Pardon our mess while we update The Huddle over the next couple days. The Huddle 3.0 begins next Tuesday, March 16th, 2010. Thanks — Ben & Andy

The Huddle

Sockeye 5 — Johnny Bravo 7

Footage courtesy of

The Huddle: Sockeye scores this point with a handful of under cuts strung together. Many of Sockeye's in cuts are thrown to small margins. Why is that, and how does the offense (seemingly) depend on completing these (seemingly) high risk passes?

Mike Whitaker: The Sockeye offense does a very nice job of throwing easily catchable passes. Their cutters aren't open by much, but the throwers place nice soft backhands out to space at chest level where only their cutters can catch it. At the highest levels of ultimate, you have to trust that your receiver that has a step isn't going to get D'ed up if you put the disc in the right spot. Cutters just aren't open by 5 steps very often. Sockeye does a great job of putting the disc where it needs to be on this point.

Andrew Fleming: Trading huck for huck in the wind against an athletic opponent is showing itself to be a dubious strategy, and Sockeye seems to make a conscious shift here toward the underneath game. Some of the windows are tight, but an "open" cut in finals looks a lot different from an open cut in pool play. If you sit back and wait for a wide-open shot, you may be waiting a long time.