"Windy City" Invitational tournament preview

2012 "Windy City Invitational"

Tournament Preview

The top 5 ranked teams in the nation and 10 of the top 15 teams converge on the Inwood Sports Complex in Joliet, Illinois this coming weekend.  This tournament should give us an undisputed #1 team as all of the best are coming in this year of parity and upsets.

#1 ranked Demarini/Dirty, who we now know can travel and play well, finally gets to go head to head with some of the Major teams after winning Indiana and Atlanta.  #2 ranked Resmondo has pitcher Andy Purcell back from injury and are healthy for the first time this season.  #3 ranked Laser Vision gets to measure where they stand as they'll have to go through Dirty and Nordkap early on.  #4 ranked Nordkap/Desert Falls coming off a win in Seattle with new player additions Brian Justice and Mike Rhines get to see how they stack up against the best of the best.  And finally can #5 ranked Shoppe, #7 ranked TYJA/Reebok with their new players SS Matt Crawford and 1B Jason Baxter, or #10 ranked Team 454 break through and win a tournament with the top 3 major teams in it?  Find out by checking in live at SoftballCenter.com where I'll have the broadcast camera up starting Saturday for the 11 AM games.  All times are CENTRAL.  I believe fields 2, 3, and 4 are too far away or blocked from view of the scoretowers so I won't be able to broadcast any games on those fields.  The rest of the day will probably be fields #1 and #6.

Nordkap/Desert Falls is currently tied with Resmondo in the points and the 1st tie breaker is Classification (both Major), so the 2nd tie breaker is Class Power Ranking which is based upon wins/losses in class.  Resmondo is 5-2 in class and Nordkap is 1-1.

Windy City bracket Link

Wind is usually a factor in Chicago but this forecast doesn't mention it?

The 6 fields at Inwood are all symmetrical and 300 feet

Lets take a look at the bracket.  There are 35 teams total.  3 Major, 6 'A', 7 'B', 8 'C', 11 'D'

In the top half of the bracket P&P and TG United have to get past 'C' teams on Friday night which is never easy.  But I'll go with Shoppe over P&P, 454 over TG United, Resmondo over Reds (Reds gets a tough draw because of lack of tournaments played unfortunately), and TYJA/Reebok over Linedrive.  This is another tournament Linedrive always plays well and they have a couple of players Dan Hall and Matt Rear who are from the Chicago area.  Linedrive is just 1-6 against the 'A' division though so I'll go against my gut feeling and take TYJA to win.

In the bottom half of the bracket I'll take Demarini/Dirty over Blitz and Laser Vision over the PRI/KBI winner.  PRI beat KBI in Columbus but this is KBI's home field so I'll go with KBI in a good matchup.  The Scene who is in disarray, rumors of the California players being left home, mergers etc and they have to get by a good Precision 'B' team from Chicago in their first game?  Not going to happen.  I'll take Precision in a 32-25 win.  For the rest of this part of the bracket I'll take Nordkap/Desert Falls over the winner of Taylormade and R&M Metals which will be R&M.

So to go to the final 4:
Shoppe over 454
Resmondo over TYJA/Reebok
Demarini/Dirty over Laser Vision (I figured, what the hell, its happened before)
Nordkap/Desert Falls over R&M as stated before.

My final picks:
1) Resmondo (looking to make a statement)
2) Laser Vision (comes out of loser's bracket to beat Dirty in losers championship)
3) Demarini/Dirty (keep that big chip on your shoulders cuz you know there are teams wanting to put you in your place )
4) Shoppe (finally knocks off Nordkap)
tied 5) Nordkap/Desert Falls (still trying to put all the pieces in place and coming off 11 long games last weekend)
tied 5) R&M Metals (time for this team to show us what they got)

There is lots of talk about the rocks and waves in the infields.  This is no joke, this is one of the toughest places for infielders to play.  The teams that accept that and field the hard shots are the ones that will still be standing on Sunday morning.

Final note:  I still don't understand why Resmondo plays on the show field with the same umpiring crew for all of their games, as long as they win, while the team thats tied with them in points only gets the show field once on Friday and won't see that umpiring crew and their strike zone again unless they make it to the winner's bracket championship game on Saturday night at 8 PM?