Thoughts.

Another trip to New Haven for Yale Cup; the last time I’ll ever play there.

A Friday night rainstorm had the TD cautiously postponing Saturday’s games until noon start time–contrary to the 9AM start listed on the score reporter, these were short (1:15) rounds, meaning any team that came out flat to start their games would NOT have much time to make up the difference…

…guess who came out flat to start their day.

Game 1: Vs. Williams
Williams continually frustrated us to start, taking advantage of our flatness–we had more than a few drops, throwaways on deep looks that, while not terrible looks, had too small a margin of error. Williams responded to our generally unsuccessful deep game by putting it up whenever they could and wherever they could. Granted, they had their fair share of turns too, but in my years of playing against Williams they’ve always shown the ability to pull down the fringy stuff with more consistency than most (though they tend to be pretty hopeless in high wind–the fringy looks become near-impossible ones with more frequency). Our D line only got a few turns throughout the day, and when we did they threw a very poachy man D set on us, forcing us to stay on one sideline with their mark so the poaches wouldn’t get burned. Were we to meet them again, we’d be better prepared to beat it.

5-11.

Game 2: Vs. Wesleyan
Well, losing to Williams is one thing. But we still couldn’t get it up for Wesleyan. We continued to have trouble connecting on the deep looks, as our O line handed out turns like it was Wesleyan’s birthday instead of treating them like the red-headed stepchildren they are. To be fair, our D line didn’t capitalize in conversion as much as it could’ve either. Yours truly did make some plays though:


(Yes, that’s a skirt. Yes, it’s golden. I had just gotten it that morning courtesy of Ms. Rohre Titcomb of Five Ultimate, who I had been nagging since I saw one at Vegas to bring me one. Real scandalous looking, but real money, too.)

After going down early, we battled back to force a universe, but couldn’t finish the comeback. We at least were showing signs of progress at this point; we went into the bye resolving to work harder through the rest of the day.

8-9.

BYE
Watched the women roll Wellesley. In Sam Routhier’s words, “I read Mackey’s blog and he’s all ‘The women are awesome,’ then I talk to Tien and she’s like ‘We’re okay.’”

The women are awesome. You heard it here first, and will continue to hear it here. I mean, holy crap. They won Yale Cup.

Game 3: Vs. UVM
UVM’s looked pretty legit this year–granted, they’re not the class of the region by any means, but ever since they played us tight at sectionals in the fall my impression of them has been that they’re really turning a corner this year. I couldn’t tell you if that’s spurred mostly by seniors with chemistry or what, but they definitely have the potential to surprise.

That said, we came out and really took it to them to start. They played pretty loose on our resets and we had a dump-swing-continue offense all day. Second half we loosened up our rotation and UVM actually battled back with a couple breaks, but we fortunately didn’t get into the danger zone before we closed this one out.

11-9.

Game 4: Vs. Brown
We got UP for this game. Finally returning to our underdog mentality, we kept the pressure on in this game and never let up, opening with two quick breaks. However, for all the trouble we gave Brown with our pressure on the resets and keeping them from hitting their primary deep option, they frustrated our offense with zone-to-man transition and converted on two more breaks to even it up before scoring a third as we called a time out. We came out firing and kept the intensity up, playing tight, hard defense, generating turns, and converting breaks. Probably the highlight of the game was Socks point blocking Vandenberg on a huck attempt–he wound up, and released the backhand straight into Socks’ outstretched arm. Priceless.

10-7.

A Night at the Routhier’s
Basketball. Batman Begins. Lasagna. Sweet, sweet slumber.

Game 5: Vs. Amherst College
We played pretty well in this game. Not 100% Dartmouth Ultimate, particularly at the very beginning, but we got up to speed before too long. Amherst liked to huck it. Like, REALLY liked to huck it. At one point I was covering a guy who was basically in the endzone with the disc maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the way up the field, pretty close (but in front of him), and they put him. He did come down with it, to his credit, and we learned our lesson from thereafter–dictate in, regardless of how far out the man is. And they stopped seeing success with their huck attempts, and we put this one away without too much difficulty.

13-6.

Game 6: Vs. Harvard
In quarters? Whoops. Guess this is what happens when you finish third in your pool. Harvard gave us a bit of trouble in the now-windy weather, throwing a box zone (4 man cup, 1-3, etc) with an extra man on our primary handler. This forced us to make some long over-the-top throws, which were fairly wide open–but again, with the wind, they weren’t sure things. It also didn’t help us in the early goings that despite there being 5 men around the disc our handlers’ general disinclination to go over the top meant trying to work it and giving Harvard short turns to start. Defensively we got our fair share of turns. I was covering Zirui, probably Harvard’s most explosive cutter, and he got his fair share of touches but wasn’t unguardable after a couple points to figure him out. Likewise we can match up well with most all of Harvard’s studs–despite going down early, we really battled back at the game’s end, with good old-fashioned man D really making Harvard work for every score they got.

9-11, but we wore Harvard down enough that they looked dead against Middlebury for 3/4 of their semifinal loss to them. I think Dartmouth can claim an ultimate (pun intended?) victory here.

That ended our Yale Cup run. Somewhat disappointing, in that we didn’t play particularly inspired ultimate outside of the Brown game and mid-late against Harvard. However, the weekend was probably the best result we could’ve asked for in terms of making progress heading into regionals. We’re not complacent. We’re ready to work again, and we’re motivated to work ’til the very end.

Watch out.

Related posts:

1. Yale Cup ’07
2. 11/4-5: Huck-a-Hunk
3. 10-22: Yale Coffee Cup
4. Obligatory Regionals Writeup
5. Regionals