Sorry Charlie- tourney recap

Big shout out to our brothers abroad.

My blogging has been lackluster to say the least. Sorry

Summary: In my opinion, Rutgers went fairly well. There were lots of great plays followed by silly turns, which I somewhat expected being a first outing this spring for City College B. We went 2-1 with wins over Princeton/Rutgers and a loss to Columbia.

• Our O really suffered when it comes to dump resets and when we do get those working, our cutters weren't good at recognizing break opportunities or deep opportunities. Lots of work to do on that.
• Our zone D is quite good. I've worked on our cup with ryan/zach a bit and it works quite well in windy Metro East conditions, but it's not perfect yet.
• Our man D is what won our games. Every team we played brought way more players than us (I think we had 14 to Princeton's 25? Columbia's 17ish? Rutger's 30?) but I think we were better conditioned b/c our man defense would shut teams down when it needed to (except against Columbia)

1. Princeton (13-10): This win should have been by a bigger margin. This team really worked through 3 throwers, one of which seems to be a transfer or grad student from Williams who had some nice hucks. Burgman, aka whiny mcwhiny pants, had some nice downwind hucks as well. However, once we started backing them their offense wasn't so effective b/c we were faster and could cover their incuts. I clearly remember 3 turns that were the dumbest things I've ever done: one scoober behind husayn, one bad swing to chris, and one horrible dishy to a crashing Schulz in which i took two steps from a standstill and then threw it right to the Princeton cup apex....whatever, I knew my first tournament game back in 7 months would be rusty, I'll fix it. When the disc is ours on the sideline, what they like to do is force straight up on the mark and have the dump defender force upline or even, while all the cutter defenders would front our downfield cutters, something we actually thought of doing and maybe will in the future? Nothing much else to note, we are faster than these guys and if we can improve our marks and clean up our O (my O) i think we'll do well against them in the future.
2. Columbia (10-12): This was a tough loss. The final score was close, but it didn't feel like it. Their O, which works through Izzy, Milo and some random asians I dont know (Carey wasn't there, but they didn't seem to hurt by this fact), broke our zone too easily. I was pissed about that. Furthermore Zac seems to have taught them a nice D which works very well in windy conditions when the disc is on the sideline. They seem to have used a 2 man trap cuppy thing while manning the dump. This gave me headaches b/c i felt very trapped and couldn't even huck it b/c the wind and large man in front of me (damn you zac roy- in retrospect, seeing as we didn't adapt to said trap cuppy thing, I should have just boosted it deep on an early count instead of trying unsuccessfully to throw to guarded incuts), but eventually we learned to get the disc off the line faster, but we didn't fix this fast enough in the end and Columbia pulled out the wind. Izzy, who really doesn't amaze me played well for being injured and Milo frustrated us with some nice throws. They have talent and we gotta tweak some things to nullify that. We could have beaten Columbia had I made some conscious changes earlier on (they would have beat us by a larger margin had we not made any changes)...In all, i never felt like we were in this game, even when we broke to take the first score...or am i making that up?...Anyway, yeah the score was close in the end, but I felt like we were down the whole time.
3. Rutgers (15-13): God this game should have been a blowout, but in regular Haze fashion we let them claw back from a 8-4 (i think? we were up like 4 breaks) half time score. Our zone d got shredded a few times by over the top scoobers/hammers. I think it wasn't windy enough for it to be super effective, then again I may be remembering said scoobers b/c we threw zone on them working downwind too :P Anyway, we know these guys well. A bunch of them are friends, so it was a little fun playing them. My friend from Cal is playing his 5th year is joining this years' Rutgers squad which has some reals threats in Joe, Glenn, Frenchy, Greg, Brian Li. It felt great to layout over my friend, Albert, for the score though...he's a much better cutter than me and I dont score goals much. I'm glad he's such a good sport about it too.

• VP-Defensive MVP: I think VP got like 10 layout D's on incuts. If that number isn't right, he definitely got the most on the team. Furthermore, he had some major skies for big scores during the day too, def touched rim.
• Hus- had some phenomenal bids as usual- but we should be throwing better so he doesn't need to make such huge bids. In my opinion, Hus could be All-Region (college or club) with his talent and athleticism. I saw one great sequence of events in which he caught in incut, turned to see a Schulz streaking deep, actually decided to huck it to him for once, but got footblocked (huge thud, which the rutgers sideline followed with a roar-Hus, you released your huck at your hip...), had his man cut deep on him and I could see in Hus' eyes that there was no way he wasn't getting the disc back for us and him, so he caught up to the trailing edge of the huck to his man and prevented a Rutgers score. Honestly I know he has the throws, mark, speed, field awareness to be great, but I think now he's gotta learn to play smart and conserve his energy on offense to make the most damaging plays necessary for our team to win. Furthermore, I'm not sure how to explain it better than saying he needs the confidence to take over games not just as a receiver but as a thrower/leader too.
• Schulz-played most points as usual. The Schulz/Hus power cutting combo should work better than it did this day. Gotta think why, since these two cutters are definitely the fastest players in our section and top cutters in our region.
• Me- too many turns when teams threw crappy zones on me-1 lay out D in the redzone against princeton and 1 layout score
• Chris Nelson- played some great D on the day, definitely is the scrappiest rookie right now, and one of the most in shape players on Haze
• Kyle- had the prettiest dishies which resulted in a goal
• Lu- got open at will and had some nice hucks to open the field up
• Zach-he's good, couldn't connect with Schulz on our pull plays though
• Kahyee- I know we have him handling but I'd like to see him cut deep sometimes like he does on me when I guard him in practice.
• WesW-needs to play more aggressively for his size on O and D

I/The teams needs to learn to use time-outs more effectively and to our advantage....not sure how, since I'm not great at it, but that should happen. We need someone to keep score, b/c I suck at that. Also, people need to start cutting deep off dump swings....and whenever I have the disc...everyone seems to cut in when I have the disc...I HAVE NICE BACKHAND HUCKS TOO GUYS....GAWD...also, our dumps suck. I'm looking at VP, Larry in particular.

Gotta get some sleep. Goin to work early tomorrow. Spring break starts at 1am Friday night for me.

Georgia on my mind,

Rampage