Thoughts.

First of all, this day started off with better food. While we tried to mishmash from a grocery store on Saturday (which was fruitful for day-long food but terrible for breakfast–where’s my breakfast sandwich??), Sunday saw my car hit up a McDonald’s for some perhaps over-greased but protein-laden breakfast sandwich action.

Unfortunately, that did little to abate the stiffness going into the day’s games. Nate said it best as we got dinner a week later: we basically spent our studs in the Florida game. Not to say we (yes, we studs, including yours truly) weren’t still able and capable of playing, but it was clear that we were all below 100% from the end of that game onwards, extending into Sunday.

Vs. Illinois
We started off with the Illini. It was obvious we were still recuperating from the previous day through much of this game, definitely some lethargic play, and the boys in orange got ahead of us relatively early on, maybe 1/3 of the way into the game. Sidelines were huge in this game–certainly picked me up more than once when I was dogging it in the cutting lane or otherwise. Carson continued to be a machine for us here–that guy had to have played more points than anybody save perhaps Cobbles, our main handling cog. It’s been too long for many details to remain in my mind, but I do know that the late game saw us down I think 13-10, something like that, before we put on a late run, bringing it as close as 14-13 before they closed it out.

Illinois, incidentally, went on to lose in the B-bracket finals to our good friends from NC State.

A personal highlight from the game: on either that last point or the second-to-last point, I made probably one of the best plays on a disc I’ve ever made in ultimate.

The guy I was covering made to cut deep on me; I was maybe a step or two back, the guy was not a threat I had to respect deep. However, our D was doing a good job of frustrating them, and they put up the throw to one of the better deep looks they’re apt to get–guy cutting up the sideline with the disc trapped, as most of their hucks came. This one might have been a tough one to make a play on, too, but Socks on the mark got a piece of the throw, which took it from laser-y throw deep to a lofty throw much shallower than expected (I’m assuming the intent on the original throw here). As I turn around on the up call, I see the disc high and about to come over my head–basically unplayable if I let it go. So I leap and, getting as high as I can, use an extra bit of body torque to reach up and hook the disc down out of the sky. I’m not 100% sure, but I think I wound up doing a 180 flip in the air, going from chest up as I reached to landing on my hands and knees. Given that I was definitely stiff all game, that play alone might have been one of the best indicators of the payoffs of the training I’ve been up to all fall–having the strength to go up and get that one was not something I had expected to be able to do. Now I shall.

Vs Miami-Ohio

This team had something like 10 guys. Between points they’d have calls of “All right, anybody on the sidelines who can play right now needs to come and play!” A surprisingly good game though. Tired as they were, they looked early and often to go deep, with some success early on before we tightened things up on both sides of the discs, forcing more turns and converting on them. They also threw zone a fair bit, which was a good opportunity for us to work on that–they were not a very fluid zone, so simple rules of finding space and hitting the open man in space applied when popping/winging. I got a bit of time in handling, as did Misha as we mixed things up a little bit more and opened up our rotation a bit more to work fresh legs in. Not sure what the final score was, I want to say 15-10 or 11. For a team so shallow in personnel, they played very well, but it was obvious by late game which team had 10 and which team had 19 guys on the squad.

Vs Colorado

This game didn’t happen–again, our top end of rotation was worn out; we agreed to play Colorado in a looser game working in the new/underplayed guys more, but then they found Michigan a willing partner for a serious game and jumped to play them instead. We went to watch Wisco-Georgia in the A finals.

Highlights from that game:
-Wisco fouls a lot. More than one egregious foul was contested for justification to the effect of “you need to deal with our body on you on the play” which came out more like “I think since we were both vying for the same space…,” nevermind that said vying took away all chance for the guy in position to make a play. It’s no wonder these guys supposedly got 3 team misconduct fouls over the course of Sunday play.
(That said, there is something to be said for balls-to-the-wall D…being tight on your man like that means the pressure is always on, fouling or no)
-Some re-fucking-DICULOUS puts. At one point there were back-to-back points scored on the most unlikely of hucks–the first, I believe, was Georgia making a half-field, hanging blade to the pinpoint back of the endzone (the cutter did a hell of a job setting his body to block a play on the disc), followed by a similarly ridiculous put to the same spot by Wisco on the next point.
-On a stall call (Wisco on D–by the way, this game was observed), the Georgia player with the disc strongly contests. Wisco player (16? He’d definitely be all-region chippy/sassy, given various other plays throughout the game): “Whatever. I’ll just get you again.” Sure enough, he did–but given the fact that the thrower literally just stepped and threw a forehand there’s no way the second stall was legit. Guess the guy had to save face. (the throw went off uncontested after the next contested stall).