. And it ended up. I think that's what set up the first goal for. For the. Whether they. The river slithers. What are they? The river hounds.

The River Horse.

The River Horse. So the other. And I can't. And I. Was it a casa that put the ball over to MD. They ended up putting up the air and off the big, gorgeous forehead of Rubio. Rubin. Rubin. I can't remember who put it over there, but let's talk about that little interview. MD Was hustling for the ball. And you're right, sometimes he doesn't have the. He's not the fluid guy like we like to see as a striker. But we talked a couple matches. We go. He's like, just put it on Rubio's forehead. Just put it up there. Let him. That's what he does. And that's exactly what he did. That's exactly what happened.

Yeah. I mean, we've been talking now for a couple weeks of. I mean, we saw what he did for the national team. Can we not just replicate a ball in the air and let him attack it? And finally we see it and we all have this aha moment. Like, oh, shit. Yeah, we should have just done that a few more times. That was really easy.

Exactly. Well, I think. I think what helped us is Dick's haircut, because I think he looks silly, and that even made him look sillier. But anyways, and he put in the back of that. It was kind of fun. It was kind of this looping kind of cross. I don't know what you call it. And it worked out very well. Nobody come out for it. Nobody could cover Rubio as he come in there. And that's. I guess that's the reason why he's such a good goal scorer, because he. He was hauling. But in there and anticipate where the ball was going.

It was one of. This is one of those goals that we're used to seeing against us. That just kills us that you sit there and you're like, are you kidding me? You just couldn't mark that guy. But, like, this was more planned, obviously. This Rubio is just. I don't know if the ball's in the air, he just turns into A magician. He could just score everything. But, like, also, kudos to the team fighting back in the first half to even it up and not just going into halftime on the road, down one after a horrible loss on the road to Louisville, like, it's exactly what we needed, and we ended up coming out the other end for it.

Yeah. And with all the changes on the team, I mean, it changed, you know, half the team, basically, you know, and the people stayed on. There was MD Arturo, of course, Graham Smith. The other person that I don't know, I didn't see a whole lot of them, but I don't think he heard us, was Jeremy Kelly. What do you think of his play?

I like when a player is invisible on the field because it means he's not doing anything wrong more often. I mean, we used to have these talks with Arsenal players like Saka or guys like that where you may not notice them for an entire game, and you're like, what did he do? And it's like, well, he didn't mess up. He must have been doing all right, because we would have noticed. Bad play.

Yeah. Didn't hurt us. But I think I. And I was trying to watch back a couple of the highlights today, and. And I could see 29 running around. I could see him in key positions at key times, but it wasn't like he stood out, which might go back to that. Hey, that's. That's a good thing.

Yeah.

You know. Sorry.

No, I was just going to say, I wish for one part of the field, we had a standout, and that was. I wish our goalie was standing out a little more than their goalie. I think this guy is one of the toughest guys in the league, and I forget about him every time. And then when I hear his name and I start making jokes, I quickly stop because I'm like, damn it, he's gonna save, like, every awesome shot we have.

Yeah. And he did. He was just standing there, and one went off his chest, and he act like he did something, but it still went off his chest. He had his chest in the right spot, and I was like, damn it. And I was like, he still got a shitty haircut, but he. He did that. So let's flip to the second goal, because that's kind of fun because that one made him look really silly. They. They had a complete defensive collapse, and I can't remember who took the shot come off. He come out like he's. I guess he's supposed to. The ball went rolling out, and I guess all their Defenders just kind of collapsed on the ground and Arturo come in and just rocketed in while Dick was doing pirouettes, trying to figure out where the ball was.

Yeah. Once again we get another ball behind the Dick, but this time it was Arturo's ball, which I think, what do we go, like five, five or six weeks where Arturo, where he's like pulling our own hair out. We're so damn frustrated. And then he does this like, wow, you finally like hit it one time. You nailed it. You're great. You did a good game. Like, I wish I could just like he could be more consistent so I could stay in love with his play.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, I'd rather kind of. Well, I don't want to say that too much. I'd rather have him be like this than just kind of be a mediocre player all the time. Sometimes I think consistency is. Consistency is fantastic. But if you can't be consistent, score some goals every once in a while.

Yeah. So for those with, with, for the, for.

For those that can't tell, Patrick's in a foreign land on a really shaky WI Fi. And so we're trying not to talk over each other. This is. We're giving each other hand signals and stuff like that. If you're listening, if you're watching, I'm going to edit all that stuff out. Okay, Go ahead, Patrick.

Yeah, I just. This is the one player in our team who has a spot. And this isn't like last year where he had to fight for it and he kept getting replaced and like every other game, he has his spot. And I just, I really think we need to. Not us, but Coach Pierman needs to get more out of him to see more of these performances. Because if you're going to have that solidified spot and you're going to be playing like, we know Juan David has that. We know Cal has that. Yes. This game, Cal didn't start, but Cal may have this in his contract. Like, hey, he gets a break every now and then, especially with back to back road games. But you have these guys that have these solidified spots and Arturo is one who just can't seem to break through consistently and stay there. Even though he's one of the most creative players on our team, I think right behind Juan David and Aaron Malloy at that.

Well, Arturo is a little more advanced on the field, on, you know, in the attack than. Than Malloy is. So Malloy's creative back in that kind of, you know, defensive center mid area. And Arturo is a great compliment up in front of him because he does get that creativity, that energy. It seems like a different energy than Emilio, but it's still. It's energy and a willingness to go forward and try to attack. Sometimes it comes off well, sometimes it doesn't. But I'd rather have that. I'd rather have him getting engaged.

May I ask you this? Do you think he is more unlocked when Ikasa plays as opposed to the other, like, front position players that we've been using this season, as in Myers and Wandavid outside?

I.

That.

I think it's a great question. One thing that the Emilio does is he moves the ball faster than I think some other players do. And maybe that's helpful to Arturo because it's getting to him or at least getting forward quicker than say, sometimes laundry does and sometimes Juan de V does. I don't want to say Juan de V. Because he does some killer passes that passes through lines that nobody else can recreate, apparently. But that's a great question. And let me think of something else. Who. Who haven't we talked about? Of course Aaron. Aaron's doing Aaron things. Aaron is just the rock. He's just, uh. It's amazing. I don't know what we do without him. He's one of those players that I think are just pivotal to our success. And I don't know how. Who you'd put in to replace him.

He's the drywall in your house. You would know if he wasn't there. But when he is there, you just kind of blindly walk by it and you're just like, oh, this is my home. I feel safe. But if he wasn't there, you'd be staring in that absolutely outside wilderness.

Aaron Malloy is the Sheetrock of our lives, I guess. Is he. Is he like, you know, half inch or quarter inch or is he three quarter inch Sheetrock? I don't know.

He's starting to become more 3/4 inch just after that Louisville game. Given the ref, I think he. He went from half to three quarter.

I was very excited about that because Aaron's very respectful. You seem to go up to other referees and if he's going to be talking to him, he'll, you know, put his hands down to his back and to his side, stuff like that, to show that he's not, you know, just. That's the way he communicates, that guy. I think he was having a finger in his face talking to him at one point. But anyways, it didn't help us out that end, but I think it helped him out. I think it helped the other team members out to see that, that he does get emotional at least we don't see it as much as they might but he is that that sheetrock. So in my house built in 1952, our Sheetrock is like, you know, could probably shoot through it with the 50 cal maybe but anything below that caliber you can't. So I'm going to compare Aaron LLOYD to the 1952 sheet rock, emphasis on rock. Let's see who else come in. So I was not prepared for Edwards to come in. I thought he was off the team. I be honest with he been injured for a while. I. I honestly thought he was back off of loan and went back to where he come from.

He was a surprise. I will say for the guys we had in there for how much we want them to be consistent. They're still working their way back into playing time and I mean Edwards did his job before whatever injury he picked up. So I'm glad to see him back because I think Edwards is the low key leader of that defense. You put anyone else out there and it's fine as long as he's on that field. You can't say the same for Archer. As much as Smith like as much as I love these guys, I think Edwards just brings something else to this team. And he really like has that vocal leadership role.

Yeah. And has that calmness to him. You know he just didn't seem to get excited. The other two don't either as much. But Edwards just that bit that he stint he did with Joey back there, he seemed to be nice and calm and people, everyone around him kind of did the same thing.

Now what I will say for Landry. So I know we dogged on him a little bit earlier. Love him as a player. I know you love him as a player. We need to find this guy his best position. Like I'm watching him just cover everyone else's ass. Let's put him in a spot where he's going to thrive and be the most dangerous player. Now maybe that is just a challenge because he is so much in the position of Juan David and there's nowhere else Juan David, we really want to put him on the field because he's so good at what he does. But I think we haven't fully unlocked Landry yet.

So do you think. And looking back at Arsenal where we'll play that kind of defensive center mid parte was there because Landry reminds me a lot of Parte the way he, he plays and just his physicality and everything and his ability to get yellow cards. Sometimes he's like, where'd that come from? But in our system, he's kind of playing that double double pivot. So he's not being that more defensive center mid like he normally is. He's kind of has to play off of what Aaron's doing and who's in front of him. So when you're talking about putting him in a position where he can consistently play, do you think putting him more forward would be helpful?

I think so. I mean, this guy is one of the only guys in this league that has this five yard dash that can get by anybody. Like you don't just sit that back behind everyone else and be like, man, I hope you go tackle that ball. You put that in front to create crosses, to create chances into the box. That's exactly how you use a player like that.

Yeah. Okay. Well, hopefully he gets out of the naughty, off the naughty bench and back into the team and we'll see him this weekend. So overall I think we did pretty well. It's a great comeback from a horrible defeat. And then we go to Pittsburgh on the road into a place we haven't won since 2018 and got the job done. Move the ball quicker. A lot of the things that we talked about in the past, I'm not saying that Ben Pearman listened to us solely, but a lot of things we were talking about seemed to be the changes that was made to the team and how they played and it seemed to work out. So either we're fantastic coaches or pyramids stealing our thoughts.

I'd like to think he's just stealing our thoughts. It's got to be that one.

It's got to be that way. It's kind of, it's kind of like it's, you know, it's got to be that way. Let's talk about next week. Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

Yeah, I was just gonna say this is one of those games where you kind of needed a heavy rotation of players because we're going to get into the end of season run here and you kind of need to get more people on form, inform, try to get to form. The best way to do it, shake a lot of things up. I don't necessarily think this was a throwaway game of if we lose, we lose because you need some type of like comeback performance after Louisville. But at the end of the day, this is going to be a Wash your hands. Chalk it up. No one's going to remember this game. We move on and we're going to get ready for our playoff push.

Well, I think people will remember this game because if we end up at the top, I think people go back and go like, look, we just took the worst defeat of the season. And then the next game, the next week, we did a little changes, did a rotation, and we come back and got back in the winning ways. I think that shows some toughness on the whole team, some mental toughness that they're going to need for the rest of the season.

Or maybe they just brought the toughness because they were in Pittsburgh, the pretty tough town.

Or maybe, maybe, maybe, you know, the coach said, you don't win here. You always have walking home or something like that. And they got to go swim across the river or something like that. Oh, some fun things I want to talk about. Hey, when you have announcers, they don't know what they're talking about. It's kind of fun because you're like, how the hell did you become an announcer? I know it sound like she was a center back on some team, but if she ever played, she would know it's offside, not offsides. I don't know why. That just irks me when people do that. That's American football. It's offsides. And so if you're a center back playing soccer, you would know that it's not. So credibility level was really low for both of those people. I don't know. Did they get announcers to be just pro? Whichever teams the home team. Is that what they do?

It's more of a make a wish program. So we just have a really good program where we make a wish to professional announcers. And all our games that are broadcasted are really good. It's just the away games that are shit.

Okay, I guess get what you pay for. What was the other funny thing?

I know a funny thing. Who was the sideline ref up there who couldn't make a damn call to save his life?

I don't know. We might have seen him before. Was that him? I think that was him.

And I can't remember who else could it be.

But what we're talking about is the gentleman kind of tall and he likes to play center ref sometimes and for our matches and likes to run around, hand out red cards and I guess lecture people ad nauseam. And there he's over playing ar and I think there was two or three times the center reference with the opposite way of like, you know, balls going out, calls which direction are supposed to go and stuff like that. So it's Kind of fun. So even that center ref didn't trust him. So the rest of us should not ever trust him.

Yeah. Here's a good snippet. When I have to tell my wife. Wow. You usually don't see a center ref look 30 yards across the field and correct a guy who is three feet in front of the ball going out of bounds. That's when you know that guy has no idea what he's doing on the field.

Exactly. And it just wasn't once. It was two or three times.

But anyway, I can't wait for him to rough our games again. He's so good.

He is. He's very good. Maybe he just has an eyesight problem.

Yeah.

Maybe they should have him take a test before next time. I mean, like an eye socket test or something. Okay. That's all I've got this weekend is we are playing not Leeds because that's somebody else playing leads.

Louden.

Louden. That's who it is. We're playing at home.

We are finally back what seems like forever. But we all kind of knew that going into August we were only going to have about one home game. I think maybe two. So I'm excited. Get back at the point, defend it. Go against another top five team here and beat them. We. We did our job on the road against them. So now let's do our job against them at home.

Yep. That's. And I will not be there. I will be scouting in Charlotte. My son has a tournament up there that I will. I'm being told I must attend. Well, we want. We're going up there with them. You don't let 17 year olds drive around in Charlotte by themselves. Especially that. That boy and his friends.

Okay, let me walk that back. It's actually number three team now. They were in the top five. So after we beat Pittsburgh, they moved on up. So there we go.

Oh, that's another big thing is Lou City did not come up with a draw.

Yeah.

And we picked up some points that they dropped some points. Check it out. Check it out.

No, they won. Day one. Day one. Because we're still just a couple points behind.

How far are we behind him?

Just three points.

So I was completely wrong on that.

You were just foreshadowing what's going to be happening.

When we play leads.

See, we don't talk about a goalkeeper for 30 minutes and this is what happens.

This. Exactly. Okay, fair enough. Lou City still three points front of us. Bastards. We'll catch them. They've had it easy. We'll catch them.

This Will also be a very, this will be a very good end to the season because there's not a single team that's kind of eliminated. Miami, I think actually won a game. So the whole, the whole 5th through 12th is up in the air for playoffs. So you don't really know who you're going to get.

No, Miami, they lost.

Maybe I'm just surprised that they even have points this year.

Maybe they didn't lose big.

Oh, you know what it was, they were, it was. They were playing Louisville, but I think it was two. Two.

That's what it was. Yeah, that's what that's. I was in my head, I was like, oh, that looks like a good result. I wonder what we just stopped. Good thing we keep up on all the other team. Yeah. We're afraid. Oh, please. It's going to be tied if we will wish it into existence. So North Carolina, they're, they're on 30 points. There's nobody can touch us for the player shield. So that'll be between us and Louisville. Looks like hopefully right then the race is still alive.

I mean it's only a three point gap and I got plenty of games left.

Yep. And I'm looking. So is it fair to equate how many points we have on Eastern Conference, the top two teams, compared to how many points the top two teams in Western Conference have? Is that a fair assessment on how well we're playing or just.

Yeah, because yeah, it is a toss up because I don't actually know. I don't think it's fair. I think there's Charleston and Louisville are the top two because the rest of the Eastern Conference and all of the Western Conference are within shooting distance of each other. Yeah. Tulsa has 39, but.

This is only 11 points from number 12 to number 2 on that side.

Yeah, I think the overall, the league is just doing really well this year and we don't have these runaway teams, which is good. It's good for a league to have that.

Yeah.

As we say from a team who's one of those runaway participants.

But yeah, there's just two of us.

We just need Louis Louisville to go back down into the 20s, that's all. Start losing games.

Well. And looking at the goal differences, you know, Louisville's at 25 or plus 25, we're at 20 and then loud's at 2 and then it just creeps down after that. And then if you look at the goal difference on the Western conference side, it's 13:13, then negative one for third place. So they Must have had really. They must have got their asses kicked. Some point. But anyways. Okay, enough. I digress. I guess you'll see Patrick Saturday night.

I'll be there. I'll be hopefully with the baby and we'll see the battery win.

Absolutely. Thanks, Patrick. We'll catch you all later.

Cheers.

You say Sears or. Cheers.

Sears. Sears Hardware.

Sears Hardware. The Thunder. We are the fleet. Your ship. We will sink. But we. We are the battle ra.

But also I would say. Yeah, I saw your text as well. Stopping.

Hey, so let's. Because it's hard for me to tell. Would you stop talking? And I feel like I'm talking over your lot. Or we're the same thing. Probably for you because we're pausing wait for the other one. Because we thought the other one was going to talk. What do we do? What do we do?

I don't think it's terrible. I think if you just stop and then I'll come in. But then I'll. Can you tell? I'll give like a hard stop. I won't just do my open ended butts and.

Well, I. But still. But still. Then like right there, your face stopped moving but your voice still carried on. It was like quiet. Then all a sudden it picked back up.

I'll do the York as Yorkie as the rest of the pod.

Okay, let's. Let's just fight through it and if it comes out bad at the other end, then it comes out bad and we'll try.

We could do it again tomorrow. Not a big deal.

Yeah. Okay, so let's. The quietness.