* - Sabbath-based reasons
Seriously dudes? This may sound like nice and friendly SOTG stuff, but really, we started this game pulling to them and the game at that point was tied with them pulling to us. Meaning we were up a break for the game. So this would be them, um, pulling a fast one, to put it politely. I pointed all of this out and said no, thanks anyways, we'll play the double game point. So they send it down to us, somebody on our squad turfed it, but they tried to swing it across the field into the wind and it sailed out of bounds. We've got a short field, work it, work it, and I see a play develop well ahead of time - Trant's going to get the disc at the front right corner of the endzone in about two seconds. So I give a big fake, get my guy moving just a hair to the wrong side of the endzone, and time my cut for Jason perfectly. He catches, turns and squeezes it into me, and I catch the double game winner. My man, of course, lays out into the back of my legs. I was pretty ticked, but cooler minds (and a nice reminder from Dixon not to spike the disc at him) prevailed, so we just walked off the field. Phew... the meaningless game went our way, 17-16, and the chippiness set the stage nicely for any rematch coming up on Sunday.
After some tourney supplied cheeseburgers and other late day foody goodness, we headed back to the hotel having held seed but pretty dissatisfied with the performance. I won't go into crazy technical detail here, but our O was not exactly smooth, people were not improvising or generally being very artful against poach defenses and such, and we were rushing a lot of decisions for no particular reason. And our D was generating plenty of turns (I think I mentioned this last post, but also getting beat deep now and then), but really not converting those turns for scores. They just kept taking the overly risky risk or the too-hard break throw, or just rushing decisions for no apparent reason. I don't know how much of that was a personnel issue - too much heat and not enough chill peeps on our D lines - but it was frustrating. Still, Saturday night at the tourney, so peeps got ready to party down at the aptly named "Hogden," a biker bar directly behind the hotel where the party would be held. I haven't been to an Ulty party in quite some time, and though I can certainly throw down with the best of them in the drink Saturday and still play Sunday department*, I fortunately had the much better option of hanging out with Beck for the evening. And seriously, a biker bar in effing Ogden, UT, doesn't exactly sound like a swinging, not-just-a-drunken-fest time**. So I showered and waited for Beck to get back from SLC. Even though I had eaten some 3500 calories already that day***, we elected to check out a local eatery called the Sonora Grill, a Mexican place that looked promising.
* - I am invincible. This is a scientific fact. It's a general scientific fact, but in the Ultimate context, the correlation between my play and having had or not had alcohol the previous evening is non-existent. I have definitely erred on the side of not drinking as I've aged, so this is probably a ruined experiment, but trust that some of my absolute super star Ultimate games have followed long island nights, and I generally drinks lots of water while partying and don't get hung over. For whatever all of that is worth.
** - Don't get me wrong; I would enjoy hanging out with the Sprawlers; I just don't really enjoy hanging out with "the competition" at tournament parties and making small talk with nothing to do other than drink. This probably falls under the general "Ultimate: love the game, but..." mantra that we used to spout at Polaroid / Spirit Foul, and is probably one of many reasons I am not much of a true Ultimate scenester. I was right on this time, as all reports indicated that the Hogden was hella lame, except that some of the guys taught some genuine biker guys how to play a drinking game called Flip-Cup, which is all kinds of ridiculous. Oh, and the bikers were told they couldn't park on the street, so they rode their bikes INTO THE BAR. So I missed an opportunity to make some serious Pee Wee jokes as I watched skinny white nerdy dudes hang out with real life biker thugs, but otherwise I was very thankful to have the Beck with me. As I always am.
*** - There is another post coming about this type of thinking, I promise.
Post-Ultimate Mexican food is without fail the best salt-for-the-salt-deprived food ever, so I can't give an unbiased review of the SG. The local dive Chuy's is pretty much manna after practice. But that particular experience absolutely hit the spot. We headed back to the hotel, and I stayed conscious long enough to work on a paper - did I mentioned that I had two papers for ASU hanging over my head all weekend? Involving annotated bibliographies and extensive citations? Yikes. I got a bit done and woke up early the following morning to put even more of a dent in it. All of this for a paper that may or may not have been graded in five minutes... ah, well. Beck got up not-as-early to go see the Tabernacle choir, and I headed down for another oddly delicious breakfast before jetting over to the fields. We had a quarterfinal bye as the reward for holding seed the previous day, so we (or the rest of Sprawl anyways) slept in, grabbed a late breakfast*, checked out of the hotel and rolled over to the fields at 10 with ample time to warm up and scout the competition.
* - Don't forget - we were surrounded by tiny dancers, none of whom held any of us closer, thankfully. Unshaven ultimate players, innocent enough next to biker dudes, are suddenly rendered seamy in other contexts. I'm glad there were no incidents.
After a quick intrasquad scrimmage to get our blood flowing, we faced off against NUDE again, a rematch of our 15-5 win from the previous day. Their quarterfinal game wore them out, so this game was never in question (even though the score ended up exactly the same). We also had the opportunity to open up the subbing and rest our hosses which would prove important. So after about 40 minutes, we were resting again while the other semi matchup - Boise v. SLC, the team we had played in the third game the prior day - dragged on. SLC unfortunately won (we would have liked to play someone else, having already rematched someone that morning) and spent themselves in the process. Things looked good for Sprawl for the finals.
Whatever tendency we had on Saturday to underestimate the competition and lackadaisically approach the game vanished. We came out for the last frame fired up and very, very ready for the chippiness that had come the previous day. I'd even say we made some typical club level calls and exhibited dare-I-say ornery, aggressive play - SWEET. Plus we knew the matchups and their deep-gunning tendencies, so we threw out a lot more straight-up mark this time around. Here's the first half game score; as you can see, it was trade, three point run, trade three point run. We were just a lot steadier on Sunday and clearly less tired, both because of our big 19 person roster and our easy semi game. Check it:
0-1; 1,2,3-1; 3-2; 4-2; 4-3; 5,6,7-3; 7-4; 8-4;
Our O-lines didn't turn it over in the first half, and our D lines turned it 6 times. It really should have been an even bigger lead than this. I'm having a bit of trouble remembering details here; mainly I just remember walking on the field and cleanly working it down and/or hucking it every time I was in. Our D was very tight and frustrated them, but would get a turn and just fail to capitalize - well, obviously not every time, but there were some turfs and overly aggressive throws in there that slowed our pace to the win. I gave the negative Nyet speech at half - "it's nice that we're up by 4 and all, but we should be up by 8" - and did my best to keep us fired up. So of course we marched out and threw it away twice on the ensuing point. Ugh. Still, after a couple of trades, our O continued to be mechanical, our D continued to force the issue, and we pulled away. Check the second half:
8-5; 9-5; 9-6; 10,11,12-6; 12-7; 13,14,15-7
*Loved* our intense D this game, but really, it was the cleaned up O that made me happiest and prevented any notion of a comeback from our opponents. The O scored on seven of its eight points and seven of its ten possessions; sprinkle in a D that forces turns and converts on occasion, and you're going to have trouble beating a team that won't give you the disc back. Anyways, a big team effort; Vince, Cole, Dhein, Ian, Ebay and Trant all came up with some huge plays, and we walked away with the trophy.
Personally, I was guarded quite a bit again by pink-shirt guy, and whatever minor edge he had the day before I ate up entirely. I used his momentum against him much better on this day, took advantage of his aggressiveness, and ran around him. He clearly got frustrated - made a crappy travel call on a huck to Trant (that ended with a sweet layout grab, btw), and started whining like nobody's business when I took advantage of his huggy mark to draw a foul and get a free breakmark backhand attempt. My definite highlight was a tight play out of a timeout where I faked him on a dump and beat him to the front corner for the goal on a tight toss by eBay. To take the first half, actually. Definitely nice to win the matchup after having some unathletic-y feeling moments the previous day, and I don't mean to get schaudenfreude-y, but it's doubly nice to run all over someone who's trying to elbow you repeatedly. Boo-yay.
The TD offered us a choice of a discount for next year's tourney or championship discs for winning; we shrewdly took the latter. We had a good time (and were very glad that our play picked up the second day), but this tourney left quite a bit to be desired. Bumpy (though plush) fields, lined with tape (ugh - nothing like a sideline that moves to make for some sketchy calls), few teams (and few good ones, though again, they gave us all we could handle at times) ... I will say, nice guys, good food and water supplied, and the showers provided post-tourney were FANTASTIC. (Seriously, there are a lot of people who took a certain Southwest flight who have no idea how grateful they should be). But it sadly seems like Daweena is getting to be a minor place, so we'll have to see how the rest of the season goes before we decide whether we'll be heading back.
After cleaning up, Sprawl disassembled into its various components and traveled home again. Beck ran late at the Great Salt Lake and picked me up alone at the tournament site; that was actually just fine with me as I munched on granola bars, drank tomato juice and started my recovery process (again, I held up, amazingly enough). We got back to the SLC airport, returned the rental cars and boarded (where I handed out some free drink coupons to my fellow champions). I, natch, had to write a paper, so I locked in for the flight home and got some thinking done. Good weekend.
So what do we take from it? Well, I've been emphasizing that we can be happy, but we really just held seed against some lesser competition that we probably should have blown out a little better. Still, we did it with a hamstrung squad, so nice to see what some of our supporting cast could do. And good to see that after some bumps we can pick up our play and TCOB.
So that's probably enough about that. Congrats to Sprawl on its first win, a big championship, as qualified as it may be. Hopefully we can use this as a nice base for the remainder of the 2010 season. I'll end with some general notes on individual players for posterity, though this being a public, facebook-advertised post and all, I probably can't deliver the authentic inner monologue of Nyet. Or, you know, whatevs, and I'll just be a jerk... :) Here you go, with the numbers being Player (playing time / percent of that playing on O points / T+- / D+- / O +-)*:
* - for example, Mr. Toe (40% / 50% / 9 / 2 / 7) would mean that Aaron played in 40% of the total points for the tournament and split his time 50 / 50 on O and D-lines. His D plus minus was 2 and his O was 7, meaning that we scored two more goals on defense than were scored against us while he was in and we scored seven more goals than were scored against us on the O points in which he was in. That gives him a total plus minus of 9. All of this helps clarify why, for example, I led the team with a total plus minus of 26; I played 50 O points and 2 D points, and it's a lot easier to score when you start out receiving the disc.
J-Ro (41% / 67% / 22 / 1 / 21): Rock steady per usual. I think he had one turn all weekend. Didn't take any chances with hucks, which we need him to do sometimes.
Nyet (41% / 96% / 26 / -2 / 28): Not my best, not my worst. See the previous post. I'm trying not to be overly self-critical as is my wont. I need to stay back and QB; that's my job on this team.
Tim (29% / 65% / 17 / 5 / 12): Some good D and all around play, but some uncharacteristic turns and throws into poaches. Couldn't get his flick off on some occasions, oddly.
Paul (31% / 40% / 8 / 4 / 4): A few iffy turns, but a lot of good hustle on D. Good maintenance handling for the most part.
Jim (35% / 31% / 11 / 1 / 10): Gave us some good D handler points. Still slow on the draw, and we had a bad miscommunication on a dump after which he screamed at me on the sideline. No biggie, he's nice and intense, which is great, but we need him to make his decisions quicker so that he and we can be more confident in him with the disc.
Jose (25% / 28% / 4 / -3 / 7): Overall okay though he couldn't keep up on D and had a few bad turns, particularly early Saturday. Also committed the cardinal sin of talking to me about his PT in game. Boo!
Ian (47% / 20% / 6 / 2 / 4): Played some great tight D and made a few huge plays on both sides of the disc... and had some gaffes while handling, both on goof-up mistakes and overzealous breaks and the like. He's fine, but needs to find the energy chill balance, and he's aware of it. His sky in the finals was siiiiiiick.
Nappi (13% / 18% / 9 / 6 / 3): Knew his role and really did his job well, getting us some yards and getting the disc back to the handlers.
eBay (43% / 51% / 21 / 3 / 18): Great tourney from this guy, and he was probably the statistical MVP. Huge plus minus while playing equal parts O and D points. Lots of good D and mid work. Nice job, eBay!
Dheintime (54% / 53% / 18 / -4 / 22): Forgot he is a mid and not a handler on occasion, but otherwise turned in a per usual ferocious performance. His baited layout D on Saturday was nice, and he bailed me out on a huck or two. Gracias, co-cap'n.
Dixon (51% / 38% / 13 / 0 / 13): Not his usual self - his hand is still bothering him, methinks - but he ran a ton and played some shut down D. Definitely a good / solid tourney, but a tad less than his usual performance.
Rob (45% / 28% / 3 / -1 / 4): Came up huge in moments and ran all day. Made some great catches / saves. Dude's a phenom, and we rode him on D.
Trant (46% / 27% / 7 / 1 / 6): Ditto - colossal on D in particular. He's really jacking up his level of play and taking charge out there. Clutch cut / throw on the double game point
Studer (42% / 21% / 7 / 8 / -1): Quiet but great weekend, particularly on the D side - he shut down more than one dump and got us some key turns. One hilarious hammer. Good stuff.
Ryan (16% / 0% / -2 / -2 / 0): Got some D's in his first Sprawl tourney, and did a good job getting yards and dumping.
Clay (13% / 12% / -1 / -3 / 2): Also his first Sprawl tourney, he got some good playing time and took advantage of some poaches Saturday to snag some goals.
Vince (50% / 40% / 15 / 2 / 13): Defensive beast with the usual wacky decision making. Air-bouncing a lot of his deep throws in particular. Still, great to have him patrolling the skies, and his hybrid abilities make him an excellent Man option and a good shut down deep defender.
Cole (50% / 62% / 19 / 0 / 19): Great work on O, got beat unnecessarily because of his overly aggressive in-coverage on D. Made some very big plays in moments when we needed them - his, um, "crotch-first" layout late on Saturday was quite epic (and game-saving).
Big Nate (27% / 50% / 14 / 3 / 11): Played very smart all weekend and took advantage of his height / size intelligently. It was kinda tough to find points for him with the other deeps we had, but hopefully I got him enough. Good job.
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