ACC

Shit's getting hectic and, as Brooks said today, The Man is looming. Still, I had hoped to get this up last week. Oh well. Vegas is this weekend, so read it while you're wishing you were there with me.

The idea to put on an ACC tournament came about over a year ago, and after no one stepped up and put it together in 2008, UNC and their broken-footed president made it happen. We were pretty hyped on this from its inception, as news came over break that the effort to make this tournament a cutting edge and user-friendly event would include a couple of unique features, the most compelling being experimental rules. Sure, some of it seemed like fanfair for the sake of fanfair (we never did get programs, and the stats were kept in a pretty inconsistent manner), but overall this the changes gave the whole thing a cool feel. Also, after watching this type of thing at Solstice, I was really excited to get a chance to play in that environment myself.

New stuff aside, it turned out we were still there to play the same old game of Ultimate. The biggest impact that I noticed the modified rules having was the speeding up of the game, as quicker pulls and very little time to argue calls had things moving smoothly. A lot of people wondered about travels in particular, but there really weren't many calls at all (sorry, Frank), and when there were any, play resumed almost instantaneously. Overall, I give the whole active calls/refzervers thing pretty high marks.

Alright, onto the games. This was only a ten team tournament (Boston College didn't come because Greg creeped out the entire school, and Miami... well I got nothing) with three fields, so there were just three games to play on Saturday.

Saturday

Wake Forest (13-7)
Wake is kind of in a weird spot of having two or three really talented guys and then a lot of other people who seem to be young and losing. That, and young Dagley quit. Offensively, I don't remember all that much from this game other than the fact that things were flowing effortlessly and I didn't turn the disc over. Our defense wasn't firing at its best, but we brought enough pressure to induce drops-a-plenty, and were cruising by half time. I think we got broken once after half and wound up trading a couple times, but this game was never really a concern.

Clemson (13-4)
Clemson took NC State to 11-13 and they looked really tall and athletic, so I figured we might be in for more of a game than most people were thinking. I turned out to be wrong. They have Ben Slade, who posts a lot on rsd and is good at skying people, getting Ds, and throwing break throws. Other than that, though, we didn't have many problems. They were cool guys though, and one of them said to me during the game (jokingly, of course) that he didn't like us because we were too fast. I thought that was pretty cool because I guess I've just never really stopped to compare our speed as a whole with that of another team; speed is usually something that I only think about relative to individual match-ups and, more specifically, how other teams' fast players can be neutralized with positioning and the like. Not that I don't think about speed in a game that centers around running and running fast, but you get the point: hearing it from an opposing player was cool.

NC State (5-13)
Nothing to see here.

Move it along.

We won't be talking about it.

Ok, ok. So this game... it was a nightmare. I played really shitty, somehow deciding that it would be a good idea to force the issue against their zone rather than work it patiently. They ran a standard four-man, but were pretty physical on our crashers, making us hesitant to stick to the cycling that we know works. Aside from my own throws, us getting static lead to coughing up the disc a lot near our own goal line, meaning quick scores were pretty easy for their D line. Before we knew it, we were down 0-3. Then 4, then 5. It was like a flashback to the old days (I'm thinking second year) when the breaks just kept coming and coming with everyone feeling pretty helpless about it. Finally, I put a huck to Conger and he hit Justin for the score to stop the bleeding. For the time being. Things stayed crappy, and yeah. We lost. I don't want to dwell on it, but all things concerned, I think that NCStateonSaturdayofACCs will go down as a very, very important teaching moment that sparked some important thinking about our offense for the rest of the season. I'm just glad it happened on Saturday.


Sunday

Virginia Tech (8-13)
Shit was COLD. Real cold. Our first game was against Virginia Tech, who none of us really like since they put us out of Sectionals two years ago. We came in thinking that the game wouldn't be so bad and that we had put the shitshow that was yesterday's loss to NC State behind us. Unfortunately, we were wrong. We traded for a few points and broke first, but our zone woes soon caught up to us and they took half 7-5. They held coming out, and I think we got broken thereafter to put them at 9. I personally felt a lot better than I did against Wolfpack (understatement much?), but I still threw a few turnovers that were far from necessary. I don't know. We lost, something like 9-13. It sucked, plain and simple. Nevertheless, because Clemson's only victory was against Wake, we knew we'd take third in the pool and play the two from the other, which was...

Florida State (13-3)
They had a good Saturday, upsetting Duke and playing UNC close, but by Sunday they were down to 12 guys, two of which got hurt during our game (more on this in a sec). They were really reliant on just two guys, Rook and David, both of whom were impressive but unable to pull the rest of the team up to their level. Most of their cutters just had a hard time knowing what to do with the disc once they got it, and since they were so low on numbers, they tried coming zone but to no avail. While this usually wouldn't even be a victory really worth commenting on, it wound up playing a big part in getting us fired back up. We restored some confidence and were ready to bring some swagger into the semis. Good thing, because it was a rematch of the previous day's debacle.

NC State (13-9)
Pretty sure I covered this, but I really can't overemphasize how demoralizing Saturday's loss was. Sure, the Tech game meant more with regard to pool play finish, but for some reason I was able to make excuses for that one. NC State, on the other hand, had dismantled us so handily that it was embarrassing. So on Sunday, we weren't even talking about revenge. We were talking about redemption.
Each O held for the first two points, but we broke to go to 3-2. Intensity was high for us as it was, but I really don't think we were losing from that point on. I think they held once more but after that we broke two or three times in a row, eventually going to half at 7-4. They certainly weren't happy with themselves, and we knew that they would look to come back in early in the second half. Their O line ran a few zones off of a turn, but to no avail. Their D started coming man, and when teams go man, we have no problem. They broke us to get as close as 9-7 (I think), but from there we kept things rolling. The game got chippy once we were at 11, but that's really to be expected, and is something we need to get used to. The game ended on an IO huck from me to Conger, a connection we've been improving on ever since the 3 turns, one point incident at Philly this summer.

UNC (13-9)
A finals match-up with UNC was what we had both hoped for and expected before the tournament. After a long couple of games, I felt great during the warm-up, and more focused than I had since Clemson. We started the game on O, and while I expected them to come with the poach-heavy handler defense we've seen from them in the past, they stuck our guys pretty close. Robert put a backhand huck to Justin, and we were on the board. Our O remained crisper than it had been all weekend, and our D was playing with more intensity than ever. Layouts were coming from all over the place, and once their cutters got the disc, they had few options outside of a dump. Ryan, typically an O-line guy, was given the assignment of guarding Lucas because of his speed, and he did a great job of simply sticking with him and not letting him be responsible for any big gains. As a team, UNC doesn't have too many holes, but they really don't have all that much firepower outside of Lucas, Noah, and Weeks and some really strong role-playing seniors. One thing I'll say about this game is that it progressed incredibly quickly. There were very few calls, little down time between pulls, and not even that many turns from either team. Probably a result of Mike G observing.
I was really impressed that as the game got closer to finishing, the O line cleaned up and the D line ran even harder. All we had to do was sit on our lead to close things out, and we did just that. Their final O point took a couple of possessions for them to convert, as I recall us forcing at least two turns. Receiving 12-9, we marched it up pretty easily, with Robert hitting Greg up the line for the game and tournament win.


ACC was UVA's first spring tournament win since Queen City 2005 (spring break my first year aside). Given how low the weekend got, getting that trophy and celebrating was a tremendous high. We all came away with a since of just how badly we could beat ourselves, but more importantly of just how well we can play when team-wide focus is all there. Sure, it was only January, but it felt good.

That's all for now. I wanted to get this up before Vegas, and at 7:30am PST Friday morning, Feb. 6, here it is. I'm gonna try something different for this tournament: daily updates so I avoid letting them pile up. We'll see.

Vegas, baby. Vegas.