RecapSummer 2018Brian Griffin vs Scooby Doo

Woops.  I wrote a bunch of stuff for the Nyan Cat game yesterday before learning about this score.  That could potentially nullify a lot of what I wrote now.  But that’s okay.  It could still hold.  Even with the loss, Scooby Doo is still in first due to point diff.  This recap came to me after the Nyan Cat one, but I’m waiting on David Reed to wake up (he works nights) to re-send me photos that didn’t work before I post that.

Let’s just get right into this one, because it ends the run for the immaculate season that I’ve been talking about for a few weeks.

Here’s Stephen Thies of Brian Griffin:

Last night’s game of Brian vs Scooby Doo had been in the making for several weeks now.

For those not in the know, weeks ago there was a proposed schedule switch involving all four teams playing last night. We were scheduled to play Scooby Doo, but it was proposed we switch and play Puss and Boots.

Now, no disrespect to Puss and Boots, but Sparta and I saw the writings on the wall. We were not surprised Scooby Doo was undefeated going in to tonight, but even if they weren’t in first, it seemed likely they would still be be in first place, and if we didn’t play them head to head, we would have little chance at beating them in a tie breaker. Plus, who doesn’t want to play a team captained by Seth, you know it’s always going to be a good time.

Fast forward a few weeks to last Friday. Brian is playing Nyan Cat, both teams are tied for second place and the winner would take sole possession of 2nd place. If Brian wins, they get a crack at undefeated Scooby Doo, and a win would give them sole possession of 1st place.

It’s about 9:40 PM Friday night, Brian has a 12-9 lead on Nyan Cat, they trade points and it’s 13-10, but then the rails begin to come off on Brian. We were exhausted, outnumbered in subs, and hadn’t been in a close game since the first game of the season. Brian did not handle the pressure well. Nyan Cat went on a 7-3 run to win the game at universe point. Heartbreaking.

I don’t think I’m speaking for just myself when I say it was a long weekend. Not the way you want to lead in to your match up against undefeated Scooby Doo. Not to mention, the loss dropped us from tied for 2nd, to tied for 4th and not only would a win against Scooby Doo no longer give us 1st place, but all it would do is give us a half game lead on Underdog for 4th place.

It was interesting to say the least to see what kind of morale Brian would show up with last night. Mopey and beaten up after a loss on universe point only 70 hours earlier, or revived by the weekend and ready to take on the giant that is Scooby Doo.

Flash forward to last night. It’s 8:00 PM and Scooby Doo had what seemed like their entire squad, meanwhile Brian had 4 ladies and 4 guys. This for sure had me worried. Brian’s strength has always been in numbers, and we’ve always been a very punctual team, ready to run a drill by 8:00 and pull by 8:15 PM, so we were off to a bad start.

I however was there by 7:30 and had a field set up by about 7:50 PM. Seth, gracious as always was willing to give me the flip because I set up the field (first time all season I set up by the way #terriblecaptain). I tried to refuse and force a fair flip, Seth called “Disc blading up and standing upright” and somehow that didn’t happen. Brian chooses offense.

We traded first points of the game, holding serve to get to 1-1, but then Scooby gets the first break of the game to go up 2-1. I’m not sure how the next portion played out. I think Brian goes on a run of something like 5-1, to put us up 6-3.

We trade the next two points, so Brian is up 7-4, then Scooby gets another break to bring it to 7-5. This next point seemed very crucial to me. Since Brian started on offense, it was very important to have any cushion at half we could get, and goes without saying that we can’t let them come back and take half since they get the disc at halftime.

Brian manages to take a hard fought point to take half 8-5 (It’s possible it was 8-6, if Seth says that, I wouldn’t contest)

Brian opens up half with a break to go up 9-5 (or 6) but the symptoms of being outmanned are starting to show. Brian gives up a few points and Scooby cuts it to somewhere around 10-8. At this point, tensions are tight, both teams are trying to keep it together, Brian is fighting to not fall apart due to exhaustion, and Scooby Doo is mustering every bit of energy to make a comeback. There are no easy points the rest of the game.

Brian is able to run away in the scorebook 15-10, but again every point was highly contested. Things got a little chippy towards the end, but that might be a little expected with two teams near the top of the standings late in the season. Nothing that couldn’t be forgotten about after a couple beers at our dear old Robin Hood.

Highlights of the game

SCOOBY DOO

DEREK LAY!! I feel like everyone has a few people in LA they always seem to find themselves matched up against, whether pick up, league game, hat tournament, or club tournament. Derek Lay is one of those guys for me and I love it. Derek is one of the nicest guys in LA and takes my lame heckles in stride. We have our battles. He’s something like 5 years younger than me, so I can’t just out athlete him, I’ll never win. I have to use any trick I have, usually just wait for him to lean in the wrong direction and hope that I get enough separation where he can’t catch up. I was able to do that a couple of times in the first half last night, but all that did was awake the sleeping giant. Derek was a monster in the second half. He had at least two crazy run through lay out Ds on me and went up and skied someone for a sick score. Derek is a beast, do not give him a reason to get riled up, he will abuse you.

MER had a a great finger tip grab on an up-line cut

There was a Scooby lady, kind of short, dark hair who touched the disc a lot in the handler position and never turned it.

Seth and AJ got their regular share of break side throws, AJ with his hammers and IOs, Seth with his IOs

BRIAN

Jeremy with some great deep cuts and a bookends towards the end of the game to really help us maintain control.

Brad with some great hucks and handler movement

All of our ladies shut down their ladies pretty well.

Joy with an in-traffic catch for a score towards the end of the game

Sully shredding and receiving maybe 100 unders.

Kate running the offense from the handler spot.

What a fun game, and fun league.

I don’t know how you would measure this, but there seems to be a lot of parity this summer. The bottom 4 teams in the league have rosters that could easily give any team in the top 4 a run for their money.

I credit it to separating the draft by men/women. I think that’s helped a great deal.

Yeah, I agree.  That seems to have helped considerably.

Wow, if the disc DID land upright, you’d have to give Seth the first point of the game, wouldn’t you?  But then again, that would probably mean there was a major shift in physics, so at that moment would points even mean anything?  Would anything mean anything anymore?  (I considered the possibility the disc could land in a particularly muddy part of a field and thus in theory could land straight up, but on a turf field… only in Inception.  Or the Matrix.)

I had almost forgotten that there was the possibility of a team switch.  Blue’s Clues, the youngest team in the league, requested to play against Scooby Doo, the oldest team in the league.  And not just for the fun of that.  But to honestly learn from their wise old ways.

So Scooby Doo drops to 9-1.  With Nyan Cat’s win last night we have a close race for the #1 spot.  And Scooby Doo still has to play 5-2 Ren while Nyan Cat only has two sub .500 teams left.

Brian Griffin sits a game back at 6-2.  Their loss to Nyan Cat means they have very little shot at winning the regular season title.  It pretty much will be between Scooby Doo and Nyan Cat.

And as I mentioned at the outset, the immaculate season is over for Scooby Doo.  We will have to wait another year to see if a team can pull off the feat.  As a captain, Seth has never lost more than 3 games in the regular season, a streak that will continue this year.  Even the three captains that have better overall records (Dot, Fei and Frankie) have all had one season of 4 losses, something Seth hasn’t experienced in his now 10th season of captaining.

(I, on the other hand, have now had 10 such seasons in my 12 years captaining.)

And now, here’s Seth with the Scooby Doo side of things:

We had hopes. Hopes to send AJ off to worlds with an example of our awesome play. Hopes to send Aurora back to Boston with a perfect season. Hopes to set a record. People kept telling me, sometimes losing one is good. It can focus the team. Blah blah blah…. Frankly I didn’t believe in that.

Last night we lost one. To a great Brian Griffin. They like to huck, but they can also work the disc up the field. They were good at taking away our first option. And they were great at backing our players and forcing them into shorter cuts than we would have liked. They earned the win.

Scooby had more turnovers than ever before. We had trouble keeping our cutting lane clear. And didn’t swing the disc like we should have. So we relied on D. And we played some pretty great D. Especially in the second half, when Griffin was looking a little tired. The team D effort was fantastic. And Derek Lay – HE FLIPPED THE SWITCH. He is always good. But this was something else. I was honored to be there to see it. Both Molly and Derek played a full tourney this weekend, then somehow managed to run their asses off Monday too. But sometimes you can’t win a game with defense alone. You’ve got to complete more passes. And we just didn’t get the job done on that front, despite a lot of hard work from everyone.

Does losing focus a team? We’ll have to see. But I’m not sure I’d want to be playing Scooby next week. We left that game really hungry. At the bar, there was way more fire than sadness or frustration. I can’t believe we have to wait 10 days to play.

Great game Brian! We will miss you Aurora – it was fabulous to have you all summer.

Losing 1 game must be beneficial.  The most teams that have won the tourney lost 1 game.  Here’s all the teams that have won Summer League (including the one undefeated team who won the pre-cursor in Spring League)

# of teams that won the tournament with this many losses:

0 losses – 1
1 loss – 9
2 losses – 5
3 losses – 6
4 losses – 4
5 losses – 2
6 losses – 2