Vegas Day 3

Wind.

Not to be found in Leverone. Somewhat kept out of Scully-Fahey. Not to be found in that 2 v. 2 ultimate video game Uptown has.

Plenty of it in Vegas.

Yes, day 3 of our Las Vegas adventure featured some wind. Nay, lots. And on the fields we played on, it was pretty much blowing right from one end zone to the other, meaning that every break was basically worth two (because you got the score upwind on D, then pulled to the other team, who you could most likely break as you were going downwind.)

(Disclaimer - it's getting late. These won't be too long.)

We started the day off with UC-Irvine, continuing our steady assault on the California public university system. They really should not have been able to hang with us, but the wind was an equalizer, to a point. From what I recall of this game, we broke them on and off to go up early, and they played a lot of deep looks that got gobbled up by our last backs. Nothing too extraordinary about this one, except for the fact that we managed to break against their zone going upwind to win the game, and the fact that we unveiled the clam, which forced some serious turns. 11 - 9, according to score reporter, but I do not remember it being that close.

Then came GDub - a solid MetroEast team, they've taken the third place in a two bid region a few years running now. I'll be honest, I didn't think we would win this one, but we played gritty as hell and really came at them harder than they could handle not once but twice. This was because after going up a couple of breaks, we gave up 4 breaks without getting one of our own, leading into halftime. In the second half, though, we punished them. We scored 5 breaks, 3 upwind (including the game winner) to take the game 13 - 10, a really satisfying win against a known team after the near misses of the day before. Once again, we gobbled up the deep swill (hi Nate!) and confounded them with our clam.

Last game of the day/tournament came against Western Washington Dirt, and we played some good Dartmouth ultimate. The wind had died down, but a long bye had left some of us decleated and unable to play. We opened up the subbing and still played right with these guys, even starting off the game with an upwind break. Dirt might be the most polished team we beat at Vegas, and they have some serious players, but we still gutted this win out on two excellent final points. There were a plethora of turns, but our handlers adjusted to the conditions as the game went on and moved the disc around on their short throws extremely effectively and safely. Dartmouth thus won the 25th place bracket by going 3-0 on day 3, which for me is more satisfying than making the braket above and losing all your games to earn 24th.

Ultimately, we played some sweet teams. UgMo, Mamabird, and CUT are all top tier teams, while aTm, Smaug, Chicago, Western and GDub are all at the level slightly below them. No teams from the Northeast, no B teams, and a team that was psyched even when they lost made for an extremely successful weekend.

Win-Loss: 4 - 5
Aces Won: 5
Asians in the top 3 of the Poker Tourney: 2
Ridiculous Nate Raines scoobers: 1 (in game, at least)
Players who ate that gross pizza: 5 or 6

Right. Pain Train, baby.

Vegas Day 2

Another morning where we all woke up with all of our organs is another successful night in Vegas. None of us will ever forget when Dan had his spleen removed last year as he slept in that tub of ice. Yeah, it was pretty dangerous, but he lost that Rosham, and Watson had every right to cash in on what he was owed. His pound of flesh, or 1.54 pounds of spleen, if you will.

So, with Yi all healed up by now, we drove back out to the fields. After initially predicting we would be opening against Cornell, we were happily proven incorrect when we learned that UCLA were to be our opponents. Unlike last year, we really did get a chance to play against some diverse as hell teams at Vegas this time, and it was also much easier to figure out where you stood exactly in the overall scheme of the tournament. Kudos, cultimate. Kudos.

Smaug, a clever literary/climatological reference, came out playing pretty well, and we fired back. Breaks were traded, from what I can remember, and we played well enough at first. What was pretty cool about this game, from a Dartmouth perspective, was that we really adjusted well to one of the problems we were having - dump set up and pushing the stack up the field with our handlers. After a halftime demonstration from Coach Seigs and pretty consistent reminders from the sidelines, our handlers got much better very quickly at setting up in a more dangerous position before making their cuts. We ended up losing this game because we could not finish on D, not getting breaks on points where we held the disc 2 or 3 times. A shitty call towards the end allowed them to end the game on a break, 11-9, but as frustrating as it is to play a solid game and have it marred by an egregious call, that was not the reason we lost. We convert a break earlier, or hold onto the disc a bit better on one of our O points, and it doesn't come down to Charlie's decision to jump over a player instead of implanting his pivot foot on the dude's neck. Ah well.

Next came UC-Berkley, UgMo, who we lost to at Vegas last year on Universe point after controlling the game for most of the way. This year's team impressed me way, way more than the 2006 incarnation did and did not depend on one stud the way that team seemed to. That also meant we couldn't just isolate one guy, and instead had to play their whole team. And in that respect, this game was really what we hope for out of our trip to Vegas (besides those free cards Crank was still distributing late last Spring. We come for those too): an opportunity to play solid ultimate against a West coast team that has a bit more practice, but at least 2/3 less grit, than the Pain Train does right now. We ended up losing this one 12 - 9, and from what I can recall the end was sort of like the end of the aTm game - we played hard, dug our heels in, but just didn't have time to make up the lead that had never seemed too daunting the whole game. Still, the attitude of this team again shown through, and we took these two successive losses for what they were - learning opportunities, games we could have won but didn't necessarily blow.

Plus, due to a surprising loss to Las Positas, we had the pleasure of taking on Carleton in the final round of the day. CUT is, like Mamabird, a top-tier team in college ultimate right now, and they rely on gritty play and rock-solid disc skills to take them places, due to the frigid, Hanover-like weather they go through. We really wanted to step up against this team and knock them on their asses right off the bat, but while we traded points at first, they scored on two throws on both of their first posessions thanks to a complicated play in their Ho-stack setup that looked like a weather pattern - the swirl, as Chimpo so elegantly put it. Long story short, we lost 13 - 7 and could have played better. Still, we scored on a decent percentage of our chances, even breaking them once. Still, our D did not force many turns, and if we can get to the point where we can rely on our stud D line to make every single throw a difficult prospect, games even against teams as gifted as CUT will be closer. Not a huge step forward, unlike most of our other endeavors this tourney, but still no grounds for discouragement.

So, an 0 - 3 day. Hey, it happens. I can say with absolute certainty that we have never played ultimate that well without winning a game, and we were straight chillin as we stole our pizza and watched the coaches game under the lights. Seigs, decked out like he was playing the title role of "Little Miss Sunshine" in a production directed by people who had never seen the movie, threw nothing but "Completions. Completions." Except for one turnover. Still, he D'd up Ben Wiggens, extending the rivalry which is approaching Mongoose vs. Black Mamba proportions. (Seriously - white guy with dark hair, defensive specialist, taking on the former MVP? It was destined. And if you got this joke, please let me know, because an obscure TV commercial for a Playstation game is a pretty pathetic name to drop.) In conclusion: my jersey got major facetime.

Vegas Day 1

I'd start this post with an explanation for the 4 month hiatus, but nobody reads this anyway, so whatever. There wasn't much ultimate for me, although my winter league team did just win a 48 minute game last Sunday by a final score of 64 -13. No lie.

But yeah, apparently there is some sort of ultimate tournament in Las Vegas every year now, and Dartmouth ultimate flew out once again to take part in the festivities. One of the selling points this year was the apparent lack of any mortalities the year before. I am fairly certain that my careful perusal of RSD has proven that there were no fatalities once again, but if this tournament had been held one week later, during the NBA All-Star festivities, I'd lay down 50-50 odds on the fact that some ultimate player would have looked just a bit too hard at Stephen Jackson's entourage and we'd have to rename the Callahan award the McHugh or something. Holy balls, that was a 71 word sentence. I am the William Faulkner of ultimate blogging.

On to the action. I'll spare you the whining about my arrival - suffice it to say that Chimpo shouldn't rest too easy - and just jump right ahead to the first day of games. We started out against Chi-Town, who spat on our dreams last year. But that was a Chicago team featuring X and V (Ex and Vee? Ehx and Vhee? Who knows. The Titcombs.) This year's manifestation are not scrubs, but after the upset they pulled on us last year we came out firing and we really controlled this game after trading points for the first 8 posessions or so. I don't recall the exact score at the end, but it was around 13 - 6... or so. Dartmouth wins. Woo hoo.

Next, we moved one field over to take on Colorado. Mamabird is one of the top programs in the country, and they absolutely dismantled us when we opened our inaugural Vegas run against them last year. I'm gonna come out and say this: they crushed us again. We talked a lot coming into this game about playing like we had nothing to lose and really relishing the opportunity to play against one of the best teams the country has to offer. And while I do think that we, for the most part, carried that attitude into the game and did not play scared, we also got our asses handed to us. No contenders should lose by that lopsided of a score (13-4) to another top team, and while we are not at Mamabird's level yet, we really could have given them a better match.
Much of the problem this game was execution, it seems to me - passes thrown away, potential scores dropped, defensive dictation completely abandoned. And that is not a tremendous surprise from a team that hasn't played in conditions like the ones we faced at Vegas (namely grass, wind, etc.) for a few months. But I really hope that next year, I'm not writing that we managed to score 5 on Mamabird, and thus are showing some improvement.

Phew, ok, I think I got all of my negativity out of my system. I realize the above passage seems bleak, but we really came into and out of that game with the right outlook, the right attitude, and unlike last year we didn't really let that loss deflate us at all. Still, I think enough time has passed to point out the obvious - teams with the aspirations and potential we have should ALWAYS have a better showing than that. My two cents, I guess.

We concluded day 1 by taking on Texas A & M. These guys were fairly large, fairly athletic and not all that polished. They were a good ultimate team, and played within the system they had worked out for themselves well, but we had our chances. At some point in the second half they rattled off a few unanswered breaks before we got our heads together and dug in towards the end. Unfortunately, we didn't really have the ability to mount a convincing comeback, and we dropped our second game in a row by the score of 10 -13. This is exactly the type of team I would love to play in the spring, when we are ready to play gritty for the whole game and have better realized what type of offense and defense we play and made it fit. aTm, as they call themselves, were pretty well-spirited, although they did push me to get chippy on an out-of-bounds call after prestalling without provocation. Seriously, who does that? In pool play? Really?

Day 1 Result: 1 - 2, Demeanor: Sunny, Faces: Sunburned.

That night, most of us chilled in our cramped hotel rooms and watched The Miz wrestle the Undertaker (Devlin: "I think this is the fourth Undertaker they've gone through."), watched the Bulls take on some other basketball organization, including a ludicrous halfcourt shot to possibly win that Mr. Awareness launched with fully three seconds left on the game clock, like the ball was hot potatoe ("Get this shit outta here!"), and of course tuned in to catch the end of the Batista - Mr. Kennedy match. Batista has extremely large shoulder muscle thingies. I can't imagine being his tailor. Or really being anyone's tailor. Really, the whole fashion industry confounds me. Aaaaand on that note... I'll bid you adieu. Until the recap of Day 2. In, like, 12 minutes.