As always, the first tournament of the season gives you a long list of things to work on, and this past weekend was no different. However, I was surprised with how well we played. Everyone remembered our zone and split stack offense despite not working on it all that much in the fall. We didn't play down to teams, weren't prone to stupid mistakes (at least for a B team), and always played hard. Even if we don't improve much skill-wise we'll will a lot of games just by doing that.
Obviously the lack of throwing practice over the past couple months hurt. There were quite a few turns on drops, turfed throws, inaccurate hucks, and people trying throws they don't quite have yet. That will get better as the season progresses, and even was much better Sunday than Saturday. As long as we practice it, it won't be a problem.
The most obvious concern was team defense. If others were like me, they were having a hard enough time remembering how to guard their man let alone help out with someone elses. Still, with the Hodags depriving us of the best available athletes, we need to be able to play a strong last back and learn how to play smart defense as opposed to just running hard, which can only take you so far. As Sunday progressed we were getting burned deep more and more because we simply tired. Conditioning will help with this also, but so will learning to play as a unit.
The second major problem was handler movement. Oftentimes the handlers wouldn't look dump until stall 6 or 7, not near enough time for the wrap to be run. Other times the dump would start cutting before the handler was looking. The cycling of the handlers would get confusing as well, sometimes there'd be 4 people back clogging or the person with the disc would have no options. In the future we'll need to communicate better when to start cutting and make sure the handlers come back and set up the dump after every throw, or have a cutter recognize the need to fill a void if a handler gets out of position upfield. However, I don't remember near as many punts this tournament as at Missoui, though that may be due to our cutters always getting open and making the dump unnecessary.
Finally, one last nitpicky thing is just the timing of cuts, it seemed like we'd either have 3 people going deep or no one at all whenever a handler got an up the line cut. If we can figure that out soon it'd be great.
On a personal level I need to remember how to position myself on D and not get burned deep and work on that handler stuff, especially if I'm going to keep playing this whole D handler position thing. I also need to figure out my decision making in the context of my role on the team. If I'm someone expected to make things happen with my throws (I'll pause for Dartmouth people to stop laughing), there's a certain amount of risk taking involved. On the other hand, I can't be a turnover machine. I can remember 3 turns on poor throws/bad ideas right near our opponents endzone, and a couple more near our own end zone, those can't happen regardless of what I'm trying to do. If I'm going to keep playing some O points too I need to be able to flip O and D mindsets instantly as well. What might be a good deep look for the D line could be a horrible idea for the O line. It's almost as much about managing game momentum as it is making good decisions. In a close game with few breaks, the O line needs to play it close and not turn the disc as they're expected to score. For the D, it can be worth it to just to put the disc out there to a favorable match up on the chance it works, because if it's a turn, hey, you're not supposed to score, but if it works, then the whole tide of the game just switched.
Mardi Gras preview and write up to follow in the next week, and maybe more of that psychology BS from the last paragraph, it's interesting to think about.
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