We knew we were going to struggle a bit this week. I came in with a hamstring strain, and Steven, Tom Brown and Davis were all missing. Emory showed up again and did her best Alison impression, but unfortunately did it a bit too well and was limited with a foot injury.
With the strong winds, (and the difficulty of guarding Natalie or Jia one on one) we set up a zone and ran it the whole game. This was one of our strongest/brightest areas as it generated a lot of d’s/turns. Brown primarily ran zone as well. Although we got into a rhythm on offense from time to time, all too often we ended up turning the disc. Maybe 30 times? We all got in on the action. Sometime in the midgame Garrison injured his knee and we had a lot of trouble moving the disc after that. Despite a game that felt reasonably competitive going in, we ended up losing 15 to 5.
Highlights for Brown: I think Max had like 5 handmacks? Not sure, there were a lot (maybe someone else got some too). Pat is a hero for playing in a Pooh suit but we kept accidentally throwing to him with his red shirt. I asked him to take it off and I think it was a wash since he just got faster and kept getting D’s. Shea almost got a Callahan (I know he wishes he had jumped). On our side, Jeffrey and Bonnie looked good in the middle and crushed it on popping. Sam looked super fast and found space on unders. Trey’s acceleration/change of speed is insane. It generates a lot of D’s. I’m excited to see what we can do with that as we get more used to playing together on offense. I got a lot of chances to handle with Dre and Tom Culpepper and our movement got a lot cleaner as we worked together. Overall, we got a lot of opportunities to take turns in different roles on O and D and I’m hopeful that translates forward. Hope to see you in the second round of the tournament!