Scobel Wiggins Photography

Firstly, Jeff Graham is back to his old springy self, which is great to see. Looking on during our bye, he went deep and, failing to catch a deep throw, called what a young teammate of mine was sure was a very sketchy foul call. Having not seen it myself, I replied that if Jeff called it, it was true; the guy embodies SOTG as well as anyone I've played against. My young teammate insisted it was a bad call and that I must just be wrong about the guy. About 10 second later, after conferring with a teammate and an opponent, Graham overturned his call. It's pretty easy, even as an opponent, to be glad he is back and playing well.

Boston runs a couple of very good 'junk' defenses. They use a standard 2-3-2 zone formation, but the points curl towards the handler much like a 1-3-3. This often forces the handlers farther backwards than they would like to go, if they can't attack the wider point-middle hole. The other zone is a person-to-person defense on the handlers with a man look in the backfield (similar to the 'Diamond' that Rhino and Furious have run so effectively). If your downfielders are the ones recognizing the defense, then the handlers can find themselves at stall-6 with no motion and very tight defender.

Boston's breaks against us came, by and large, from hucks to Colin Mahoney (a 6'6'' primary zone deep and very athletic deep cutter). Their normal offense from their D line is very good, and this gives them a D-point weapon even against very good D and in very windy conditions. Force flick, and you face Steve Kolthammer's lefty backhand (or later, Kurt Gibson's flick?). Force backhand, and you might be asking for that same throw from other players. It's a nice embedded scoring method that, if a hurricane blows into Sarasota, might become extremely important for them.

Boston is for real, and any discussion of the favorites for this year's National title should have them at or near the beginning of the sentence. Semis at the very least.