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).

We left having upset some, rolled with others, and having established ourselves as a force to be reckoned with–most importantly, however, we established for ourselves that we’re capable of great things–and that we’re nowhere close to our full potential, a very powerful motivating force as we head into our winter training ready and eager.

Without further ado, onto the game recaps…

Vs. Texas State
We came out hard today. From the very beginning, we told ourselves that we were gonna give it our all on the field, and (perhaps more importantly), from the sideline, and the on-field intensity was matched by the sideline’s constant chatter, superb support, and continual cheers. Texas St was a pretty good team, but I don’t know that they ever had any kind of upper hand on us. We were running hard and working well–our defense was stellar all day, and this game was no exception, as we broke them at least a couple times in the early few points. Going into half with a lead, we resolved to keep the pressure on, and we did–Texas St. started to creep back into things in the later going, showing more resilience against our D and pressuring us a little bit more, but our studs were gellin’ and we put this one away 13-9.

We worked the hostack pretty well here–not only running it on O (I think I threw the first two scores, one on a huck to Watson in ho, the other on an around break/swing after transitioning to straight stack), but also causing chaos in it on D with smart handler poaching of the lane and shutdown D downfield. We pressured Texas into a number of turns, and they also came out a little flat with a few throwaways/drops in the early going.

Vs. LSU
This game was not as challenging as the last one. Looking back, it would’ve been a great opportunity for us to get complacent and let them stay in the game, but we rode the momentum from our last win into this game and again came out on fire. This team had maybe 12 or 14 guys? They were tiring a lot more quickly than we were and we never let up. The same themes on O and D from last game also applied to this game. No particular highlights leap to mind, personal or otherwise, we just got ‘er done, as it were. 13-3.

Vs. NC State
An interesting game, for a number of reasons. Namely:
-looking at their results, particularly against Florida on Saturday and in the other side of the B-bracket on Sunday, this team certainly seemed capable of really hosing us. But they didn’t–we were in control of this game from the get-go. As we repeated many a time throughout the weekend, “it’s all about us.”
-they got really chippy with their calls/fouls as the game went on. It was pretty apparent that they were frustrated with their play, specifically their inability to stop us on the mark and to really make anything happen when they had the disc.
-additionally, they got really annoyed by our sidelines. This was the game where our sidelines really started going–major props to our freshmen for spearheading that. Imagine being NC State, busting your ass to score a point–and then being treated not to congrats from your teammates, but to a cheer of “D-A-RT MOUTH!” from the team you just scored on. It says that we’re not afraid, and we know that our D was great and you got lucky this time. Add in our multitude of ridiculous pull/sideline cheers and you have a great recipe for frustration.

We continued to roll in this game. Again, the intensity was there, the sidelines were huge, and we were more or less unstoppable. Lots of great plays by our guys here, highlighted by our handling core being simply unstoppable, breaking the mark at will. Calls of “no break, no break–BROKEN!” were commonplace. Our handling core was thin this weekend, but they were rocks for us the entire time.

Highlight (lowlight?) of the game–one of our freshmen skys to catch the last goal of the game (we won 11-5), in what may have been his first touch of the weekend (and certainly his first goal), and spikes it with full strength, super-pumped for the play. I’m on the sideline, and one of the NC state guys just goes “Oh, that’s real classy, Dartmouth. How much are you up by?” I immediately start explaining the above–”oh, he’s just a freshman, he’s very excitable, he didn’t mean anything by it…” and more or less apologize to their whole team. Sorry, NC State. Sorry you couldn’t even cover our rookies.

(lunch break)

Vs. Florida
This was the game of the weekend. The final score was 9-6, but beginning to end this was our game. Point after point, we would lock down and force the turnovers from Florida. We had drops in the endzone, first-pass turfs, all flukes, to give Florida the disc back–few and far between were discs Florida got that they forced the turn on.

Our D, especially our zone, gave Florida lots of trouble. At one point we threw a clam, had the disc trapped near the back of their endzone–I’m the open-side in, and a pass goes up to a cutter streaking in wide as I start running over to pick him up–I get there first, make the layout, and miss by this much catching a callahan. We then proceed to turf our first throw after the turn and the work it up for the goal with the shorter field in transition. More or less sums up the game. In an hour and a half, one of the best teams in the country could only muster 9 points against us.

This was the point where we went from “good weekend, kicking the butt of some good teams” to “great weekend, establishing in our minds the potential to be truly great.”

Vs. Michigan

MagnUM picked up Northeastern transfer Will Neff this year, and his presence helped them tremendously in this game. The guy has monstrous pulls, not to mention being a dominant handler. He also gave Michigan some scouting reports on us, as they were clearly better prepared to deal with our game than the rest of the teams we’d played, pressuring our handlers a lot more. We bent but did not break–when the around was taken away/made difficult, we worked the IO more–but they converted on enough turns to squeeze this one out, largely on the strength of some great puts and some better-still catches from their athletes deep.

I was cramping up on and off at this point in the day–it had started at the end of the Florida game and came back in the early parts of this game–but I managed to be good to go enough to get in for a point that we won’t soon forget.

We ran a clam. UM works it up to half field, a little farther, and then we finally get a turn on a long pass up the line near the endzone. Chaos ensues in the transition, and the point finally ends on a long put to Nate Raines in the endzone, who was apparently not picked up in transition.

UM’s sidelines are shouting–”who the fuck is poaching?? how the fuck did this happen?” when finally, one guy figures it out.

“Wait a second. How many of you are there?”
“…”
“…there’s 8 of them!”

Oh shit. Did we seriously just play a point with eight men on? After much ballyhooing about what to do (quote of the point, Nate Raines: “yes, Will! obviously we’re not going to count the goal.”), UM gets the disc at half-field as though we had violated offsides twice, and then proceeds to score with relative ease. Turns out we had two breakside defenders (in their own words, “we had that side of the field locked down”). I’m still incredulous that we managed to play a full point with eight guys. This spurred many a discussion on ways to effectively sneak 8 into play in the future/alternative means to mitigate playing with eight–we could just let them play with 8 at some later point, or 7.5 players for two points (we decided that, say, having a guy on the sideline block a throw up the line would be like half an extra defender for that point).

Anyway. A hard-fought game, with a ridiculous 8-player interlude in the middle. We dropped this game 11-8, securing 3rd place in the pool (we were the 6 seed in our pool) and a spot in the B bracket against Illinois on Sunday.