Strange Blue 1 at MUOOR
SB1 started the tournament seeded 2nd (behind uBu :P), in a pool of 6 including Oxford, ARU and Oxford Brookes. Clearly someone wanted practice for Varsity. Games were very short so we knew we had to play well from the start of each match.
Saturday
SB1 13-1 ARU (win)
Regionals was basically our first tournament with our whole squad, so we needed some warmup games. Highlights of this match including Kaustuv getting skied by a girl to concede our only point and Chris Tull taking revenge by stamping on their captain's toe. Surprisingly given their proximity to the tournament, ARU (hi guys) had a small squad, props to them for doing well through the rest of the weekend.
SB1 13-2 Lincoln (win)
Lincoln scored two points through high crosspitch puts but otherwise was a fairly routine match.
SB1 13-0 Bears 3 (win)
This match marked the return of JNord, who suggested we use this match to practice our zone. Against a 3rd team with little handler experience that meant that the game was over in about 15 minutes.
SB1 12?-2 Brookes (win)
More zone practice. They had a few handlers so punished us a bit better when we obviously messed up.
Now that the warmup matches were over we knew it was time to really turn it on. Tom prepared for that by eating a turkey. Ben took a nap. Dom showed off his football skills (too bad he sucks at Fifa). Sidelining SB2 and SB3 was fun too.
SB1 6-4 OW1 (win)
Finally, a big match! OW knew it too and suddenly we had some real ultimate to play. They came out a little more pumped up than us and we found ourselves 1-3 down. We were getting turnovers from some great defense though (some spectacular blocks from Cap'n George), so as our offense started to gel we scored the next few to bring it to 5-4 at cap. We had to finish the point, so Oxford could've come back to tie the game, but the Cambridge offence succesfully saw the game out to avoid any unpleasantness with points difference.
SB 1-0 social (win)
All three SB teams descended on the Maharaja to have a team meal. There was a huge turnout, much fun was had, including making choices for play of the day and dick of the day. SB1 potd: George's layout Ds against Oxford, dotd: Kaustuv for getting skyed to concede our first point
Sunday
Having avoided any crossover nonsense by winning our pool, we had a nice late start to Sunday. Longer games and a bit of wind, let's go!
SB1 9-5 Fling1 (win)
Fling started strong as we took a few points to remember how to play, but eventually our tight zone and sweet handler movement won out. From 3-1 down we dominated to close out the game 9-5. Bring on the final!!!
Dom chose this moment to leave for a college football game. Which he didn't even win. What a tosser.
SB1 4-7 Bears1 (loss)
As the final started, the wind was a bit gusty at this point and causing real problems to the catching of both teams. We traded the first few points in really scrappy fashion. Scoring the point to make it 3-3 took about ten minutes and our offence became more and more static, relying too much on our handlers to make things happen and failing to make good continuation cuts. Once Justin and Ben were tired, we all seemed to slow down and we conceded a few cheap points with drops near our endzone line. Down 6-3 at cap and we didn't look like we wanted it. Matt H did a great job rousing us for one more point of effort (and a great George layout) to win the next one 6-4, but we swiftly lost the final point to another uncontested drop in our half. The Bears offence clearly had gelled far better than ours with their many tournaments together, well done and well played to them. We look forward to the rematch at nationals.
We avoided having to play another match thanks to Fling beating uBu in the 3v4 (they then lost that rematch in the game to go later in the day, that must have sucked) so that was the end of MUOOR 2014 for SB1 -- a well deserved 2nd place. We've got some work to do to turn that into a victory at Div 1 Nationals at the end of April.
Tejas
