Regular season play in the San Diego Hoops basketball league came to a spectacular close this week with The Loft upsetting Kickers in the opening game of the night, to shake up the standings before going into playoffs next week.

Four weeks ago, Moby Dick’s coach David Valenzuela, after losing in an upset to Brians’/Hummingbird, predicted that there would be some shake-ups in the league standings before the end of the season.

“It’s going to be a run to see who ends up where,” Valenzuela said. “It’s going to be fun. I think the playoffs are going to be very interesting.”

Little did he know that his team would be benefiting from one of those upsets in this, the final week of play.

Game one of the night pitted the 9-4 Kickers team in a three-way tie with Moby Dick’s and Fusion for second place in the league, against the 5-8 Loft team that was tied for fifth place with Brians’/Hummingbird. Kickers jumped out to an early lead in the game, but by half time The Loft had managed to narrow their lead in a two-point game.

“They got up by about seven or nine, and we called a timeout and moved the defense and told everyone to play really tight defense and guard the cut – and we did that and came back in the game,” The Loft’s Julius Williams said. “Our offense really wasn’t hurting us, but our defense really made the difference in the end.”

The Loft tied things up, seven minutes into the second half off a shot by Dan Taylor, to make it a 34-34 ball game. Both teams kept their defense tight and held each other scoreless for an intense five minutes of play. Kickers tried to break away but The Loft was on top of them, matching them point for point until they got a jump on them with six minutes left in the game, and kept up the lead, making it a 48-38 ballgame at the buzzer.

“Chrissy [Ingals] was a consistent player for us tonight,” Williams said, following the game. “She had a couple of big shots in the first half to get us back in the game. She had a couple of great defensive plays and at the end she came down and hit a couple of free-throws too.”

Dan Taylor led The Loft’s scoring with 17 points, with Rick Kilgore contributing 13 to the win. The leading scorer for Kickers was Jonathan Knapp with 16 points. Robert Wiggins pitched in a total of 11 points in the game but The Loft defense only allowed him two of those points in the second half.

For The Loft, the win helped them maintain the tie for fifth place in the league with Brains’/Hummingbird who also chalked up 70-40 win against Powerhouse Gym. The Loft and Brians’/Hummingbird split with a 1-1 record in head-to-head competition, but with a great total points scored, The Loft picked up the number-five seed in the playoffs.

For Kickers, the loss knocks them out of the tie for second-place with Fusion and Moby Dick’s. In this week’s games, Fusion secured a second place seed with a 47-31 win against Pecs. Morgan Stanley, whose one loss this season was at the hands of Moby Dick’s, got their revenge this week beating Moby’s 42-32. The loss put Moby’s into a tie for third place in the league with Kickers, who they beat twice this season in head-to-head competition, thus securing the third-place seed”.