Labor Day

Three straight wins, three straight losses, and we ended up in 3rd/4th place with Justice League (no 3/4 game was played).

We started off with Rhino, starting a bit slow as per our SZ trademark, but Rhino's deep game never really took hold. We generated enough breaks to take a victory. I was also the receiving end of a foot-block for the first time this season. Syndicate was next (a combo of California, Utah, and others). This game wasn't close from the start. They were running a small squad, and we were starting to hit stride. Chain was the third game, and our last win of the weekend. Simpson wasn't there, and he would have definitely helped them. This was one of those weird games where we were never down, but never up more than a few points. Even though we won by just one point, I never considered the game out of our control.

At that point we were in a great position to get ourselves into semis, as we were the only undefeated team at that time. Bravo was 0-3 and would soon lose their fourth game as well. Furious lost to Rhino, and all we had to do was beat Furious. Considering our history of close games (the last three games between us was decided by a combined 4 points, in the monkey's favor). We came out seemingly very satisfied with how the previous games had gone and promptly lost. The next day brought a first round game against Bravo, who caught fire early and torched us again this season. Thanks to a Rhino loss to Chain, we advanced to semis thanks to victories over both of said teams.

The Sockeye game was extremely close. Turnovers were plentiful and we broke each other several times. We emerged on the other side of half on-serve with the fish up 1 point (8-7). They broke our O-line twice and our D-line couldn't come up with any of our own, and the game was capped at 12-9. Overall, it was a good weekend to gain experience against more West Coast teams.

As I've said in this space before, being able to take advantage of leads is an extremely important quality for successful teams. Be it advancing ourselves into semis by winning the first game instead of thinking "we can win the next one and still get there", or "we own the point differential" or having a 3 or 4 point lead late in a game and not closing the door. If you want to win consistently, you have to approach each point and game as if they are the most important one you've played all day, regardless of where you stand in that game or the tourney standings.