Salt Lake City MLP Recap: Drama, Benching, and Big Announcements

MLP Salt Lake City was kind of boring, but guys, I promise you, I’m going to make this blog post interesting. We’re going to talk about Christian Alshon getting benched by the Ranchers, players getting mic’d up, huge announcements across the league, some crazy drama that happened in basically meaningless matches, and we’ll even do a check-in on Quang Duong, who was playing his first competitive tournament since having his contract terminated by the UPA last month. Last but not least, I’ve got the biggest giveaway to date: We’re almost to 50,000 subscribers on YouTube. One person that subscribes to the channel and follows Lobster Sports on Instagram will be entered to win a Lobster pickle!

The Playoff Picture

Heading into this weekend, there were two playoff spots up for grabs and three teams looking to secure them: The hometown Utah Black Diamonds, The Miami Pickleball Club, and The Chicago Slice. Normally when teams are battling for a playoff spot, they’re winning teams, but if I had to describe the playoff battle between the Slice and the Miami Pickleball Club it would be like when one team has had a bunch of match points on their serve and they dump another third shot into the net and somebody in the crowd yells “They don’t want it.”

The Ranchers actually had a shot to jump the LA Mad Drops and take the #6 position, which comes with a first-round bye and would have put LA into the play-in matches, which is a big deal! Even with that on the line, they decided not to bring their star player Christian Alshon along with them. I’m not sure exactly why Christian was benched, but it gave Wyatt Stone a crack at the lineup, and the Ranchers have a history of utilizing their bench players more than anybody else in the league.

Drama on the Court

Chicago got out to a 2 - 0 lead against the Ranchers, but Wyatt and Kaitlyn were able to clutch up to win their mixed match 13 - 11, Eric and Tina beat James and Callie 11 - 3, then the Ranchers won their very first dreambreaker of the season 21 - 18. Miami then played Chicago head-to-head in a huge matchup for the last spot in the playoffs. They split the doubles so we’re headed to a dreambreaker. It’s 2 - 4 James serving and he hits this combo of forehand to erne. 3 - 4, right? Well, actually, there was a foot fault called. Watch this again and watch the ref on the right side call a foot fault. The Slice decide to challenge it, and on replay, there was clearly no foot fault, so they’re gonna get the point, right…right? After the challenge, it was deemed a replay, which is wild! The ball was way passed Yuta when this was called. The play was completely dead, and the foot fault was called afterwards. It's one thing when an incorrect foot fault is called in the middle of an ongoing rally, but this is rough. Oh well, I’m sure James will just lock in and win the next couple of points. The Slice ended up losing 21-13 in a huge head-to-head matchup, but they weren’t completely out of things yet. They were only two points behind Miami in the standings.

Players Mic'd Up and More

I wasn’t sure exactly where to fit this in the recap, but grandstand players were mic’d up this weekend, and it went about as expected. Let me know in the comments: Do you like players being mic'd up?

On Friday, the Slice got some help from Wyatt Stone who was able to help clinch the win for the Ranchers against Miami in regulation. Perfect, the Slice are back in business. They just need some points against Utah…aaaaand it's gone. Fortunately for the Slice, Miami only scored one point by getting to a dreambreaker against Atlanta which was a very winnable match for them. Wyatt kept winning in mixed, helping the Ranchers to 3 - 1 wins over Miami and the Squeeze, which put them just 2 points behind the Mad Drops with one match left against the Atlanta Bouncers on Saturday? Could they get it done without Christian Alshon on Saturday?

Crowd Chaos and Player Updates

On Saturday, Chicago played Utah, and I’m not even going to talk about the pickleball because it’s irrelevant. This was an interesting match because the crowd was somewhat split. Callie Smith is playing on the Chicago Slice, but she has so many fans in Utah, and obviously the Black Diamonds are the home team, and they had some crazy hecklers that were going absolutely wild like nothing we’ve ever seen before in pickleball.