SW Regionals '09

Our season is over. We finished officially tied for 5th, apparently the best that Smaug's ever finished. The results were, in case you live in a cave:
1. Colorado*
2. UCSD*
3. UCSB*
4. Arizona
T5. UCLA
T5. Colorado College

Not the results that we wanted, but I don't think anyone felt bad about how we played this weekend. In fact, I think we played awesome. We peaked at the right time, and lots of people stepped up in surprising and awesome ways. Just off the top of my head - Bishop, Attica, Avatar, Vonage, and Scarecrow really impressed me with their best play of the year, just to name a few. I saw our described as a faceless army in the SW all region rsd thread, and I think that's great. It's a shame we don't have any super ballers, but we are a deep team and I'm very excited for next year.

I guess I'll run through a quick recap of the tourney...

Irvine - 15-5
I love playing Irvine. They're fun guys. They all came out with blue and yellow Braveheart style facepaint which looked pretty sweet. Roeder's throws were on fire and were always threatening to shred our zone. Other people struggled, though, and our zone was pretty efficient, especially with everyone not very used to the mile high air. And it was ass cold. Why did we have to go to Colorado again?

SDSU - 12-11
Props to Splash and Corey. Those guys are awesome players and they make SDSU much better than they would otherwise be. They ran out to take half 8-3 on us. Fortunately, the games and rounds were really long. Their studs were playing almost every point and it was bound to take its toll in the thin air. Our legs got the better of them and we crept back to take the game on universe at hard cap. Our season almost ended during this game, but oddly enough, I was never worried that we wouldn't win. Still, our comeback was amazing. We felt like the team of destiny.

SLO - 15-11
This was the big game of the day. Winner took the pool and had a straighter path to qualifying. (SLO, as it turns out, ran into Colorado College who was super-underseeded. Ouch.) They had taken our last meeting as Sectionals, so we were really fired up for this one. As a side note, though, losing to SLO at sectionals may have been very lucky; we could have ended up in pool D, the clear "Pool of Death" with some combination of Claremont, SB and AZ. Anyway, we knew we had to shut down Bacon, which we did through a combination of straight up marks, physicality and great D by Bishop. He still toasted us deep a few times, our offense connected more consistantly than theirs. For once, a game went exactly to our plan and we came out with a drama free, quality win. And we broke seed to win our pool!

Colorado 9-14
I almost forgot about this game and moved on to Sunday morning. It wasn't very important for us to win, and we decided to really open up the lines and save our legs for Sunday morning. Still, it was freakin awesome to play Mamabird because none of us ever had. They were definitely at a higher level than anyone else at the tourney, and they didn't even have Mac on Saturday. With our nothing-to-lose mindset, we actually played really well. It's amazing what you can do when you don't feel any pressure. Linux told us to relax and challenge them. Avatar broke open for 3 consecutive offensive huck scores. BSOD also had about a 5 minute possession our their goal line because we kept stopping to argue. DaVinci also made a sick catch around his man's head, although it got called back. Finally SOD put up a swilly throw to break side and we brought it down. Attica also played some great dump D.
Anyway, I felt like we really gave them a tough time with our tight man D (and this was confirmed when one of their dudes told us that we had given them their toughest game of the weekend. This was after they beat Squids 15-2 in the finals. Really squids?). Anyway, I think 2 things really stood out to me about Mamabird: 1. They are fast as hell, and 2. They are all great throwers. I'll come back to this later.

Saturday night we ate some BBQ and marveled at Outdoor World near our hotel. It's as close to Disneyland as Commerce City has.

UCSB - 12-14
Tide had looked really shaky on Saturday. Azusa Pacific took them universe point. APU had the disc on the goal line and turned it. After about 4 more turns by both teams, Tide put in the winning point. It's amazing that APU even got that far, but seriously, they couldn't have just put it in? We could have played them in quarters! Anyway, we started throwing a trap zone in the light wind, and it was pretty effective at first. I picked off a few lazy deep passes and we went up a couple breaks to start the game. Tide crept back to take half 8-7. Boutcher absolutely killed us in the air. We didn't have anyone that could go up with him. He and Silverman are Tide. They're great players, but I don't think it will take them very far at nationals. Anyway, we basically traded for the rest of the game. Both our offenses were very efficient, but they broke us once more near the very end as the cap blew. I have to credit them for being tough as nails with the game on the line. They have the big game experience that we don't have yet. It was disappointing to lose this one, but both teams played great. Sometimes, you have to just tip your hat.

SDSU - 15-5
SDSU had just blown a 14-11 lead to the Squids in the quarters game (sound familiar?) although I'm glad they did because I would not have wanted to meet the Squids in this game. They're guys were tired and the wind really started kicking up. We basically had our way with our zone O and the game felt like more of a formality.

Arizona - 9-14
The wind got crazy in this game. We had never played AZ this year, but they have 2 guys that stand above the rest. Austin and Gaffney are amazing players. Austin absolutely killed us with his throws and his skies. We just had no answer. Anyway, it was basically an upwind/downwind game. We traded with them until they figured out that it was more effective for them to run man on our upwind offense and really pressure our dumps. With the deep game taken away by the wind and their athletes, there wasn't much we could do. Austin was throwing huge hammers all over the field downwind, and connnecting a very large number of them. Going upwind, Gaffney would rip it and a they brought down a fair amount of these shots. It was good for a few breaks on us, and that was all they needed.
When it became clear that we weren't going to take this game, we started playing senior lines. It was really emotional with everyone cheering on the old guys playing their last points of college ultimate. They played great, too. They scored up wind and then got a break. Kiosk scored 2 points and Sultan was playing pyscho D and got 2 huge layout D's in the last point. If we had to lose, I'm glad it came at the hands of Arizona because they are spirited and really nice guys. I was really bummed to hear that they lost on universe to Tide. I guess they threw one too many hammers in the wind and rain.

And thus ended our season.