Pittsburgh:
Pitts warm
ups were timed to the minute. They went
from one drill to another with set times for grabbing water. Everything they did was businesslike and
focused. When they did breakmark drills
or drills where the team could be split up, they divided themselves into Oline
and Dline. My initial feeling was that
they wanted the drills to be geared towards talent levels of guys. For example what is the point of your best
thrower getting marked by a poor marker?
I shared this thought with Zubair who mentioned he felt that a big part
of getting the disc to the breakside was having cutters who knew that their throwers
could get it to them. This is a great
point, so by having guys who play together run a drill of breakmark together,
then you can get a feel for where your thrower wants to put a break shot, and
as a cutter you can dramatically increase the chances of getting the ball by
making a move for that spot.
Pittsburgh had matchups set for
everyone on their team. They had a
spreadsheet with their players and the matchups they wanted their guys to mark
up on. During their warm up they found
time to stand at midfield and stare at the other team so they could identify
their matchups and make sure they knew who was who. This was a great idea because on the line
they knew their guys and the coach could talk about the flow of the game
instead of worrying about individual tweaks.
It also served as a pretty solid moment of intimidation.
Texas:
The Texas
game pitted me against my old foe, desperation in the face of a more athletic
foe. Illinois got blown apart in the
first half, 8-3 because they couldn’t compete athletically with Texas. The Texas Ultimate Frisbee Friends were
getting a lot of easy passes and they were using a ho-stack poach which was
totally killing Illinois.
I asked
Austin what he would do when your team is losing the athletic game and he mentioned
that you can make it up in different spots, like throws and catches. I thought this was pretty stupid, because how
are you supposed to count on catches when everything is heavily contested, and
how can you count on throws when the other teams marks are very quick.
During
Halftime two things happened. Stupca
gave Ryan Smith a stern talking to about sucking it up and finding a way to
play with Brad Bolliger, and Walden told the dline to start going for
handblocks. Illinois came out of half with
a 7-3. The biggest difference I think
was that the throwers were being pressured way more. Texas wasn’t getting the easy swings or easy
inverts they had in the first half, and even though the cutters were open by
the same margins the throws were made more difficult which got Illinois a bunch
of possessions.
Colorado v. Oregon:
This was
the best game of the tournament.
UCF v. CUT:
I can’t
shake the feeling that CUT looked past UCF in the semifinal. Nick Stuart was out so that hurt, but
Montague is good enough to compete with Mischa which he did not do. Montague should have been squirreling around
in handler sets and using his throws to help his team win, but he kept going
downfield with a 6’8’’ D1 athlete on him.
I was pretty disappointed because I expected him to be able to outsmart
Mischa.
JCW, Simon
and Jonah didn’t do anything the entire game.
When your top dogs aren’t effective and your team isn’t very deep then
you have massive problems. I do not feel
that UCF did anything to interfere with these guys; they were doing it to
themselves by being apprehensive.
Wisco:
Kyle
Geppert has the greatest backhand pump fake ever.
