Players to Watch: Week Three
Week three of MLQ begins with our marquee regular season matchup in the East: the Boston Forge vs. the New York Titans and continues later in the evening with a hard-hitting affair between the New Orleans Curse and League City Legends. Want to know who you should keep an eye on? Here are four players to watch for week three.
League City Legends
It’s no surprise that the head coach and 2023 leading scorer is a player to watch for the League City Legends. Keeper Hayden Boyes will be extra valuable this weekend when the Legends face off against the New Orleans Curse without chaser Great Usiaphre in their most important series of the season. Boyes will shoulder even more of the playmaking burden than usual, but an increased role for the dynamic ball carrier is not necessarily a bad thing if he can prove his stamina. A challenge for Boyes will be managing his minutes while making strategic adjustments against a sophisticated New Orleans squad. Watch for the Curse to cheat toward Boyes and send double teams to force the ball out of his hands and make other players beat them.
New York Titans
Chaser Josh Johnson could not have waited for a bigger moment to make his debut for the New York Titans. In his first game, he will walk into the best rivalry in quadball, and one of the greatest intercity feuds in sports, with the East Division up for grabs. Both the Titans and the Boston Forge started the season 3-0, meaning both teams will enter with undefeated records as they have so many times before. Johnson’s ability to break tackles and find the smallest openings for shots could be deadly against a Boston defense that will be missing keeper Carsen Olazaba, one of their best tacklers, and uncharacteristically struggled defending the hoops last weekend against the Charlotte Aviators. In his last MLQ appearance, Johnson scored 25 goals and added five assists in six games to lead the Austin Outlaws to the 2023 MLQ Championship title.
Boston Forge
The Boston Forge did most of their damage against the Charlotte Aviators in transition after forcing turnovers in dangerous spots. They will no doubt try to repeat their stellar performance on the fast break this weekend, but it will be difficult to replicate their success against the New York Titans, a team that takes much better care of the ball. Needing to run much more of their offense through the half court, the Forge will turn to chaser Athena Mayor for inspiration. Her passing from the point and her directing traffic offball will be key for Boston to make their matchup with New York into a genuine contest. The Titans will be heavily favored, but an outstanding series from Mayor could help the Forge steal a game, or even potentially the series.
New Orleans Curse
The New Orleans Curse have been led by their beating for years, but after years of steady improvement, beater Alex Pucciarelli took a star turn in 2023. League-wide, she finished top five in drives played, top 20 in stops, and top 30 in average dodgeballs with a minimum of 25 drives played. She averaged 1.56 dodgeballs on a team with a losing record, a mark that no beater besides her partner Josh Mansfield was able to match in high minutes, operationalized as more than 50 drives played. The League City Legends beaters have developed a reputation for being aggressive, and it will be up to Pucciarelli and the rest of the Curse beating corps to exploit their tendencies. She will have to clear wide lanes in transition for their chasers and create windows in the seeking game for New Orleans to come away with the W.
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