Rerun: Rules for cutting

Rules for cutting was originally posted on July 7, 2005. This was a more concrete set of rules than the famous rules of "take what they give you, fake them into giving you what you want, fake until they give you something".

Anyway, the post:

1. Cut sharp.
2. Cut hard.
3. Cut decisively
4. Think, but only before or after the cut.
5. Know when to just run.


Cut sharp. Don’t round your cuts. Plant on one foot, push off hard, and go. The longer it takes you to change direction, the less separation you will get from your defender.
Cut hard. Don’t jog out there when you are actively cutting. One place where this is especially important is at the start of a deep cut. For your first 3-6 steps, go all out without looking up or back, until you’re near top speed and have some separation and can check back to see whether the throw is up and where it’s going. Further, cut hard when you’re the decoy in a called play, or else an astute defender will know that it’s a fake.
Cut decisively. As Idris said, “Oh, you had ‘em.” You really only have time for one or two efforts before you become a clog. Commit to something, if that doesn’t work, quickly try something else, and if you don’t think you’re open in the first three steps, get the hell out of the way.
Think, but only before or after the cut. During the setup phase of the cut, you might have a chance to think about what you’re going to do, and can try to manipulate the defender into giving you a straight path to the disc. But once you are in motion, you can only react. You need to internalize all the small details (defender body position, field space, playing conditions)
that let you know whether you’re open or not without having to think about it. After the cut, you can think about what it was that made it work or not so that you build up your experience, until eventually it will become more of an instinct.
Know when to just run. You need to learn when you can just sprint in a straight line and be open. Fortunat calls these “opportunity cuts.” These arise when you know that the disc has changed positions but the defender does not, because you have kept him busy enough that he can’t check in. But this also arises in the middle of a faking sequence, when you can recognize the exact moment that the defender has committed himself to another direction and you can cut behind him.

ADDENDUM:
I was thinking that I should have added a rule about clearing, and I noted that the book (page 52) has a fourth rule of "actively get out of the way when someone else has a better cut". These anti-cuts are basically just moving in the opposite direction from where you would cut. When the flow goes right, the anti-cut goes left. Simple English communication can help to achieve this, as players talk to each other to establish priority.

Rerun: Mechanical cutting

Mackey occasionally cites an old article of mine, so I thought I would get in the rerun business. I will begin to repost old articles, with addenda as necessary.

I noticed that it took me 50 or 60 posts to write something technical. Was I afraid of cannibalizing sales? Did it just not occur to me? Should "decision-making" count? Anyway, on June 14, 2005, three months into the blog (when I was making posts almost daily), I wrote Mechanical Cutting, reprinted below.
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Mechanical cutting
I noticed that some of the tryouts this weekend cut very mechanically. They might fake, but then their actions do not depend at all on what their defender does. They don't even appear to be watching the defender at all.

Idris talked about this in his Oh you had 'em blog entry. Players just don't seem to realize when they're open. I commented there, "Bad players either plan too many fakes or else they get so caught up in trying to read the defender that they misread him. Instead, do a simple fake, expect that it's going to work, but be ready to do something else after 2 or 3 steps if you see that it hasn't worked."

Maybe the way to drill this is to have them watch real cutters and defenders and attempt to identify the exact moment at which the cutter simply needs to move in a straight line to get open. Anything a cutter does after that is at best inefficient and at worst the first part of a miscommunication turnover.

We sometimes say that a cutter has several seconds and several options before he has to clear, but that includes the setup time, which should occur before the disc is live.
1. The setup. As the disc is in the air to the new thrower, the cutter moves into position and might do a little bit of juking, but is basically trying to force the defender into a repositioning error.
2. The cut. Make a final sell and then go hard in one direction, making a commitment. THEN you evaluate whether you'll be open. When you get good, you'll know as you're making that hard move whether or not you're successful. If not,
3. The 2nd cut. Turn 90 or 180 degrees and go hard that way. If that's not open, clear. The only exception is when you're in an iso situation with a lot of field and the defender overcommits to the 2nd cut, and you are 100% guaranteed to be open in a good place if you return to your original direction.

I guess basketball players work on their fakes by themselves, repeating until they've internalized the sequences, but they will still need the feedback of whether their defenders are going to buy the fakes.
END

Addendum: in the ho stack, as was pointed out to me the other day, the thrower might want to give the lane cutter an extra cut before turning away, since there is still room for a 20+ yarder after a deep cut without poaching or clogging. I guess that is just the "exception" mentioned in point #3.

Also, what about when a defender really studies and learns an offensive player's moves? As mentioned in the post that spurred this idea, this can happen after only one or two instances, but what if a defender really learns the tendencies and internalizes them? (I mean, beyond just a simple bait.)

Man I love Paga (hey!)

I went to Paganello for the second time in my life. I'm not trying to hit any list, just taking the opportunity to have fun. And boy, was that fun.

It wasn't even on my radar a few months ago. I enjoyed myself when I went previously but apparently didn't capture the full Paga experience (for example, I went to The Barge only once and wasn't even aware that it was The Barge), so hadn't really had any supreme desire to return. I wasn't against the idea, mind you, but it wasn't a top priority.

But then Alex was going, and I had a good team to play on, and airfares got cheap ($400), so what the hell, I asked my wife if I could go, she said, "Sure", so I booked my ticket quickly.

I'll leave most of the details to Alex, since our itinerary was the same and we were on the same team and he likes going into excruciating detail. The summary:
On the field: Solid team. Apparently a few guys couldn't make it because they had World Games practice or had other commitments, so we were stuck with a team of 2008 Open semifinalists and me and Alex. Without putting a lot of effort into laying out strategy, we were nonetheless on the same page and played efficiently throughout the weekend, even when some players were hungover or still drunk (several players blew over the limit in the morning or early afternoon from the night before) (but of course, this didn't bode well for our hard man-to-man D).
Off the field: Solid team. We were very well represented every night at the parties and at the bar, averaging something like 3 or 4 am bedtime each night after starting out with room cocktails after the games (well, after a carbomb at the Barge).
The tournament was built for socializing, with 2-3 hours between games, nightly parties, a stadium field, and a late start time (no more than one game before noon).
I held up pretty well, although I did get a muscle tweak (groin, maybe) on my last point of the finals. In the end, we were just a little worn out to play well in the second half, and watched them score the final five to win. We probably could have used another solid player or two so as to allow for a little more rest in the finals. There was only a brief period for me in between "ah, finally wore off the effects of last night" and "gee, my legs are awfully tired".
blockstack.tv did a 20 minute podcast each night. The final one covered part of our final. Our game was supposed to start at 4, but between the under-14 exhibition game and the gladiator exhibition (a bunch of guys in gladiator costumes had a pretent battle), it was pushed back 20 minutes. The UTI guys had already been out there for 45 minutes getting ready, while we were much more laidback, shall we say, and took the extra 15 minutes and pretty much just sat on the line and waited. (I do have to confess to taking a 10 minute jog at 3:15 in order to get a sweat going, and also did about a quarter of the full active warmup.) Unless not warming up doesn't manifest itself until the second half, I don't think this cost us. We just made some mistakes in the end. Despite not having invested a lot in this tournament or in trying to win it, I was surprisingly disappointed in losing, probably somewhere around #15-20 of my all time losses. Right now, I'm pretty much over it, but it was strong at the moment, even a couple hours later on the medal podium. One of the good organizational things that make this such a popular tournament is that they call each team up on stage one at a time, culminating in the medalists for each division. Standing up there looking out as the penultimate group, well, it felt good but it also hurt a bit.
Asher Roth's "I Love College" white boy rap somehow became the song of the tournament, at least for me. I don't know, it just struck a chord.
Had some good food, too, though didn't do a four hour team dinner like I had the previous time.
And absolutely no sight-seeing. After having spent 11 days in Hawaii, and with some other things planned for the year, it was stretching it even making it to Paga. But boy, am I glad I did.

spirit, workouts, frisbee

The other night at indoor soccer, the ref was terrible. He seemed to get a majority of the contested out of bounds calls (i.e., which team did it go off) wrong, may have given us a goal on a ball that hit either the top post or the top of the net, and rarely moved from his standing position at center field. Now, this is just a coed B league (and only B because there was no C), so I'm not expecting him to be any better than we were, but I would appreciate a small amount of effort. But that is just the origin of the problem. The problem was how the other team reacted.

At first they just whined. We actually gave up a call that was obviously wrong in our favor, then watched them complain a few minutes later on a less obvious call. Shortly after that, they started to try to steal the calls by acting as if the ball was theirs. This led to me retaliating, twice. The first time, I deliberately kinda fouled a player from behind, leading to an OB ball in our favor and a resulting goal from the corner kick. The second time, it was a horribly blatant OB on them and their player ran to put it into play. I complained to him about his terrible manners, and he said, "Lighten up" and proceeded to crowd the ball on the kick in. So I kicked it as hard as I could right into him, and would have done so again on the rekick had he not backed up.

The way I see it, when they realized the ref sucked, they could have either accepted that each call would be a coin flip as to which team got it, or they could play as if there was no ref by dropping off when they knew it was our ball. It was not ok for them to whine and to try to steal the balls. (In case you didn't notice, this was a B league coed soccer game, albeit the semis of the playoffs.) I was very close to speaking to their team about it, both at half and after the game. I am again mad as I type this.

I've worked out more this winter than I have for many years. Been doing about one Tabata or pseudo-Tabata a week, often during my kid's swim class. I've varied the exercise, trying out the rowing machine, spinning bike, exercise bike, elliptical machine, swimming, and burpees. I'm not sure the rowing machine and exercise bike provide enough resistance. I maxxed out at about 400W on the rower, and while I got to 600W on one of the bikes, the resistance it provided was inconsistent and slow to adjust so I had difficulties with it. I don't have my own heart monitor so have used the machine monitors or counted heart beats and multiplied (but only at the end of workouts) and found my heart rate to generally be only about 165. (I hit 170 once after running on the treadmill.) I also ran two timed miles to see where I was. The latter was at a 6 minute pace but with a 15 second break with about a lap to go (due to a weak will more than a physical breakdown), followed by two quarters at 75s pace (after 5 and 3 minute breaks). (According to treadmill conversion charts, running on a treadmill at a 1.5 degree incline translates to a very slightly faster road time. And a 6:00 treadmill pace at 8 degrees is a 5:00 road pace (what I used for my quarters).

Also playing basketball most weeks, working hard there. Played some goaltimate over the winter, too, and finally got a chance on Saturday to play on something besides snow. That game couldn't have worked out much better. I show up to see Alex's team lose game 1 while he's muttering that they will have to mix up the teams soon. I join the other team and we win two more. At that point they agree to mix the teams, so I say that I have a big enough ego to think that I can make the other team win. Sure enough, I switch (along with another guy) and we win the next two. Someone then suggested that the two guys who switched to the new losing team ought to split up so at least one of them can get I win. I wonder aloud whether conversely, there was anyone who won all his games. (Someone quickly pointed out there was another guy who had done so.) Then we played a few more games but I can't remember how they turned out, other than I had a nice sweep catch called not a goal at 4-4.

I'm surprised at the variety of ways I will throw the disc at goaltimate. On the one hand, this is a bad habit, since I can get away with using just my arm on those short throws but in ultimate throwing without shifting my weight might be a bad idea. But otoh, it helps with creativity and in fast decision-making. Seve Ballesteros became an escape artist on the golf course because he grew up playing with only one club (a 3-iron, at that) and had to learn how to do everything with that club. (I'm not sure that's the right analogy, but I'm sticking with it.)

I was looking at my recent commentary on end zone offense and was wondering whether a typical elite ultimate team could benefit by using Frank's motion offense there without having to adopt the philosophy everywhere. Give and goes often work great as long as the space ahead is clear. If you keep the disc off the line you have enough space to keep multiple players behind the disc. You only need a few yards, and your goal-scoring cut has the additional benefit of not having to leave the receiver in position to make another throw.

Off to Paganello next week with Los Ox, one of only two US teams this year (the same number that Russia is sending and less than France). I was there in 2000 or so so I won't be doing any bucket list editing, not that I have a bucket list.

Kaimana Klassik and the 23 person paradox

I got back the other day from my second Kaimana tournament, the first being in 1998. Both teams had "Southern" in their name and were basically the same team, except only one other guy from the first team was here again.

The tournament was a blast. There was no need to leave the area for the whole tournament. Breakfast, dinner, and beer were at the site, camping across the street. Pseudo-Nationals format with 4 pools then power pools then elimination play. We stumbled undefeated through Day 1, winning but not covering the spread appropriate for the #2 overall seed. We had one last pool play game at 8:30 on Day 2, but were missing several players from too much partying the night before. This is the 23 person paradox for a casual tournament. If you have small numbers, say, 12, then the only valid excuse for missing a game or practice is if there is something legendary happening. When you have a few more, then the realm of excuses expands a bit, but it still has to be for a good reason. But when you get to 23, then pretty much anything goes, and you can even convince yourself that the team is better off if you took off that game (or day, Luke) because it's more PT for everyone else and you'll be fresher when the games REALLY matter.

So this presented an opportunity for me to test myself. I came into the tournament wanting to play hard, not efficient, and expected that with our pool of talent (the email list of talent was even greater, as the Kid didn't seem to remove anyone from it), we'd win 15-6 and I'd try to play 6-8 points a game. Instead, we'd win 13-11 (and have those 24 points be more like 35 with all the turnovers) and 23 felt more like 16 with a few part-timers. And we had to win this game (or lose it by one or two) in order to avoid getting sent to the B pool. So I laced them up, did what passed for an active warmup, and went out to play. I can't actually say that I remember much other than I played a lot and we staged a late rally to avoid relegation (and also won).

But then I was cooked. I played a couple points early and could hardly move, and then took off the next ten points while I chatted with Dugan, who had a bye but was at our field for some reason. I started to get my legs back and was rarin' to go when they turned it over at 7-7, half at 8, cap approaching. One of our players had the disc about 10 yards outside the goal and I saw him flip the disc over to a thumber grip. I said to him sternly, "No, Karl." He swung it to me on the open side, I got no cuts from anyone, so I went to swing it back to him, but got point blocked (it was probably going into the ground anyway). Score, 8-7, halftime, cap comes on, they score again to win. After a bye, we head over to the other fields (10 minute walk away, second time we had to head over there) and go down 5-1 to Voltron. Our offensive flow stands out as being terrible by this time, as a disproportionate amount of the time, whoever has the disc is looking at the endzone. Sure, with players coming from all over, there wasn't much familiarity prior to the tournament, but it never really meshed, as we never really discussed an offensive philosophy. (Perhaps there were too many potential cooks and all were afraid to tout their own recipe.) We stage a late rally but it is impossible to score quickly enough to overcome the hard cap. (Hard cap in effect for all games, including the elimination rounds, although apparently the women played with a +1 soft cap in their games, but whether due to different rules or different knowledge of the rules, I don't know). We're still in the quarters, though (one of the teams fell down to the pre-quarters, lost, and had to play a fifth game of the day in the B bracket quarters).

Quarters were against Philthy, who were looking much the worse for wear after a hard partying night. And with only somewhere between 10 and 13 functioning players, they needed everyone. Nevertheless, their offense at times featured an unbelievable amount of running. We were no longer a favorite to win or even contend for the tournament by this time, but we still had enough good players and experience that a run of wins wouldn't be out of line. But it didn't happen, and despite yet another late rally, we couldn't overcome a big deficit and lost at the cap, 14-12.

I was particularly irritated late in this game when we played a zone defense and no one on the sideline ventured more than 2 yards from where they started the point. Earlier in the weekend, I noticed players doing the same (and pointed out that the guy 30 yards away probably could not hear what was being said). I myself am generally not all that active on the sideline, unless not enough people are helping out already. There is much to be gained from having one sideline person talking to exactly one player on the field (and only that sideline person is talking to him, excepting perhaps if it's a deep and there is one guy on each sideline). Instead, it's "Tom, look at 34, now Fred, a guy is coming up behind you, ok, ok, force middle, 34 again, Tom, ooh, is that a travel, up, up" while Tom and Fred have to listen (or not, more likely) to several voices and figure out which words are for them. This isn't to pick on the Southern Dandies, as it is the exception that teams talk efficiently. But it's big.

Overall, I had a great time at the tournament. Lots of time to hang out, good opportunity to play. I was happy with my ability to move around, less happy with my throwing skill at times (although in fairness, I've only thrown goaltimate passes since October). Good group of guys who were genuinely happy to be there (one fellow even flew out there with wife and infant, rented a pop-up trailer, and left late on Day 2 to head back) and that rubs off. So thanks, guys.

Trip to the Big Island after the tournament was a lot of fun, too, but I won't bore you with too many of the details. One day exploring the wet Hilo side, including a trip to Waipio Valley, one day at the volcano (lava flow was outside the park, could only get a mile from the flow but watched it from there), 4 days on the Kona side. One 2-tank dive, several great snorkels, and a manta ray night snorkel adventure.

Hawai'i, and Hard vs Efficient

We bought our tickets for Kaimana, after some headaches along the way. We'll be spending a week on the Big Island after the tournament (3 days on the Hilo side, including the volcano, and 4 days on the Kona side at a TBD discounted luxury resort (yeah, recession)). From the time I started looking at flights, the price cycled between $600 and $900-1100 four times, and each time I missed the buying opportunity, I got sick to my stomach. The third time was especially painful, as I saw the fares and did a few other searches and got FF numbers and rejiggered and played whatifs, and by the time I hit "select flight", all the low fares had disappeared. We had almost resolved to paying an extra $900 for the three of us but waited it out, and at 9 pm on New Year's Eve, prices dropped again so I snatched them up. Fares are still at that price if you're willing to leave at 6 am.

I decided I'm going to play hard, not efficient, at the tournament. I'm playing with John Hammond's team, and it looks to have a lot of good players, he says, so I should have the liberty of burning my energy in short bursts without feeling like I have to be ready all the time for the team. My normal mode is to play efficiently. I spend a good part of my time doing purposeful walking on offense, and generally try to minimize damage on defense.

The two modes are not mutually exclusive, of course, but there are different mindsets. The downside of "play hard" is that you can play stupid, biting on fakes in order to make the big D, or being overaggressive on marginal throws. The downside of "play efficient" is that you can be too passive and thus let others make the turnover (and it can mask laziness).

Efficient play can work really well on offense if the team is smart and has the ability to reset at will. The team then flows as one, creates lots of open space, and punishes the poach (if there are fewer people moving around, it's easier to spot the poach and find the poachee who has moved to the open space). Hard play is more stereotypically frothy defense, but I prefer to think of it as good positioning like in basketball. I play hard at my pickup basketball game, especially on defense, constantly moving my feet and getting my body into position, not flailing with my arms. In indoor soccer, I usually play goalie, and I play hard there, too (though that doesn't involve running so much). I move around, run hard to get loose balls, diving even, and am willing to take a shot to the body to stop it. When I'm in the field, I tend to be more efficient, though I'm not as sure how to be efficient playing soccer since I don't have great control of the ball.

No love for the Coop cut

This week's Huddle discussed endzone offense. I liked Wiggins' talk about using easy breaks or non-break breaks.

Ostensibly, DoG's endzone offense has always been the swing/strike regenerative offense with the 45 degree "gut cut" thrown in as an option. However, we've always had an alternate that has never really been codified. This year at Worlds, we really started going to this option a lot, and finally named it after Michael Cooper, who perfected the shoulder shimmy Coop cut.

So what is this cut? It's just a quick step to seal off the defender, and cut directly in front of the thrower, no more than 3 yards away. Break or no break, it's very easy to throw a soft pass over the marker's arm. The only way the defender could block it would be to lay out before the throw is made. The cut is ideally made from about a foot inside the endzone.

Alex and I have always preferred the cut from the front of the endzone instead of the back. As the various Huddle contributors pointed out directly or indirectly, the cut from the back is a race to the cone and good solid defense (front, keep the buffer but not too much, don't get turned) can usually stop this while tiring out the cutter. The cuts from the front rely on soft break passes or the threat of the soft break. The horizontal cut straight across the field is tough to hit only if the pass is fast.

The key to the cut is that the thrower needs to be ready to throw. If the thrower sees the cut and reacts to it, it might be too late. He doesn't have to be sitting on the throw, although he can, but his weight needs to be set so that he can immediately move to it. For this reason, I don't think I would recommend this as a default endzone offense for any team other than ours (although Frank might like it because a power move can lead to a goal).