akrish

Last weekend, Mr. Yuk headed west to Chicago for our last tournament before the series. We were on a six-game losing streak after a terrible Sunday at Queen City Tune-up and a possibly worse Saturday at Easterns Qualifier, but for the first time since the fall, we had a full roster, which suggested we might have a more positive weekend. Results-wise, we certainly did; we finished in 9th place (out of 64 open teams) going 6-1 on the weekend, with our only loss coming to Michigan State (the eventual finalist) on universe point.

Unfortunately, the tournament format wasn’t all that ideal. We were pretty horribly under-seeded after poor performances against good competition earlier in the spring and this meant that to get into the championship bracket (and finish higher than 9th), we pretty much had to be undefeated on Saturday. Moreover, our cross-over game on Saturday evening would be against a two-seed from a power pool, in this case Michigan State. If we were seeded slightly better or slightly worse, our cross-over would have been against a three or four seed, which would have been a much more winnable game. Our loss to MSU meant we could get 9th at best, and by winning out on Sunday, we did exactly that.

First the break-down, then some comments.

1. Michigan B: As is usually the case with Mr. Yuk, we started out pretty slow trading points early on and going down a break before we really got our act together. They ran a poach-y defense that our O-line had a pretty hard time dealing with, resulting in a lot of miscues and easy blocks for them. Our D-line really picked up the intensity, with much more tenacious man-defense that I’m used to seeing from our team, and also with some nice zone-looks that generated turnovers. We started to run away with the game in the second half and eventually won 13-8.
2. Wright State: With some momentum from our win against Michigan B, we brought the pain on Wright State, generate break after break. The O-line didn’t need to play all that much, but when they did, were cool and consistent. The D-line worked hard to generate turnovers (actually earning blocks, not just capitalizing on miscues) and then converted time after time. CMU wins 13-3.
3. Dayton: Building on our earlier rounds, we came out strong right away, generating three breaks to start the game and taking half 7-2. Dayton was plagued with injuries and consequently played pretty short-handed but our defense was pretty stifling. Again O-line did their job. CMU wins 13-6.
4. Michigan State: As our cross-over game, this was a must-win situation for either team to get into the championship bracket on Sunday. At Easterns Qualifier we played MSU very close, losing 14-16, and I looked forward to a competitive, exciting game. As it turns out that is exactly what happened. We started out trading points, and eventually MSU earned two breaks in the first half. The second half was a different story. We earned three breaks to take the lead 12-11, generated another block with the opportunity to win but a costly turnover swung momentum in favor of MSU. They scored to tie the game at 12s, and we traded to 13s. On universe point, both teams were very impatient, resulting in a marathon of a point with the possession exchanging several times. A costly end-zone turnover on our part enable MSU to work their end-zone offense and score for the universe-point win. MSU wins 14-13.
5. Dayton: Relegated to the 9th place bracket, we faced Dayton again first thing on Sunday morning. If it’s at all possible, they had incurred even more injuries but as usual, we came out incredibly slow, going down 1-4 right away. Once we got our act together both lines started clicking and we earned our breaks back to win 13-10.
6. Western Michigan: Another fairly straightforward win for us. We started out trading and then broke a couple of times to take half 7-4. Deep defense was huge for us this game as they looked to huck early and often but we prevented them from completing the majority of these attempts. The second half was went smoothly and we came out ahead. CMU wins 13-8.
7. Northern Iowa: Penn State was on the other side of the bracket after a surprising loss in their crossover game on Saturday, and we were expecting to see them in the 9th place game. However, they got upset by Northern Iowa, who we ended up facing. Again we came out strong right away, taking a quick 3-1 lead. They broke back once in the first half but we got a couple of more to take half 7-4. In what was a fairly uneventful second half, we ended up winning 12-9 after the game got capped. Thus we ended up in 9th place.

Some comments:

• We clearly play up or down to our opponents. We played some teams that we should have crushed this weekend, yet many of our games ended pretty close. This meant that we had to keep our starters playing, so that in the games that mattered we were fairly fatigued. We need to get much better at putting away bad teams. On the plus side, we really stepped up to MSU and showed that we can compete with some very good, potentially nationals caliber, teams.
• Another mental thing, it takes us way too long to get going in the mornings. Come regionals, we can’t dig ourselves into a hole on Saturday or Sunday morning, and really all it means is that we focus and take our warmup seriously. This is purely mental, but, to me, it is critical for our success in the series.
• The last mental thing, we lost our composure towards the end of the MSU game and I think that cost us the game. We had a couple of unforced turnovers and bad decisions, especially on universe point, where we repeatedly gave them back the disc. Our offense was not clicking on that point and I think that in part it was because we’re not used to such high-pressure situations and lost our cool. We’ll only improve on that with experience but it is something to note.
• Strategically, our O-line really struggled with the poach-y defense that Michigan B threw at us. Our cutters were very hesitant about moving through the poaches, making it very hard for handlers to find open upfield targets, and resulting in several turnovers. I’m not sure if a lot of teams in our region rely on poach-y defenses but it is something we should work on in the next couple of weeks.
• Defensively, the one thing that really hurt us in the MSU game was our marks. We started out marking honestly, but MSU’s handlers repeatedly got off around breaks, making it near impossible for upfield defenders to get blocks. We adjusted by having our marks really take away the around option, but this came at the expense of opening up the inside looks, which MSU exploited, again at the cost of our upfield defense. Better marks would ideally challenge both options simultaneously, making it much easier for us to generate turnovers.
• On a positive note, both our offense and defense clicked much better than it has in past tournaments. On the defensive side, missing two of our starters at past tournaments definitely contributed to our relative success this weekend. Offensively things also seemed to work very well for the most part (apart from a couple of miscues and the poach-defense thing). Defensively I was especially happy to see more and more people laying out and actually contesting both underneath and deep throws.

All in all, we had a solid weekend, winning games we should win, and with a really close, competitive game against a very good team in MSU. However, there are definitely things to work on in the next couple of weeks leading up to regionals. With our region only earning two bids to nationals, we’ll have to iron out all of these kinks if we want to make a push for one of them.

Conferences is next weekend so look for another post in a week or so.

On Friday, Mr. Yuk made the 11 hour drive from Pittsburgh back to Wilmington, NC for Easterns Qualifier, hosted by UNCW. After a fairly disappointing showing at Queen City, we were looking to turn things around and earn some big wins this weekend. Unfortunately, due to injuries, midterms, and other commitments, we only brought 15 healthy players and were missing some big players on both the O and D lines. In a pretty competitive tournament, we couldn’t afford to rest our top guys much, and fatigue reared its ugly head late on saturday in a very winnable game against Tennessee.

The big story of the weekend was the weather, which was warm but raining on and off on saturday, and throughout saturday night, leading to sunday games being cancelled due to field closures. After falling into the 9th place bracket on Saturday, we were looking forward to playing some more winnable games, but alas it was not to be. Instead we got an early start home and made it back to Pittsburgh in time to catch the live stream of the finals of Stanford Invite.

Before I go into the takeaways from the tournament, here’s a game-by-game recap:

1. Michigan State: In what was undoubtedly our best showing of the weekend, Mr. Yuk took MSU to 14s, only to lose 16-14. MSU came out strong, repeatedly breaking our marks and working down the break side of the field. MSU earned a couple of breaks off of drops and miscues from our offense but by fixing our marks, we were able to earn them back and keep the game interesting. We earned two breaks late in the game to tie the score at 14s, but MSU finally converted and then broke to win. They were a physical team with a lot of skilled players, but our performance showed that we can certainly keep up with this caliber of team.
2. Penn State: Coming off a tough loss to MSU, we didn’t bring any intensity to our second round game against regional rivals Penn State. They quickly pulled ahead and never really looked back. Not much positive to say about this game; Penn State wins 15-5.
3. Tennessee: Again, not much positive to say about this game. With a small roster, our top players started to fatigue and this lead to mistakes and a lack of effort on defense. We simply did not play very well and Tennessee outclassed us. Tennessee wins 15-7.

This was a poor showing for Mr. Yuk. We demonstrated that we lack the mental toughness to maintain intensity after a tough loss. We also do not have the stamina to keep our top guys playing every point of every game. This is understandable, but with a small roster this weekend, we did not have enough to play close games against these teams. With a fairly top-heavy roster this year, we specifically need to improve on this aspect, so that we can be competitive in the series.

Strategically the big let-down for us was our marks. Both MSU and and Penn State repeatedly broke our marks at will, resulting in several easy goals. To me this is also a mental thing, that can be fixed fairly easily, but with poor marks we will not be successful in the remainder of the season.

It is now patently clear that Mr. Yuk had a terrible winter. The poor attendance at practices and the lack of individual effort outside of practice clearly showed in our poor performance last weekend. I’m hoping that this is a wake up call for us; we still have time to become the team we expected to be this season, but we have a lot of work to do.

This weekend, Carnegie Mellon’s Men’s ultimate team, Mr. Yuk, made the 8 hour drive out of snowy Pittsburgh to Charlotte, NC for Queen City Tune-Up. This was our first tournament since early November (Fall Easterns) and we have had very few opportunities to actually play ultimate since returning to school in January. While we haven’t had the best winter in terms of training, we did have a very productive fall season, so while my expectation was that we wouldn’t have the of best tournament, it was not unreasonable to think that we could do very well. As it turned out, my expectation was correct both results-wise and performance-wise.

Results-wise we went 3-4, with big wins against UNC, Cornell and NYU, but with upsetting losses to Ohio State and NCSU along with losses to Dartmouth and Michigan. This resulted in us taking 12th place out of 20, behind our original seeding of 10th.

Before I go on, let me just mention that the weather was a huge factor, particularly on Saturday. Reportedly winds were recorded at 20mph with gusts up to 40mph and all of our games were upwind-downwind. This had huge strategic implications for both teams, which ended up punting and playing defense on the downwind side, relying on the strong winds to help generate turns with favorable field position. Apart from Dartmouth, no team could move the disc up the field with any consistency, so upwind scores were hard to come by. Most games were consequently decided by one or two upwind scores.

Sunday was much less windy, but much colder than Saturday. The fields were frozen when we arrived and, at the start of our first game, the temperature was just about 32F. This more or less persisted throughout the day. But without the strong winds, Sunday was much more playable.

Performance-wise, we learned that we have many things to work on. Offensively, we struggled to move upwind against aggressive zone defenses. As I mentioned, part of this was because the winds were particularly strong, and most teams had difficulty doing this, but I think we can certainly improve in this area. Two specific things I think we can work on are keeping the disc off of the trap sideline and keeping the cup moving with fakes and crashes. Defensively, I think our zones need a lot of work; and I’m hopefully that this is just a product of not having practiced together in a couple of months. Our Defense-O and Offensive-D both need a fair amount of work; defensively we had many opportunities for breaks that we didn’t capitalize on and offensively we had trouble recovering the disc after a turn over.

While there are certainly many things to work on in preparation for the series, there were also some things that we did quite well. Firstly, our O-line didn’t get broken in 3 of our games on Saturday. This lead to our three wins of the tournament, all by a difference of just a couple of goals. If the offense can maintain this performance, we will be in a great position to win games in the future. Defensively, we managed to generate a lot of turnovers which is great, but as I mentioned, we had a hard time capitalizing on this. I was also pleasantly surprised with how well our D-line worked through zones, especially considering that we have a lot of people that are uncomfortable with their throws.

Here is a quick game-by-game recap:

1. UNC — UNC was the first seed in our pool, and since we had a first round bye, we got in a good warmup and were ready to play come game time. The wind had already picked up a decent amount and we traded downwind O-points for most of the game. Offensively the strategy for both teams was to immediately huck to a receiver streaking deep, and play defense in the event of a turnover. This turned out to be a successful strategy as both teams struggled to work upwind. After a fairly monotonous game, we finally managed to earn ourselves an upwind break, and the subsequent downwind break sealed the victory. CMU wins 11-8 on hard cap, our O-line did not give up a break.
2. Cornell — Coming off a huge with against UNC we were ready to bring it to Cornell. The winds picked up even more and this game proceeded much like the last one. We squeezed out a break just before half, and Cornell’s D-line could not score upwind, which resulted a positive result again for us. CMU wins 9-7 on hard cap and again our O-line did not give up a break.
3. Dartmouth — While the winds were still raging, Dartmouth did not play the hucking strategy that we had grown accustomed to in the last two games. They had solid throwers that were comfortable both up- and down-wind and they capitalized on our O-lines turnovers to earn breaks. We struggled to move the disc upwind while they continued to be successful in both directions and this lead to a fairly easy win for them. Dartmouth wins 13-4.
4. NYU — The last round of the day presented itself with a must-win situation for us if we wanted to make it to pre-quarters. Unfortunately we started out on the losing side of the coin flip, with NYU starting on offense going downwind. The game progressed as the previous ones had with both teams trading down-wind points and it looked like NYU would win in a hardcap situation, simply because they received first. However, just before half (pretty late in the game), our D-line somehow managed to get through NYU’s zone and earn a break. NYU looked about to do the same thing later but some game-saving plays helped us retain the lead and eventually earn the win. CMU wins 10-8 again on hard cap. O-line did not get broken.
5. Pre-quarters: Michigan — Michigan is a historically very strong team and their experience certainly showed in this pre-quarters matchup. While the wind wasn’t as strong as Saturday, we did not adapt our strategy and turned the disc over too easily. Meanwhile, Michigan was very conservative, repeatedly breaking our marks and working this disc up the field to earn easy scores. Michigan wins fairly easily 15-6.
6. 9th place bracket: North Carolina State — We played NCSU at Fall Easterns and beat them pretty handedly, but they were a much more prepared team this time around. Our O-line got broken several times early on and the D-line never managed to earn all of those breaks back. We went on a run later in the game but never managed to take the lead. In a disappointing loss, NCSU wins 10-8.
7. 11th place game: Ohio State — We also played and beat OSU at Fall Easterns in a fun, pretty close game but this time Ohio State’s preparation really showed. Having played two other tournaments already this spring, they were clearly more conditioned, experienced and familiar with each other than we were, and they beat us handedly. OSU wins 15-8, we end up in 12th place, 2 places behind our initial seed of 10th.

We are going back to North Carolina (this time Wilmington) in a couple of weeks for Eastern’s Qualifier. With a lot of the same teams, we certainly have the potential to make some noise, but we cannot perform as we did this passed weekend in Charlotte. Stay tuned for what I hope will be some more exciting news.

I’m a little behind on this one but a couple of weeks ago Mr. Yuk made the 11 hour drive down to Wilmington, North Carolina to compete in Fall Easterns, a highly competitive tournament featuring some of the best teams in the Atlantic Coast and Ohio Valley regions. The tournament got a lot of coverage on skydmagazine (see here, here and here) and here is the official results from score reporter.

We came in seeded somewhere in the bottom 4 out of 16 teams (I heard that they didn’t snake the last round of the pools, so it’s not obvious exactly what seed we are) and finished 4th over all, losing the 3rd place game by forfeit only because we had to start driving home. Here’s a quick game by game recap:

1. University of Delaware — After getting into Wilmington after 3am the night before, we clearly weren’t ready to start playing at 9am and this showed as we quickly went down 7-1 against Delaware. It was incredibly windy (20-30 mph winds) and our offense couldn’t seem to break their zone. Meanwhile they adopted a “punt and play-D” strategy that seemed to work quite well as we gave them great field position over and over, allowing them to convert easy scores. We came out a lot more fired up in the second half, but had already dug ourselves into too deep of a hole to win this one. Delaware wins 15-7.
2. University of Virginia — If it’s at all possible, winds seemed to increase for the second round of the day, and this lead to a really sloppy game. However we came out strong. We adapted to the wind, playing the same style of field position game that was successful for Delaware against us and this allowed our O-line to convert. At the same time our D-line’s zone generated turn after turn, and we accumulated a couple of breaks. CMU wins 6-10 on hard cap. Some video footage of this game is here.
3. William and Mary — We played W&M at Hucks of the Hilltops a few weeks before Easterns (I wasn’t there hence no recap here), and lost to them on universe point after being up for most of the game. Coming off a big win against UVa, we were hungry to bring it to these guys. We started off really well, converting our O-points and punching in a couple of breaks, eventually taking half, but afterwards we started to slip. If I remember correctly soft-cap went on when we were up 12-9 and W&M broke over and over again to tie it at 13s and bring it to universe. They would come out ahead again, leaving us on one hand dejected, but on the other, excited to play regional rival Ohio State in our cross over game. William and Mary wins 14-13.
4. Ohio State — OSU knocked us out of regionals last year in a very close game, and our veterans were looking forward to facing them in the crossover game. To start out, I think they were playing a lot of their tryout players, but we took a pretty substantial lead, forcing them to put in their veterans for the second half. We kept bringing the pressure and came out with a comfortable win and a berth into the Championship bracket on sunday. CMU wins 14-8. Footage of this game is here
5. University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) — Our first game on Sunday was the quarterfinal matchup against UNC. As we did on Saturday morning, we came out slow, allowing UNC to take half 8-3. The second half however, was a completely different story. We generated break after break, with big defensive plays, winning the half 10-7, but losing the game 15-13. UNC is a very good team (they ended up winning the tournament) and I was very impressed with how we played, particularly in the second half. Footage of this game is here
6. North Carolina State — Losing in quarterfinals, we dropped into the 3rd place bracket. I don’t remember too much of this game, except that we had a lot of momentum from the UNC game and kept rolling. CMU wins 13-9.
7. University of South Carolina — The Skyd report from day 1 suggested that USC was the story of the tournament, because of their unexpected success, despite our similarly unexpected success. As a result, we thought of this matchup as a way to prove that we were just as memorable as they were. I don’t remember too many details of this game either, except that it wasn’t ever particularly close. CMU wins 15-7, earning us a berth in the 3rd place game.
8. University of North Carolina Wilmington — The third place game was set to start at 3:45. With a 11 hour car ride in front of us, we simply couldn’t push off leaving for a couple more hours and were forced to forfeit to UNCW.

For the most part, we played much better than I expected. This made me really excited to be a part of Mr. Yuk this year and I’m hopeful that we make some noise in the spring and going into the college series. The win against OSU was especially satisfying because we’re going to see them again at regionals and it shows that we can compete against some of the better teams in our region. Our success has also motivated me to do work over the winter, so that I can contribute in the spring.

On the positive side, for the most part our offense was silky-smooth. In the USC game they only had three turnovers and gave up no breaks. I, in part, expected this, as we only graduated one O-line player, and two of our starting handlers have returned from serious injuries, but it was definitely reassuring to see. It’s really nice to play for a team where you can count on the O-line to score. Our D-line, after losing several seniors, also impressed me for the most part. Holes were filled by rookies who really stepped up, and despite our lack of offensive-minded players, we managed to convert after generating turnovers. We can certainly improve in this area, because it was clear that our defensive offense was run by three or four players, and most everyone else didn’t really have an idea of what to do after the turnover.

Of course there are many things we need to work on. Most patently obvious is that we need to start playing when games actually start. We can’t afford to give up insane leads in the first half as we did against Delaware and UNC. I don’t really know how to fix this, because it is mostly a mental thing and something that I don’t know how to teach people. More tactically, William and Mary discovered that they could keep hitting up-the-line dump cuts, and this helped the go on their run towards the end of the game. UNC broke our marks over and over again, resulting in a lot of fairly easy scores. These are two sort of little details that will haunt us in the spring if we don’t fix them.

Fall Easterns wrapped up our fall season and hopefully gives us a lot of momentum as we go indoors for the winter. Our next tournament will be sometime in late February or March. I’m really looking forward to an exciting spring season.