Thoughts.

The Pain Train rolled into Vegas this weekend a collection of ultimate players, and rolled out looking less like a mishmash of players and more like a team than before (albeit with work still to be done).

We went 4-5 on the weekend, winning our last 3 games on Sunday to win the 25th place bracket. Considering that several of our losses were teams that either went on to upset top seeds or were top seeds themselves, it could be said that we played better than our record.

Short game-by-game recaps below:
Game 1: vs UChicago
We rolled fairly easily in this game. I think we won 13-7 or 8? A good way to start of the tourney, as Chicago is a pretty loose, fun team to play against and going in we felt we overmatched them enough that we didn’t have to put a lot of pressure on ourselves to perform to get the W.

Game 2: vs Colorado
Pretty much the opposite of the Chicago game, as we were rolled fairly easily. Colorado moved the disc very effectively, and in the words of Dan Yi, they “created space extremely well,” which they used with good effect deep and short to score. On O we were able to deal with Colorado’s defense, but our O was not clean and we gave Colorado plenty of chances to break as a result which they capitalized on. I think the final score was in the vicinity of 13-6. Of note during this game–I tweaked my left ankle yet again. Took most of the first half off, and was back in towards the end of the game with a brace for support.

Game 3: vs Texas A & M
This was a solid matchup. With two byes separating this game from our last one, we came in well-rested. We got off to a very poor start, a couple miscues and short turns allowing Texas to go up 5-1 on us, but from that point on I think it’d be fair to say we dominated the game. After getting off to a slow start personally in the first two games, I finally got my legs back under me, so to speak, and made some nice plays deep on D and O. Though we dominated the game after going down early, we didn’t dominate enough to make up for the early deficit. I think we may have lost 13-11 or 10? In any case, this ended our first day.

Game 4: vs UCLA
A good game to start off day 2, we played a close game with these guys. I think it was around this point that we really started to diagnose and make progress in our O’s struggles in terms of disc movement and setting the stack, a positive trend that would continue for the rest of the tourney. This was another fairly close loss (I never kept track of score throughout the tourney); ultimately, we played well, but unforced errors and turns kept us from capitalizing (which would become the story of the tournament).

Game 5: vs …? I can’t remember
My mind’s a blank on this one (this is what happens when I recap still tired from traveling back). We lost, but it was close? We definitely played really well in this game, we all went into the next game feeling pretty good. In any case, after this game we immediately faced…
(UPDATE: CalTech. No Boo this year to run an anti-Boo zone against, we were pretty much up to snuff but we had plenty of unforced turns. story of the tourney)

Game 6: vs CUT
…Carleton. We got hosed. This game was a bit of a step down from our last game, and I think our fatigue really started to show here as there were an inordinate number of sloppy throwaways and the like. This guy encouraged the team to “smile!” which I think definitely helped to keep the team looser and enjoy the game rather than getting all up in our own heads. Carleton was coming off of a universe-point upset loss to Las Positas (Las who? I know!), and apparently came out fired up as we scored maybe 3 points in the first half; after that, I think CUT opened up their subbing rotation to work in their younger guns and we perhaps pulled it together a bit more and scored with more regularity, but this game wasn’t close. 13-7, or 8, maybe. The loss consigned us to the 25th-place bracket on Sunday.

Game 7: vs…vs….ah, er…wow, I’m gonna need to update this post when results are posted online. (UPDATE: this game was against UC-Irvine)
We started off the third and final day with a game against a team I can’t remember the name of. I do know that this day was marked by wind, adding a significant upwind/downwind as well as crosswind factor to all of our games. The wind meant lots of turns, but by sticking to our guns on O and working the dump-swing-continue, especially upwind, our motion O carried us to a 4- or 5-point win (I think we had two or three upwind breaks on them).

Game 8: vs George Washington U
This was a really good game, a bit of back-and-forth if I remember correctly. Again, a significant upwind/downwind game. However, while GWU often resorted to the long shot (like the team we had just played) with little success, we managed to be just a bit more efficient by moving the disc and not falling prey to a huck-and-hope strategy (though we did have more than a couple punts on downwind points, and we had at least a few strong hucks that led to scores). Lots of turns, but we had fewer, and won by I think 2 upwind breaks.

Game 9: vs Western Washinton
This was it, the game for all the marbles in the 25th-place bracket. Seigs coached us against his would-be nemesis, Ben Wiggins and his WeWa Dirt. A strange game of sorts, as we wound up winning on universe point, though Dirt had a whole lot of drops/unforced turns that made our job easier. We had opened up our subbing rotation for this game–I only played maybe half a dozen points, trying (in vain) to preserve my foot, which had started to bruise on the heel from the way my brace altered my running gait.

Overall, we improved steadily throughout the weekend. I think we managed to do a good job as a team of keeping things loose and fun, never placing too much pressure on ourselves to win now and instead focusing on the bigger picture of making progress and improving as a team, and by that criterion the tournament was a success. I think we’ve discovered a lot of aspects of our game that need to be refined, from the mark to our dumps to our motion O, and we’re going to bring that home and really work to continue to improve ourselves for the spring season.

Oh, and Vegas wasn’t half bad. We had an extra day to walk the strip after the tourney ended, and my car stopped in more than a few casinos on Monday. Bellagio, Wynn, MGM Grand, among others. Good stuff. Nothing too scandalous, but a lot of walking on my aching, bruised foot, a whole lot of excess and general ridiculousness of Las Vegas, and we hit up a Chipotle for a fulfilling dinner. Flights back took forever–we rolled into the airport in Vegas at 9:00 or so for an 11:30 flight, and combine that with at 2+ hour layover in Charlotte, NC at 7 in the morning, and we were traveling for something pretty close to 12 hours. Good thing I didn’t have any homework or classes to get back to at Dartmouth upon my return!

Related posts:

1. 2/11-2/13: Trouble in Vegas
2. 2/8/08-2/10/08 Vegas, Baby, Vegas.
3. Spring Break, woo!
4. 11/10-11: Brown Huck-a-Hunk
5. 8/5: Mike’s hat