Joey continues to dominate.
Drew’s season is such a roller coaster with the highs and lows he’s had. This past week an excellent showcase of how good his team is when he combines his threats with defensive pivots. His specs houndoom which was a great bring on his part got a KO every time it came in as vivid had no fire resist. The game came down to some crucial turns of sacking the right pokemon and drew played it perfectly. He utilized stunfisk to prevent a hawlucha sweep and used a extra pokemon lead to get 1 for 1 trades late in the game to seal the deal. Drew could’ve easily choked under the pressure and sacked the wrong pokemon to nidoking but he calculated which pokemon he needed and got the W.

Duncan this week showed just how dominate his team is. Scarf Jirachi plus Tyranitar paired so well together. Jirachi could bait in pokemon that tyranitar wanted weakened like cobalion and blastoise and finish off his tema with a DD sweep. But it was the unlikely hero lurantis that put in the most work. When duncna puts the pressure on his opponents that’s when he is at his best. Duncan struggles when sequencing some of his strategies as we saw in the last week when he attempted trick room. But this week as soon as he got an opportunity with TTAR or Lurantis he knew what to do.
Wolfe really felt the impact of the trade between joey and gator. The lack of prep for breloom really showed. If joey still had volcarona, I felt like tornadus would have been brought and been able to handle that. Wolfe was really overwhelmed at how bulky and strong it was. I felt like he could have played the worry seed tech a bit better by saving it. If the worry seed ability swap didn’t ko breloom, I don’t think using it was worth it. Breloom had too many opportunities to efficiently recover against wolfe’s team. Additionally the blastoise not being zen headbutt also really hurt him. Zen headbutt could’ve dealt with both toxapex and breloom while potentially malntaining a substitute if pex wanted to use recover after a few power up punches. Wolfe is still a top player in this league nad id like to see him bounce back after a tough loss.
Speaking of bouncing back from tough losses that’s exactly what Kelly did this week. However he got a lot of help from Kyle to do that. He took advantage of kyle’s lack of focus and utilized arbok to its absolutely full potential. It absorbed toxic spikes and got several kills. There’s not much to talk about other than that for Kelly. His prep was solid  but he didn’t really get to show off his mons. The moves that Kelly made were very good however. Sableye to deter hazards is great and it works pretty well with serperior and zygarde. Sableye can chip away at the bulky pokemon they don’t like to deal with by knocking off or burning them.  Very good free agent pick ups by him.
Galactic Elliot also made some moves that I’ll talk about but this game was another straightforward game. Turn 1 was very unfortunate for Sacred as he got a crucial KO on aerodactly. And the rest of the game snowballed from there. Aero was a huge threat to his team and eliminating it turn 1 at the potential cost of tsareena was well worth it. Outside of this game however, I really like the moves Elliot made to imrove his team. He changed his sandslash to alola to pair up with his alolan tails and got a garchomp and gurdurr as sturdy rock resist to replace kantonian sandslash. Excellent moves to really strengthen the overall strength of his team.
This week I have gator still at 5. He brought a meme team and won but sometimes you can’t be results oriented. He nearly lost to Azumaril because he played the celebi so recklessly. It was the only pokemon that could really take on azumarill one on one. He does have emvee’s number so that move may have been calculated to throw emvee off for the rest of the game. The last turn of the game was also a bit fortunate but the fact that gator brought a team of banded mons and won paying half attention to the game really shows the talent of gator. Should these two teams face in the playoffs expect gator to play more disciplined and bring a more polished team. Gator’s schedule has been insane thus far this season and he’s been holding up excellently thus far.
Leo kept his undefeated streak alive playing tup. He got pretty unlucky this game by missing a few focus blasts but that’s how the game goes sometimes. It was unfortunate that he was forced to bring that move because ttar’s damage output and bulk warrants the move being brought. However the luck goes both ways as it looked like Leo got a crucial damage roll on musharna which enabled him to win the game with that out of the way. The only question that I still have about that game is why did Alolan dugtrio get outsped by a manaphy.
Emvee is still number 3 despite the loss. I don’t think he played this game optimally but like I said earlier it was a tough roll on the azumarill to win the game. One thing I don’t get is the reasoning behind switching sceptile fromazumarill. If it was banded then gator would have went for a poison jab to get the ko on azumarill and sceptile. It didn’t matter much but its one of the reasons why I like live commented games a bit better so I can truly see why a coach went for a certain play.
Dan once again showed why his gastrodon is so crucial to his team. He’s brought it every week so far and its such a big part to his defensive backbone because it forced Patterz to go with an awkward koko set with natures madness. Quick side note does patters know koko gets uturn? I’ve seen him have volt switch on his koko multiple weeks against defensive ground types that were likely coming to combat it. Ultimately this game was tough because of the unfortunate sleep powder misses. It’s funny how every one of the abiliites venomoth had would’ve been great this week. Compound eyes would’ve helped sleep powder hit, tinted lens allows bug buzz to do massive damage and Wonder skin would’ve let him gamble a bit more with quiver dance and maybe have a coverage move over sleep powder on veno. Dan played this game really well outside o fmaybe playing the game a bit slower. Had Patters been more aware of the fact that dan was using roar as his main way of answering venomoth he could’ve sacked his other pokemon to go for a last mon venomoth sweep. And even then I doubt it would’ve mattered because of how weakened it would have been to hazards.
Joey prepped out of his mind this week. The breloom set was an excellent choice. The combination of breloom plus zeroara made it very awkward for wolfe. Joey used every resource to his advantage especially the surprise factor.  The breloom set was excellentbecause you expect it to carry spore and so wolfe was hesistant to bringin his duoision. The sheer amount of recovery he got from drain punch poison heal and protect doubling up on that heal was incredible. And once again gothitelle shows its worth. Wolfe ran a shed shell set on hismandibuzz to prevent it from being taken advantage of.