Welcome back to the BUM Report!  Session 7 has now passed into the annuls of TMVL history, and with it we're also halfway done with our recruiting season.  Chances of nabbing your next program-altering draft class are steadily dwindling, and they are about to get a whole lot worse for at least 26 of us.  The Big Rollers have finally started upping the ante and showing glimpses of their hands and how the last five sessions might play out!  There are five teams that have yet to sign a recruit, and are sitting pretty with well over 2000 RP in reserves.  We know we're going to see a lot of them soon, and some of them have already put in their intent to be bidding competitively by session 9.  After this coming weekend, there will only be ten 5* players left to recruit, highlighted by a whopping FIVE players in session 11 in what we're hoping may be the largest RP draining session this league has yet seen!  When going the math(s) though, which is rough on us here at the BUM Report, it has dawned on us that 5 teams with large reserves and 10 players left means 2 players each at 1500 RP+ for the sharks, and the rest of us will have to be content with nibbling at the 4*s unless they find a particular player distasteful for personal reasons. And who are they, that you should be aware of your bidding partners and figure out quickly if you're the little fish in a game of sharks, or if you'll need to go all-in to have even a remote shot at the upset recruit?

By the numbers: honorable mention first to Manitowoc. They have a player recruited, though just a 3*, and have 2698 RP left to nab two more of their choice.  Portland! Jim and the Flora Fellers have 2282 RP.  Burlington! Aires and his Bullyfrogs are going to start forcefully flicking their tongues at potential catches, with 2396 RP.  Starkville! Eduard is certainly not having his finest season. He's a gamer though, and is already calculating how to rebound hard and fast, and have the 'Hounds again treeing game with ease, as his 2487 RP war chest will soon come into play.  T-Town! C-Ball and the Dust Devils have a whopping 2830 RP to swirl into the competitive mix, and his earlier bidding was probably just subterfuge and swirling eddys meant to throw us off his actual targets. Finally, Alton! James and the Screaming Eagles, your Big East conference tourney title game hosts, are also going to be gearing up for next season as they are all of 3 RP shy of 3000, with 2997 RP to absolutely have any two players they want of the final four rounds.  Someone will have to make them pay as well, or else a mere 1000 RP buy will still leave them with enough to land extra 4*+ or 5* players in session 12!  For the rest of us, our only hope is that they'll either all bid on the same players, or push each other's pricing up to burn the war chests before session 11.  If neither happens, there may be a lot of attention on the suddenly appealing 3* guys, in hopes of not having to overpay for a 3* in the off-season just to get a backup who is not a complete liability.  Plan accordingly or start sliding the RP into your Season 13 accounts, because no upset love from Olmec can save you from the 2000 RP bidders!

As for the session 7 matches, we'll start with a general observation: normally matches 21 (non-conference) and 22 (TMVL Cup opening round, splitting us between Cup & Shield play) is filled with widely divergent team strengths and a lot of sweeps and blowouts. This season? We had some of our most competitive play in weeks!  Less than half the matches were one-sided 3-0 affairs, eight (25%!) went to five sets, while three matches saw us with same-rated teams and another four were just 1 ratings-point apart.  12 of the 32 matches had at least one set go to extra points, and three matches had two sets each go to extra points! Match 21, Mat-Su @ Alton, Match 22, Spokane @ Alton, and Match 22, Starkville @ Albuquerque.  Only 11 of the 32 featured teams with 10+ ratings-points-difference, which really, really puts a dent in the Blowouts odds for the weekend.  So it is with much appreciation and applause that we laud our few yet fearsome Blowouts of the Week!

We'll start with the Legume Legion, at home in the conference tourney semis, match 23.  Pekin has consistently put out top lines lately, and this time they backed off a little bit, playing a "mere" 91 at home.  Arlington has pulled some upsets and feasted on teams that they caught napping or with their T7s elsewhere.  Apparently figuring that Pekin was not going to be risking the B-team in this tourney, and counting the odds against him until he ran out of fingers and toes, David must have liked his chances elsewhere better.  At home in the non-conference match for Arlington? 80 rating. Neutral court in the TMVL opener? 79 rating. In the conference tourney semis? 66 rating.  The resulting 25-rating match difference was the 2nd-highest of the weekend, and Roger's red-eyed lads were rounding out match points to the nearest 5.  Set 1 and Arlington at least kept it respectable, 20-25. Set 2 was not, 10-25. Set 3 split the difference, 15-25, and we're not sure if that makes it semi-respectable or still just mostly pathetic to lose by double-digits, as Pekin and the Pod People took the #2 Blowout of the Week with a combined 30-pt shellacking of the Anteaters. After Ames fielded a 65-rated team in the last round, and now with this 66 "challenge," congrats to Roger for being so good that teams have simply stopped trying to beat him at all!  Surely Columbia won't just mail in their effort for the finals, right? No doubt Steve will rise to the challenge and play it all out here, dividing out the other starters' games to the non-cons and some other afterthought of a match 28 that's of little consequence to him.

And topping our blowouts table this past session, we'll stick with Arlington, rewinding one match to 22, TMVL opener, where the Anteaters were making an effort.  Neutral court, their 79 rating was 18 better than Manitowoc's 61, and was almost the most lopsided matchup of the TMVL openers (only Burlington vs Pekin had a greater rating difference, as Aires sent the tadpoles out).  David's Bug Lovers took it to Derek's Walltoppers in the first two sets, 25-14 and 25-9! Only one other team scored fewer than 10 in any regular set this session (Columbia @ Nashville, match 21 non-con, where Steve's reserves were crushed by the Pandas in set 4 to the tune of 8-25).  Arlington let off in set 3, and though the match report doesn't show it, social media reports from the arena indicated that they all started trying to spike with their off hands, leading to more errors and letting the score get up to a final 25-21 before the match was over.  The resulting 31-pt blowout is well under our season leaders to date, yet more than good enough for the Blowout of the Week!  Congrats, David, for the Blowout and for sponsoring the "B" portion of this week's column!

On the "U for Upset" side of things, we had a series of small to significant upsets featuring teams well-acquainted with the stellar journalistic endeavor that is the BUM Report. We'll highlight four for our faithful followers (the 's' in followers may or may not be accurate; we're rolling with it optimistically).  Three were from Match 22, the TMVL opener.  Starting with Baton Rouge (neutral court) against Santa Clara, Martyn's Ankle Biters are one of the better teams at pulling off minor upsets with aplomb and panache and elan and flair, and other fun words that make us sound pretentious. Mike's luck has been more spotty, a bit browned even, something more fit for getting cooked or blended. Here we saw a reversal of fortunes though, as the Bananaramamen were 1-pt underfruits to the Rat Dogs. Somehow, someway, somehow, Senator Mike and the (near universally-hated, as we've mentioned before in this column) Bananas kept their peels intact long enough to pull off three near-identical upset sets, 25-19, 25-18, 25-19, to coast out the -1 Upset victory, that more importantly was our one and only Upset Sweep of the Week!  Congrats (begrudingly) to the seasoned and salt-and-peppery Mike H!

Staying in Match 22, we see another team that just can't get the Olmec love in the big matches. San Jose on neutral court put out a 90-rated squad, which was topped by only two teams this round, both at 91 (Pekin, of course, and Nashville, who you should absolutely T7 whenever possible because reasons). Their opponent was none other than the high-flyers of Porkopolis, as James T brought an 87-rated team to dance.  Though +3 in the ratings, the Shrimps were only able to trade sets through the first four and ended up tied 12-12 in set 5 with the serve, looking to hold form and break a string of tough luck against tough teams. Instead, a pair of errors undid them, as Scilacci served it out (now 13-12 Cinci) and then Cassone attacked it out to wrap up the team-high 5 hitting errors on the day (now 14-12 Cinci). Cassone got a kill back to take it to 14-13, yet you can't give away points to the Tusked Truffle-Trackers and expect to win, which San Jose knows all too well. Cordero to Bowers and match point for Cinci, as James pulls off yet another upset against a 90+ rated team, this time at -3 in a five-set fest that saw the highest combined ratings-points of the TMVL opener!

Skipping the other TMVL opener for now, we'll dash over to the non-con match 21 between T-Town and Arlington (hello again, David!). The Twisters were not toying around in this one. They brought a road 85 to a non-con match, highest of the session (next highest was a tie at 79). And to put it in even more perspective, the highest home rating of the round was 82 (Ames), followed by Arlington (80). Nobody else cleared the 70's, and five teams played a 60-something lineup at home. So C-Ball brings the absolute highest rated squad of Match 21, and of course with his luck ran into the 3rd-highest lineup instead of getting a walkover from one of the teams still playing the conference and WGM matches. Though leading 2 sets to 1 after the first three, the Anteaters rallied back to take set four and then a closer-than-it-appeared set 5 by a final 11-15 tally. Along the way though, the Windy Warriors dominated set 2 25-17, and actually out-scored the Anteaters by 2 combined points across the five sets.  So congrats to David and the Anteaters for the #2 Blowout of the Week, and our only team of the session to win a match while being outscored!

And we'll wrap up this section with a shout out to a manager that already knows it's coming, as Eduard can't seem to have anything go right for the Bloodhounds two matches in a row this season. Match 22, TMVL opener on neutral court. Starkville draws the Trash Pandas, and are rated better, 82 to 76.  This match gave us two close, great sets (set 1, 25-27 Masked Bandits, & set 4, 26-24 Droopy Dogs), and two not-close sets in between, 25-18 & 16-25.  It was all tied up and looking perhaps like a competitive set 5 would be in the works, when whatever stinks in Starkville this season followed them on their travels and took up home on neutral court too!  It's a good thing dogs like rolling in whatever Starkville was laying down on the court, as the Buttsniffers were behind 0-6 before they scored their first point, and trailed 2-10 while having 5 attacks dug and returned for a kill. Something or other happened after that to finish at 7-15, as Kelsey pulls yet again another Upset of the Week!  Congrats also to the Trash Pandas for keeping the Pac 8's season-long run in this column going! We almost lost you there!

And in the More department, Mat-Su and Alton gave us a new season-high for the points department in Match 21 (non-con), with a thrilling set 2 that finally finished well after several fans couldn't hold their beverage of choice any longer and may or may not have wet themselves before the 34-36 kill fest finally finished!  They went on to have another tight set 4 (26-24) and tallied enough elsewhere to ring up 235 total points, 2nd-highest total of the season so far! Nice match, Bryce and James!  The strongest combined matchup of the round came in the WGM Semis between New Orleans (90) @ Quincy (90), that ran out to a fitting five sets.  Both teams a just a cut below the top teams though, and that's not just the Rabbids' standard PR department line!  Between the conference semis and WGM semis, we saw four teams put up 93+ lines! Alton (93), San Jose (94), Columbia (94, twice) and a now-season-leading 95 from Nashville! We'd be far more excited about that if we weren't playing two of those teams this coming session, both on the road, both in tourney finals (@ Nashville, SEC tourney; @ Columbia, WGM final).  Best of luck to everyone else, because New Orleans is headed for an 0-for-4 session unless Olmec gifts us the Upset of the Week to headline next session's column!