Bucky Souvanthong, Brickhouse Billiards Owner Brian Holmes and Len Gianfrate
At the first stop on the Joss NE 9-Ball Tour back on October 2nd and 3rd, Ron Casanzio came through the one loss side to steal first place from Bucky Souvanthong. On the second stop of the season, at Brick House Billiards in Syracuse, Casanzio was no where in sight and no one could stop Souvanthong.
Souvanthong was one of the few players to miss an opening round bye in the field of 38 players, and he kicked things off with a 9-5 win over Tim Davis. He followed that up with another 9-5 win over Ray Ortiz, and he pretty much cruised from there. A 9-0 win over Mike Houppert and a 9-4 win over Nick Coppola finished off Saturday play for Souvanthong.
Sunday dawned with Souvanthong facing Jamie Garrett on one side of the brackets, and Len Gianfrate taking on Nick Brucato on the other. Gianfrate won a tight 9-7 match over Brucato and Souvanthong scored a much more comfortable 9-4 win over Garrett. Souvanthong then went on and took the hot-seat with a 9-3 win over Gianfrate.
On the one loss side, Rohit Aggarwal was a “man on a mission”. He had dropped his first round match to Tim Feathers hill-hill, but fought back with five straight wins on the left side of the board, three of those wins being hill-hill affairs. Aggarwal came back on Sunday for a forfeit win over Bryan McDaniel and then another hill-hill win, this time over Brucato. Aggarwal then defeated Garrett 7-4 to earn his shot against Gianfrate in the semi-finals.
Any momentum that Aggarwal had gained with his run of nine straight match wins was stifled immediately, with Gianfrate ending Aggarwal’s run with a 7-0 whitewash.
The final match, a rematch between Souvanthong and Gianfrate, looked a lot like their first meeting with Souvanthong winning it by a comfortable 9-4 margin.
Sundays second chance tournament saw Aaron Greenwood take the hot-seat with wins over Jason Reese, Doug Wells, Nick Coppola and Nate Marshall. Marshall earned a hill-hill win over Coppola in the semi-finals to earn another shot at Greenwood in the finals. Marshall handed Greenwood his first loss of the day in the first set of the finals with a 3-1 scoreline, but Greenwood bounced back to take the second set 3-2, for first place.
The Joss NE 9-Ball Tour is back in action this weekend with another $1500/$500 added event at Utica Billiards on the Boulevard in Utica, NY.
