Wednesday, January 7, 2009

SFUC Week 8

Our game yesterday was a great way for me to get back into the swing of things after spending the last week+ on vacation with my extended family, who are finally all of drinking age. I had a blast, but sitting around the pool and beach all day doesn't do much to keep you in shape it turns out...

My conditioning work I had done pre-break is definitely lost, which is to be expected. Luckily, I am still in far better shape than I was at the beginning of the season. My cardio was gone, but my legs were alright, if nowhere near where they were 2 weeks ago.

To the game. We played against the Community Organizers, who featured Tyler Grant of Mischief and Greg Marliave and Charles Denby of YR. I was looking forward to matching up with Greg, who had given me the business in our YR-SCUC matchups this summer. The terms would be somewhat different this time I figured, as he wouldn't be in prime conditioned shape, and I wouldn't be woefully out of shape or fighting a stomach parasite or debilitating hangover, or going against team D that made my normal cuts less tenable. As it turned out, we were only matched up for maybe 1 point the whole game.

The task of guarding and being guarded by Tyler Grant fell to me. I have heard a lot about him being perhaps the best man in co-ed since he was in his Mischief days, but don't remember much about seeing him play this club season. It turns out that he is about my height, but carries quite a load compared to me. He is far quicker than me in the first couple steps, and just a little faster than me at top speed. It was clear that he was the single player most central to his team's gameplan of all the team's we have played so far.

We decided that it would be best to make him beat us with the disc under rather than deep, so I spent a lot of the game being run ragged by him in the space in front of the stack. This led to him catching a ton of uncontested 5-8 yard passes, but I was always there to put on a good mark pretty quickly. I did a good job of taking away his breaks and making him throw short throws toward the open sideline rather than up the middle of the field.

When he would take off, it was pretty tough to stick with him because he would change directions and get up to speed so quickly. Luckily, it was pretty easy to predict when he was about to really bust deep so i wasn't caught unaware when he would kick it into 5th gear. Even more luckily, there wasn't anyone on his team with good enough deep throws to get him the disc when he would get open downfield. Of course, he did catch a couple deep bombs, but generally they didn't have the horses to get it to him.

One thing they did do, though, was look to him exclusively at the goal line. I did a pretty great job of sticking with him on front stack iso's, considering his quickness advantage. In fact, I think he didn't catch any iso goals on me, or even get open in that situation. One situation they burned me on repeatedly were blades. If he was out in the lane in the end zone, I would let him get deeper than me since a short blade is so rare in that situation.

It was clear that as their main threat, though, they would find any way to get the disc to him. There must have been 6 or so throws like that made, early in the count so that they weren't necessarily desperation looks. On some of them I was sagged off enough that he caught them with no trouble. On 2 or 3 of them, though, I was close enough to be able to time my jump by looking at his eyes as I ran toward him to catch up, and either deflect the disc or distract him into a drop.

As far as the deep matchup went, he sort of got me on one that I could only catch up enough on a huck to get skied without a real chance at the disc. I made up for it a few points later, though, when I baited a lesser thrower into hucking to him when I had bettter position. The disc was floating in front of us with me between him and the disc. I went up high and ripped it down, but I don't know how close he was to getting it since he was behind me and never touched me.

The game itself was a lot of fun. We broke on the first point, which was important since there is no mirrored half in SFUC. After trading a few, we got another to go up 5-3, then traded to 7-5 before we ran off a bunch to move the score to 11-5 or so in a game to 13. At this point, they threw a zone at us. Three points in a row, we threw away hammers and were promptly scored on. Then we settled down and moved the disc a little better before turning it and getting scored on. 11-11. Ugh.

Very reminiscent of many Braineaters games we had that followed a similar formula of Big Lead, Other Team Zones Its Way Back, We Pull It Off In The End. Notable ones include Pittsburgh at Stanford Invite 08, UCLA at SIQ 06, SDSU at SIQ 08, and more that I am sure will be pointed out in the comments.

I moved to popper because I had been standing still on the wing doing nothing as our handlers swung til they turned the previous 5 points. Things went a little smoother, and we scored to make it 12-11 and then broke to win. I don't think zones will be a real problem for us in general though, because we were playing without Whit and Kevin Buchanan, two of our top and most experienced throwers.

I had a strong game overall considering how out of shape I was, doing a reasonably good job on Tyler and scoring a bunch of goals myself to go along with a backhand bomb i threw for a score, and no turnovers, as usual.
(8 cousins + 2 randos).

2 comments:

Joaq said...

Tyler played for Revolver last year. You might remember Gomez getting a D in the air on him at sectionals. (http://web.mac.com/tish2/2008_Sectionals/Revolver_v_SCUC.html#15)

Also, notice there were no problems with zones in '07. That zone O was so fun to play.

In other news, good to know you're back. Going to any fun tournaments this winter?

Jay Schulkin said...

right, i knew that. i meant of mischief fame. and why havent i seen this site before?