I thought I would get the college discussion ball rolling with a little bit about Wisconsin. One of the captains of the Hodags (James Foster) was kind enough to answer some questions and I thought I would share some initial thoughts about their 2008 season.
Player Departures
The first thing on my mind for the upcoming year is who are they losing. Now I know that there are some obvious players like Callahan winner Dan Heijman who just finished his 5th year at Wisconsin and Jack Marsh is out of eligibility. Another really huge name that isn’t coming back is Dan Miller. I have been blinded by this kids nuclear hair color for a few years and his defense and all around intensity will be missed. Bobby Lau and Matt Scallet are also done but aside from these, Wisconsin is still returning a ton of experience.
2008 Play Makers
Two major players from last year that will definitely be striking fear into the hearts of opponents are Brandon “Muffin” Malecek and Shane Hohenstein. I feel like Muffin is like the Barry Bonds of ultimate (just physically, not all that lying stuff). I have seen some pictures of him from a few years ago and he looks like a completely different person. Then he had non-descript hair, he was slimmer, and generally not all that scary looking. In 2006 he sported the cornrows, and he still has the Oakley shades, and the Hodag headband. That and he is freaking jacked. Guy definitely did his ultimate homework and is committed to absolutely dominating on all sides of the disc, more power to him. Shane is also a scary mofo. I mistakenly thought Heijman got 3 layout Ds against Stanford in the semis at college nationals, but it was actually Hohenstein. I was far away and they both wear head bands, but after really watching Wisconsin and Sub Zero footage, I can definitely say, this guy is one of the scariest defenders I have ever seen. He literally killed Stanford in the semis all by himself. His man defense is through the roof. I will say that there are usually 2 kinds of good college defenders out there. There are the really fast guys and then there are the crafty ones. The best defenders are both and Shane definitely is and he brings the hurt, just watch the Fall tounrey footage from the Classic City Classic. I asked Foster who he thought were going to be the big play makers for Wisconsin this year and this is what he told me:
“Matt Rebholz and Kevin Riley will be holding down the O Line, breaking the mark at will and sending it deep to our athletic cutters like Will Lokke and Tim Pearce. Muffin (Brandon Malecek) and Tom Annen will be anchoring the D Line throwing to some of the best defenders in the country in Chris Doede, Andrew Mahowald, and Shane Hohenstein.”
What I think makes Wisconsin so good is that they are the poster team for athleticism as well as commitment to the game. Because Wisconsin is a state school they have such a large population to draw from and the chance of finding an all-state soccer player (Dan Heijman-Connecticut) or some Winona State transfer students with disc experience (Hohenstein and Miller) are much better than a small school like Carleton. With these kinds of athletes coming into town, your odds of finding one that likes ultimate and will work at it are much higher. It also probably helps that a top 8 team at Club Nationals is based out of Minneapolis. I wonder how many Sub Zero teammates are bitter Wisconsin/CUT rivals?
Young Guns
Another thing that I was interested to know about Wisco this year was who their next crop of all-stars is going to be. I remember the days of Tyler Spindler, Grant Zukowski, the Valdivias, and Tripoli. Now it's Heijman, Miller, Muffin and Shane, but I wonder who will be the next big leaguers? When I asked James this question he told me “Cullen Geppert and Ben Feldman will certainly be noticed this year by playing great defense and then cutting people up after a turn.” Ben was a member of the Junior Worlds team in 2006 and Cullen was a very solid defender for Wisconsin during the series last year. Hopefully they will carry the torch well.
Goals and Challenges
Another thing that I find interesting are Wisconsin’s goals for the year. When I think of the Hodags outside of college nationals, the first big goal I think of would be to win Trouble in Vegas. This team has been absolutely dominant the last two years and has lost only in bracket play or the finals of the first tournament of the year. In 2006 they lost to Carleton 6-5 (what kind of a score is that?) and last year 12-11 to Florida in the finals. They then went on to sweep the rest of the season in 2007 and lost only once more on Sunday at nationals in 2006. One thing that I think really helps Wisconsin this year is the fact that for whatever reason, Mardi Gras will be before TiV. Wisconsin usually kills people at this 60+ team tournament and gets cash in the process. I dunno how they travel so much but they have won Mardi Gras a few years running and only have a few teams like Texas and Kansas in their way. If they can get the dust off early and warm up in Louisiana, they might be able to work out the kinks and get fluidity in their offense to handle the high winds in Vegas. However, despite my focus on TiV as a goal, James said that “Our main goal for this season is the same as it always is: Win the Central Region.“ This I think is really interesting because it shows how much tension and history is in this region. This is not the AC or the NE where the teams on top routinely shuffle around. This is the Central Region, which is a lot like the SW. Wisconsin and CUT have been beating each other up in this region for like 20 years. For the majority of that, CUT has absolutely dominated with routine classes like Roger Crafts and Mike Caldwell in the late 90's followed by the Nord era, then Chase, Jimmy Chu and Sam O’Brien. However, it is without question that the last few years, Wisconsin has really showed themselves to be the big bad wolf in the upper mid west. However, despite a recent college national championship (their 2nd in 5 years) and 4 trips to the finals this millennium, they still focus on winning the central region. I love it.
I was also curious to know what sorts of challenges Wisconsin has. What does a team that is something like 110-3 over the last 2 years fear? Is there anything that can rattle a team like this? Apparently the main concern is “to stay focused as a team and not let any of the hype effect how we perform or how we go about accomplishing the goals we have set as a team.” How very Belichick of James. Their focus, again, is not to win TiV or repeat at Centex, not even to win another national championship, but rather earn “the right to play CUT in the Finals of Regionals.” What an epic saga CUT and Wisconsin have. It must be nice to have to struggle so hard with a team in your own region and know that in prepping to just make it to nationals you are beating a team that could beat half the teams in Boulder next May. I suppose this is an advantage to teams like Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Stanford, Oregon, etc.. because they have to work so hard to get out of their region that they end up getting better competition in the regional finals than in pool play at nationals. I don’t know how Zipp and Brown did it in 2005. I guess that just shows you how good the Amherst→Brown→DoG ultimate program is.
Callahan Watch
One thing that I wanted to know but was very doubtful to get a straight answer about, was who the Callahan nominee for Wisconsin is going to be this year. I understand not wanting to name a specific person because they probably don’t know yet and I totally respect that. But I also want to say that whoever Wisconsin nominates will be in the top 3 Callahan finishers if not THE winner. If you look back over the last 5 years, whoever wins nationals or is close, usually wins the Callahan. Wiggins in 2003 was the last Callahan winner to not win a national championship but he still played in the finals. Since then it was Richter (champion ‘04), Zipp (champion ‘05), Tim Gehret (champion ‘06) and Dan Heijman (champion ’07). Callahan voters are not smart, they vote for the guy that is nominated by the best team. Players like Dylan Tunnell, Tank Natenberg, Oscar Pottinger, and Seth Wiggins are great, great players, but if you aren’t going to make the Finals, you aren’t going to win the MVP. Nothing against people that vote, but the information gap is so huge (which is why I write this stuff) that no one knows anybody outside their region so they just vote for the players from the best teams. In any event, I just want to say that whoever Wisconsin does nominate, has a good chance of winning. One thing that I really liked about Heijman when he won was the he told Rob that he thought he was only the 4th or 5th best player on Wisconsin. If you watched them play, Heijman was definitely a source of assists, scores, Ds and ZERO turnovers, but the Hodags had a lot of other guys reeling in the fantasy points and a lot of them are still on the team. They still have a ton of talent left and if something like the Robbie Cahill/Mark Sherwood thing happens again, you might see 2 Callahan nominees getting votes. Regardless, James told me to start prepping my ballot for “Matt Rebholz, Muffin Malecek, Shane Hohenstein, Andrew Mahowald and Will Lokke”. What a PC and respectful answer. I am sure he is a great captain.
Tournament Schedule
This year Wisconsin is playing in Mardi Gras, Vegas, Stanford, and Centex. This is definitely a different schedule from last year where Wisconsin went to Terminus in Georgia and Easterns in North Carolina. I like that they are going back to Stanford. Once again I don’t know how they fly to all these tournaments. Colorado usually doesn’t go to a lot of tournaments like Stanford (until this year) and Santa Barbara because it is too much to fly but I am glad Wisconsin is going back to Palo Alto. It is one of the most elite tournaments in the country and Wisconsin has a tradition of doing very well at it.
College Nationals Thoughts
One thing that has been an extremely controversial issue is the college nationals debate. Since they are changing the weekend it is this year, as well as piggy backing with CSTV, there have been a lot of contrasting opinions concerning it. I heard that the UPA surveyed teams that were at nationals in Columbus but I will say that this is what the captain of the current national champions had to say:
“I am extremely upset about the schedule change this year. I do not like to look ahead that far but we have players that are scheduled to take finals during bracket play at nationals. If we are successful at Regionals it is going to be very difficult for our entire team to make it to Colorado in time to play on Friday and getting there a day early to practice is almost entirely out of the question.”
Closing thoughts
I think Wisconsin is the real deal again. I think they were as good in 2006 as they were in 2007 (Florida was just better). I think this year will be no different. I think CUT is definitely better this year (that will be another blog article-tune in tomorrow) and there will be some great teams out there, but if Wisconsin can stay focused, you will see baby blue play on May 18th. When I asked James if there was anything he wanted the rest of the country to know about Wisconsin in the new year he said “The Hodags are still hungry.“
Just my thoughts
Match Diesel
3 comments:
Great writeup Match. Looking forward to more...
The advantage Brown has is that most years to win the region we never had to peak for Regionals. There was no tapering in the weeks leading up to Regionals and at Regionals if top players were feeling a little "tweaky" they did not have to risk injury by playing - they could just rest.
Certainly there is some benefits to facing good competition at Regionals such as practicing the intensity that you need for Nationals and revealing any problems that you can fix in the window before Nationals, but in 2000 and I'm guessing 2005 Brown just had to amp up the level of practices to ensure that we had that opportunity.
As for the "Amherst-Brown-Dog" pipeline, Zip and Mike Pozar were the only two Amherst players on Brown during the team's current run of Nationals appearences (9 out of the past 10 years). There have been many more Paideia players making an impact on the team (Moses, Harper, myself, Will Arnold, Paul Vandenberg, Mike Vandenberg, Jimmy Lowe). Of those players, Moses, Will, and Paul have gone on to play with DoG/Boston.
Of course, the other players that played for DoG/Boston in the fall and played for Brown in the spring (those guys listed above, Zip, Fort, Safdie, Colin) and the coaching of Nathan Wicks were the biggest impact.
Blah, blah, blah, I just like to talk about Paideia and Brown. Thanks for providing the opening for me to do so.
you got it Kyle
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