Monday, May 05, 2003

For Second Straight Year, Cedar Point Reaches Finals

In last night’s playoff action, Cedar Point held off a late rally from Paramount’s King’s Island to earn the Eastern Conference crown and face off next week in a highly anticipated rematch of last year’s final. Once again, the Point will square off against Six Flags Magic Mountain for the theme park crown.

“I want to shout out and give thanks to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for this great victory, because I know He was with us and will bring us a championship,” said Point guard Troy Hudson. “We came to play, we brought our game face out, and we were the most G’d up tonight.”

The Point almost didn’t return to the finals. After leading their series with PKI three games to one, Cedar Point seemed to relax, and allowed the tough Islanders to dominate them in the next two face/offs. However, the Point, despite facing the scoring of Dirk “Beast” Nowitski and the mad airtime of Tracy “The Vortex” McGrady, outlasted a final last-minute barrage of PKI outside shooting to win 116-112. Shaquille “Mean Streak” O’Neal led the Point with 40 points, while Ben “The Raptor” Wallace notched a timely triple-double to help lead the team to victory.

Cedar Point moves on to play a SFMM team that has won two straight championships, but has looked surprisingly vulnerable this playoff season. In the first round, it took SFMM seven games to earn victory against the undermanned but scrappy eighth seed Family Kingdom, who was led by Swamp “The Answer” Fox and his absurd 38.5 point per game average for the series. After a relatively easy victory over Sea World Texas, the conference final was an epic battle, including five overtime games, which SFMM barely won from a tough young Holiday World squad.

Pregame hype for the championship has already begun. “Last year, Magic Mountain handed us our big Dr. Seuss hat and mopped the park urinals with us,” said Cedar Point coach George Karl. “We had our chances in that series, but the more we tightened our grasp, the more they slipped through our fingers. We’re going to finish this off and do it right this year so that fans of Cedar Point, the best fans on Earth, can celebrate a world championship with their team. We are the Millennium Force!”

--JCK