early season thoughts on the NE region

With veterans Lakshmi Narayan, Liz Middleton, and Sarah Markus as well as top freshman Rohre Titcomb, all the talk is about Dartmouth as the pre-season favorite from the New England region, however, i wouldn't so quickly overlook other regional programs, including Tufts, Brown, and MIT.

Tufts did not look challenged by any of the competition they faced at ultimax this past weekend and had a solid showing at Vegas. they have a core of juniors and seniors who have been building a team together for a few years. led by the throws of Bernie Diaz and downfield motion of Meghan Cain, they are fundamentally sound, play an efficient offense, and run hard on both sides of the disc. a heartbreaking loss to Brown at regionals last year sent them out of the tournament early, but i suspect that will be different this year.

even after graduating a slew of players last year, Brown has refueled for the 2005 season. it is early in the season and their offense is still coming together, but they are coached by the collective brainpower of Ted Munter, Mo McCamley, and Mike Kafka, and are capable of throwing a number of defensive sets at you to get the disc back.

after being hit hard by some early season injuries, MIT lost in the semifinals of Ultimax. experience is not in question, as their top players this year have been playing significant roles at Nationals the past few years. however, depth has been a trademark weakness of MIT, and this year may be no different.

after a relatively mild winter, the northeast is starting to thaw, and teams are kicking off their seasons. in preparing for the UPA series, regional teams will get chances to face off at UMassacre (if it isn't rained out for the 4th year in a row) and Yale Cup, and it will be exciting to see which teams emerge as the favorites entering into Regionals.

some other teams in the mix that i cannot write about because i haven't seen them play this season yet: Wellesley, Northeastern, and Yale.

Is it a two horse race?

Not only are Stanford and Colorado the two top women's teams out there this season, but Lauren Casey and Alex Snyder are two of the best women's players this year too. When was the last time that happened? Now, I'm not going to go into which one I think will win Nationals or who should win the Callahan this year, because I'm rather biased. It's not that hard to guess who I'd pick, just like it's not that hard to guess who Hector will tell you is going to win.

But, does anyone else stand a chance?

UCLA is the next team I'd put money on, if I were betting on another team to make the finals of Nationals. UCLA came close to upsetting Stanford in the windy semis of Centex, going up 10-7 before eventually losing 10-12. UCLA also came close to beating Colorado in the semis of the Stanford Invite, where the game was decided on double game point. UCLA will get another shot at Colorado at SW Regionals, which could make things interesting. UCLA and Colorado seem like very similar teams in terms of a couple dominant handlers with a number of solid receivers. I would put UCLA's top receivers as slightly more athletic than Colorado's, but losing the height of Emily Gauthier could hurt UCLA. If Regionals is not windy, UCLA's chances of an upset against Colorado rise.

Florida is making a strong push this year and the phrase "real deal" keeps popping up in reference to the team, but FUEL still could have a hard time making it out of its region. With only four losses for the season (to Georgia in the finals of Southerns, to UCLA in pool play and in the 3/4 game at Centex, and to Colorado in the semis of Centex), this team looks good on paper and has bested some quality teams. Probably its biggest win of the season so far was against highly-ranked British Columbia in the semis of Centex. Florida has beaten top teams from other regions too: Michigan, Purdue, and Northwestern from the Great Lakes; Cornell and State College from the Metro East; Dartmouth from New England; and Texas from the South. Interestingly enough, Florida hasn't won as many big games against its own regional competition. It has yet to play Emory or UNC-Chapel Hill and has lost to Georgia. The team utilizes various clam/switching defenses that many teams take awhile to adjust to, which could be a bonus at Nationals against new opponents. The team will have to make it there first. Also, the jury is still out on whether Florida will turn into another team from the AC that has lots of pre-season hype but doesn't hold seed at Nationals.

British Columbia has also been one of the front runners of the season. The only team from within its region that it has lost to thus far is Stanford, while it has beat all the other major contenders from the NW. The team also had early season wins against UCLA and Carleton (at Trouble in Vegas) and more recent victories over San Diego, Emory, Dartmouth, and UNC-Chapel Hill. UBC runs a very efficient offense that isolates players in its horizontal stack. As it is all but impossible to prevent a reset dump pass from getting to the squirrelly handler Kira Frew, UBC is able to pick apart a team's defense with patience and precision. Megan O'Brien's athleticism and field sense are also remarkable and she makes a huge impact, even playing with her left arm in a cast. The team only had 12 players at Centex, although presumably the team's complete roster has more depth.

Wisconsin is another team to keep an eye on. The team traded games with UBC at Trouble in Vegas, eventually coming in third among a competitive field. Wisconsin went on to win Mardi Gras, Terminus, and Huck Finn, albeit against less competitive teams. This team has bounced back from a disappointing end to its season at Regionals, and the tight-knit squad benefits from the experience of its many veterans and juniors-playing freshmen. Team leaders Holly Greunke and Dana Gerrits are especially dynamic players. All the winning experience of this season will come in handy when the team finds itself battling an improving Carleton squad at Regionals, because everyone knows that Carleton shows up to play once the Series starts.

There are also a number of other solid teams out there. San Diego performed well at Centex, although it will have to perform brilliantly at Regionals to get past UCLA and Colorado for one of the two bids. UNC-Chapel Hill has played close games with top teams this year, but it too hasn't won enough of the right games to show that it is a lock for either qualifying out of the AC or advancing far into the bracket play of Nationals. The same goes for UC-Davis, UC-Berkeley, Michigan, and State College, to name a few.

Given that the college season is known for last minute upsets and teams peaking at Nationals, there could be some surprises in store for Superfly and Kali if they expect to rest on their laurels and coast into the championship game. But that's what makes things interesting, right?

Punting to play zone

This past weekend at the Stanford Invite, the strong winds on Sunday meant that a lot of teams hucked going downwind and then played zone to try and force the upwind turnover. This is quite effective strategy in the college game, although it made for a number of ugly points to watch. Of course, there were exceptions to the high-turnover rule of thumb. For instance, in the finals a third of the points were scored with no turnovers (including the very first point when Stanford worked the disc upwind, taking almost 25 passes to get through Colorado's zone). Still, there were some horrific points during the day with over 20 turnovers before someone scored.

In high winds, more turnovers are bound to happen than in perfect weather conditions. However, punting to play zone just doesn't quite feel right as a team strategy when you think about trying to improve players skills and teach them good fundamentals. It makes a great deal of sense to avoid turning the disc over near the upwind goal, but is there any other way to do this besides exclusively looking to huck? It doesn't exude a ton of confidence in your own team's offensive abilities if the only strategy is to huck right off the pull. As someone on rsd pointed out, it's also not an offensive strategy that teams practice outside of a tournament setting. It's not exactly good ultimate.

The other thing is, even if a team wants to try and work it down (perhaps focusing on hitting in-cuts that would be wide-open since the defense is afraid of the huck), if its opponent is bent on punting when it goes downwind, the risk of turning it over and giving up an upwinder becomes greater for the team that would like to play more of a possession-based downwind O. Thus, upwind-downwind games become prime examples of the "Turnover Compact" (see the 08/14/06 post by Zaz) where teams often don't care about how many times they turn it going downwind (just as long as they do score the downwind in the end), but instead focus on trying to get those upwind breaks. Scoring upwind is how teams win windy games, but the constant turnovers make for very ugly ultimate that's not all that exciting.

Maybe the only real solution for most college teams is to try and maximize the completion percentages of their downwind looks. Oftentimes, throwers seemed to be hucking into oblivion without a target in sight or were so bent on jacking the disc that it would sail out the back of the endzone. If teams are going to utilize a huck-and-zone strategy to win games at tournaments, maybe they should be practicing the necessary skills in practice: putting touch on those downwind hucks, reading the wind to place hucks where a receiver has a chance at the disc, reading the disc to be able to track it in high winds, and catching passes in a pack of people. Also, I wonder if teams should significantly change their offensive set-up when going downwind to try and overload receivers in the endzone or isolate players in various spots on the field. Maybe other teams already do that... What other alternatives are there to catching the pull, jacking it, and then setting a zone to get the turnover?