Apologies for the late submission this week!  We could come up with some creative excuses, yet the reality is that we didn't get a chance to dig into match-watching and upset-rating until Wednesday, which pushed back our creative deadlines and endeavors to the weekend.  We'll strive for a more timely BUM Report post-session 4!  Until then, hopefully you can enjoy this pre-match commentary, and/or a session 3 recap to ease the session 4 results?  Choose your own adventuring, or just take it all in with its full BUM glory!  Grab a frosty one and let's begin!

To keep up with all the action of the weekly games across the TMVL universe, the BUM Report has had to create regional information nodes (we don't like it when you call them 'surveillence posts' or 'listening stations' or 'flock cameras').  This mostly involves finding high points in low traffic areas (i.e. where we can trespass for at least a week or three before anyone notices) and have our local (unpaid) interns lash together some fallen timber for towers, then send them up to the top with a telescope and a hand-held antenna to pick up shortwave radio transmissions of the games in progress in their respective areas.  We also really hope the weather holds on game days, as a hand-held antenna at the top of a 50 foot tower (~15 meters for all you "No Kings and No King's Measurements Either!" folks) looks awful friendly and accomodating to lightning strikes, straightline winds, and the entire Teutopolis roster (plus alumni, for whom it's the next best thing to a trailer park).  For our friends in the PAC 8, one of those NODES (thank you) is located atop a BUM-worthy named rocky locale in New Mexico, called Elephant Butt, er, Butte, same thing, we think.  The closest town is named Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, (we're not making either name up) and it's currently our favo(u)rite NODE as it gives us a great hotline of info from three of the PAC 8 BUM Report stalwarts, Albuquerque, Carlsbad, and a little town just over the state line called Tucson (that's TOO-sawn, not TUCK-sun).  So strap in and muster up your favorite frosty beverage for a full slate of BUM Truth and Olmec Consequences this week, because it's the Season 18, session 3 BUM Report!

This session started out slow on the BUM front. Match 7 featured no blowouts and just one upset, at -2, good for #3 on the session.  That match was noteworthy for its impact though.  Conference play in the SEC, with conference-leading Red Stick headed to conference-favorite Starkville.  The Fightin' Fern Fruit brought a road 75, not great, yet nothing to overlook.  The 'Hounds were trying out some tactical trickery, and played a home 77, hoping for a weaker road team to show up, while saving the T7 for match 8 against Nashville (where they played a road 87!). Olmec apparently took this match as a sign to pull some Olmecery with the game play, as the oddities involved were highly amusing to our editorial staff, the Baton Rouge faithful, and perhaps to anyone else not named Eduard! First, we need to clarify how not-close the team averages actually were. Baton Rouge brought 5 B-rated players, and 2 C's. Starkville's team average was brought down by 3* walk-on Freshman MB Mitchell Root (F+, 49 rating) as they played two A's and 3 B's in the lineup, along with one C-rated player. Baton Rouge hit .256 for the match. Starkville hit .386.  In the opening set, the Bananaramamen hit just .160! (11 kills, 7 errors, on 25 attempts). The Cruor-Craving Canines hit .500 (24 attempts, 13 kills, only 1 error)!  Guess who won?  Yep, it was Red Stick, 25-23! Starkville in the opening serves, before either team reached 10 points, had multiple hits dug, got aced twice in a row, hit two serve errors, and had a net call go against them.  Despite that, the 'Hounds still took the lead back at 12-11 (and then served it out) and again at 13-12 (for another service error!) and tied it at 15-15 (another serve out, seriously!). Tied at 22?  Starkville service error.  Tied at 23? You guessed it! Welch (serve rating 17) with another crucial service error!  24-23, set point #1, and Baton Rouge's Carrasco (serve rating 12) hits the ace to win the set!  .160 hitting beat .500 hitting, thanks to Baton Rouge getting as many points off the serving game (4 aces, 7 Starkville errors) as they did on attacks (11 points).  The Bananas hit much better in set 2 (.348) only for Starkville to respond as well (.524) and without all the serving errors, the Bloodhounds took the set 25-21.  In set 3, Starkville's hitting then fell apart!  .185 for the set while Baton Rouge tallied their most kills (15) to eke out the 25-22 win. Now on the ropes, Starkville responded with a powerful game, 16 kills, 3 errors (.520 hitting) and limited Baton Rouge to just 8 kills, to force a fifth set... where the wheels fell off the proverbial bus.  After trading opening points, at 1-1, Starkville returned to the first set madness.  Served it out, got aced, got it back, served it out again. Battled back and then watching the set go up perfectly to a hitter to hopefully tie it up at 7-7? Nope, hitting error by MB Root, then a lousy set leading to an easy dig/kill in response, and then another hitting error by Root! What easily could have been 7-7 is now 10-6! And then a huge Red Stick block followed by a dig/kill to lead 12-6! Not done yet, Starkville rolled back on a kill, two Banana hitting errors, a dig/kill, and was serving to get within one before a fantastic rally played out with four digs that the Pugilists in Peels finally capped off with a kill. We jump to match point #1, Baton Rouge serving at 14-11, and Lambright sets... Root? We could hear Eduard shouting from his knees on the sideline without needing our shortwave radio amplifier, as the "NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!" reverberated all the way from Mississippi to BUM HQ, as Root rose and with all his might very effectively avoided the attempted block by spiking the ball clean out of bounds to give Baton Rouge the -2 Upset win, despite being outscored on the match as a whole by three points (#2 on the season so far!) that completely upset the Conference tables as well!  Now instead of a 4-2 three-way tie between Starkville, Baton Rouge, and a third dark horse team, Baton Rouge sits at 5-1 atop the conference, Starkville is two games back at 3-3, and Baton Rouge remains tied for the best league record at 7-2! Who says minor upsets are just little blips?  Not the BUM Report, where every upset has league-upsetting potential and is rightly celebrated as such!  MB Root is in the early running for BUM-V-P of the Year!

In other match 7 action, though not upsets or blowouts, we feel it necessary to warn the league about some power teams going head-to-head and bringing the T7s to play!  We head to the stacked Big 8 Conference, where Columbia (88) went to Pekin (90) and Quincy (87) hit the road to Portland (89).  That's the highest two away ratings we've seen so far, and the #2 and #3 home ratings in response!  Both matches only went to four sets before the home teams claimed the victories, yet the Columbia-Pekin match featured a 30-28 set 3, our third-highest of the season so far!  The combined 176 and 178 ratings are good for #3 and #1 on the season, sandwiched around a match that happened right after in match 8, Portland (85) at Columbia (92), our highest-rated team of the season-to-date, in another must-watch four-set narrow home win. The Big 8 is brutal this season!

And then we flip to Match 8.  Hello, match 8!  Let's walk through the blowouts first.

First, a revisit to last weekend's BUM Report hero, Max and St. Charles.  Not content with just the lowest 2 away ratings of the season, Max had to own all three spots!  Road 51 at Dallas, where the Bulldogs courted a 75-rated team.  Not sure what happened in set 2 to throw off an otherwise great thing going, as the Big D B-Dawgs opened and closed sets 1 and 3 by an 11-25 margin of victory, only to sandwich in a narrow 23-25 win to keep us just on the edge of blowout land with a combined +30, good for tying our #2 blowout of the week!  Congrats, Craig!  And keeping in the Big 8, Pekin decided to roll out the top lines at home and to seal a good WGM seed, which left little (62) to travel to Quincy, where the Mules were waiting with a not-quite-top-lineup rated at 82.  +20 was good enough to roll easily though, 17-25, 17-25 and 11-25 to cap it off and also just hit the +30 Blowout, tying Craig at #2 for the weekend and getting a huge statement win over Pekin to keep Quincy in the conference conversation despite Portland previously vaccinating the Rabbids in match 7.  Congrats to Al for the Blowout!

For our #1 Blowout, we now turn to the aforementioned Elephant Butte tower, which had a bird's eye view of what went down in Carlsbad.  Phil likes conference wins.  We've highlighted many of them in this column before, as the Carlsbad ColorChangers are tied for the most upset home wins in the league since season 9 (7, along with the Gargoyles and Bullfrogs). For this one though, we didn't have to dig into the upset column.  Amy, perhaps using finely tuned needles to sense the building vibrations of oncoming danger like a desert storm forming on the horizon, chose to focus the Spiny Spikers' efforts elsewhere (road 58).  Phil brought the A-team, 81 at home.  They ended up nearly doubling the rating difference in total points of domination, as their independently rotating eyes didn't let a hit fall unchallenged, with 26 digs to Tucson's 7, and MB Gogolak going a perfect 10 for 10 hitting as the Man of the Match in leading the Chameleons to a total .667 hitting rate!  Tucson only managed a -.032 for the game, and no one's rating even hit 3.00 for the match.  The final tally was 11-25, 13-25, 11-25 for a combined +40 Blowout, tied for our third-best of the season so far!  Congrats to Phil and the Chameleons for our Blowout of the Week!

And staying in the Pac 8, out west from Elephant Butte again, we turn our attention to the north along I-25, and find ourselves listening in on the clash between conference leaders, with Denali (4-1) @ Albuqueque (5-0) in match 8!  Andy's Livid Lupines didn't bring much of the top line, having played 78 on the road previously, and fielding three C and D players in this one.  James' Trash Pandas had just one C+ player, 2 B's, and 4 A's in this one, dropping an 85-rated lineup for what seemed to be a really good chance to roll to 6-0 and a 2-game conference lead after three sessions.  The opening set played out that way, with the Masked Bandits rolling out with .600 hitting and winning 20-25.  Still, Denali's sole A-rated player was Setter Rik van den Bergh, and he wasn't going to let this one go without a fight.  Despite the serve receivers pulling a great bump less than half the time (2.12 for the match, 10 errors on 102 receives), the setting was consistently solid.  For the second set, Denali hit .696! That let them narrowly overcome the Raccoons' .545 in a match oddly devoid of blocking (18 combined on the match) and not a lot of defensive rallies (59 combined digs).  In the preview comments, James said he was expecting a 5-set game.  Olmec did not disappoint!  Set three also went to the Wolves, 25-23!  James' Dumpster Divers rallied in the fourth to win soundly 18-25 and we had our set five!  And what a set five it was.  Denali jumped out to a quick 3-0 lead, only for James' lads to rally back.  Points were traded as no one could build a lead, and from 10-10 it stayed within a point of each other!  We'll pick up the action at Albuquerque serving at 14-13 for match point #1, as L Medina pulled a solid receive and van den Burgh set Dunne beautifully for a tool kill to keep it alive!  14-14 and Dunne aces it!  Now Denali's first set point, at 15-14, and the Raccoons didn't flinch: bump, set, kill and 15-15!  It was back-and-forth after that as Albuquerque had chances to seal it at 16-15 and 17-16 only for the Wolves to pull back from the brink time and again before rolling two-in-a-row after a dig/kill to get their second match point at 18-17.  But it was not to be!  Again points were traded and Denali had chances at 19-18, 20-19 before we ended up at 21-20, Denali with the lead and serving, and they got a dig to have their chance!  Only the dig was by the setter, so the Libero had to step and dealt a beauty of a set to OH Hauser. But that was dug too, with Firth flying across the court to save the match point and the return attack... was again dug by Denali's setter, van der Bergh! Again, L Medina had to set, and botched it (1) to Dunne!  Despite the lousy set, Dunne managed to adjust mid-air, switch hands, and got the hit just around the fingertips of Sharpe for the point to fall, and the Denali pulled off the -12 Upset of the Week!  This also tied the top upset of the season-so-far, our highest fifth set of the season (22-20), most total points so far (225) and has left us with a tie atop the Pac 8 at 5-1 where both teams need to be looking over their shoulders at Carlsbad who is lurking at 4-2!  Great match to watch for everyone but Bucknall the Younger, as the upsets keep rolling in from the wild, wild west where the PAC 8 plays!  Can the Trash Pandas rebound and reclaim the conference lead in session 4?  Or will the Wolves hunt down another road win to rename it the Pack's 8?  Tune in next weekend to see!

There were a few other matches of note, and honorable mentions to toss out.  Congrats to James T and Porkopolis, as they held off the Bloodsuckers for a -2 home upset sweep!  How impressive was this one?  Sheboygan played a road 85, tied for third-best this season, and still couldn't topple their bogey team.  Merritt Island pulled a 4-set -3 upset in the WGM group match to take down the Eagles, and finishing at 3-0 thanks to the upset have claimed the overall #5 seed, so congrats are in order for Mark as well!

Speaking of the WGM, who are the betting faves?  #1 seed San Jose has to get an early nod, if they can survive the Chameleons' upset potential in the opener before facing a likely Sasquatch team in the second round (#5 T7!).  #2 Cinci cannot be overlooked either, though they face a potent Portland team that just played an 85-rated team on the road last session.  #3 Pekin?  They have already shown they can play a neutral court 90, so could we see our first home 93 or 94 this season by the Pod People?  #4 Nashville doesn't have it any easier themselves, with the FireFoxes facing a Sheboygan team that has also just played a road 85. Nashville best lineup so far is a home 86, barely enough to even call it an upset if Haiku Holden brings the top line to keep Roy sweating it out. Will the 8-seed Squirrels pull some early wins to challenge for a semis spot?  Will Aires take the Olmec-led Mushroom threat seriously and flex the BullyFrogs' might early?  So much to guess as all the top contenders are going to have to choose between challenging for two conference matches and going for the WGM win, as none of them got an easy draw despite a top seeding!  Good times shall surely be coming to the BUM Report in session 4!  We're already getting a new tower erected at a soon-to-be-disclosed location as our advanced match prediction matrix (i.e. a dartboard) has told us where the best upset is likely to occur!  Where is it, you ask?  Wait 'til the next edition of the BUM Report to find out!