While Ballometrics had a decent showing this past weekend, we’re far from our full potential.

Breaking seed was accomplished in our first game of the day against Kung Fu Grip (went down early, took half on a Callahan by yours truly, and won 10-9 [10-8 if you discount "garbage time" once hard cap went on mid-point]), and secured our spot in the championship bracket with a 12-9 win over Flight in our third match.

Our other games all saw us against better, but often beatable, competition, yet struggle. Defensively we did a fairly decent job of generating turns, but on offense we struggled for consistency, with many a mis-execution.

There’s a continuum* of mental states and adjustments that can be made when a team is struggling to execute. On one end, you can ignore the result, recognize the process is good, and keep playing, focusing on what you can control; on the other you can take the result and dwell on it, get caught up in these mis-cues and mis-throws and go into what I like to call “panic mode,” where a team attempts to damage-control for bad luck or bad preparation (or similar factors, beyond control in the moment, that lead to mis-executions); this results-oriented focus on past failures leads to tensing up in anticipation of the next failure, setting up a vicious cycle.

We fell into panic mode a bit too often this weekend, and it shows in our results (biggest case in point being our 13-0 loss to Amp on Saturday–yes, they’re good, but certainly we had as much of a hand in that result as they did).

*(Incidentally, there’s a second dimension to this continuum: at some point, you admit that your execution errors are symptomatic of an error in process [for example, your best deep receiver is having a tough time against their big man defender], and seek to change that process [sending your second option deep with a lesser defender, etc]. It should be noted that this is not a reactionary panic, but a concerted effort to, as Parinella puts it, mix it up on offense.)

Rather than a game-by-game recap (the story was pretty much the same in each, with early mis-steps leading to early deficits and early panic to varying degrees), I’ll offer some scattered observations:

• Amp is a solid, solid team. Unlike Bucket, who seemed to run primarily through a few very talented players*, Amp didn’t blow us away with any single player, but collectively were able to execute very consistently, with measured deep shots to open receivers. They get the fundamentals down well and don’t give the disc back when they get it, and their women are very talented. *I got hurt on a bid** against one of said players early and couldn’t keep playing after the second point. Probably the most disappointed I was on the weekend; I was eager to face a good matchup challenge.
  **oblique contusion; he fell on me, I basically took him out after I came down, and he came down on top of me. Iced on the sidelines all game, was OK to go after the pain subsided a bit.

• TAU (14-8 loss in prequarters Sunday) was a game that would’ve been a lot tighter had we played more up to snuff; they showed good handler motion at times and had a couple good receiving targets they used well deep (primarily male, but their women were good too).
• Rival (14-9 loss in consolation semis) used good handler motion to set up power position hucks to their men streaking deep out of horizontal stack as their primary weapon.
• Caught a bit of the elite play; Ironside looked good against Ring in crossover play on Saturday, but struggled to use both sides of the field on Sunday in their loss against Chain. Revolver flashed a lot of athleticism, and some good stack discipline creating space for their cutters to attack at points. They appeared to be outplaying Ring for much of the semis, but they gave Ring enough chances to take them down.
• Chain looks legit. As Kosednar reported, Zip was heavily involved on the field, just destroying his defender at points, and he also seemed to be taking a very strong leadership role off-field as well, at points giving assignments and calling plays. Zip wasn’t the only one showing some dominant athleticism for them either; they look like they can create a lot of matchup issues for opponents given their speed combined with some very precise leading puts from their throwers.

Goals on the weekend:

• Remain focused on defense. Met. I was really happy with my defensive play all weekend long; outside of the occasonal blip on the radar, either from a loss of focus or overconfidence in my cushion, I felt pretty comfortable mantaining a tight bodying D all weekend, and pulled the trigger on a few bids. Granted, I don’t think any of them were successful, but I’m only a half-step away (and that’ll come with time and training). Oh, and I caught a Callahan–that was more heads-up than anything (hustling down on the pull and looking to poach off my man on the deep placement, combined with the O slowing a step on a pick call, gave me a chance to slip in for the interception). I didn’t get too many chances to flash it for D’s, but leveraging the peripheral vision kept me pretty aware and ready to help. Defense was not my main issue this weekend.
• Keep within myself throwing. Missed. Throwing, however, was. Execution was mostly within tolerable range; no turfs or anything of that ilk, but more than a few throws were lacking in the touch I need to justify the decisions, and several others, despite working ok, still went for turns. I absolutely still have a long ways to go there; until I can get to a point of real comfort, I need to holster the break throws and hucks unless the receiver is open significantly. As a primary cutter I was making far far far too many turns (as an aside, I felt great about my cutting all weekend–I’m operating with 4.5 gears, which is enough to dust most. The best is yet to come there, as well).
• Keep the good times rolling. Met. We’ve got a great group, and with further augmentations this past weekend there was a lot of Dartmouth/Williams ridiculousness to keep spirits light even when panic mode hit. Thoroughly enjoyed the weekend, looking forward to practice on Saturday/Sunday.

Chesapeake was well worth the trip; we’ve gotten a lot of valuable diagnostic information we can apply in practice as we polish up over the coming weeks, as our roster is finally finalized. Didn’t get the chance to study all that much this weekend, for the first tests (“quizzes”) of my Medical (School) Career on Monday, but for once I’ve got some good study habits, didn’t need to cram, and I won the exams going away, handing the pages in under 50 minutes after start time on a two-hour block. (Insert comment about my top test-taking speed here; yes, Crew, this parenthetical is just for you).

Sectionals is in two weekends.! Off to the track in a couple hours, and the training and tossing continues.

Related posts:

1. Chesapeake (Mixed) Preview
2. ENE Mixed Sectionals: "How Big are the Balls?"
3. 2/9-11/07: Trouble In Vegas