Moondoggies – Day 2

A hot and tiring day at Bishops has left me a bit sleepy as I type this update.  Our day shouldn’t have been this hard but the first two teams we played were, simply put, awesome.

After a night of drinking and partying our first match was versus local team Bloody Gary who forced us to wake up fast.  They kept decent pace with us right until half at which point we dialed our defense in as well as completing our breaks.  Bloody Gary played a very efficient form of defense that caused us quite a bit of trouble in the red zone and continued to do so until the second half when we figured it out.  My personal highlight was guarding one of the tournament organizers Wax; it’s always fun to guard friends.  We won the match 15-8.

After a bye we resumed play against Red Circus.  Having beaten ROY RC needed another win to get into the quarters and we were just another team in their way.  Their handlers proved to be almost too much for us in the first half by slicing through our O.  In retrospect the heat and previous night had taken our edge off and allowed them to stay with us till half, 8-7 (for us).  The second half was once again a different story as we knew we had Mephisto next and needed to prepare for the hardest match of the day.  Once again our defense dialed it up and we held them to a single point in the second half taking the game 13-8.  It was by far the best defensive effort of the day.

Finally came the match that we’d been waiting for all tournament, to face the reigning champions:  Mephisto.  When you play a high level team like Mephisto the entire mentality of a team changes.  We knew we were in for our best (and consequently most fun) game of the tournament and Mephisto did not disappoint.  Our offense was incredibly efficient and scored almost effortlessly during the first half aside from two breaks.  The first break was earned back by the D almost immediately; the second took Mephisto to half 8-7 and we had to wait till the second to regain it.  A break late in the last point of the game gave Mephisto the win.  We fully expect to see them again in the tournament, preferably in the finals.

I feel that when two closely matched teams meet the winner is at a disadvantage as they see mostly the positives in their match.  We know what we did poorly and we can fix those things.

Due to the topsyturviness of the GT/Phoenix/Maverick/General Strike pool we’ll see GT for our quarters play in.  Confidence and spirits are high.

Today was a good day.

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