Quick Yale Cap Recap

Oh jeez, I have got to stop writing these late at night. After meetings. 2 weeks after the tournament.

We rolled down in a charter bus. The Raines'es are literally saints. Literally, they are dead, have three confirmed miracles, and have been canonized by the Pope. Cause they got us a charter bus. Bob was the man (our driver) bending the rules to drop us off late and pick us up early. Disc 4 in the morning, Stick It at night, GaS at the Routhier's, Batman Begins and the Prestige always - this bus opened up the miracle of the media for us.

Whatever, recaps.

Brown:
Close. We were up a break (or two?) early. Man, I wish you all could have been there. It was a great game. They climbed back to 9 - 9, and all we had to do was trade points to 11 to upset the 1 seed. We received, and after working it up about 3/4 of the way, C-Mo got a huge layout block. Went for a score. Then on the next pull, the first throw went over Zargham's head for a Callahan goal to lose. Hmmm. This was a stomach punch. But, you know, we showed we can roll with ANYONE. Plus, like many elite teams, Brown seems to have two settings - playing and needing to win. They are a great team, but when they really needed to win, they started fouling a bit on the mark, bodying up a bit more, hand checking on D, etc. I don't comdemn them - I'm not going to claim we are the epitome of Spirit, though we try. But it was great for us to get some experience playing through those types of conditions, and we have been working it into practice a bit (not as a strategy for us on D, but as experience for us on O).

On the off chance someone from Brown or somewhere else wastes their time reading this - no hate intended. That was a great game, and you guys totally earned the outcome. I don't think anyone in this region cheats, we just ratchet up our games sometimes, like all great teams do. Can't wait for the rematch.
11-9 Brown.

Then came a bye. We watched some of the womenses, they looked great, some big hucks by Mandy and great cutting by Bean and Molly. They broke the zone of whatever team they were playing like it was an American Girls doll and they were my little sister.

I loved that doll, Eleanor, and will never forgive you.


Tufts:
We rolled. Man, that felt great. It was a very, very odd game - because no matter how badly Tufts is underperforming, they show that they know what they are doing. Every point that we won was hard-fought, and we had to play our best to get the blocks and complete the breaks. It was just that we did it almost every single time. God, I love our D line sometimes.
13-5 Dartmouth.

MIT:
Wow, where did these guys come from? Some great players, two awesome coaches, and all of a sudden they are up near the class of the Region. Since Yale Cup they have won the Metro Boston Section (over Harvard), and they beat Tufts earlier this day (at Yale Cup). This game was very weird again, I think they were even up two breaks early? Well, we came back, and at 10 - 7 the hard cap went on and the game was over. I wish we had a better game against them, it was shortened and unclear. They are a real solid competitor in the Region this year, and getting some more experience against them would have been great. Still, a win is a win, and this one was even more solid than the score showed. We won without playing a great game, which is always bittersweet. Both teams will bring it harder if we meet again.
10-8 Dartmouth.

Northeastern:
By the end of the day, we were watching Tufts freefall through the pool, and knew that the 2nd seed was more or less locked up. We were pumped, and peaking, at the right time. Northeastern had a few more hardfought games than we did, so we rolled through them fairly easily, isolating their stars and not letting them torch us. This is another surprise team in the Region - I mean, they are always around, but it looks like they are really in the Naties bid mix. I love this parity shit - the region is cwazy. They came in behind MIT in the MB section, setting up an awesome second round game against someone.
13-5 Dartmouth.

Showers.
Homework.
Sleep.
Wake.
Bagels.
Fields.

RPI:
The only good thing about this game was the Chuckie's bro connection - he plays for them. We really played down to them, and against a deeper and more experienced team we might have been in for some real problems. However, we simply have the legs and the experience at this point, and we won fairly easily 11-5.

P.S. At some point on Saturday, Slammy rolled his ankle. This sucked. So we played all Sunday without him - keep this in mind. Plus, Dan's eye continued to revolt, so he skipped the trip altogether.

WUFO:
WUFO is missing some great players. That said, we were too, and we really showed who we are. Williams is a team we have historically (read: last season) struggled against, so taking it to them was satisfying as hell. I am a bit hazy on the details, although I remember some crazy wind and a surprisingly high percentage of upwind scores. God, I am sorry I put this off for so long, this was a fun game with various details I'm forgetting. Oh, they hucked a lot and Cobbles was beast deep.
12-6 Dartmouth.

UMass:
This was going to be interesting. We saw them gut out a win at the end of Day 1 over Harvard, and these guys have been called out as a team to beat / watch out of NE since the Fall. This was our first real shot at them of the year, and I liked how it went. We figured out their zone, threw our own and really, really pressured the hell out of their resets. Again, I am doing this game a disservice - expect to see these guys still alive Sunday of Regionals.
14-9 Dartmouth.

THE FUCKING FINALS:
We never make the finals. No longer true.
Harvard:
We came out pumped, went up a few breaks, really played great. This game is pretty easy to summarize - we struggled against their clam.

It won't happen again.

13 - 9 Harvard.
2nd place at the tourney.

Ok, so on to Regionals. Some crazy shit has happened so far. Brown took the top spot out of SNE, and thus the top spot at Regionals, because MIT won MetroBoston section (Harvard took third, behind Northeastern, followed by BU and Tufts). The other SNE teams to make it were Wesleyan, Conn. Coll., RWU and Yale, in that order. WNE and ENE both have three bids and will play sectionals this weekend.

If we win ENE, I think we have to get the second seed (head to head wins over MIT, UMass and WUFO, other sectional winners (UMass and WUFO have yet to play in WNE), plus a head to head loss to Brown.) If UMass wins WNE, they should get the three seed most likely (further at Yale Cup than MIT, both have wins over Harvard, losses to Dartmouth, UMass has higher RRI by almost 200 points, and no losses like MIT's to Vermont). Then I guess you put MIT (is there a case for WUFO at 4? Not really - lower RRI, losses to Tufts and Harvard where MIT has wins).

I think that WUFO should be ranked below Harvard, due to their head to head loss. That would mean that Northeastern gets the 5, Harvard the 6, and then there is an argument between BU, the fourth seed out of MetroBoston, and WUFO (assuming they are in fact the 2 out of WNE. Who knows what will happen?). I think WUFO will get the nod, based on a head to head game at Yale. So then Tufts gets the 9, with the rest of the seeds (10 - 16) being distributed between Wesleyan (loss to Tufts), Connecticut College, RWU, Yale, WNE 3 and ENE 2 and 3. I don't really know enough about these teams (or even who they will be in some cases), so no seedings.

This gives us (dependent on a UMass win in WNE, a WUFO second place and a Dartmouth win in ENE - none of which are a sure thing):

1. Brownian Motion
2. Dartmouth Pain Train
3. UMass Zoomass
4. MIT Engineers
5. Northeastern Gentlemens Club
6. Harvard Red Line
7. WUFO
8. BU Ozone Pilots
9. Tufts E-Men
10. - 16. Unclear.

Enough lame seeding stuff. Let's see how it all shakes out after this weekend. Plus, let's see some chatter on RSD, eh? I give you a link, none of you use it, and I'm stuck reading about seeding of the 10 and 11 seeds in the ME and pondering the inclusion of Arkansas down South.

Whew. Bed time. I wonder if I'll get in trouble for these predictions.

lamar