UCSB Memorial Day Classic Tournament Summary
Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 12:41:07 -0700
From: "Anil R. Gangolli"
Subject: S.B. Classic Results
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Saturday Pool Play
DF 13 Spastic 6
DF 11 Burbank 13
DF 13 LagunaTicks 7
DF 13 NoYouGo 5
Notes: Weather was sunny with some wind, mixed crossing and
lengthwise. We utilized all of our players pretty uniformly. We
stayed well-hydrated and kept our heads in the games. Most of our
leads were established in the early to middle part of the games. All
of the wins were pretty comfortable. LagunaTicks gave us some cause
to worry as they seemed to be building a catchup momentum in the end.
We finally focused and finished them. My impression, ungrounded in
actual statistics, was that over the course of the whole day there
were very few drops and receiving errors. Several throwaways, about
1/2 bad judgement. We played pretty good defense most of the time.
This had a devastating effect on these weaker teams.
It's worth talking about the Burbank game. Burbank re-established
their band-of-thugs tradition with a physical and call-heavy game.
They threw a zone we are not used to playing against with 1 mark and a
3-man cup at about 15 feet out, trapping on the line. Our normal
popper-intensive zone O did not work well against this D. We really
had to go over the top to advance often, and failed to realize this in
time. Unfortunately, the deep area was covered by a fairly large very
athletic player, Dan Babbitt or Babbins or something, who munched a
number of the weaker over the tops. We had lots of throwaways in the
backfield, including a number of poor full-field swings upwind that
rose and were not caught in bounds on the other side. They
established an early lead and pulled to 10-4. We made a good comeback
to 11-10, but couldn't sustain the momentum. It ended 13-11. Still,
we didn't let it get to our heads and played well the rest of the day.
We had a great rice-intensive Thai dinner at the place across from the
Good Earth.
Elimination Rounds
DF 15 Smog 8
DF 17 CA Sex Popes (Potted Plants) 15
DF 10 Burbank 17
The pattern for the Smog game was similar to that of the LagunaTicks
game on Saturday. We pulled way ahead early. They kind of caught up
to 13-8. Then we finally ended it. Our game against the Potted
Plants was long and hard, filled with points from hell, mostly
self-inflicted from both sides. We established a healthy 3-4 point
lead early but let them catch up and pass us in the middle. We were
neck and neck from 10 through 15, and tied 15-15. We played a hard
two last points to win and advance very tired to the finals.
Our major problems in the finals were due to people being too tired to
play good D. Our players were too slow to stop their advances on the
receiver-side and our marks were lax and often broken. Burbank came
out rested and obnoxious with their zone D, and we turned it over 4
times with lax or late D recoveries giving them a 4-0 lead. We never
really recovered those and they got another 3 somewhere in the
middle-- these points were characterized by full-field zone O drives
ending with a bad or impatient throw and then poor recovery on D to
lose the point. They had us about 14-7 and traded points to the end.
Summary
-------
Over both days we played pretty well against all teams except Burbank,
and I think the team we took down had a lot of fun playing. We
re-established our confidence that we can consistently beat out most
of the "rabble" teams that might show up at Sectionals. We have
definitely gotten above that. We need to improve our conditioning and
intensity over the summer to be able to clinch a berth in Regionals
again. We should practice against the Burbank-style zone with maybe
Rich or E.J. playing the Babbitt role. Happiness plays a similar zone
sometimes.
Pickups
-------
E.J.'s friend Cory, a tall young guy, was a pretty good deep on O. He
was not as impressive on D, but played well overall and was a good
addition for the weekend. We had Jocko Magadini and a S.B. friend of Xen's
named Greg pick up with us on Sunday. My impression was that Jocko
was a positive factor helping out on handling. Greg was not very
influential either on D or O, but wasn't a big weak link either. In
the finals we picked up another player Dan Goldman (?). My impression
was this hurt us to some extent. He had a couple of bad throwaways
and dropped an easy catch. This was a negative factor but not at all
decisive in the final game.
--
AND MORE FROM JOHN:
From: "John H. Gennari"
Subject: SB tourney
Sender: "John H. Gennari"
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Thanks Anil for posting a good summary of the tournament. I especially agreed
with the following:
> Over both days we played pretty well against all teams except Burbank,
> and I think the team we took down had a lot of fun playing. We
> re-established our confidence that we can consistently beat out most
> of the "rabble" teams that might show up at Sectionals. We have
> definitely gotten above that.
To kind of reinforce that, I wanted to add that the marathon 17-15 win in the
Semi-finals was the best, most fun game of Ultimate I've played since I don't
know when. I believe we only had a 1-2 point lead early in the game, and I
think that they had a 2-3 point lead from 7-4 to 10-8. Also, although all the
points were long, the turnovers were usually on hucks or on over-eager throws
in the end-zone. Although obviously we should work on this, this type of
turnover is much, much better than a drop or receiving error in our backfield!
The latter is too easy for the other team to convert into a quick score, and
is more psychologically disheartening.
Good work DF, and hurray for a great weekend of Ultimate!
-jhg
ps. I think that special recognition should go to Max, both for his good
play as a middle/handler, and for his spirit as the "Aaach" Scotsman.