In this post, I'll look at some clips of myself playing and go over some of the thoughts that go through my head when I watch them happen. Hopefully, you will be able to follow my thought process and it will be helpful when you watch your own footage. Remember that since all of these clips are on gfycat, you can watch them in slow motion, pause, and go frame-by-frame.
There's a lot going on here, so before I dive into it I'll try to give you a little bit of background. I am in the red hoodie and white tank, guarding the furthest guy from the disc. There has just been a contested stall, so the disc was coming back in at stall 8. Generally speaking, at a high stall count, the last thing you want to give up is an open huck. Therefore, in most cases, you should be positioned on the "high" side of your defender, so that you are taking away the deep cut, but still in a position to pressure an under. Note that when the disc is tapped in, I was on the "low side" of my cutter; in many cases, I would say that a defender in my position should immediately adjust to be on the high side.
In this particular case, there were a number of other factors that led to me maintaining my position. First, I was actually guarding one of their primary handlers, and our team had found some success when I kept him out of the handleset, forcing other players to make throws and forcing him to make big cuts downfield. Second, the thrower had eye contact with his dump, and I incorrectly assumed he would be looking to throw a reset. Third, I did not believe that the thrower would be able to consistently place a same-third huck accurately over my head. However, with all of that said, I made a couple crucial mistakes that led to my opponent getting a relatively easy score.
(1) I misread the thrower and the space
Clearly, the thrower here was good enough to make a throw to an open cutter. However, it is also important to see that had I adjusted my position to take away the deep throw, there was nowhere for my cutter to cut in -- two other players were already in that space, and I have help from my teammates if he decided to go there. Unfortunately, I did not have any help over the top for a huck, so I needed to take away that space rather than giving it up.
(2) I turned a full 270˚ when the throw went up, losing precious time that put me just outside of the range where I could safely make a layout attempt on the throw
This one is pretty easy to see, and is pretty frustrating for me to watch. Despite being slightly out of position when the disc is tapped in, I still had a chance to make a play; I see the throw go up, but clearly turn the wrong way, causing me to lose half a second of acceleration time that may have made the difference. Although turning the other way would have made me lose sight of the disc (not always a good thing), since I saw the throw go up, I would have been able to do so safely and still get a good read on my man and the disc.
Let's take a look at another clip:
This is another one of those that is painful for me to watch, since it involves me getting beat upline. That being said, these kinds of clips are the ones I usually learn from the most, since my own frustration makes it easier to improve and avoid making the same mistakes again. If you pause the clip right as the handler starts his cut, you'll see that my positioning isn't terrible - I'm triangulating the disc and the man, allowing me to see both and, in theory, react to a cut or a throw. However, you can also see that my hips are facing towards the thrower, rather than towards the cutter. This puts me in a slightly more awkward position where I have to choose which way to turn: I can turn towards the thrower, but in doing so would lose sight of my man. Or, I could turn towards my man (which is what I do), but in doing so, have to turn an extra 90˚ and am too slow to make a play. If my hips were open towards the cutter when he started is cut, I would have been able to turn much more quickly and probably would have been able to get a hand on the disc (or prevent it from being thrown).
It's also important to look at why I was in that position to begin with.
At the start of the clip, the disc has just advanced up the field, and the player I am defending is still behind the play and not immediately threatening. I increase the distance between myself and him to give a bit more of a cushion and to be able to help a little bit in the around throwing lane. However, my mistake is that I reel back in towards him too late; as a result, I start moving towards him just as he starts cutting upline, allowing him to blow by me and get the score.
Finally, let's take a look at one last clip. Here, I am defending a situation that is very common, but I often see mis-played by handle-guards.
There are a number of ways to defend this position, and a lot of factors that influence that choice. Generally, I will look to put more pressure on the backfield, leaving the upfield window a little more open, since that throw is generally much more difficult to make, especially with a good mark. However, it is also important to recognize that although the throw is more difficult, it is much more threatening since it results in a power position for the thrower, with no mark. Thus, how you defend that position will also depend on your team defensive philosophy. Many teams are willing to give up/force this throw since it is relatively difficult to complete.
Watching the clip again, you can also see that my teammate on the mark does very little to help me on defense.
There are tons more clips that I could go through, and I'm hoping that soon I'll be able to go through some other video in more detail either here or on twitter. For now, I hope that this is helpful for some people to get an idea of some of the things I think about when I'm watching film and trying to pick out individual things I can do to get better.
No comments:
Post a Comment