Shane Van Boening
The final day of the 2011 Mosconi Cup got underway and the pool world was wondering how team Captains Charlie Williams and Johan Ruijsink would set up their rotations for the day's play.
Ruijsink set Nick van den Berg as his first player to give the Dutch player a chance to redeem himself after the heartbreaking hill-hill loss on day three. Meanwhile, Charlie Williams might have heard some of the talk criticizing Team USA for their lack of experience in high pressure situations against International players and went with the player on his squad with the most experience, Shane Van Boening.
Things did not start out well for Shane as he misses his first shot after the break in rack one. From there though, Van Boening was perfect.
Van den Berg ran out that first rack, but returned the favor in rack two as he missed a long straight in 8-ball allowing Van Boening to knot the score at 1-1.
The two players exchanged break and runs for a 2-2 scoreline and then Van Boening inched back ahead at 3-2 with another break and run.
The deciding point of the match was an error in judgement by van den Berg. After a successful break in rack six, the Dutchman had no path to the one ball. He opted to push out and left Van Boening a long straight one ball with the cue ball frozen to the short rail. Van Boening took his time and slow rolled the ball in with perfect shape, then proceeded to run out the rack for a 4-2 score.
A break and run in the next rack by Van Boening led to a 5-2 lead for the Shane. He had held a lead of 5-2 over van den Berg in day three, only to watch van den Berg fight back to 5-5. That would not happen this time as van den Berg got out of line early in his rack eight run and was forced to sit and watch Van Boening run out for the 6-2 win. The win brought the over score to 10-6 Europe.
Next up, Johnny Archer vs Darren Appleton.
