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.

I thought of this whilst sketching out some different offensive sets in my notes at the Neuroscience 2007 seminar in San Diego, and I think it very aptly sums up my philosophy/thought process with regards to cutting.

“It” is the notion of Threat Points, places on the field where, given your position and motion and the position of the disc, you can choose to cut in at least two directions and reasonably expect to get the disc–which way you cut, then, is a personal call depending on how you’re being played defensively and perhaps other concerns like the skill set of the person with the disc, weather, etc.

This is perhaps best conveyed by means of visual aid…

The simplest setup for this might be the dump. Let’s say we have a fairly typical dump setup like below:In this particular instance the force is forehand (player with the disc is on the right), with the black lines being defenders. The red line is the cut/clearing out that the dump cutter has just made (I’m assuming a following-the-play scenario where the dump is moving, not starting from standing), and the blue line is where the dump should cut to next.

By making a hard cut to that space…
…the dump cutter is now in a position where he can do one of two things.

• He can continue cutting to space upline, or
• He can plant and cut backwards at an angle to get the dump in ideal position to swing it.

Which option he chooses depends on a few factors, notably which option his defender is giving him (it could be both), what’s happening downfield (is the upline lane clogged?), his team philosophy (perhaps the dump-swing is their bread and butter) and how the defense is playing their team (again, perhaps the dump-swing is the necessary tool to victory against a lane-poachy D, or perhaps the mark is taking away the backfield and upfield is the most viable option).

What matters most is that, more often than not, this puts a cutter in a position where he can effectively “threaten” two areas. This usually means that the cutter can get open in at least one direction, given that the two positions are not simultaneously defensible (some defenses/situations will prove this wrong of course).

Finding Threat Points like that and exploiting them is the essence of my cutting strategy, especially when it comes to secondary cutting–very often when clearning out deep or back towards the stack there are positions where I can make a cut back into space and be open for a gainer/swing. Generally I set up my cuts by cutting to a space where I can pick one of two directions to go in and still get the disc.

In cases where a defender is on you such that they’ll be with you in whichever direction you choose to go, you’re very often still in a position where you’ll force a defender to turn his hips, in which case the cutting 101 rule of “get him to turn his hips, then go the other way” applies.