Mardi Gras Part 2.5

So, Sunday. We had rested up the night before, desperately tried to figure out when and where our game was and ended up seeing on RSD that we were the 6 seed coming in to the second day. Pretty inexplicable to me, but whatever. This set us up against Georgia Tech, a team that we've played a few times before (Centex 2006, when they had this crazy fast dude Hensely Sejour or something, last year in Georgia after the tornado-shortened Terminus). They have a solid team, and we both traded for a long time (although I think they may have broken us on the first point...)

Basically, we weren't totally woken up. This is going to have to be a particularly big point of emphasis at future tournaments, having every player being up, active and into it from the moment we get to the fields. That's cool - for the most part people were chill at Mardi Gras and that's how it should be during our winter tournament, where we're really knocking the dust off our cleats. But come Spring Break, we're going to need some truly Psychotic sidelines and on-field attitudes.

So that was pretty much the story of the GA Tech game - not much interesting in either direction, a few breaks, some shifty foul calls at the end of the game in their favor, oh and totally insufficient marks. Marks marks marks. Man, we have got some work to do there...

Ok, so as often seems to happen we ended up playing Texas outside of the main bracket. We faced off with these guys like 7 minutes after our Universe point loss to Arizona that ended our season at Nationals last year (hold on, I need a second... alright). We also played against them in the finals of the C bracket at CCC, not a place either of us meant to end up. They won both of those contests, never by a ton (although we never really put up all that much of a fight at Natties...), and now we were seeing them in consolation on Sunday of Mardi Gras.

Our guys played well in this one too, particularly with some of our older vets really feeling the long weekend and resting more than they had been. Our offense ran relatively smoothly, setting up in cuts well and managing to get consistently open on the force side, although we had more trouble swinging to the break or executing our endzone plays. Still, the 8 members of the class of 2012 all stepped up in this game, playing within themselves to make nice stops, heads up cuts and chilly throwing decisions, an aspect of the mental game that we asked them to put a special emphasis on. The maturity was pretty astounding - I don't think I counted one freshman hammer, usually the bane of a Pain Train winter tournament, especially surprising given that a few of these youngins actually have good hammers.

So, the Texas game went down with a close loss, 13-11 or so. Dermo played some good D on their main handler, Steve Pressley, on the final point, almost connecting on a layout D against the dump, but ended just centimeters shy and could only watch the next bomb that ended it.

So, there are worse places to be than lying out in the Louisiana sun, with your cleats off. We stretched down together and migrated over to the finals fields, where Michigan was leading Wisconsin going in to the half. We watched a decent second half of ultimate, with the Hodags coming back huge to win the game on a 7-1 run, but while resting our legs more than one freshman would remark that they had realized how important it was to value the disc and not concede any self-imposed turnovers. Good lessons to learn from some other schools, both of whom were playing well all things considered.

After a shower back at our hotels (which we eventually managed to get into after a room reservation snafu), we drove over to a restaurant on the beautiful LSU campus for dinner with Princess Layout. Blackened alligator appetizers, hush puppies and crawfish etouffe were all on the menu and on our tables, but eventually we managed to push back from the feast and head to the hotel holding Princess for some Clinic and haphazard watching of the Oscars. Eventually we had to let them get some sleep (our intrepid women were flying out of Baton Rouge at 6 am), so we headed back to our hotel for a final night of falling asleep to Sportscenter. The travel back was long but relaxed and relatively unproblematic, although apparently one Alex Kell 2010 was seen sprinting through the Chicago airport trying to hold a flight for some of his teammates. Good thing he's got a Mackey-esque top speed.


Ok, thanks for reading. Winter term is drawing to a close, although we're going to reverse the natural momentum and really step up our efforts right as we come into Spring Break. Keep checking back here, it's going to be a sprint from the first moment of Spring Break through the UPA Series. Pain Train 2009 is comin'.