This became exceptionally clear about twenty seconds into the game, when they caught the opening pull and dink dink dink hucked it for an astonishingly easy goal. 1-0 bad guys, just like that, and Sprawl knew it was get-going time. Our O line went in; we, too, worked it fairly easily, but then Gries tried a down the line huck to Dheintime. It was one of Gries's trademark laser-it-past-the-defender hucks to a streaking receiver, only the defender was mildly athletic this time, and jumped to D the too-low throw. Ruh-roh. This meant we had to play D with our O line, and things got ugly quick. They turned it, we turned it, and the point quickly adopted that familiar "hell-point" feel. I don't know how many back and forths we had, but after a long nerve-racking time, we finally got a turn in the middle of the field that I picked up and calmly hucked to DT for a score. 1-1 instead of 0-2 was huge, and started a big run for the Phoenix squad.
Or, really, that hell point burned out their players - they did have some quality guys, but had a quite finite number of them, and our in-shapeness and depth proved to be too much. Some monstrous D from the likes of Ian, Rob, Josh, Vince, Studer, etc. turned the game very quickly - breaks came freely, and we took half 7-2. One of the striking things in this game was the switch that flipped in Vince. Mr. Noe has a habit of getting HUGE D's and then taking HUGE, unnecessary chances with hucks when we have the disc that require him to make yet more HUGE D's. At some point in this game, though - after one particularly errant, 10 second hang time up for grabs hospital huck - Vince dialed it down and began taking his chances (largely to Rob, who kicked all kinds of arse through the weekend) at appropriate moments rather than wantonly. He and Josh K, in particular, developed a psychic connection game, and with two athletes running the middle of the field like that (and Ian and Joe K feeding them), things were troublesome for the bad guys once we got rolling. Indeed, this one turned into a laugher - our O marched it down sans incident on its remaining points, our D continually blanketed them, shutting down their deep game and playing some great D in particular on their dumps, and we walked away with a 13-3 victory, just one point shy of the 13-2 beating JB had given them. Semis guaranteed, and it felt great to come through in the one truly important game of Saturday.
Not that this game didn't have some hijinks, too. Most famously, Ian P got the yips something fierce and turfed a series of forehands in a bunch. Your classic "the catcher can't lob the ball back to the pitcher" mental block, it was great to see him work his way out of it and throw a breakmark flick for the winning goal. Studer also yipped it up a but, throwing away consecutive Wobblesworthian flicks. He, too, gathered himself and played the D to make up for it. Outside of that, not a ton pops to mind - Griesy hit Cole a number of times for scores; I hit Dhein a couple of times deep for easy ones. Really a smooth game, though we were amped for it enough for the easy-win outcome to feel quite nice.
Fast-forward to the next game ... actually, don't. We wanted to give JB a good show in the last 1-2 game of the day, but man-oh-man, we got so amped for the game that we played a little out of our element and missed a number of deep shots. You really can't turn it over that many times against a quality team, and before we knew it, we were down huge, and then down huger. Nightmare game, and best left unrecorded*.
* - Okay, I have to record this. Probably the most notable play was some Nyetian idiocy. JB does a great job pulling the disc very high and sprinting down on the pull, so the first throw that is normally unchecked is constantly hotly contested. On one pull, I felt them screaming down on me, so I gave a small juke to throw the defender off and headed the opposite way as J-Ro caught the disc. Unfortunately, J-Ro tossed it at me as I was juking - it was a perfectly fine throw, just came about a half second before i was ready for it. So it hit off my hand and tumbled earthward. I grabbed awkwardly at it and miracle of miracles pinched the disc in my left hand between my thumb and forefinger. Sadly enough, the disc was on the ground ... apparently. I didn't know for sure that it was on the ground already when I "caught" it, so I just went to play it. The other team understandably got mad; I said I thought I had pinched it in time (I have been told repeatedly by teammates since that I was absolutely wrong). Amazingly - and probably because they were already up by a ton - they let it go.
Actually, they didn't let it go. Somebody on the other team asked what happened, and the guy guarding me said, "They turned it over, but this guy's going to keep it. We'll get the D anyways." Pretty much a great and demeaning A level heckle. Good stuff. I feel mildly bad in retrospect for "cheating," but I really did have no idea, and when-in-doubt you have to vie for your side in this sport, imho. We ended up turning it and they scored anyways, so karma keeps track, I suppose. Ugh. On the plus side, I did snap off a blade flick for a score (to Cole) in this one, so I can forever say that I threw a goal against JB. Huzzah.
Otherwise, though, it was just kinda embarrassing. And nothing really came to fruition - ha - in the grand banana conflict between Studer and #0, either. Actually, #0 didn't even play - we're not sure if that means he's too good to play against us, or so bad that he can't even play against *us*. Pretty sure it's the latter. Anyhoo, not a lot worth saying - we opened up the subbing at half and took our beating, losing 13-3 and not really belonging on the field. But it really didn't matter - we made our goal for Saturday, coming in second and primed to start Sunday int he semis. I utilized a metaphor recruited on the spot - hit the reset button, blow on the nintendo cartridge, because we're completely starting over. Sunday was a new day, the Bravo stuff didn't matter, and honestly, if we hadn't started the game pepped out of our heads, we would have at least been respectable - our uncharacteristic jack it first, ask questions later strategy came out of nowhere and hurt us quite a bit.
Headed out of there, planning to team-meet back in the Oxnard hotel lobby at 7. We checked the scores of missed college football and baseball games on smartphones, stopped by the beach en route, and headed to rooms for well-deserved showers. Aaron, who was completely on top of this weekend in the organization department, even got our jerseys laundered. BAM! We cleaned up and settled on hitting up Outback for a salty meal, thereby dodging the two hour waits in other hopping Oxnard eateries (I went 2 for 2 on disappointing meals, this time grabbing a BBQ chicken sandwich that lacked BBQ sauce. WHAT?). People had single beers, we discussed who would be on the weird team for Sprawl (and who would captain - the consensus was Dixon and Jim as co-captains), and after some threats of credit card roulette, we headed back to the hotel for sleep.
Of which I had little - we were glad to have a later 9 am start time the next morn, but this didn't stop me from waking up repeatedly during the night and finally conceding to a 5:20 AM wake up. I don't know what the deal is - hotels + Ulty = bad night's sleep for me and always have. The only worse ones were the times I camped. BLAH. Anyhoo, I once again applied SPF 30 before the sun was up. At least this time the ETD was 7 AM so we could partake of the free breakfast. I mean, "free" breakfast...
ADDENDUM: Day one for me was ~23 points at primary handler and one ... okay, two, turns. Some hucks, some break marks, whole lotta resets, and man can I not play D (the bravo game *may* have convinced me that it's absolutely idiotic for me to be on the club field after this year. Embarrassing). Not bad, but given the competition, not much to write home about, either. That would, imho, change in the semis the next morning, though I suppose I'll need some objective assessment before I go around declaring that. See the next post, please.
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