Windy times in the windy city

This is matsi reporting on the Gobies performance at the Chicago Invite. We came in ranked 8th (I think) and finish tied for 11th.

Playing conditions: Wind and more wind. Oh yeah, it was also "balls" cold the whole weekend. Many backhands were thrown, many flicks turned over into the ground. Owen put it best in one of our games Sunday: "That might've been the second flick I've thrown all weekend".

Saturday, pool play:
We came in as the #2 seed in our pool and started off against a lower seeded team, Truman State. We say it all the time, but this is "one of those teams" that we have trouble with. As in they throw stuff up we don't expect and come down with it. We unfortunately lost the match 13-7 (or something). The truth of the matter is that they dropped less discs than us and made stronger throws than us. I forget who we played our second game, but we won 13-7. Cool. Our last pool play game was against the 1 seed in our pool, Michigan State. This was a tough loss for the Gobies (13-5 I believe), but we can definitely learn a lot from this team and how they run their zone offense. They relied on quick handler movement and even quicker throws through our zone. We had a lot of trouble slowing down their attack.

Cross over game:
This was debately the biggest game of the tournament for us as it was against a rival sectionals team, Miami. We also had a heated game against them last year at Chicago where we lost pretty handily. Needless to say, we played well. Our D line really took it to them and we wore them out with stellar defense, forcing long points with their O line on the field. We beat them. Every tough sectionals team we beat brings confidence to the team. We have the potential to do something truly special this year. We just have to bring it on the field.

Sunday, bracket play:
In the championship bracket, our first bracket play game was the quaterfinals against Eastern Illinois. Once again, we weren't used to their style of play of throwing up discs when we least expect it. We went down early due to their surprise throws and spectacular catches. The O line struggled with a few short runs of getting broken. We traded points out of half until it was around 10-6. Soft cap went off, and we had to get our shit together. We rattled off four solid breaks, including two upwind. Hard cap went off as it was 9-9: universe point. The point was long, and we stopped them twice on the goal line. Unfortunately, we couldn't punch it in one last time upwind, and Eastern Illinois was victorious.
Apparently someone overheard an Eastern Illinois player state: "We didn't deserve to win that game". Maybe so, but we need to learn to bring our game from the first point in the first game. We can't expect to win a game if we have to do it with five breaks in a row at the end.

We went 1-1 in the next two games. The main thing of note here was that we beat Minnesota-Deleuth, a team that made it apparent that they thought they could walk all over us. Needless to say, not a word was spoken on the field or sidelines on universe point when our O line confidently and efficiently walked the disc down the field for the winning score.

What we learned/need to work on: Q
uick handler and disc movement is essential to breaking a tight zone.
It's hard to score upwind.
Fundamentals: most of our issues stemmed from simple catches and throws.

Big performances:
Owen: once again asserting his dominance over any zone that teams throw at us with his excellent popping and perfect backhands through holes in the zone. And sweet layouts.
Bharath: overall solid play on D-line. He knew how to get a D and then take over on offense to provide D-line with some excellent chances for upwind breaks.
The rookies: Erik playing great handler defense as well as minimizing mistakes, which is vital in these weather conditions. Bayunt almost having another callahan (might we say the new Jason Williams?). Eli playing great D, especially on in-cuts, and unleashing his forehand huck a few times.

Highlight of the tournament:
I would say beating Miami, but that's a lie. It was having Bro KP cheering us on and bro-ing out all weekend. Way to be a bro, bro.


- matsi

High Tide Writeup Coming soon

Hopefully before Chicago.

I'll get back into the swing of actually writing real ones of these soon, I bromise.

CWRUL Writeup

We beat a bunch of pretty good teams and lost to WVU in pool play.


Then we beat Toledo.

It was pretty sweet. Then we beat Bowling Green in the finals. That was pretty sweet too. 2 for 2? 2 for 2. B-team picked up a win too.

Also, first tournament with new jerseys. We were stylin' pretty hard.

NorthCoast Writeup

We beat a bunch of chumps and everyone played real well. Ed threw a whole bunch of scores to Mac. It snowed, and then it didn't.
B team picked up a win as well.