Nationals

Life can be mundane
But moments can alter that
Can turn it surreal

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Going into Nationals, I felt confident about making the bracket. I knew we could compete with these teams. It's odd to me that I felt this way, given that I didn't think this would be the year we would reach Nationals in the first place going into Regionals.
I had a very similar conversation with many people leading up to the weekend.
Them: "How are you feeling about your pool?"
Me: "I like our pool. I watched film on all the teams and while CUT doesn't seem beatable, the other games seem very winnable. We can beat Stanford and Auburn for sure, and we can compete with UMass."
...

Friday:
Watching Stanford vs Auburn game - They still both looked very beatable. I was feeling good. Discussed Stanford matchups and gameplan with Kevin and Yiding a lot.
First game is here.
D2 baby. Holy cow. The ability to run two distinct D lines throughout this entire tournament was enormous. Not only did D2 do their job in the sense of making it tough for opposing O-lines by slowing the game down, but they got breaks too! Talk about filling roles well.
Our gameplan was spot on. We didn't execute the plan very well in the first half (forcing everyone out besides their one tall dude), but once we executed the plan, their O-line struggled mightily.

CUT game is upon us. Coming directly off 15-10 win over Stanford, we start out with a few trades, but our O-line has to work harder than theirs and gets a few lucky breaks. Ultimately our disregard for disc possession and their overall defensive pressure cause some breaks. Our O-line plays great defense on the whole, but we just gave them too many opportunities. They were huge babies. Yes, Jeff had one bad bid, but they got mad about two others that were entirely fine and Raul got a TMF for a bid where he hardly touched the guy. This was a theme throughout the weekend, way too many TMFs for 'dangerous plays' that weren't actually dangerous - see Nhi Nguyen's bid in front of Verzuh. Their low spirit rating of us was obviously an anomaly as we finished 4th overall in spirit scores and they finished near the bottom. Suck it Carleton.

Discussion with Kevin and Yiding about resting/not crossing over against UMass. The Auburn game was 'Win and In' (assuming they didn't beat CUT - a safe bet), but beating UMass and losing to Auburn would likely result in a 3-way tie in which case point diff could potentially bite us in the butt. Given that UMass had beaten Auburn so thoroughly, the idea of going to point diff wasn't great in my mind. A fear of mine as a coach is being the cause of a loss - having the team play great, but ultimately lose because of something I/We did, such as not knowing the cap times or something like that.

Saturday:
UMass game was as winnable as I thought, even while running open lines, and UMass running tight lines/even crossing over a few times. We've traded for a while and we just gave up the first break of the game. O-line holds and we have a chance to get it back going downwind. We send D2 out. We've made them complete about 100 or so passes *Edit 52 passes but it seemed like more*, and pushed them back from 10 yards out to 50 at least. We are going to win this point. The sidelines are going absolutely insane and then we blow a coverage in the bedlam. No telling what may have happened had BenG *Edit BenR* been able to hear the sideline to drop back, but my feeling is that would've changed the complexion of the late game for sure. They finish us off in the next two points.

Auburn game arrives. Most intense game I've ever been involved with. Kevin had to calm me down at half as I was anxious, but I still feel like my points/adjustments at half were correct and important. I think our gameplan from the start was good, but our D-line struggled to string together passes after the turn, though they earned plenty of chances. I stand firmly by my earlier decision not to cross over or run tight lines in UMass game as we (Kyle esp) were very tired late into this game as we crossed over a ton in the second half to convert some of these chances we were getting. This marked the 3rd game out of 4 where Kyle was the best player on the field (yes this includes the UMass game), and holy cow was he good. He made every throw. Ed was saying he had 8 assists, 2 hockey assists, and two others that could have been goals (Dicky's that was called out incorrectly and Jay's that he doinked/got fouled on). This includes the game winner which was a beauty to the back corner to a wide open Jeff. Of course he made the throw. We don't have much time now until pre-quarters. We're walking to the new field and Kyle's lower body seizes up. Welp there goes much hope at quarters.

We made it to the bracket baby. I knew we could make it coming in, and we've proved it. Our matchups on D for Brown aren't bad, but we were for sure more tired than they were. Their all-star freshman makes Josh (who I would put up against anyone in the country on D) look silly on the first D point. He was in the right position, as per usual, but Randolph just plucked the disc from right over his head. We didn't do a great job at pushing Hecht downfield and his throws were quite good. Minus Kyle, our O-line now asked Jeff to make all the difficult throws and he did an admirable job. Max played out of his mind, coming down with everything and making some top notch throws as well. Jay straight-armed a number of bums (classic Jayj), but the O-line had to work hard for their goals, while Brown's O-line went mostly unchallenged by our tired legs. The game doesn't feel as though it was ever in doubt for them, but it wasn't a blowout either. We fall 15-11. What a season.

Being a part of the NUT team that finally made it to the college ultimate promised land is awesome. I'm very thankful and proud of the team's growth and performance, not because of the results, but because of their improvement which led to the results. Last year, the team peaked at Warm-up and then steadily played worse and worse. This year after watching the QCTU footage of the UMass game leading up to Nationals, I could see how much better we had gotten and how much better we were playing which is how I knew that UMass game was winnable (we lost 11-4 or something at QCTU).

ARC