Labor Day
- Rest Day -
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I watched the Pro Champs Women's and Men's livestreams:
Brute/Riot Notes:
- Lukewarm take: I think Riot is the favorite this year, I think they finally win it all. Reasoning: Paige Soper is playing great, MB has a lot of injuries that hurts their depth, Brute is younger/3peats are hard/their offense looks worse than last year, Fury has a little lower ceiling this year.
- Counterpoint: Lien made some errors down the stretch, Riot can't count on that in Sarasota.
- Riot handler defense was very good. Created a lot of pressure and really difficult resets for Sinicrope and Tajima. I especially felt like Amber Sinicrope got exposed, really struggled to get open in the reset, which led to a ton of jams for Brute Squad. "Stall 8 jump ball to Becky" might work once a game, but it obviously isn't a reliable strategy and doesn't bode well. I'd be drilling O resets and rhythm pretty much exclusively until Sarasota if I was them.
Revolver/Machine Notes:
- I felt like Revolver didn't really want to play a sloppy game of ultimate at first. It seemed like machine was more willing to play a grittier & messier game, and this directly led to a lot of scores for machine. Specifically, Revolver seems to be really uncomfortable on longer points or reacting to things they don't expect. Example: Von layout d's Beau, and a bunch of the Revolver guys are just standing there dumbstruck(?!), so Champe just picks it up and throws it to KK. Boom, break. If I was coaching revolver I'd be losing my mind, watching that.
- Grant Lindsley & Ashlin Joye just murdered the junky sets from machine in the 2nd half. They moved the disc more quickly and repeatedly hit the middle guy for big gains. They were able to do this by spreading out their offensive shape. When they got too constricted (as they did in the 1st half), Von was able to hit layout Ds on the shot to the stationary up the gut. He did this twice and it resulted in 2 breaks for machine.
- I felt like the game came down to depth of athletes. Machine took a lot of good shots to open people, but the Revolver defenders were able to make up ground and make a play. This happened a couple times with Pardo vs Nick Stuart/Antoine Davis, and once with Fergus vs Eli Friedman. I think against lesser defenders those shots would have worked, but the windows were smaller and as a result blocks were created.
- I felt like Machine did a good job punishing poaching and sagging. They had a good willingness to hit poached guys, like Yiding or Shanahan, both guys you want to have the disc. Aside, I think Yiding played great.
- Rest Day -
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I watched the Pro Champs Women's and Men's livestreams:
Brute/Riot Notes:
- Lukewarm take: I think Riot is the favorite this year, I think they finally win it all. Reasoning: Paige Soper is playing great, MB has a lot of injuries that hurts their depth, Brute is younger/3peats are hard/their offense looks worse than last year, Fury has a little lower ceiling this year.
- Counterpoint: Lien made some errors down the stretch, Riot can't count on that in Sarasota.
- Riot handler defense was very good. Created a lot of pressure and really difficult resets for Sinicrope and Tajima. I especially felt like Amber Sinicrope got exposed, really struggled to get open in the reset, which led to a ton of jams for Brute Squad. "Stall 8 jump ball to Becky" might work once a game, but it obviously isn't a reliable strategy and doesn't bode well. I'd be drilling O resets and rhythm pretty much exclusively until Sarasota if I was them.
Revolver/Machine Notes:
- I felt like Revolver didn't really want to play a sloppy game of ultimate at first. It seemed like machine was more willing to play a grittier & messier game, and this directly led to a lot of scores for machine. Specifically, Revolver seems to be really uncomfortable on longer points or reacting to things they don't expect. Example: Von layout d's Beau, and a bunch of the Revolver guys are just standing there dumbstruck(?!), so Champe just picks it up and throws it to KK. Boom, break. If I was coaching revolver I'd be losing my mind, watching that.
- Grant Lindsley & Ashlin Joye just murdered the junky sets from machine in the 2nd half. They moved the disc more quickly and repeatedly hit the middle guy for big gains. They were able to do this by spreading out their offensive shape. When they got too constricted (as they did in the 1st half), Von was able to hit layout Ds on the shot to the stationary up the gut. He did this twice and it resulted in 2 breaks for machine.
- I felt like the game came down to depth of athletes. Machine took a lot of good shots to open people, but the Revolver defenders were able to make up ground and make a play. This happened a couple times with Pardo vs Nick Stuart/Antoine Davis, and once with Fergus vs Eli Friedman. I think against lesser defenders those shots would have worked, but the windows were smaller and as a result blocks were created.
- I felt like Machine did a good job punishing poaching and sagging. They had a good willingness to hit poached guys, like Yiding or Shanahan, both guys you want to have the disc. Aside, I think Yiding played great.
