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As the qualification advances, Onnereds are getting better. The shift to 3-2-1 defense turned out crucial since it managed to make up for the absences. After that, they have to wins home against top tier Ricoh and Skovde and two close losses away against the same opponents. They are at the same time rivals for Onnereds, which Aranas no longer are. The visitors secured a spot in top division and I don't think they can put up a fight good enough for a win over a team that needs points and is getting better each next game. Details

The only reason behind this margin is the first h2h in which Leoben play a 31-31 draw against Hard. But, a lot has changed since. Barisic-Jaman scored team high 12 goals for Leoben and Markez scored team high 8 for Hard. Barisic is no longer at Leoben and Markez joined to replace him. He's good on the offensive end, having scored 8 goals in the last match but he is too lonely. Besides, the defense is horrible without Jaman. Leoben conceded 41 goal without him three days ago, and Hard reshuffled for the most part of the second half. Magelinskas had to use most of his starters all the time. Markez joined Hard last summer because the team lost first choice right back to an injury and the first middle back. Both of them are now back. If it hadn't been for hose, Markez would not have played an important role at defending champions. He's is far from top players at Leoben, which only goes to show how far they are above their opponents quality-wise. Hard will be happy only with the title, while Leoben only want to stay in the league, which already happened. I expect Hard to display dominance once again, especially since it's this part of the season. Details

The key to this match is the absence to Lugi's captain Danielsson, who is irreplaceable in both offense and defense. Lugi are in a 2-1 lead in this series thanks to her and despite Skovde's better game. I don't think Brljic's team can get away once again, especially since there is no one to step in at the pivot position. Left wing Ringdahl will have to take that over and probably won't be able to make room for her back players like Danielsson did. I think Lugi will have just as many problems in defense. Lagerquist has been out with a broken knee for a while now, which means the visitors are without two key defense players today. They only have Ringdahl to count on, but she's not used to played for 60 minutes, which is what today's game will require her to do. I doubt that can do Lugi any good and I expect this series to go on for another final match. Details

I don't understand where this margin for the goals is coming from. The first match ended at 48, and the goalies Sedojkina and Ungureanu didn't perform as expected. There were about ten unbelievable goals, and I don't think that can happen again. Still, the biggest plus is this duel's importance: these 60 minutes will take someone to F4 in Budapest. The second Baia Mare's goalie Arenhart already said a lot by saying her team "will value every ball double". So, we can't expect a lot of running, but long and disciplined offenses. The same applies to Dynamo who are a better team defensively. Their only good offensive player is Kočetova. She scored everything she tried in the first match, and the Romanians will pay more attention to her tonight. If they manage to guard her better, Volgograd will go down to a margin of about 20 goals, and that definitely solved any worry about the under. All in all, I don't expect this match to end up with more goals than the first one. Details

4 h2h games this season, none of which finished with more than 50 goals speak volumes of the game-styles these opponents have. The pace in the first part of the season was not too fast and is now even slower. Two matches in the battle for avoiding relegation finished with a total of 92 and 86 shots, which means both teams need to have efficiency of well over 50% to go over the set margin. Since the points from this match are extremely important, for Aarau especially, under seems to be a very likely outcome. The mere fact home team have not scored more than 23 goals in any of the last 7 games is an extra reason. Details

Head-to-head record might be deceitful in this game. The previous Savenhof-Skovde matches finished with more than 55 goals but they were all played before the drastic change in tactics at Savenhof after which they focus on defense. Their average number of goals dropped significantly since and the have 13 unders and 4 overs at this margin since. That became particularly obvious against team that are good in fastbreaks (like Skovde): 47 in the Drott game, 43 against Redberglids, 47 and 51 against Guif. One game with the defending champions Alingsas finished at 38, the other one at 51. Skove have been slowing the pace down as well as the games became more important to finish with unders in the last 4 games. Since this is a game of utmost importance that will decide which is the opponents will end up in Kvalserien, I expect another under. Details

Lugi are focusing on their defense, and tonight their one defensive player will definitely be missing (Engdahl), and captain Monti Danielsson, with whom she creates the middle block, almost surely won't perform because of influenza. Danielsson is also very important in the offense because she opens a lot of space for backs, and when she's out she's replaced by Ringdahl. The problem for the away team is that she's sick and her performance is questionable. For the experienced Skovde who will find their way around on the other side of the court, this is a situation they simply have to use. Key players are in very good shape, and I'm convinced they will win in front of their fans. Besides, Lugi's strategist Brljevic is already turning towards their second match, nowing that his team has one home game more in these series. Details

This margin is a surprise since these two teams went over it in 9 out of the last 10 games. The only match that was an under is their last one h2h, which Savenhof won 19-25 away. That game is not relevant because it happened right after Savenhof's disappointing performance against Metz and just before the match against Larvik away. That forced them into slowing down the pace, which is not to be expected today since they had 2 weeks to prepare for game. Savenhof will be fierce in fastbreaks, they will have first choice left back Alm today, who is the most efficient player next to Oden. On the other hand, Torabi will be back at Eslov today. She is one of their top offense players and that should result in less saves for the goal keepers on both sides (did brilliantly in the last h2h). Wingemo will definitely not do as well - finished with 14/39 last match just because Savenhof slowed down the pace. The defending champions had 11 shots off target, which helped too. Savenhof's goal keepers finished at 17/36 but Eslov were very limited offense-wise back them. Torabi and a few other players were out and the coach had only 9 players + goal keepers on the list. Things will be different today and most importantly, Eslov's coach said he will force the fast pace, even though it potentially meant fastbreaks. Details

Balaton are the typical under team. Everything there is about defense, with almost no running present in their performances. That resulted in an average of 51.6 in their games this season. Their first h2h with Szeged finished at 53 goals. The visitors' games average 57.4 goals but mostly because they were super-productive against poor-performing teams. As soon as they were faced with better opponents like Balaton or Tatabany, they would finish under this margin, at 53, 52, or 48 goals. Since this is a very special situation as they just played a very tough match with Lowen only two days ago, I don't think Szeged will be up for running today. Pastor would bring the pace down in similar situations in the second part of the last season and give more room to substitutes. That saw their game with the flying Oroshazi finish at 55 goals away. Details

Drott showed this season that they have problems with rock solid defenses. Malmo are one of those, and they were too big of a task for the opponents both times earlier this season. The guests celebrated 28-26 and 28-22, back when they didn't play nearly as good as after the WC. No wonder because the first two shooters (Lonn, Persson) are back on the team. Better offense means less chances for the opponents' fastbreaks, and that's the only way Drott can win. Since they didn't in the previous two matches, when Malmo had a much weaker roster, I don't think they will today. Especially because these 60 minutes are the key of the season, and an experience of playing many big games is definitely on the guests' side. Details

If Polten didn't acquire the new goal keeper Vran and thus put more emphasis on defense, this margin would have made sense to some extent. But, given the current situation, it seems way too high. While both matches in the first part of the season finished at 60 goals, the first one this year finished at 51, making it very clear what kind of consequences will the change in Polten's game style have. The visitors proved that that game was no exception against Schwatz, who are style-wise closer to Linz than any other team in the league. That game finished at 43 goals. Both coaches are calling for focus in defense today, meaning we shouldn't expect either team to play fast-paced game. Especially not Linz, who like battles of defenses. In accordance to that, this should finish at some 50 goals if the goal keepers have an average performances. Better performances could see this end like Polten's match with Schwatz. Details

Thun are definitely the most powerful home team of the Swiss league. It's common knowledge that a pretty rough game is allowed in their arena, and they're using it the best way possible. In 12 home matches this season, they got 12 wins. Thun didn't take a point from this arena since December 2011. They got eight defeats in the away matches played there since, and that series will probably continue. A few of the guest players came down with something, and even when they're completely healthy, the Otmar can't really rotate much. Everything will depend on their starters today, and their pivot and the first right wing aren't playing as well as expected. Otmar didn't gt a win in circumstances like those even at home against Kriens, and this challenge is much more demanding. Thun are a better team in general, and when they get a home court advantage, that means a mission impossible for the guests this season. Details

Under on the Swiss matches for staying in the league will become a default bet. The teams that struggle to stay in the league, like Gossau and Stafa, play a lot more disciplined compared to the regular part of the season. Bern are the only team that run a lot, and Staga managed to end the match against them with 47 goals total. The first one against Gossau in this part of the competition stayed at 43, and I don't expect the one today to go over more than 10 goals plus. Actually, they'll hardly get to the margin of 50 goals. There's also a plus of the home team not being able to rely on the top scorer Naf, so the guests' defense should have it even more difficult. Stafa aren't a team that scores a lot in general, so I don't believe they'll stuff Gossau's net, in what they say is the key match of the season. Details

The first head-to-head finished at 40 goals and I really don't see a reason for this to go over 50 especially because Richo's top goal keeper recorded only 4 out of 25 saves in the first h2h which stayed well under this margin. Damberg made things a bit better with 4/7 in the end. Larsson had 10/25 for the other team. As you can notice, it was a match with very little shots on goal. Only 76 were fired, which means the efficiency to get over this margin should be 65% today in case the number of shots remains the same. That kind of efficiency is mission impossible because both teams are defense-oriented and both will probably be without one of their top scorers - home team without Jepson, visitors without Konradsson (?). IFK will maybe manage to make up for him but Ricoh are powerless offense-wise without Konradsson. Even with him, he scored 15 goals against Kristianstad. On top of everything, there's the good defense performances by both teams. IFK conceded 21 and 16 goals in the last 2 rounds, Ricoh 23 and 22 against two good-quality teams Alingsas and Malmo. Details

Polten won te first head-to-head of the season with a narrow 31-30 but teams pretty much went in completely different directions since. Leoben lost Barisic -Jaman, who scored 8 goals back then, while Polten acquired good-quality goal keeper Vran and stabilized the defense even more. The progress was obvious against Leoben when they won 27-34 in the early in the second stage of the competition. I don't think they will fail home, before their fans, who are known to be as one of the trickiest fan groups in Austria. The visitors admit that they cannot play consistently since Jaman left and that is not way to beat Polten, who are on a roll. Details

Kadetten are on a 7-game winning run against Winterthur, three of which this season. Baur's team covered the handicap in each of the games this season, despite having quite a few injury-struggles. They won by 5 goals in the Supercup even though Pfadi had Bajram-Čorovic-Maros on the team. None of them will play today, and Maros had 5/6 in that last game. Kadetten won the first league match by 7 goals when Pfadi were complete, while Kadetten didn't have the right back Stojanovic and new acquisition Csaszar, both of whom will be there today. Pfadi hosted the third h2h this season, they were complete again while Kadetten already had Stojanovic back then while Csaszar joined later Stojanovic finished that match with a 5/11 record. Since Baur has Csaszar to count on today and this is a home game for them, which means a packed arena, I don't expect Pfadi to end their losing streak, especially since they miss a lot of players compared to the first three meetings. Details

The first head-to-head of the season finished at 57 goals with Alignsas's goal keeper Frisk finishing with staggering 24 saves. It was a game that came in the most unfortunate moment for the defending champions. Franzev's team was not completely fit back then but still scored 30+ goals even without the brilliant Konradsson. The flow at visiting attack should be better now. Middle back Adolfsson is back at Drott. He is their central figure, both teams have middle backs back and that should result in more goals than the first match. Especially since both often play fast pace. Details

The first match these two teams played ended at 49 goals in what was a weird match, to say the least. The first half-time ended at 28, and the goalies were great (Stefanišin eight saves in the first 12 min), and it seemed this match would end in a convincing over. But the second part and technical faults on both sides killed it. Even then, the final result was close to the margin. It's hard to expect the same thing to happen again.
What seemed to be the minus today was that Pineau left, but that won't be the case. She couldn't play for the life of her lately. She tried everything, and actually killed Krim's flow. She did play the defense okay. Still, her departure might actually be a great thing for her former team. The middle back Luzumova should give her part today. She didn't play in the first because of an injury, so the left wing Frey had to organize the game. 34 goals against Leipzig confirm that their offense is much better when the Czech national team player is there, because Leipzig are a very defensively powerful team, with a great goalie Schulke. Krim are exactly the opposite, they play fast like Thuringer do, their defense isn't that important, and so I expect this duel to end at 55+ goals. Details

Even when they had a much weaker lineup at the beginning of the season, playing without a few starters, Hard managed to win here by four goals difference. Today, the only one missing is the middle back Krsmančić, but it seems they don't have any issues with organizing the offense even without him. WW's rival Fivers witnessed that in the last round, where Hard defeated them by 8, and that team are considered their biggest rival in the battle for the title. It only shows how powerful Hard are when they're complete (or at least close to it). The leaders are clearly admitting it and saying they're going to the capital to win, which isn't at all surprising. Details

The matches of the league in which teams fight to avoid relegation are a whole different thing compared to regular season games and these two teams proved it. Their regular season games a+finished at 52 and 59 goals, while the first one in this league finished at 41. Aarau played without their top player in offense and that will happen today again. When that is the case, they rely on their defense and very good goal keeper entirely, which saw them finish even the Stafa game with only 41 goal. Gossau played Stafa at 43 goals and both teams went over this margin in this league only against Bern, which is no surprise given Bern's pace and individual quality that sees them score more than 30 goals against the weaker competition easily. We have two close teams meeting today, the stakes are extremely high, and we are in for a tough battle from start to finish. Details