Machine’s Comeback: Part 1 – USAU Nationals 2019 Men’s Final

At 10-6 down machine field the pull and run a vertical stack. Yiding Hou recognises that Nathan Kwon is poaching, so threatens to go deep. Kwon gesticulates to his teammates for cover, and Janus breaks the force around to Evangelides. Notice how Kwon’s defensive positioning is dictated by the position of his teammates. He orbits sharply around Hou as his teammate passes quickly on the far side. This is because the open spaces are changing as the players on the field move. He effectively forces Hou to move towards his teammate, which deflects his cut and he ends in no-man’s-land for a couple of seconds. Kwon uses this time to clog the throwing lane again, and then closes Hou down very quickly as he starts to become a throwing option again. Hou reacts aggressively by threatening up line, but Kwon stays balanced and isn’t faked out either way. All this has forced a stall 8 or 9 situation. Machine continue to struggle to get flow, before Joe White turfs a backhand.

Hou sets off deep and isn’t really picked up by Machine’s deepest defenders, one of whom comes under and the other sticks with White. Rankin winds up for the throw but Katz is clogging the throwing lane, leaving Janus as an open pass backwards and towards the sideline. Rankin then hard-pivots in the opposite direction to threaten the backhand, but Julian Hausman on force is able to pressure the release point, with enough time between hard-pivots to regain his balance. Foster also does well to react dynamically to the situation and make the thrower’s job harder.
Joe White gets the disc under and goes to execute his classic throw’n’go move, but unfortunately it’s a turn-n-go. First take notice of Kwon’s aggressive repositioning on the far side of the field – positioning himself towards the space White is looking at, and never lingering in space already occupied by a teammate.
In the semi final White was able to get these throw’n’go backhands off uncontested on multiple occasions, but it looks like the combination of hand and foot from Carnegie on the mark was enough to force the error this time, shuffling his feet to cover ground.

Sockeye turn over on their second pass with a pass to Kwon – William Katz puts too much zip on it. Keep your eye on Katz because the next time he touches the disc will also be a turn over. The Machine O line set up a horizontal stack and Christian Foster cleans up after Katz’s exceptional point block, again we see shuffling on the mark but note how every step is synchronised between Foster and Evangelides, and the awesome athleticism of Foster to instantly take the quickest interception route to the new path of the disc.

Sockeye dump and swing as Evangelides and White bracket the downfield stack for Machine. A zig-zag cut from Foster occupies both bracketing defenders, and the downfield Machine defenders don’t reposition to cover the big break space.

Foster pivots wide for an around break backhand to Carnegie for the last point to be scored by Sockeye before a 5 point run from Machine.