Day one at the Turning Stone Classic XXXII went pretty much as expected, with no real upsets of note. All of the top players advanced into day two without a loss. 

 

The first rounds usually don’t offer many “marquee matches” but it looked like there would be one in the first round matchup between Joss Tour regular Matt Tetreault and Zion Zvi. Tetreault had other plans though, as he cruised to a dominating 9-1 win over Zvi. 

 

Bruce Carroll, who got into the tournament at the last minute because of a no-show, took an early 2-0 lead over former champion Billy Thorpe, but Thorpe quickly righted his ship to tie things at 4-4 and then go on to win the match 9-5. Jim Prather did what he could to give the fans an upset as he fought Johnny Archer to a 4-4 tie before Archer took control of the match and won 9-4. Brandon Shuff was on his way to a convincing win over Jesse Docalavich in the final round of the night when he held an early 6-0 lead. Docalavich wasn’t going to just hand Shuff the win though, as he came back to 6-4 down, to get Shuff’s attention. Shuff then regained control for the 9-5 win. 

 

Upstate Al is providing a free stream of select matches on his Facebook page and the noon (Eastern Time) match looks like a great one between Shane Van Boening and Johnny Archer. We are providing complete coverage of the event with online brackets and real time scoring for the duration of the event. 

Jeremy Sossei earned his third Joss NE 9-Ball Tour stop win of the year (and second in as many stops) on April 27th – 28th at Brickhouse Billiards in North Syracuse, NY. While he would eventually get to the finals and pull off the win, it wasn’t smooth sailing like it has been for at earlier event this season. 

 

Sossei started out the event with wins over Len Gianfrate, Tony Antone and Jesse Docalavich, but had his Saturday spoiled late by Nate Marshall, who scored a hill-hill win to send Sossei to the one loss side. Sossei bounced back from that loss in style and beat Steve Lamontagne 7-1 to close out the day. 

 

Sunday play saw Marshall drop his first match of the day to Hendrick Drost 9-5, while Geoff Montgomery was sending Dwight Dixon to the one loss side 9-4. Drost would then go on to take the hot-seat over Montgomery 9-2.

 

Sossei scored wins over Bruce Carroll (7-0) and Dixon (7-5) to reach the final four on the one loss side. Sossei would not get a chance to avenge his loss to Marshall as Len Gianfrate eliminated Marshall 7-4 in 5th place. The opponent didn’t matter to Sossei though, as he then eliminated Gianfrate 7-5. The only person left standing between Sossei and the finals was Montgomery, and Sossei ended that opposition quickly with a 7-2 win. 

 

The final match between Drost and Sossei was true double elimination, where Sossei scored a 9-4 win in the first set and then a 7-3 win in the second (and deciding) set for first place. 

 

Sunday’s second chance tournament saw Aaron Greenwood lose his first match of the day, but come back with seven straight match wins (including both sets of the finals against Nick Coppola) for first place. 

 

The Joss NE 9-Ball Tour is back in action this weekend (May 4th – 5th) at Raxx Pool Room in West Hempstead, NY.