Day 2. After playing only 17 points on Friday I felt good - as did much of the Oline and Dline for that matter. playing 2 games a day is a real luxury after tournaments like Stanford and Centex. Not to mention we were never at full strength and so I played something like 100 pts in the 2 days of Stanford. But that's why nationals seemed so easy (at times) - we had worked harder before.
So are game against Tufts was easy. The day before they had played two 15-12 (split 1-1) games and I noticed their top guys shouldering a lot of the load. Another thing about Tufts and Carleton is the Amherst connection. Tufts captain Andrew Hollingworth is bff with Christian Foster and played with Kanner/Pbob in high school. This leads to a lot of off the field feelings getting in the way. Which reminds me of something else.
Kanner loves to match up against Will Neff. It makes sense - our best defender, especially against players that touch the disc a lot. The funny thing is that Neff is so in Kanner's head, in terms of Kanner always think he is being outplayed and convinced that Neff is the better. Will is good - Callahan - but the two are very different players, though I think Sam's style is better. Basically there is all this old bull shit that gets in the way, even though players have progressed at different rates and really become different players. Digression
Right so I think Andrew-Sam-Pbob-Christian have all these preconceived ideas about each others play and it gets in the way of good play. That said, Kanner dominated the matchup though I think we switched defenders on Andrew throughout the game. With Andrew neutralized Tufts falls apart, he was an integral part of their play all year and other players were not prepared to step up. Not to mention our Handler D was again absolutely shut down.
Why doesn't the ME and NE regions fly to better tournaments? (Everybody was touting Cornell, saying they were seeded to low) The year Brown won they flew out to Stanford and Centex(?) Take a look at Tufts season schedule they played some pretty poor teams - how can you expect to win at nationals when you haven't seen a good team since Vegas? Maybe that was not their goal - for some teams it's just making it to the big show but come on, there is a correlation between team finish at nationals and strength of season schedule. Teams improve by leaps and bounds in only 2 days at events - very evident for our team this year.
Our coaching staff
So the game - nothing stands out in my mind, breakfast mostly. The game went like most, Tufts hung on for the first 8 pts. CUT is too deep and our 4-7 players on the field are hands down better than our competitions 4-7. Especially on Offensive no team can match up with us. 6 and 7 are forced to match up against Mammel/Pbob/Jerome and that causes some problems. The reason our offense was so successful - somebody was always getting open (with a bad player on them which means a bad mark etc.)
We blew Tufts out - ohwell they managed to to win their next game and make prequarters, a definite accomplishment. Also I'm not trying to hate on anyone, just telling it from my point of view. I don't know the Amherst crew as well as most but those are my observations.
UPA READ THIS - why not hire 4 reporters for Friday and Saturday, I bet you could even get volunteers. Have 1 reporter per pool that way there is more detail on each game and the reporters will 'know' the dynamics of their pool. Good for everybody, shit why not have 2 people do write up for finals some opposing views - Good for everybody
UPA - I will be a reporter for CUTs pool/schedule at 2010 Nationals
Again Thx to Tish Fagin for letting me publish her photos on my blog
The defense looks tired
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