Elite Men's League · Week 4
Six by One
Thirty games. Six of them decided by a single point. The standings responded the only way they know how, which is by moving.
The second seeded week put the top four on one court and the bottom four on another, and the league answered with 535 points and six 11–10 finishes — a season high, and three times what the previous week managed. The leader went 3-3 and kept first place by two points. A man in the fifth group posted the best night in the league. Nothing about this week was tidy, and the table is better for it.
A season record
The wire, six times
The season's previous high was four one-point games in a week. Week four produced six. Group 1 — the top four seeds, Monday night — played two of them, and they went opposite ways: Jeremy McCann took one 11–10 off Sparkman and Wright, then Sparkman and McCann took one 11–10 back in the night's last game. Group 4 also played two, Group 2 one, Group 5 one. When a format seeds players by standing, this is what it's supposed to produce: games where nobody on the court is the obvious loser. It took four weeks. It arrived all at once.
The seeding did something else, too. Group 1 was the four best records in the league playing only each other, which means somebody in it had to lose a lot — and the table doesn't grade on a curve. Shayne Wright and Jeremy McCann each slipped a place without playing anyone outside the top four. That's the tax on being seeded first, and everyone below them is paying attention.
“Six games decided by a point. The standings didn't get more accurate this week. They got more honest.”
Performance of the week
The best night was in Group 5
Michael Vandenburg went 4-2 on 61 of 66 — the highest points total in the league this week — from the fifth group, on a Wednesday night, with the standings already assuming nothing much would happen down there. Wins of 11–7, 11–6, 11–6 and 11–8, and his two losses were 10–11 and 7–11. Sixty-one points moved him from 18th to 15th, which reads as modest until you notice he did it against players seeded within a few places of him. The seeding is designed to make the middle and bottom groups tighter. Vandenburg took it personally.
Behind him, Matt Malleo posted 58 on a 4-2 in Group 3 and climbed three to eighth — the biggest legitimate climb of the week — with Shane Brown matching the 4-2 on 57 in the same group. And in Group 2, Justin Craig and Brian Blase both went 4-2 on exactly 58, including the 11–10 they won together. Two men, one group, identical nights, and one of them is now sixth.
The race at the top
Two points
James Sparkman went 3-3 and is still first. That is not a criticism of the week — it's a description of the format. A 3-3 in the top group with 56 points is a perfectly decent night, and it left him at 239 of 264 with a lead of two points over second and twelve over third. Four weeks in, first place has changed hands once — Yin held it through week two, Sparkman has held it since — and the top three are separated by 4.5 percentage points. Three weeks remain. The seeding guarantees the top four keep playing each other, which means the gap can only close the hard way.
After Week 4
The top ten
| Rank | Player | Move | W–L | Points | % Won |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | James Sparkman | — | 17-7 | 239 | 90.5% |
| 2 | Jonathan Yin | ▲ 2 | 18-6 | 237 | 89.8% |
| 3 | Shayne Wright | — | 13-11 | 227 | 86.0% |
| 4 | Jeremy McCann | — | 14-10 | 225 | 85.2% |
| 5 | Justin Craig | — | 14-10 | 222 | 84.1% |
| 6 | Brian Blase | ▲ 1 | 12-12 | 217 | 82.2% |
| 7 | Zachary Gragg | — | 13-11 | 216 | 81.8% |
| 8 | Matt Malleo | ▲ 3 | 12-12 | 210 | 79.5% |
| 9 | Jeff Morano | — | 11-13 | 207 | 78.4% |
| 10 | Brett Byron | ▲ 4 | 14-10 | 206 | 78.0% |
Standings are ordered by percentage of available points won. Arrows mark upward movement only. Three players used their one substitution this week; under league rules the substitute's points are credited to them, and those nights are not eligible for the honor roll. The full table of all twenty players is live here.
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