Santa Barabra Invite 2010

Kattan's throw'n-go to Forge

Short Recap:

• Tourney gets cut down to 12 teams so the whole thing can be played on turf due to prior week's rain.
  
• Decently good conditions during play
• SDSU jumps up on us early as we are slow to warm up. We win on DGP in classic Squid fashion. I would be really pissed at the squids if I were state (see: Regionals '09)
  
• Santa Cruz is missing one of their key guys who helped them beat us twice at Sean Ryan (but hey, we were missing Bobble at that tourney)
• Cal tares us a new one in the 1v1 crossover. Pumba gets injured and thinks his collar bone is broken. Forge gets skied by a 5'10 guy. Twice. Its all bad.
• Tide in the 8pm Quarterfinals. Pumba figures out it is not a broken collar bone, just a sprained joint so he plays through. Pumba is such a fucking man. Besides the first point which was a fucking disaster (while Pumba is still warming up on the sideline), the O only turned the disc once. Tide throws a lot of juky zone and we absolutely shred it. Pumba has a really nice scoober. With that win we are slated to play Colorado tomorrow morning in the Semis.
  
• Woodstock's is still delicious. Apparently they stop selling booze in IV at 12. We leave Woodstock's and head to the liquor store...at 12:20. Fuck! Epic journey to find booze. Epic invasion of the hotel room of guys who didn't want to hang with the team and study instead. Dollar introduces the Squids to the Lunchbox (beer, OJ, Amaretto), Meowth swears to never drink anything else ever again. Ziggy is the coolest Psycho by a long shot. We finally leave Monstro and Coppa's hotel room at 3, he can finally get back to studying. We make it to Jawa's house (Fish. Sweet throws.) and try to get some sleep. Bobble is out like a light, others decide it would be a good idea to recount some of the better lines from "The Emperor's New Groove". For 30 minutes, ugh.
  
• We get to the fields on time and start to warm up, unsure of what to think about the defending National Runner's Up. Bobble's broken toe (Lei Out. Yeah, Angery Kevin is pretty fucking pissed about it.) is hurting a lot so he can't play. We talk about a super quick transition-poach-zone to stop the side stack plays(why did we not do this for other side stack teams?).
• We go up 2 breaks quickly because of this new zone, shit is clicking really well. Pumba hucks from the brick to Kattan and Forge who are both so open that they have enough time to talk about who is gonna catch it. Yay Pumba. Next brick, Pumba gets footblocked because he is trying to make shit happen. Boo Pumba. We go to half on serve. Soda is playing really well.
  
• We are doing well with working it against their constant poaching but the troubles come with actually scoring. We are shutting down their big man (#30 Hielka sp?) but having trouble with their smaller shifty handler dude (#13 Matty). We (and by that, I mean Kattan and Forge) are getting Ds on their hammers which is surprising seeing as how we've been having a lot of trouble with hammers the rest of the weekend.
• We pull on DGP, they work it and then huck to #30 who has it easily but somehow drops it. Pumba picks it up on the cone, they poach real big so he swings it to Coppa who throws it into the ground. Colorado takes a time out, they set up in Iso, Matty makes a up-the-line cut, its thrown, Kenobi get a piece of the disc but it pops back up into the cutter's hands. Mamabird wins 11-10. Have the Squids EVER beat Colorado? Fuck.
• We talk for a bit and decide its really not good enough to be happy with such a close game with them. We are all gunning for them, we are going for the jugular next time we play. This game helps us realize that we CAN work the disc verse a well-disciplined defense.
  
• 3rd place game vs Santa Cruz; we agreed to not report the score. Time to give the fish some playing time, . All of them are money and getting better every week. Look for Jawa, Mangle, Eomer, Frau, Cable, BeBeep, and Flounder to be blowing up tourney recaps in the next few years.
• 4 teams (UCSD, Davis, Cal, Santa Cruz) finished better than Tide but were not given a bid to Sanford Invite while Tide did get one.
  
• Freebirds after the tourney is still fucking delicious. Pumba fucks up talking to a hot chick from his high school days in from of the entire team. Mangle goes back to finish what he didn't the night before at Woodstock's; confirmed by Frau.
• 3rd place aint bad but we could have played a lot better. We will have another shot at Cal at Prez Day this weekend. Hope to see some of you old Squids there.
• PS-New jerseys are sweet!

Here is the writeup posted by Booble on the Club Sports page:

The UC San Diego Mens Ultimate A-Team headed up the coast for the Santa Barbara Invite. The tournament had been downsized because of the recent downpour that hit Southern California but the team was still ready to show that last season’s top 15 national finish was not a fluke. The first game against cross-town rival San Diego State started off less than perfect. A few turnovers from veteran players allowed State to hang in the game much longer than we had hoped. Fortunately when the game was tied and then next point would decide the victory, senior captains Guy Hughes and Justin Elliott connected on a deep shot to seal the first victory of the year , 11-10.

The next game against the always competitive UC Santa Cruz Slugs was as exciting as it promised to be. The wind had started to pick up in the cold Santa Barbara air and the two teams were locked for most of the game. Once again we found ourselves in a situation where the next point would decide the game. This time senior leader Josh Nickerson bolted to the endzone and Elliott let his playmaker go get the disc, and he did with the typical awe-striking athleticism we have come to expect from him over his career at UC San Diego (SD 10, SC 9).

California Berkeley was our next opponent and unfortunately we were not on top of our game this time. Several mistakes from our best players let Cal take a big lead and they handled us with not much difficulty, 11-5 (that’s all we’ll say about this one).

The final game of the day was against our biggest and most storied rival, the UC Santa Barbara Black Tide. This was the quarterfinals of the tournament and we had renewed our focus and were ready to put the pressure on our rivals. Thanks to great play from 5th year Stephen Hubbard handling the disc, we were able to navigate the zone defense that Santa Barbara has become famous for over the years. Once we went up we never looked back and the final score of 10-8 doesn’t quite reflect how well this game was played on our part.

Sunday meant the semifinals and our regional rival Colorado. They have historically dominated the Southwest region but we ignored the hype of last year’s national runners-up. With a few players injured we knew that vets were going to have to step up their game and battle through the soreness of 4 games the previous day to reach the finals. After getting out to a quick lead thanks to successful conversion of a few Colorado miscues, we coughed the disc up a few times ourselves and went into halftime down one. Then a constant battling for every point led us to our third double game-point situation of the weekend and despite a turnover by Colorado, we were not able to convert and Colorado scored to win the game (on their way to winning the tournament) 11-10.

The third place consolation game was a rematch against Santa Cruz and both teams agreed to play a rookie heavy scrimmage. This was a great opportunity for our first year players to get some more in game experience after spending much of the weekend watching and learning from the stars of our team. Adam Meckel, Aaron Lee, Rand Norberg, Donny Kleinhen, and Sean O’Donnell all developed tremendously and have really given our team hope for the future. Overall the weekend was a success and we did break seed (seeded 4th, finished 3rd). Once we’re free of injuries this team is going to be feared by everyone in the country.