Acadians Win Big; Muddy Western Conference
WORLD LEAGUE – The New Orleans Acadians posted the highest score of the week in the World League, beating the Dacusville Devils 123-95 and moving into first place in the Western Conference. Sitting at 3-2, New Orleans leads a pack of teams all vying for control of the West. Despite the loss, the Devils remain 3-2 as well, but fall behind City of Champions and the Buenos Aires Blue Dogs who won and lost, respectively, joining the foursome of 3-2 teams in the World League West. Through a maze of tiebreakers, New Orleans’ win leaves them first in the conference for now and ranked 4th overall in the league. All 4 teams will be playing cross-conference games in Week 6, hoping to pull ahead of one another.
In the Eastern Conference, the last undefeated remaining in the league, the Old England Patriots, lost a close one 92-89 to the surging Scandinavia Stars to fall to 4-1 while the Stars are now 3-2. The Patriots are still number 1 in the East, but the Dublin Bay Prawns defeated Barcelona 76-69 for their third win in a row, and they are right behind England at 4-1 also. The 3 of them are ranked 1, 2, and 3 in the conference and play cross-Atlantic games next week. It’s worth noting, that Old England’s loss was close enough to be reversed by stat corrections, and if it is, they would sit at 5-0 with a much more solid hold on the East.
Last season’s World Bowl teams continue to struggle. Both are now at 2-3 records, the defending Champion Los Angeles Dragons losing this week to City of Champions, while London Falling fell to Jerusalem by a fraction of a point – a midweek stat correction could reverse that loss, and would start to muddy the standings in the Eastern Conference just the same as in the West.