Mob loom as postseason benchmark, Moragne leads Lava challenge

Bryce Moragne gave Lava its cleanest answer to the Mob problem. The first name called in the 2023 SlamBall Draft was averaging 24.5 points and had already piled up 14 dunks, and he had done it after a college run at Florida A&M that produced 8.3 points and 6.2 rebounds per game. Mason Gordon had described Moragne as the most complete player SlamBall had ever seen.

That was the only way to attack a Mob team that opened Week 2 at 4-0, was winning by 29 points a night, and led the league at 64.3 points scored and 35.5 allowed. The Mob also shot 57.1 percent, the only club above 50 percent, and turned it over just 9.5 times per game. In a league built on bursts, those numbers were suffocating. If the Mob were going to lose, somebody had to drag them away from pace, punish every empty trip, and turn the game into a possession fight instead of a highlight reel.

Lava had at least shown it could stay in that kind of fight. Its first two losses came by four points each, which mattered in SlamBall more than a comfortable-looking record ever would. Faysal Shafaat was the anchor there, posting eight stops in each of Lava’s first two games and leading the team with 11 loose-ball recoveries. That was the blueprint for an upset against the Mob: force contact, collect the loose balls, and make Moragne the finisher on enough possessions to matter late.

The same logic explained why the Gryphons could not be dismissed despite averaging just 33.5 points per game. They were allowing only 41.5, one of the cleaner defensive lines in the field, and their dunk conversion rate of 72.7 percent was one of the best in the league. Justin Holmes led them with 26 points and Connor Hollenbeck with 16 stops, while Ozone entered as just a 2.5-point favorite in that matchup. In a sport where one run can flip a night, those margins mattered.

Thursday night’s 8 p.m. ET return on ESPN2 gave the league its showcase, and the Mob kept setting the standard everyone else had to chase. Moragne was the best individual answer on the board, but the broader reality held: the unbeaten Mob were already pulling away from the field, and they later finished 16-0 with a semifinal bye.