Trouble in Vegas

Last weekend, Miranda and I played in the club version of the Trouble in Vegas tournament. Based on our experiences, I thought it would be nice to give college teams a heads up as to what to expect when they return this coming weekend for the college tournament. So, this post will be a recap of our weekend with some tips thrown in that could be applicable for next weekend.

Mir and I had created a team of players from around the country that we'd played with or against in college. The team name was Lawless Guile Committee, which was an anagram for "we miss college ultimate." Awwww, so cute. We only had 13 players on the final roster, but they were from 7 different schools, including some major rivalries: Texas, UC-San Diego, Stanford, Washington, Purdue, Wisconsin, and Carleton represent.

Many of the players had never met before, but some quality team bonding on Friday night and some rounds of the "box drill" at the field helped us all get acquainted. We also had to rally together in the first game to overcome our 0-3 deficit after being assessed points for being half an hour late to the fields.

Speaking of the fields, the rumors are true. They are very dry, very scratchy, and I wish I'd remembered to pack my turf shoes along with my cleats. While club players might have self-preservation in their mind when considering laying-out, I predict that the college kids playing next weekend are going to be ruined unless they wear tights and long sleeves. Watch out for broken glass in the endzone too.

We ended up winning our pool and the cross-over game, although we were down at half to both the Berkeley reunion team and the Canadians. Losing to Berkeley once in my life is enough for me (Regionals finals 2003), so I'm especially glad we pulled that one out. To celebrate, we had a team dinner at the Gold Coast's buffet. The food was good for $12 total, and coupons for free wine helped us get over the fact that we had to peel the shrimp ourselves. It was time to hit up the tournament pre-party for our free drink before hitting the Strip.

I don't really know what to say about Saturday night on the Strip as it all seems a bit of a blur. It was really fun to run into people from the tournament at different bars, clubs, and casinos, all amidst the over-the-top extravagance that is Vegas. However, unless you enjoy paying $8-12 for a drink, I don't recommend trying to buy drinks at some of the classier joints--although definitely check them out at least (for instance, the Conservatory at the Bellagio was pretty sweet, even if the big dog was rather creepy). A couple more words of advice: if you want to go dancing in the Bellagio, leave the boys at home. It was easy to get in free of charge and without waiting in line if you were missing the Y chromosome. Sorry 'bout it, guys. Also, if you're staying at the Gold Coast, keep track of your keys or make new friends with other people who kept track of their keys. You can't actually get into the hotel portion of the building without one...

Sunday morning's games started out late and hungover as well, although the Viva women were less into the whole assessing points thing than Rogue was the day before. Sunday was marked by pretty strong winds. Half the fields were oriented one direction (upwind-downwind), while the other half had more of a cross-wind. If either day is that windy next weekend, be ready for teams to punt and zone and the games to be capped. Playing lots of zone and 1-3-3, we made it to the finals after beating the team from Atlanta. I think they only had 8 women at the tournament, which must have been rough. Sidenote: Katherine Wooten's forehand is ridiculous--I think she even pulled flick.

We rematched the Canadian team, Felions, in the finals. At this point the Superbowl was about to start and all the other games were over. It's a good thing we didn't have many spectators since the game was a turnover fest. I believe the final score was 21-18 for the LGC. After not winning a single cent in Vegas, I guess winning the tournament wasn't too bad. Although, I still wish I'd found out about the penny slots at O'Shay's earlier...

All in all, this was one of my most fun tournament experiences, so I hope that the college version goes as well for teams. Hopefully Vegas will be just as fun for those under 21!

NUMP talk

There have been some questions about the rationale behind the latest women's NUMP poll results. In addition to starting more of a discussion about what should play into changes in the rankings from week to week, I'd also like to discuss what the qualifications should be of being on the NUMP.

Some of the major changes between the pre-season poll and this week's poll were the direct result of last weekend's Santa Barbara Invite. UCLA and UC-Davis made it into the poll (after previously being unranked) based on their finals and semifinals appearances, respectively. After coming in second in its pool to UC-San Diego and then losing to UCLA in quarters, UC-Berkeley went down a couple notches in the poll, and UCSD moved up a spot.

As AJ pointed out in his previous comment, it is interesting that UC-Davis remains below both UC-Berkeley and UCLA, despite the fact that the team finished higher at the tournament than UC-Berkeley and actually beat UCLA by one in pool play. I can't speak to the Davis-Berkeley order, because it does't make sense to me either, but perhaps I can offer a little insight into the UCLA-Davis order as I saw both teams play during the weekend in their games against Stanford.

Of note is that both games against Stanford had a score of 11-6, Stanford, at some point in time. The semis were then capped at this score, while the finals had no cap and UCLA was able to mount two runs to bring the final score to 15-13. While it's impossible to say whether Davis would have been able to have the same type of comeback given the time, I give a lot of credit to the fact that UCLA did outscore Stanford in the second half. I think it speaks to the depth of the team that UCLA was still able to run hard, play tough D, and convert on offense late in a game that was late in the tournament. Personally, I also thought UCLA's offense was slightly more polished than Davis', but maybe that's just the bias that comes from seeing them score more points. Perhaps other voters who weren't in Santa Barbara simply based their rankings on the tournament finishes of the two teams and their scores against their common opponent.

Other major changes to the poll's rankings involved the demotion of Cornell, Iowa, and MIT. Iowa and MIT in particular lost a lot of ground, but my conjecture is that those two teams were ranked too highly to begin with in the pre-season poll. I don't know how much information all the voters had on all the teams before the pre-season poll, but it could very well be the case that people didn't know all that much about roster changes and simply based much of their voting on finishes at last year's nationals. As more information about teams was unearthed, the panelists adjusted their picks accordingly.

Of course, most of the teams on the poll haven't even played a game this season, so the rankings have to be taken with a major grain of salt. I imagine that as more tournaments happen, the panelists will have a more accurate sense of how teams stack up against each other and the poll's rankings will be more valid as a result.

The poll's accuracy could also be enhanced by having more than 7 people voting!

I think that many people are hesitant to join the NUMP because they haven't seen all that many teams and would have a hard time ranking teams from across the nation. However, no one has seen every team or teams from every region yet. I think that especially coaches who accurately know the intra-region competition and are expecting to travel to a couple tournaments with inter-region play should consider voting on the panel. It's up to the panelists from different geographic areas to share information about teams and tournaments and for people to make their best informed guesses.

Wow, this was meant to be a quick post as a study break. Procrastination let me get carried away again...