Shock take on Yard Dawgz and bad spelling practices

When Spokane Shock Director of Communications Kevin Maloney had to put together a game preview for last week's game against Tri-City, I'm pretty sure he was hard-pressed to write anything other than "we should completely stomp this team."

This week should be a bit tougher with the Oklahoma City Yard Dawgz. In fact, it should be the biggest test of the Spokane Shock in a long time. With the exception of Boise, everybody else is gawd-awful in the division.

Factor in (and you have to factor this in) that the Shock are probably the most talented and well-run organizations in the league and you basically have the equivalent of the Red Sox playing in the AL West. This week was the 15th straight time they were ranked above everyone else in the coaches poll.

WEEK 14 TOP 16

RANK	TEAM	PTS
1	Spokane	381 (21)
2	Tulsa	354 (3)
3	W-B/Scranton	334 (1)
4	Tennessee Valley	297
5	Boise	292
6	Arkansas	258
7	South Georgia	241
8	Iowa	206
9	Kentucky	195
10	Green Bay	171
11	Oklahoma City	161
12	Bossier-Shreveport	146
13	Rio Grande Valley	126
14	Florida	62
15	Manchester	53
16	Albany	42

As you can see, Oklahoma City is ranked 11th and was actually undefeated in early May. However, a nasty five-game losing streak dropped them in the poll. Since then they've won three in a row and scored 93-points last week against Corpus Christi.

In other words, the Shock can't sleep on this 7-5 team.

And really, any self-loving Pacific Northwest fan would love to see the Shock kick the mother-loving crap out of a team from Oklahoma City, who's fans seem absolutely fine with stealing an NBA franchise from Seattle. If anyone from the Shock is reading this, I would beg them to go in for the kill and a player needs to bust out a Sonics jersey at some point in the game.

Preferably when they're up by 40.

Oh and don't forget, we'll be running a live game blog as Dylan Kitzan will be watching from the press box, so stay tuned!