IT&E Voyagers, Shark Attack are No. 1 in Budweiser 8-Ball

 Jonny’s Bar & Grill’s IT&E Voyagers and Wild Bill’s Bar & Grill’s Shark Attack finished first place in their respective Agingan and Obyan divisions of the 2011 Summer/Fall Budweiser Open 8-Ball League as the regular season of the Saipan Billiards Association competition came to a close last Tuesday.

Agingan Division’s IT&E Voyagers breezed past Fotten Palau (28-77), 5-2, in a road match at Joe’s Steakhouse to finish with a 12-game lead in the six-team division.

In similar fashion, Obyan Division’s Shark Attack knocked off the runner-up team out of Jonny’s, Team SCS (52-53), 5-2, at home and finished its season with a win-loss slate of 65-40.

In other results, Agingan runner-up IT&E Incredibles (64-41) stumbled in the final match of the season, falling to the third-ranked Docomo Hustlers (60-45), 2-5, at Utopia Sports Bar, but still managed a second place berth in the post season Budweiser Cup tournament.

Docomo fared well down the home stretch but still finished tied with Jonny’s Home Boyz Five (60-45), who skunked VFW Post 3457 X-Tream (27-78), 7-0, at home. The loss dropped X-Tream to a last place finish heading into the Bud Cup series.

Obyan’s Crazy 8 (53-52) defeated 19th Hole Bar’s Titans (45-60), 4-3, at home in Jonny’s, while D’Pirates Bar’s Pirata (50-55) climbed up a notch by downing 19th Hole’s Poksu (50-55), 4-3, on the road.

Crazy 8 snagged second place by a game over Team SCS and finished the season with Shark Attack as the only two teams with winning records, while Pirata finished the year tied with Poksu, despite forfeiting two of the seven matches.

The opening rounds of the divisional Bud Cup tournaments start on Tuesday.

The Bud Cup opening rounds will also serve as regular season tiebreaker matches for some teams still in a battle for third place.

Agingan’s Docomo Hustlers and Home Boyz Five finished their schedules with identical records, while Obyan’s Pirata and Poksu came out knotted together at the end of the season.

Coincidentally, these teams happened to be paired against each other in Tuesday’s opening rounds.

League organizers have picked Utopia as the site for the Agingan match and D’Pirates as the venue for the Obyan pairing.

In the Bud Cup the most difficult rout to the finals is actually from the No. 1 seed, so perhaps X-Tream folded on purpose as the format of the Bud Cup tourney benefits lower-ranked squads. Lower-ranked teams are gifted home field advantage and even play against the lowest-ranked opponents possible.