Nice guys finish last

"Stubborn Love"

She'll lie and steal, and cheat, and beg you from her knees
Make you think she means it this time
She'll tear a hole in you, the one you can't repair
But I still love her, I don't really care

When we were young, oh, oh, we did enough
When it got cold, ooh, ooh, we bundled up
I can't be told, ah, ah, it can't be done

It's better to feel pain, than nothing at all
The opposite of love's indifference
So pay attention now, I'm standing on your porch screaming out
And I won't leave until you come downstairs

So keep your head up, keep your love
Keep your head up, my love [x2]
Keep your head up, keep your love

And I don't blame you dear for running like you did all these years
I would do the same, you'd best believe
And the highway signs say we're close but I don't read those things anymore
I never trusted my own eyes

When we were young oh, oh, we did enough
When it got cold, ooh, ooh we bundled up
I can't be told, ah, ah, it can't be done

So keep your head up, keep your love
Keep your head up, my love [x2]
Keep your head up, keep your love
Head up, love
Head up, love
Head up, love
Head up, love

Let the season begin!

For most college teams the fall was a time to get those rookies up to speed, dust off returners rust, and have your stars be frustrated with the entire process But now the College Regular Season has begun and its time to head to the Santa Barbara Invite.

The SB Invite is typically full of SW teams all trying to figure things out. Most teams recently returned from winter break meaning their few practices have been highly saturated with conditioning & overall ultimate content. So the teams loaded with veterans tend to have the best results at this tournament. For Example; UW, UBC, SDSU, and UC Santa Cruz were semi final teams last year and all came into the season with many returners who could handle the lack of practice.

As for the pools...
http://scores.usaultimate.org/scores/#college-open/tournament/10542

The pools are not that surprising, it's tough to seed such an early tournament where you have no results to base anything on. It's really a guessing game.

Pool A:
Santa Clara is not the roll over team they used to be, I expect they will have a couple of guys who can play and will do their best to make plays. Since they played in the qualifier they are one of the only teams at this tournament who have played actual competition, should help them capitalize on teams with slower starts.

Chico has always been athletic but the past two years they seem to have been approaching the game with more seriousness of purpose. Less flannels & nalgenes of colored beverages and more hard defense, discipline, and big plays. They will be a tough opponent all year.

SDSU had a great run last year but fell short at the end at regionals. They lost several stand out seniors and 5th years and will now be a younger team. With younger teams come typical younger team mistakes. However seniors Dominic Leggio and Steven Milardovich have grown into stand out players since playing for Streetgang this summer and they will be the ones to lead this team and build off last years successes.

Stanford comes off a Nationals Quarter Finals appearance last season and are the top dogs in the pool. They have a program that just keeps winning so you cannot count them out in any year. They looked athletic and energized at Sean Ryan but were a bit too rusty and ended up losing to Cal, I expect they will be much more polished come Saturday.

Pool B:
I believe this is SLO's pool to lose. They are the perceived best team in that pool, I say "perceived" because with no results I could be eating my words later on. Jake Juszak will be ruling the skies and Peter (I don't know his last name) will be touching the disc every other. The only thing that I would be concerned about if I was SLO would be depth, but we'll see if that is an issue.

UCLA returns a lot of guys from last year which, as I stated before, that may be helpful this weekend. They seem to have moved from an handler centric offence that was typical UCLA for a long time, to a huck and make big play type of team. With retained chemistry from last year I would expect them to play well.

Santa Cruz is the opposite of UCLA by not retaining anyone, or at least not anyone of note. They are well coached so they should be prepared at the least.

Cal-Poly Pomona won the qualifier so they will have a lot of confidence working in their favor. We'll see if they can turn that into W's.

In the end I think the SLO vs UCLA game will be the best game of this pool.

Pool C:
Cal is in the same league as Stanford in my opinion, looked good at Sean Ryan, they have an army of guys who are athletic and make plays. They have a system they rely on that they know and trust, and with James Pollard as their guy they are the favorite in this pool.

Tide is always tough at their home tourney and since most of their guys played Condors they should be a team with established chemistry.

Not sure what to expect from Arizona or Long Beach. LB will probably have a skeleton roster while Arizona will have some athletes to huck to.

Pool D:
This pool I have no idea what to expect from any team. UW went to Nationals last year but who have they returned? They went to the finals of this tourney last year and I would assume that they expect to be their again. Davis is young but hungry and with Kevin Cissna coaching they should play close to their top potential. UCSD has a lot of good players and are well coached but they are young and who knows how they will respond to adversity. And who knows anything about Williams, quite the trip to make all the way from MA. I'm thinking no one wins this pool outright, two teams will finish 2-1 and someone takes it on Point Dif. This is absolutely the most interesting pool of the tourney.

The SW should have a good amount of parity this year and the results here should be interesting. But in the end the cream always rises to the top, so expect the semis or even the finals to be a potential Regional Finals match up.

The boring prediction is obviously Cal and Stanford in the finals but SLO should be at least in the semis and we'll see about the rest.

But my "take it to the bank" prediction is that Santa Clara will avenge their SB Qualifier Finals lost to Pomona this weekend, go ahead and make the call to Vegas. Easy money.

Sweating!

Did a work out yesterday with the Blade. Took a page out of Pumba's crossfit book.

As many rounds as you can complete in 20 minutes

5 pull ups
10 push ups
15 squats
20 sit ups / crunches

I completed 10.5 - crushed the Blade!

Boom!

And I'm back. After a long dry spell I am back on the keyboard determined to type up my usual non-sense, upload my poorly taken photos, and make more of those gramatical errors both of you love. 

No real reason why I stopped blogging other than I was busy doing other things. Being unemployed allowed me to not be in an office and away from the need to fill the lulls in actual work I had to do. But now that I am gainfully employed again, paying taxes, and generally getting back into the mindless consuming lifestyle - I suppose it's time to put things on paper. 

Looks like my last post was way back in April after our Sectional (Conference) Tournament. It seems like a lot has happened since then but at the same time not really. Man I must be boring. Anyways this post is just for me to start rollin with the posts. Let's see if I can go a post a Day for a week. 

Anyways here's to livin large!

SoCal Conference Championships

Wrote up a Conference Preview for Skyd Magazine and Inside Breaks. Figure I'd post here about it...

www.skydmagazine.com/2011/04/conference-match-ups-socal

Pres Day Classic

The Pres Day Classic took place this weekend in "sunny" San Diego. The weather was in question all week and with the lack of quality field space there was a chance that the tournament would not happen. I have to give credit to Stephen "Pumba" Hubbard for having to deal with the stress of so much uncertainly. Would the fields be closed? Or won't they? Will the back up fields close? Won't they? He was able to handle everything well and not lose his mind. At least I think.

Anyways to how we did...

Day 1

The first day was met with uncertainly on whether or not we would play. We show up at 9:45 for a 11 o'clock game but we were forced to delay our start a few minutes to help the fields dry out. Finally at 11:15 we were able to start.

Dartmoth
We didn't have much of a scouting report coming in and I'm sure they knew nothing about us so we were just going to show up and play to our strengths and adjust as needed as the game went on. The field was small and half of it was full of puddles and mud. We get a turn on the first few points but can't put in the breaks and our offense looks smooth early and we trade for till about 3-3. Dartmoth was able to work it through their handles with give and go's so we switched to a flick force to help counter. We were able to get a break or two and take half 7-5 I believe.

In the second half we were able to maintain offensive consistantly by not getting broken all game and were able to take the game 13-11. A little too close but a win either way. I figured that we were a little sluggish to start but now we got our legs going and will be able to bring more intensity on D in the coming game, that wasn't the case.

Texas A&M
Again we had little to no idea about this team before playing them but they did just have a game agains Minnesota and did not play too well. But we knew Minnesota was good so we were not going to overlook them.

We came out sluggish again, we seemed sleepy or unintersted and we could not get a break. On the contrary our offense again was consistant and kept us in the game while our D would get going. A&M ran a simple stack and string plays off the pull, we were able to shut down most of those cuts but they were getting off ridiculous dump thows and would get a huck off. We threw some junk and were able to get a few breaks to close out the game in the second half 13-9. But again our Defense was not bringing enough pressure and we were not getting the breaks and D's that I felt we should. Some discussions with the other coaches and we concluded that we really just needed someone to make a big play and hoped that would start the snowball. We were right...

UCSB
I've said it before, I hate playing these guys. Partially because of when I played them in college they were all classless and disrespectful and because they are always tough competition. The weather was starting to show it's teeth at the start of the game with some winds gusting as well as some light rain and by 3rd point or so the clouds opened up and dumped buckets for about ten minutes.

We started this game on O and scored promptly on their box d. We came down 4 man paritally because of the weather and because it was effective against them at the SB Invite. We were able to generate turns but our Endzone O was couldn't decide if they wanted to fast break score or set up the O so we weren't able to get the breaks.

At 2-2 out Defense finally started showing some intensity and started putting in breaks. We kept with the zone and they could not get it off the trap side, a problem that again would be evident when Tide played Texas in Quarters against their Zone. They don't try to get it off the line and they don't throw over the top. We take half at 7-2 and never look back. Finally our defense started showing up and just in time for our game against Minnesota.

Minnesota
There was some trash talking on RSD in the week leading up to Pres Day. Someone stated that we would not put 8 up on Minnesota and that they would win the pool handily. However they already lost a close one to SB earlier (I did here there was some hard cap issues however) and we were now beaming with confidence after the Tide game so we knew we had a good shot to give them a game.

Again the weather was not holding well and it would rain occasionally and at one point it hailed for about 2 points. By far the hardest I've ever seen it come down during an ultimate tournament / game.

Steve Prodan watched alot of their game before ours so he was able to help with match ups. We forced flick to take away their lefty's flick and came down in hard man. We pressured the dumps and were able to make them go to their second option but still traded until about 2's. We threw some junk D and were able to ger a few breaks in a row and take half 7-3 I believe. The first half we were running hard and making plays all over the place. At one point they huck it deep and Blardo runs down hard to make up the ground and bids huge for the D. This really fired up the D and we just rolled after that. Another highlight was when Richard Prodan pulled it out of bounds and was on the mark at the brick, the thrower wound up big and Rich footblocked it with what looked like little effort.

Minnesota looked like they were ready to go to their hotel and call it a day, and we were able to finish the game 13-7. The team responded to the trash talk and didn't allow Minnesota to score 8 on us. We were feeling good after the day and could feel we were getting better ever point of every game. Overall Minnesota is a good team full of athletes, my guess is they haven't had sufficient amounts of practice time and that contributed to their struggles.

Day 2
The weather on this day was much better and there was no shot at it raining. We were on field 1 taking on the winner of Texas St. and Kansas, Kansas took care of business so we had the Zontals to deal with.

Kansas
To start the game we stressed fundamentals and sticking with what we do best and everything would come together for us. Kansas came out super poachy and we were hesitant to start and had two silly turns and go down two breaks to start. We stop the bleeding with some good flow and a nice huck to Tim Giligan who proceeds to spike the disc, Kansas became upset thinking we taco-ed the disc. This would be the theme of the first half, Kansas being upset with us and a lot of bickering between our players and theirs. The next point we come box and get a break back and the Kansas coach asked us to switch the disc saying it wobbled, we did and moved on.

Kansas liked to huck it but their recievers couldn't pull them down consistently. We were able to pressure with both aggresive man and junk and pull ahead. Score reporter says we won 15-7 but I thought it was more like 9.

UW
These guys were def intimidating at SB Invite in the Semis when we were dead tired and 4 guys down. Now we were confident and were feeling good so we were welcoming the challenge, the point being that our mind set was much stronger going into this game.

We start on O and promplty get broken to start the game again, this was concerning because our Offense was so clean all weekend but faltered to start both games. Our offense gets back on form and ties it up, we trade for a bit while UW is able to work it in their vert stack offense and their red head afro hucker is on point. We're able to get our break back and take half on serve 8-7. Early in the game we threw our junk d and they were able to throw it over the top, in the second half we went back to it and they stopped going over the top and were able to get a break or two. Our offense was holding serve, a few points our O turned it but our their Doffense could not work it all the way up and we were able to get the turn back.

We trade the last 3 points as we score on a Bobble huck to Gil to win 15-13. In the end it was prob the best game we have played all year but we left a lot of points on the field, too many times we turned the disc on the goal line of what would have been a break. Overall that would be our theme for the weekend. But at the moment we are meeting our goal of getting better every game.

Day 3
Again a very nice day and we had UBC in semis. This was big for us with back to back semi final appearances at our home tourney it was time to really show up and play.

UBC
We knew these guys were good and were basically Furious Lite with guys like Norris, Loach, and that Asian guy. We start on D and get the turn on a UBC drop. We work it the entire length of the field and give it back to them on the goal line. Again this would be a theme as we had the disc 4 times on the goal line for a break in the first half. Obviously something to work on at practice.

We do manage to get a break but they break half and they take half on serve 8-7. At half we talked about valuing the disc on the goal line and taking advantage of the opportunities we get. But out of half UBC ups their intensity and we are not able to match it. We get broken 3 times out of half to go down 11-7. We call a time out to try and refocus but are unable to respond to their pressure as we continue to shoot our selves in the foot. They take the game 15-9 in a second half beat down.

All weekend we were improving up until that second half, tired legs may have caught up to us but bascially a veteran team made the adjustments and we didn't. UBC is good and I expect that they will be around come Nationals.

Texas
We lost the semi's which was a bummer but we tried to get the guys amped up for this game. but Jackson went down in the UBC game and Bobble had to leave which dropped our moral. But we battled any way.

Texas wasn't much of a hucking team as they preferred to abuse the mark and work the break side. We were able to contain the breaks throws and pressure the open side. However our offense was not doing it's job and we went down 3 breaks or so. We def were not into this game but as coaches we tried to get the guys up for it. Our studs were having so-so games and we opened up the lines a bit which did not help with our pressure. In the end we lost 15-11 in a game I think we could have been in if we were into it. I think the three day weekend wore us down mentally and we faltered in the end.

Overall their were a ton of positives to take from the weekend but the few negatives are the most beneficial for us. We will practice those things we did not do well and look to respond at Stanford with some more good games and results.

How to Lose 5 Pounds in 5 Minutes!!!!!!!

Three easy steps...

1.

2.

3.

It's like backwards Chia Pets...