Stanford Invite Recap - Part One

I had been planning on writing up a preview for the tourney but I ran out of time. Dang. I also had to write up the women's division preview for the UPA magazine so I've been a bit delinquent with my blog posts. Double dang.

To make up for my tardiness, I'll be posting two or more entries this week. And now...

THE STANFORD INVITE

Going into the Stanford Invite, three of the most interesting storylines included:

1) The Battle for the Northwest

Washington and Western Washington chose to attend Trouble in Vegas over President's Day. Oregon, Stanford, UBC and Berkeley chose Pres Day over TiV. Who would emerge on top and how would the individual rivalries (Oregon v. Stanford, Stanford v. Berkeley, Washington v. UBC) turn out?

After the weekend, I would say that Oregon and Stanford are the two clear favorites in the region, but the margin between each of the top six Northwest teams is razor thin. UBC remains the most difficult team to assess. They were missing Tory Hislop and Jenny Lo this weekend, both of whom are vital to the Thunderbirds' chances of a repeat championship. My personal feeling is that the T-Birds are much better than they showed this past weekend, but they are in danger of losing the confidence that they need to compete with the rest of the Northwest. It is a brutal region and every little edge makes a big difference. At Centex, they are currently scheduled to play against cross-country rivals Ottawa and UCLA, the team they can never seem to beat. If they can't manufacture a big win in Austin, I think their best shot of making the College Championships would be to convince the UPA to redraw British Columbia as part of the Central region. Maybe that's a bit extreme... a much more likely scenario is to request the UPA to create a new region called the Great White North. Now, that would be awesome, but the travel would be a bitch. Thankfully, snowmobiles are plentiful in the GWN.

Berkeley had a very split weekend. On the downside, they missed a great opportunity to nab a key win against Washington and lost a contentious pool game to UNC-Wilmington, a team that they should have beaten. Worst of all, their psychological struggles with Stanford only got worse. Thus far, Superfly has simply owned the Pie Queens, winning all three matchups by an average of six points. The two teams are much more evenly matched than the results would suggest, but in a rivalry like theirs, the mental game means everything. If Berkeley can't find a way to play Stanford tight at Sectionals (or Centex), they will likely have to key in on upsetting Oregon or preparing for an arduous run through the backdoor gauntlet.

On the upside, Cal beat Western Washington and demonstrated that they are definitely capable of beating Element. The Pie Queens should feel confident that they could run the table if they had to go the backdoor route, and certainly one of their advantages is that they can run a deep rotation. They will have to find ways to keep their key players fresh (Cree and Darragh in particular) and get some of their role players to step up and have one of those Derek Fisher or Robert Horry type of games. They don't need to be big over the course of the tourney; they just need to make great plays in key spots or have a big performance in an important game. Look for Lucy Rosenbloom to provide one of these performances.

Western Washington is an interesting squad, and I'm looking forward to seeing them play more. They have quite a bit of size on their roster but I know very little about their rotation beyond Alyssa Weatherford and Hannah Kreilkamp. They played Fugue to double game point, and they can draw on their experience getting to last year's game-to-go. On the national scale, I think Chaos currently belongs in the same tier of teams that includes UCLA, USC, Cal and Carleton.

2) The Battle for the Southwest

After the weekend, a clear divide emerged between the top three (UCSB, UCLA, USC) and the next tier in the region (UCSD, Arizona, Colorado, Claremont). Truthfully, UCSB remains in a tier of their own ahead of BLU and the Hellions, but the UCSB-USC matchup remains an intriguing one.

UCLA has emerged as the team that I suspected they would. Featuring what may be the most patient offensive line in the entire women's division, Coach Korb has BLU playing very well. Most impressive is that this team has adopted quite a different style of play from past squads. Last year's team offered quite a bit more high-octane offense but had the versatility to switch between a smashmouth style of play and a Bostonian value-the-disc offense. This year, they are heavily geared to the latter, and what makes this squad, especially their O line, particularly frustrating to defend is that you cannot key in on two or three players. Sarah 'Atari' Peters, KC 'Bossa' Vampola and Adrienne 'Hawkins' Baker are their primary receiving threats -- all three are athletic players who all play within themselves very well. In the backfield, Karisa 'Danger' Tang, Samara 'Nokie' Leader and Rebecca 'Diggs' Delshad are three of their primary handlers who play very disciplined offense.

Our pre-quarters game was a fun matchup and should be the first of at least three meetings this year. We opened the game with a break, and almost followed it up with another quick one that was D'd in the end zone. The shocker was that both teams would only break three more times in the rest of the game. BLU got both of their breaks in the first half and they took half 7-5. The early break point definitely threw me off of what kind of game this was going to be -- it took a while for me to realize that this was going to be a very O-line heavy game.

True enough, the second half was dominated by both team's O-lines. I think we each had a couple of decent shots at breaking, but for the most part, there was a lot of clean offense and the receiving team very often overpowered the other team's D line. Down 12-11, we finally got our second break after BLU uncharacteristically gave us three good chances at scoring. On double game point, UCLA worked it patiently against our zone and eventually found Atari in the front corner of the end zone.

I'm sure that this felt good for some of the BLU folks who think I've been talking too much shit against them this year. I'm also certain that I'll continue to throw verbal logs onto the fire and risk alienating the younger crop of BLU players who take me too seriously. Here's a few more verbal bombs for any Westwood elitists who might be reading this.

V-BOMB #1 - USC will beat you soon and you know it. We're like the grim reaper and your time is coming soon. Enjoy your time on top of the LA pyramid while it lasts and don't forget to gather your plastic while you may.

V-BOMB #2 - I thought our previous jerseys from my first year of coaching were pretty ugly, but dude, your current threads make me think you were sponsored by K-Mart to advertise a deep discount ugly sale.

A few thoughts about UC San Diego... I'm really psyched (heh, get it?... *groan*) that they have bounced back. Our game against them was a lot of fun and notwithstanding Sir Robin's questionable taste in wardrobe, they looked good. Psycho has a number of good young athletes on this team, but they will need another year or two before they can realistically get to the next level. Even still, their current squad is more than capable of grabbing one of the Southwest bids. They will have to fight off Colorado, Arizona and Claremont, and they have realistic chances of upsetting either UCLA or USC. After a one-year suspension, getting a bid to Columbus would be a major accomplishment and a big step towards returning to the top of the Southwest.

One area where Psycho needs to improve is in their handling depth. In our game, they definitely relied a lot on Jennifer 'Sir Robin' Jacobsen, Amy 'Meeko' Chang and Molica 'Guano' Anderson. Usually, they would have two of the three on the field and by the end of the game, they looked a bit fatigued. If it's too late for them to develop a solid 5th or 6th handler option, they might be better served by stacking strong O lines and a few selective D lines. Their top seven can run with almost every team that I have seen, but against the top ten or so teams in the country, they have to pick and choose their points. They definitely cannot win any of those games by rolling out balanced lines (i.e. 4-5 top line players and 2-3 second line players).

3) The Atlantic Coast - Contenders or Pretenders

I have a soft spot for this region since I originally hail from the Atlantic Coast (actually there was no such region in my playing days... back then, it was the Mid-Atlantic). UNC and UNC-Wilmington came into the tourney as two of the region's top teams (Wake Forest and Florida round out the favorites in the region), and both demonstrated that they are capable of running with any of the top tier teams. I think depth is an issue on both teams which will be more evident at a longer tourney like the College Championships, but if either or both of these teams makes it to Columbus, they have great potential to upset a higher seed.

As the result of their consolation game indicates, Pleiades and Seaweed are two evenly matched teams. They may both be from the Tarheel State but they have very little in common beyond that. Pleiades plays a much deeper rotation and their offense is much more versatile than that of Seaweed. I was definitely impressed with how the team has progressed, especially offensively, since I saw them last year. Leila Tunnell is a gifted thrower and UNC has a couple of tall targets, especially Karen Kimel, who effectively stretch the field to open up options underneath.

Seaweed relies heavily on four players - Elise Bardsley, Kelly Tidwell, Lia English and Sara Casey - all of whom are strong and confident athletes. In our game against them, these four ran almost every point. I have the feeling that running such a short rotation will catch up with them at Regionals, but in a one-game winner-takes-all scenario, Seaweed is more than capable of beating anyone in the Atlantic Coast region. They also possess an aggressive style of play that can throw opponents off their game. Their wins over Berkeley and Colorado demonstrate how talented they are.

We had observers for our game, a brilliant move by my wife Tracy after hearing a few choice things about Seaweed from their previous opponents. Wilmington is more than happy to get into the call game, and the presence of observers made a gigantic difference in our game. After a bit of a contentious start, we took control in the first half and built a decent lead by halftime. Seaweed battled us to the very end of the game -- their effort was consistently solid and their never-quit attitude will serve them well at Regionals.

-------

My next post will have more specific thoughts on the other teams that we played (Stanford, British Columbia, Claremont).