Thoughts.

I felt good going in to Brown, and I felt pretty damn good leaving it, too. Dartmouth rolled to a second-place finish at Brown’s Huck-a-Hunk-a Burning Pumpkin tournament after losing to the home team in the finals.

Game Recaps:
Vs Brown B
Do I really need to say anything? We put up a bagel on them. I think they had one time where a huck was almost caught in the endzone by Brown B…but they dropped it. 13-0. We used the game to get ourselves set to play, things already looked fairly solid in this game.

Vs BU
We came into the game with BU expecting to be challenged, and we stepped up our game accordingly. BU couldn’t keep up with us, and we took half up 7-3, I think. We came out of half committed to the idea of not letting up, and continued to roll to a 13-5 victory. Probably the highlight of this game was BU’s main handler (Nate?) who had the most convincing backhand huck fake I’ve seen (though he apparently never actually throws from that position). At one point Socks and I were in a clam on their handlers and he goes with this fake–not only does Socks leap to get in the way on the mark, but I, poaching off my open-side handler mark, also jump to try and stop the throw, which is just a fake. Ironically enough, Nate then passes to his now-poached handler compatriot, who proceeds to drop the pass. I don’t have any other real memories of highlights, just general dominance on both sides of the disc from us.

Vs UMass
After a bye we lined up against UMass, not really knowing what to expect but anticipating better competition than the last two games. The game started off tight, I think, but we rattled off a few unanswered breaks to take half on a seemingly out of it UMass, 7-3 or 4. I may be remembering this incorrectly but I think UMass breaks us right out of half to pull themselves right back into it, and we trade points for a bit, UMass slowly chipping away to bring it to 11-10, the cap meaning Dartmouth needs to score the next point or face a universe point. We take care of business to get the 12-10 win. Again I’m at a loss for highlights–my memory is a bit fuzzy on Saturday right now–but we ran hard, and frustrated UMass with a couple different defensive looks.

Sunday!

Vs Harvard
Somehow the seedings and format had us playing Harvard in quarters. It only sort of made sense in the format. Anyways, we start this game off VERY strong, throwing clam, zone, and man in succession and getting breaks with each to take a 3-0 lead as Harvard calls a timeout. They come out of their TO better able to deal with our D, not sure what the halftime score is but we take half by a couple points. At some point Harvard starts throwing zone against us with good success, getting enough breaks to force a universe point. We work it down and score on a floaty huck from Poohface that Dermott reels in (not the first or last time he does that Sunday) for the score. Despite it coming to universe the game had a more relaxed feel for me than I’d have expected. Maybe it’s just playing Harvard and being unable to feel intimidated by players you’ve given nicknames such as “Dreamboat” and “Uncle Moneybags” to. We win 10-9, in any case.

Vs Tufts (semis)
(semi-)Finally, a rematch with our season-enders from the past year. Compared to the relative tightness of the last game (or at least the second half of the last game), we do a pretty good job of running Tufts around and rebound from an early deficit to win 13-8. We had some early easy turns due in part to yours truly with a drop and an ill-executed jugular pass, but Tufts’ early lead was more endemic of our own mistakes than Tufts overmatching us (a theme of all of our games), and that we came back to win so commandingly is proof of that. This was probably my worst game of the tournament, I got off to a slow start, but I moved on and kept playing my ass off and did my part to make up for my errors instead of getting into my own head. Definitely played solid D this game, and apparently Tufts earmarked me as one of Dartmouth’s “studs” and matched me up accordingly. I also got a few pats on the back during the postgame handshakes after this game from Tufts players, which was really cool. I’m kind of a big deal!

Vs Brown (finals)
This ain’t yo’ Purple’s Brown. The addition of C-Mo meant we’d have a whole new factor to reckon with in this game, though he wound up being less of a factor, relatively speaking, than anticipated. Mahoney got several D’s against us and did flex a bit of deep game muscle, but by and large we did a good job of limiting his impact as far as simply being a deep target in every point. The relative difference in his impact may also be due to the fact that Brown hosed us fairly decently, 15-9. The early goings were at least somewhat close, we were broken a couple times to start, but we got one back and I think were only down one or two at half. Brown continued to roll and we couldn’t keep up, however. It wasn’t so much that we were overmatched, but we gave Brown the disc a fair bit and had mixed success getting it back as Brown did a good job converting. This was probably my second-worst game of the tournament, relatively speaking. I got off to another bad start, getting the force mixed up on the first point and twice getting beating by Brown’s fast guy to the cone in the endzone. I was pretty pissed with myself for letting myself be beaten, I was starting to feel the fatigue from playing so much and wasn’t capable or willing to go as full-tilt for as long as I expected. I wound up sitting out more points this game in part due to that fatigue and in part because we decided to open things up in the rotation to get fresh legs, a decision I definitely endorse and think we should try and do earlier and more often (without sacrificing team capability) in the future.

Great tourney. We played very well, with solid D looks, our core of returners looking very good, and some solid play from our young’uns, too. Personally I was very happy with how I played–I don’t know if I could say any one game was my best–maybe the BU game–as I feel like I played very well in all of my games, playing a bunch of points and putting in a solid effort on O and D. I was very happy with my athleticism for the weekend–I took it easy the week/week and a half before Brown, in part due to being a little under the weather, and the recovery showed on the field. My knee even held up all weekend (though I did take a fair bit of ibuprofen), which was a very encouraging sign going into my next training cycle. Seigs showed up and offered guidance for much of the tournament, which was greatly aprpeciated (though it would’ve been real nice if he hadn’t claimed a couch and not slept in it, as I slept on the floor nearby unknowingly…). Personal highlight of the tournament was off the field; I think it was me, Chimpo, and Downtown who ran into some UMass guys who were apparently already drunk at 9:30 (we were getting stuff from Will’s car), and one of them was all “hey, great game Dartmouth…see you at the party tonight?” and I was all “uh…maybe” and he just goes “That’s a no from Dartmouth’s fastest man.” Hehe. “Dartmouth’s Fastest Man!” I like it. Though I don’t know if it’s actually warranted just yet, it’s a nice indicator of the effect on other teams I have on the field (and plan to continue to have).