Monday, October 3, 2016

09-30-2016

Workout:

No workout.

Reading:

No reading.

Notes:

Today I went to club nationals to watch prequarters and quarters.  It was great!  Rockford was pretty much exactly as bad a place to host nationals as I expected, with the exception of the showcase field which was pretty nice.  It was pretty windy and rainy, but the big downside in my mind is that the field quality just isn't good enough.  The fields are lumpy, sloped, and not at the level you would expect of a marquee national championship event.  As convenient as it is for me, Rockford should not be the pick for next year.

Ring of Fire figured out how to play clean offense for the post-season and Machine did not.  This wasn't the whole story, as Ring also was able to apply tremendous pressure with matchup defense and get d's on isolated cutters in space.  They did this consistently and to great effect against Machine, Truck Stop, and even Revolver.  Jack Williams is probably the 2nd best player in college right now.  I don't have a good understanding of how the Ring of Fire team that I witnessed struggled so much early in the season, having not seen them play at all prior to this weekend.

There was more parity in the men's division this year, and it's a great thing.  I feel like as recently as 5 years ago things pretty much went to chalk and the games weren't very close between seeds 1-4 and 13-16.  But this year I think the bottom seeds were able to play much tighter games, and occasionally pull upsets in bracket play.  This makes the tournament way more interesting.

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