One thing is for sure, it is going to be close. A lot of different storylines heading into the last derby of the year for the Marshall Bass Trail.
Team of The Year Race
Going into the last regular event of the year Mike Samples and Lloyd Coleman hold onto the lead with 389 points. On the heels of them are the father-son duo of Tim and Tyler Cline with 386 points.
Tim and Tyler Cline did exactly what they needed to do on Summersville over the weekend by taking the win. The win awarded the duo 100 points. Winning the event put pressure on the current leader’s Mike and Lloyd who had a 7-point lead on them going into Summersville now cut down to 3 points.
October 9th, The Marshall Bass Trail will visit Burnsville Lake for the final regular season stop. With a 3rd place finish or better Mike Samples and Lloyd Coleman can win the Team of The Year Race even if the Cline’s win the event.
This is the first year the Marshall Bass Trail has paid out to the Team of The Year Winners and therefore did not place a rule in case of a tie in points. The Marshall Bass Trail spoke with both the Clines, Samples and Coleman about how a tie would be broken in case of one.
The Marshall Bass Trail decided that in case of a tie for the win, the tied individuals would relaunch their boats back into Burnsville. There will be a team member in each boat to officiate. The first team to boat a 12” legal keeper will decide the winner. A maximum of 2 hours of fishing will be given to the contestants.
Playing a little devil’s advocate, I am sure neither team wants to be in a situation where there is a tie. Although watching from the sidelines I would love nothing more than to see a tie personally and have to go to the tiebreaker. What a turn of events that would be.
The Cup Cut Line
The Top 45 in the points will move on to The Cup as long as they have fished 3 of the Marshall Bass Trail Open Tournaments. Looking at the points race there are currently 61 teams with potential still to make The Cup.
It’s astounding to me that there have been 49 teams that have fished at least 3 of the 4 so far. By far the biggest numbers the Trail has ever seen in its existence.
The current cut line for points is 173 points to make it inside. With double qualifications, the Trail will work down the list for those who have at least fished 3 tournaments.
Current double qualifiers are:
-Bill Shelton/James Pack (Previous year’s Cup Winners) who are currently 8th in points.
-Josh Milam/Eli Milam (Big Bass Winners) are currently 29th in points.
As long as they stay inside the Top 45 cut that will work down to 47th. Which would then put the team of Joey Gress/Rich Holtzapfel and Jerry Bragg/Jeff Ransbottom inside the cut line.
Also, there are currently 3 teams inside the Top 45 cut that have only fished 2 tournaments this year, so currently that would work down 3 more spots if everything was to stay the same.
Projections and On the Bubble:
As mentioned before there are still 61 teams in contention to qualify. As of now the average amount of points to get inside the cut for The Cup is 43.25 points per tournament. If that trend stays true, the number of points you will need to make it inside the Top 45 would be 216 to 217 points to qualify. So, we will say 217 is the projected cutline.
Again, this is all just a projection. But if the cut line is to stay at the 216 or 217 mark everyone inside the Top 30 currently in points is going to be safe from elimination. That being said you never know and the higher the finish in the points, the better the boat number will be for contestants in The Cup.
Everyone that is inside the Top 61 has a shot at it for sure, the only team that might be a long shot for would be Ryan Nottingham/Rick Nottingham. Currently, with 102 points and 2 tournaments, the duo will just about have to win the Burnsville tournament and hope for some double qualifications or other contestants to drop from The Cup field.
The next position up is James Nottingham/Donald Rees who could make the projected cut line with a 6th place finish or better.
Teams that are going to need to weigh in at Burnsville would range from 61st place team to 44th place team who are more than likely going to need to weigh in to make it inside the cut. Some will need more weight than others.
43rd place team up to the 31st place team will have to show up to Burnsville to at least give themselves a chance at qualifying for The Cup. Below is the full points spread!
