Wolfpack

i should have seen this coming. i'm getting behind on blog posts before even really getting started. ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, this is terrrrrrrrible.
this blog is a very serious thing.
with very serious deadlines.
i will do better. i must.

so the fall rolled in a while ago, and with none of us making nationals (kind of), practices during the past couple of months have been devoted to the typical fall hustle of teaching rookies the game and getting our legs back. the most exciting part, however, has been anticipation brought on by everyone's summer improvements. it's been clear since the first days of september that everyone put time and effort into getting better since regionals, a reality that has had me itching to get onto the field against some non-uva opposition.

that competition came in the form of nc state's wolfpack last weekend. long story short: it went pretty well; we went 5-1; we won the tournament.

saturday

unc-wilmington [L 10-12]
after having some changes to the pools, fields, and schedule, we finally took the field saturday morning against unc-wilmington. we started on d, and even though we hadn't really warmed up as though we were playing our pool's top seed, we came out running hard and fast. their offense held, but we forced two turnovers along the way, the start of a trend that would last throughout the weekend. and it's a good thing, too, because things were a bit of a different story on offense. we got broken twice pretty early in the half, forcing throws that were crowded on the on side and trying to throw breaks against marks that were stronger than what we've been putting on each other in practice. as i said, though, our defense looked on from the start, and they broke back twice to even things out at 4-4-. there may have been another break or two for each team in the following points, but they were a wash and wilmington went into half on serve, 8-7. in the second half, the wind and rain started to pick up, and even though they didn't show all that much ability with a deep game, we weren't really able to open ours up because of the conditions. this was exacerbated when they started to throw zone, and the summer rust started to show as we turned the disc over multiple times trying to throw through the cup rather than around it. this was definitely a problem for us on offense, and our turnover woes kept coming. (side note: when i say "our" turnover woes, i mostly mean myself. i came out this game looking to do a lot more than i needed to, and it showed. i did settle down somewhere in this game, but i wouldn't exactly say it lasted. read on...) once again, though, our d flexed its overall improvements, getting breaks back and then some. highlights that i remember include charlie and jesse coming up with their typical layout blocks on in cuts, brooks playing real well against one of their stronger cutters (the carl crawford wannabe), and dagley jumping very, very high to catch some swill and then throw a push pass score (this would not be the only time that dags showed signs of realizing his leaping abilities). i'm also going to mention justin's shoulder-high layout that got a turn back for us on offense and stopped another break for wilmington. anyway, after a few more points, things were looking food for us. we went up 10-9 just after the cap horn blew, meaning the game would be played to 12. they held, making it 10s. then we got broken on a real unlucky callahan. at 11-10 wilmington, robert came on and we were set to get down the field and play a double game point. good plan, except i through a high release to justin that slipped in the rain and sailed over his head. two throws, game wilmington. fuck. put simply, this wasn't a good game for me, but for the team as a whole, it was. the loss sucked, but all things considered, it just let us know that we can play at whatever level we want to play at.

georgetown [15-5ish?], virginia tech [the same??]
aside from the whole learning experience thing, the wilmington loss was noteworthy because it was our only one of the weekend. our next two saturday games went pretty smoothly, which i think was a product of both us working out the jitters and the opposition not really being on the same level as what we saw in the first game. against georgetown, it was cool to play against alex laws, who played on floodwall with us and is a good player and a perpetually friendly guy. our d kept itself on the field a lot, but they were able to put up a few because on top of alex as a thrower, they had two or three pretty athletic receivers. the game ended on a stupid hammer from me to matt king, who made a very nice grab.
virginia tech had played wilmington closer than we expected them to, and coming into the game against them, we knew to look for one thing: the huck. they have some really tall guys, some decent throwers, and not much else. we actually traded for the first few points, but once our d found its groove (aka how to recognize being last back and how to put robert at deep in a zone when all they want to do is huck anyway), their offense was on the field until something like 9-4. at some point, charlie had a wild sky, and we wound up finishing the game on offense, but not before i turfed and then floated flicks, both of which resulted in breaks. i blame being on the sideline for so long.
there were some real common themes in both of these games. first, robert on the d line is looking like it's going to be a good thing. the man knows how to generate a turn, and i think his defense has gone underrated for a while. more importantly, though, he's really hard to cover and can throw pretty much whatever he wants when he wants it unless he's facing a real lockdown defender, both of which are traits you don't mind having in someone that you're asking to run the show once you have the disc. with him as a solid and calming force, our other d handlers were able to relax a bit and know that as long as they kept looking dump/swing early, someone would be open. as cutting awareness and chemistry gets better, our defensive offense is only going to get more efficient. sweet.

with saturday in the books, we went to the girls' fields and watched them beat ecu on double game point. on the way over, we saw what would become our entertainment for the night: neeley st. after dinner, we checked it out, and after it got dark, we went back and put it in the hands of its rightful owner, me. brooks proved himself to be both horrible and good at stealing things all in the same half hour.


sunday

our first game sunday was against wake forest. yeah, it was quarters and we played well (took half 8-2, cruised to something like 15-5), but the real reason this game was cool was because it featured a dagley v. dagley matchup. as a personal fan of brotherly matchups (mostly because they only go in my favor), i was happy to see this. the elder seemed to be in control when they were actually guarding each other, but mitchell looks like a smart player who's going to be really good once he gets his rhythm down. i did my best to forestall this process, though, nearly killing him on a layout d in the endzone. on that note, personal highlights in this game included a pull that went out of bounds on the unc-uncw field, along with getting live at the bbq not once, but twice.

semifinals against duke was our closest win of the weekend. we took half 8-4 and i think went to 9-4, but we got lazy here and there and let them back into the game to the tune of something like 10-8. we were forcing abnormal stuff like breaks that were something like 70% rather than on side throws that were 100%, and when they broke us twice, we started putting up some stupid hucks. we cooled it though, and eventually got the win 15-11. they definitely looked better than i remember from years past, with a couple of guys pulling real athletic plays in the air. i will say is one thing they don't like to do is dump, so when we took away their lanes and made them do it, they didn't handle it well. still, after missing out on regionals last year, i'll be curious to see what happens with duke in 2009.

on the opposite side of the bracket, unc beat wilmington and played ecu, who had taken down elon, and then ecu beat unc on universe to go to finals. going in, i expected a couple of guys to have good throws and the rest of them to be relatively disciplined, waiting on those guys to get the throws they wanted and then making the cut for them. this was more or less the case, and they scored their first point off of a centering throw and a huck. our o held, they held, and then they broke us. after that, though, we decided we didn't want any nonsense and put out a couple of breaks. they called a timeout after one of them, but came out sitting and kneeling on the line. really, they just looked real tired, and we stepped it up briefly before coasting to the 15-7 win.

we got a big beer class as a championship trophy, took a few pictures, watched the girls (tough loss to duke, but amtrak had a boss layout on a deep throw), and headed to cookout. overall, the weekend was really good. we played with real open rotations, and while there were some kinks on the parts of both rookies and vets, i'd say that our showing with what was a preliminary team was as good as we would have hoped. really, it's nice to win tournaments whenever you play in them.


next week is ccc (we played as X and Y in matt baccary memorial tournament this weekend, with Y losing to w&m in the finals), which is something we're all looking forward to. the competition's going to be real tough, higher than a lot of our players have really ever seen. but we're up to it. night train's coming.