Hex Movement Decision Tree

 

 

… read transcript / summary …

Hex Movement Decision Tree: Brief explanation / shortened transcript of video

The way I’ve been looking at offence recently is to break it into three elements; Movement, Structure, and Technique.
This decision tree is a guideline for how to sustain and generate movement of the disc. The left side pertains to movement of the disc, and the right side is more focused on players who are off-disc.

If you have the disc in your hands then you have three questions; Is someone open in front of you?, Is the previous thrower open?, and Can you continue the path of the disc? If the answer is Yes to any of these three questions then you take the open pass, and look for the return pass, before returning to the start of the decision tree. If the return pass is successful then you enter a loop on the top left of the tree, which is where give-go / dribbling moves thrive.

If the answer to any of the three ‘open’ questions is Maybe, then you fake. The answer could be ‘maybe’ because you’re not confident with the distance or type of throw the option is asking of you, or because the defender is half-covering the throw, or for any reason you’re not happy with the option – in this case, fake, and return to asking “Is someone open in front of you?” – which may be the player you just faked an option to.

In some situations it’s better to look to continue the path of the disc before looking back to the previous thrower. Looking back to previous thrower lends itself to a more dribbling-style of Hex, but looking first to continue the path of the disc fits in quite nicely with techniques players have learnt from conventional offences.
If all then ‘open’ answers are ‘No’, then you should face the centre of the space. In Hex, this means you face where the Hat position is (the central player), and you should have all your team mates within your field of view. At this point you return to asking yourself if anyone is open in front of you.

Let’s say you go for the return pass and don’t get the disc back into your hands. The first question to ask yourself is ‘Am I in good hex shape?‘. The details about hex shape / structure are defined in another video, but if you decide you are not in good hex shape then you should reposition – with urgency. Repositioning moves are like cuts, and simply repositioning may well provide the thrower with a viable passing option.

If you are in good hex shape, ask yourself if you are open. If you are, communicate with the thrower by gesticulation or vocalisation, to let the thrower know you are a potential option for them to hit or fake to.

If you aren’t open, see if the thrower is looking at you. If they are, you should try to generate an option for them to either hit or fake to – by moving, or by gesticulating towards space. This will create further options for your team mates.

If you’re in good hex shape, not open, and the thrower is not looking at you, then you should see whether you can create useful space for a team mate. This means looking around to take note of your team mates positions and their defenders relative positions, and working out whether you moving in any direction could create a space, or occupy another defender, which would be useful for your team mate. If you can, then you should generate this option.

If none of these things are the case, then you should chill – don’t stress or feel pressure to create an option, because if everyone on your team is going through the same decision process then the thrower will be faking to half-options, looking at players to generate options, and so on, and the options will come. Continue monitoring the situation to see if you can create useful space for a team mate, to make sure you’re in good hex shape (as a team), and to see if you’re free or if the thrower is looking at you, but aim to become comfortable being in the position of sustaining offensive possession as a team.

Analysis: Live Stream with Oakland playing Vertical Stack

Excerpt:

Oakland’s coach Valerio got in touch about reviewing some footage of his team. They play conventional offence and defence – here is an excerpt from a Live Streamed Analysis session I ran with them.

Here’s the full 2hr video:

Analysis: Turnovers from Clapham v Chevron (Galaxy Point)

Analysis of the 5 turnovers in Galaxy Point between Clapham and Chevron, the final of Open Tour 1. Full game footage from this and many other great Tour games is available only at fanseat.com

Quick analysis: Inward pivoting, & stack’s influence on technique

Talking about inward pivoting, the influence that playing stack offences has had on our techniques and habits, plus some info about live streamed analysis which is coming soon!

Analysis: Japan’s bizzare short-field defence pull play against USA & Colony

Brief analysis on Japan’s bizzare tactic of not chasing down the pull on defence.

Quick analysis: Japan’s defensive flash-poach

Japan with some brief poaching against USA in the final of the World Championships in 2016.

… read transcript …

Transcript:

In this video I’m going to look at the Japan-USA World Championships final from 2016 – specifically the Japanese defence for one particular point. They do some interesting stuff – it’s not the very advanced switching defence they do that I’ve looked at in other videos and articles, but they do do some interesting things nonetheless. I noticed it whilst watching and thought I would make a quick video to look a bit closer. Enjoy!

First look at #22’s movement after his mark releases the disc.

He has moved downfield and created separation, narrowing the crossfield throwing channel.

Now watch #97’s movement after the disc is released.

Significant separation is created. Again, watch the next defender’s movement after Beau releases the disc.

He moves downfield quickly and tries to cause some trouble for the offence, distancing himself from Beau in the backfield. But wait, it looks like Beau is marked by somebody else now? How did that happen? Keep your eye on these two.

You can see it was not an actual switch – it was just an illusion caused by the movement of the Japanese defenders. At this point the flow stops and there’s an immediate pick, so let’s rewind a little.

Here is the defender that ends up appearing to mark Beau. You can see he leaves his mark – Cassidy Rasmussen – whilst staying super-aware of everything that’s going on around him, covering Beau to help his team mate. He keeps an eye on Rasmussen so he’s able to close him down quickly when he becomes a threat again.

This movement by the Japan defenders is so repetitive that I believe it’s a specific tactic they are employing. In the conventional style of ultimate, the first few seconds of the stall count are almost always spent looking for a positive-yards throw. By overloading this area early in the stall count, Japan are attempting to counter this offensive trend, knowing it’s unlikely USA will throw backwards immediately.

In this point, Cassidy Rasmussen finishes the offence off with some clever footwork – but later in the game the tactic did cause a turnover – one of only three of USA’s turns in the game. If you want to see more analysis on that turnover and the other 8 turns in the game, take a look at the video linked below.

I hope you enjoyed the analysis – I know it wasn’t anything particularly ground-breaking. I think you could describe it as a flash-poach, if you were to use conventional ultimate wisdom & lexicon to describe it. I hope you got something from it, and enjoyed watching a point from that game, which is a brilliant game which I recommend you check out in full – I’ll be looking at other points of this game in the future. Subscribe and like if you want to see more!

Quick Analysis: Failed switch in the AUDL

Quick analysis of a failed switch by San Francisco vs Seattle in this AUDL match from week 16, 2017.

Colombia WG2017 – Analysis of a Gender-Weighted Offence

In this video from the 2017 World Games we’re going to look at how Colombia adapt their offence to effectively counter the one-to-one defence Poland play against them.

Interview with Colombian coach Mauricio Moore: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN65_cIBYy8

Transcript: During the game it became apparent that the Colombian women were winning their matchups with greater ease than the Colombian men. To play to this advantage, Colombia manipulate the space on the field to reduce the risk of clogging and poaching from the male defenders, and maximise the space available to the women – in this case on the far sideline & deep – whilst the men are concentrated in the near-side and backfield areas.

… read more & photos …

There is some initial poaching from the male defenders, but the Colombian men stay involved and calmly take the open pass. The women on the far side have now formed a triangle, they are no longer being inhibited by the poaches, and they have a clear channel to the end zone. Note how the male players resist the urge to reposition downfield when the disc is near the sideline, instead trying to draw their defenders away from poaching positions.

Once the Colombian women are in flow the offence looks fairly unstoppable, with the defenders not able to apply any real pressure, however in the end the turnover is caused by an unforced execution error.

Colombia get the disc back later in the point, but the women are disconnected at the start of the offence, and there is some sagging and poaching from the defenders. When one of Poland’s male defenders gets sucked in on a poaching opportunity, their mark rightly takes off deep, but the disc doesn’t come and when he comes back we see Colombia fall into a similar setup to the one we saw earlier.

The women retain their shape deep on the far sideline whilst the men take a few easy open passes to keep the tempo of the offence. The triangle shape makes it very difficult for the Polish female defenders to poach or switch effectively.

When Lauras Ospina gets the disc, Colombia have a favourable one-to-one matchup completely isolated in the attacking half of the field, where Yina Cartagena scores without the defence having a bid.

By utilising the space on the field, manipulating the defence, and taking the open pass, Colombia were able to play to their advantage – their female one-to-one matchups – whilst minimising the poaching opportunities for the male defenders.

Utilising space and manipulating defence happens with all offenses, but which offensive structure would be most suited to this gender-weighted tactic?
Vertical stack creates space down the sides of the field but is very susceptible to poaching, as one or two male defenders start in the centre of the downfield space. 4-women in the stack with the three men in the backfield is possible, but is open to counter-tactics such as defenders sagging off the handlers, or downfield defenders surrounding the vertical stack to make it overconcentrated and difficult to initate flow from.

Splitting the vertical stack takes things to the extreme – it maximisises the space available, but it asks cutters to make big initial movements to get free. This is well suited to the hard cutting, yards-focused style which is prevalent in the game at the moment, particularly in North America.

How about horizontal stack? This is more dynamic and can work in a few different ways… when there are two male defenders downfield poaching could become a problem, so having three downfield female players can work nicely, offering loads of space… My favourite setup – which will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with my work – is called Hexagon Offence. This setup naturally supports the triangle shape Colombia’s women were forming, whilst keeping every other player connected, meaning any poaching can be quickly and easily punished.

Space in the Hex setup is created dynamically – when one player makes a cut they create a space where they came from, which is not how it works in vertical or split stack. This new space can be used by any adjacent team mates, and unlike horizontal stack, these second cuts can be made directly from the setup positions within the Hex shape. This dynamic creation and use of space has a cascading effect which maximises options for the offence and denies the defence any leverage.

Hex has taught me a lot about Ultimate, and there’s a bunch of other reasons why I prefer it to traditional offences, but I digress! I can talk about that more in another video.

If four women are on the field winning their matchups – perhaps related to a lack of female subs from the opposition – then a number of other interesting setups are possible to make use of this advantage.

I didn’t get a chance to speak to Mauricio Moore, the Colombian coach, about this video at all, so it’s just things that I’ve kind of seen, and my interpretation of them. He did an interview recently which is really really worth checking out – it’s a subtitled one, it’s in Spanish, but the subtitles are great, he’s clearly got a way with words, I’ll put the link down in the description below. Definitely check it out, I think everyone can learn from his experiences and what he has to say.

He says they focus very little on on-field tactics, so probably they just identified that the women were mismatched and just encouraged their men to just stay back and out of the way whilst the women had their own space to work with, rather than it being something they had drilled or it being a formal structure or arrangement they had. In this way I think they’re similar to Japan in terms of national teams, in that they’re more dynamic and organic with how they play, rather than sticking to set rules and cutting patterns and reset patterns, they kind of make it up as they go along to a certain extent, which is an approach that I really like.