University Open Indoor Regionals

The preview for MUIOR said “Cambridge could well cruise through the weekend and sweep all before them.” which turned out not to be far from the truth…

The Strange Blue squad consisted of the captains George and James, and – also returning from last year’s 1st team – Dom,Tom,Rolo,Tejas, and – just having started their graduate courses – Alex Jones and CUlt Open captain Chris Tull, and – last but not least – two new faces: American superstars Justin Norden and Ben Funk.
With this incredibly experienced and athletic squad we set out to repeat last year’s victory at regionals, coming in from 3rd seed.

We managed to take our first two pool games against UBU2 and Fling2 comfortably, winning 12-4 and 12-6. Last game on saturday was against 6th seeded Loughborough Haze, who started strong and went up 3-1. We kept trading until 5-3, when SB stepped their game up and showed how hard they can play on D. We fought back, turned the game around and eventually ran down the clock being 6-5 up.
Play of the day went to JR who got a D on a really tall guy who kept shouting “Mismatch!”
Dick of the day went to Justin who got handblocked twice on lazy pushpasses.

Topping our pool on saturday meant we would jump right into semis on sunday morning. We were up against Jesters from Leicester, who primarily relied on “Medic” to make plays as their iso cutter. It took us some time to get used to this setup and Jesters went up 3-1 but we managed to shut them down from there on and went on to win 9-5.
On to the finals. First seeded UBU was desperate to take revenge for losing to us in both indoor and outdoor regionals finals last year. But they wouldn’t succeed…
It was an incredibly hard fought game, UBU equalizing just before the buzzer sounded after we had gotten a couple of early breaks. However, our offense did not crumble under the pressure and would go on to score the last point to win 7-6 in sudden death.
Play of the day went to Dom for getting an upline goal against two defenders while toeing the line.
Dick of the day went to Justin and Ben for carelessly letting UBU score and go into universe point with less than 10 seconds on the clock.

MVP of the weekend went to Dom for being the safest handler in the midlands and getting a huge block in the finals.

I had dyed my hair on Friday (as part of a forfeit) and promised that, if we win Nationals, I will dye my hair “Strange” blue permanently. Infinite mocking, isn’t that an incentive!

Thanks for an awesome weekend,

George