Friday, April 17, 2009

Presday from my perspective.

Presday. The competition wasn't what I had hoped but over all, we had many good games. You may not know, but PresDay used to be THE 3 day tourney in the West and then some shit went down...wait till the Squid history gets to that...
While this tourney used to attract the best of the best, many people I talked to expressed real desire to come but just couldn't justify another 3 dayer right after Trouble In Vegas. Im not sure what should be done - maybe move it to the next weekend - but something has to change next year.

Decent win verses UCLA - coulda been better but Ill still take a 2 point victory. UNT looks good, Cal looks good. We win the showcase game vrs CalPoly Slo easily - we played well but they had injured dudes which has been a problem for them all season - will a healthy SLO show up to the series? I hope so. We win our semi vs UNT by a decent amount because of our multiable zone looks - that UNT captain is sure good - the kinda baby faced one, is that KRich? The final verse Cal is mostly windy and I think I am playing pretty good handler. The swings are crisp, my blades just seemed to come out right, and I crashed and threw through the cup a few times - I love that feeling of ease. Cal had a strong puller with an interesting strategy: he would jack every pull 110% instead of going for the conservative. Sometimes (~45%) these would be out the back but he did trap me in the back once or twice. Whata you think about this choice? In the end they proved to be too smooth and even when they did turn it, they played great D. Congrates to them, I believe they could be a quarter finalist if they make nationals but they will certainly have to fight to get there with Oregon, LPC, Davis, UCSC, and Stanford.

Of note: As TD my worst mistake was not assigning responsibilities in advance to my teammates to help with stuff. calling freshman at 6 am to try to get them up on Sunday morning to help with food and setup was really stupid. The best decision made was to shorten the tourney to 2 days because of the impending rain on Monday (thanks Dutchy). Everyone was happy on Sunday afternoon with their 8 games and no one was wet. The girls, however, played the entire thing through horrible conditions on the backup fields 2 hours away.
Overall, I had a great time organizing the 2 tourneys the squids hosted this year - im a good TD because I like the science of producing a good tournament and talking with other teams but my organization skills need some work.

Stanford and Centex and Sectionals to come.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

110% is an overstatemment, but he definitely knew the right way to throw them so they were catching the wind, and so sometimes sailing to far (o-i to i-o curve). if its the same guy i'm thinking of, i think he got injured right after presday and hasn't played since (dislocated elbow? - i heard there's some nasty footage). if that is true, cal's results look better missing one of their best players. don't they have a guy on their team who played for jam last summer? or maybe it was revolver.

i think keeping the tournament on presidents day weekend is smart. there is definitely a domino effect in terms of good teams going to tournaments where other good teams are. get a couple to commit and things will be up agian. plus after the disaster vegas was this year you might get a few more teams looking for a tournament that doesn't suck

congrats on the sectionals win and good luck at regionals