Shaun Wilkie (Courtesy Jose Soto)
The Joss NE 9-Ball Tour got the second half of their 2023 – 2024 season underway with eighty-one players at Amazin Billiards in Malden Massachusetts for the 2024 Massachusetts State Nineball Championship.
The right side of the board narrowed down to just four players by the end of Saturday play. That left Sunday morning winners side matches with Dave Hall facing Jimmy Nou and Ranulf Tamba playing Shaun Wilkie. Wilkie made quick work of Tamba 9-3 and Dave Hall made even quicker work of Nou in a 9-0 match.
Those two matches were lopsided, but the hot-seat match was a true battle with Wilkie emerging the winner of a hill-hill match.
Looking back on the four matches that Wilkie won on Saturday, one of those matches was a 9-5 win over young gun Lukas Fracasso-Verner. If Wilkie thought that was all that he would have to deal with from Fracasso-Verner, he was wrong. Fracasso-Verner capped off a nine-match winning streak on the one-loss side, with a 7-6 will over Dave Hall to earn a rematch with Wilkie in the finals.
Fracasso-Verner extended his winning streak to ten straight matches, with a hill-hill 9-8 win over Wilkie in the first set of the finals, but was on the wrong end of another hill-hill match in the second set, as Wilkie won 7-6 to hold on for the tournament win.
Sunday’s second chance tournament saw twenty-three players competing for nearly $1000 in prize money. Dan Sharlow took the hot-seat with a 3-0 win over Jay Aliomer. On the one-loss side, Beau Powers handed Aliomer his second loss, 3-2, and the final match between Sharlow and Powers was set.
Powers won the first set of the finals 3-0, but Sharlow came back to win the second set 3-2 for the win.
The Joss NE 9-Ball Tour is off this weekend but will be back in action on February 17th – 18th with another $1500 added events at Sharpshooters Billiards & Sports Pub in Amsterdam, NY.
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