I admit, I didn’t watch too much of the Eastern regional. This was partly because personal obligations kept me from it and partly for reasons nicely stated elsewhere. Plus, its football season.

• Once again, I went 11-6 in my picks for this tournament. At least I am consistent so far.
• Montreal vs. Dutchland. Neon green on orange. Two light colored jerseys (again). Those with normal color vision may have had no trouble telling them apart in real life or on screen, but anyone with impaired color vision/red-green colorblindness could not. And besides, being able to contrast them visually does not change the fact that its two light colored jerseys in the same game, opposing each other.
• For at least a while Saturday, I had to flip a coin between which blowout to watch- Philly over Boston, or the Ohio State Buckeyes over Eastern Michigan. While Philly/Boston was the far more intriguing matchup, much more of my personal money, through tuition and fees (not to mention time investment), has gone into funding the Buckeyes, so I watched them. Like all blowouts, it was no fun to watch.
• Much ado has been made about scoring errors in the Montreal-Carolina game. All I can say is it went both ways. My opinion is, were the scoring more accurate, Carolina still would have won but by a wider margin. All caveats apply ( I wasn’t there, I couldn’t see cuts and whatnot), and no disrespect toward NSO’s or refs is at all implied here. Human error happens, and its ok, ya just hope over the course of 60 minutes it evens out for both sides. I think in that game it did.
• As in Thunda on the Tundra- lots of official time outs. Lots.
• I actually heard the “hot knife through butter” reference by an announcer. I thought we had gotten beyond that by now. For those unaware, about every 2^nd sentence used by the announcers on the A&E “Rollergirls” show was that phrase. An unwritten rule of derby announcing these days is to avoid that one at all cost!
• Speaking of announcin’, there was a whole lot of players’ name mispronouncin’. No huge deal to me, but that tends to drive the players and their friends/fans bonkers.
• Regarding the many blowouts, I still don’t get why teams aren’t employing various strategies that still allow for hard play, secure a win, but make blowouts more respectable. For example- rest your damn best players! What’s it gonna take, a pointless injury to a superstar in a meaningless game that is already over, preventing that superstar from being able to contribute to the next, more meaningful game, before people get it? I know players pay to play, and wanna be on the track- but this makes no sense in any sport at any level.
• Another way (of many) to kill the clock and limit the ugliness of a blowout- don’t call the jam when you are winning by six zillion points and you are lead jammer. Just let it ride, let your pack play defense and let the jam clock end the jam.
• Carolina is definitely on its way back. Their pack work and blocking is great, they are a good jammer or two away from climbing up the ranks.
• Flopping seems to be on the rise in derby, saw a few good ones on the track this weekend. Flopping (or diving) is the over dramatic reacting to relatively minor penalties/contact in hopes of convincing refs that the action is worse than it was and draw a foul. It’s standard in sports like soccer and basketball, and can be very effective. It’s also hilarious. I am all for more flopping- give us something to laugh about, people! Someone please scour the footage and put together a highlight reel of derby flops.
• Steel City rules, in all ways! They are fun and smart and awesome. Athena and Snot Rocket Science are two of the most underrated derby players in the country.
• I predicted that no final score for a Gotham opponent would be within 50 points of the winning score. Thanks Philly for (impressively) proving me wrong. Still, if you consider averages I was totally on the mark- Gotham won by an insane average of 155 points.

Well that’s all I’ve got this time. I am sure I have made some assumption that deserves being called out, so feel free to use that comment box ya see below to do so and stay tuned for thoughts on the West tournament next week. Oh, and as always, you can keep with my real time deep thoughts on roller derby and all the problems of the world on my twitter page.