Saturday:
Game 1 vs JR: We had just seen JR topple Fire 2 in a pretty big upset. JR went on to stay in A-Tour so big props to them. We started fast and ended a little slow. After taking the half 8-3 we went on to win 13-10. Still comfortable, but we definitely slowed up. We were finding it difficult to run our offensive systems against a zone which would be a bit of a theme for the weekend. Our defenses were strong though and consistently got turns. Final score was about 13-9/10
Game 2 vs Fire 2: Tough game in tough conditions against a mentally tough team. They were missing a lot of handlers, but still played strongly against our defenses. Went to sudden death and we came out on top. Good game to allow us to top the group.
Game 3 vs Wessex: To take it to the top 12 we needed to beat Wessex. These boys played the best game against us of the three times we've played them this season and we didn't play well enough to win out. Last tour we had a close but comfortable win against them with 9 players. This time we had more players and they had a stronger squad as well. We had a pretty relaxed warmup and went into the game with confidence and took an early 3-1 lead. This is when our mistakes began to creep in. We needed to be mentally stronger than we were and Wessex began to punish us. It went to 10-10, sudden death, we were on downwind defense. I managed to get a run through D and it the disc was about 12 yards outside their endzone. We didn't run our endzone offense well enough and turned it over on a floaty mixer disc into the endzone. Wessex then hucked it up wind for the final point and the win. A deserved win for the Wessex guys, but it definitely stung our squad to be so close to Top 12 and then miss out, even if we didn't fully deserve it based on this game.
So on Sunday we were playing to hold onto 13th seed all day. We were all pretty disappointed to not be top 12 but knew we still had work to do to get our offense firing all over the field.
Sunday:
Game 1 vs The Brown: Started a little slow to trade to 2-2 then basically stepped up our O and D and they couldn't keep up. Final score 15-4 win.
Game 2 vs EMO: Traded all the way to about 9-9. Took a couple of points lead before EMO managed to bring it back to 12-12, sudden death again. Both teams had a few chances, but our defense really clamped down on all there scoring oppurtunities, whereas our offense was turning itself trying to score upwind (including a pretty poor hammer from me). Eventually we ground out the win to go into our final game against Fusion, playing for 13th.
Game 3 vs Fusion: Fusion are a very strong team and it wasn't all that long ago that they were consistently challenging for Tour championships against Clapham, Chevron and Fire. They had all the throws in the wind and a strong zone that we struggled with into the wind for the first half. The general idea was they would play man on the handlers but mark behind forcing them to cut up the field then have a the upfield defenders who were playing zones coming in to clog the space in front of the disc, which made handler resets particularly difficult, especially on the sidelines. After half we managed to break it slightly more easily, but we never managed to pull back the 3 point lead they had taken in the first half. Final score was 12-9 win to Fusion.
Overall, a bit of an up and down weekend. The wind definitely was a factor in us running our systems as every team we came up against played a zone on defense. Some we were able to run our systems against, others we had to play standard zone offense. Our zones, at times worked, and at other times got broken quickly, but that's the nature of zone. One zone was particularly stifling for the upfield players, allowing endless resets, which resulted in a few mistakes from handlers, and the other put more pressure on and generated a few more turns from upfield defense so I'm happy with the way they were progressing throughout the weekend.
In terms of my play, I think for the most part I was solid, but had a few too many throwaways, mostly coming on mid to long range sidearms. Will be working on that for next time. Other than that, I defended deep passes well, stopping two huck scoring oppurtunities for EMO and a couple in the other games. I also got one layout D against EMO and the run through D in the final point against Wessex. At times I thought I was playing offense well and at others I felt a bit out of place. Will be heading to training to try and sort this out too. But overall, pretty happy with the weekend.
Ka-Pow!
No comments:
Post a Comment