We're number 6!

I don't know what to make of it but it looks like we will be ranked sixth going into World's. The teams ahead of us are Chilly (Aus), Sub-Zero, Doublewide (US), Buzz Bullets (Jap) and Clapham (Eng). I don't know where they come up with the rankings but I can't begin to try to predict whether we should beat our seeding or not. That's the beauty of World's, you just don't know how you stack up against the other teams so I could see us winning the tournament just as easily as I could see us finishing near the bottom.

Now don't get me wrong, I have every intention of having Mephisto power to a strong finish. I want us to beat our seed but we have no way of knowing how strong some of the other teams will be relative to us. Every team will have different styles of play and it will be interesting how we cope with them and how they cope with us. For instance I'm betting that the Japanese teams will have trouble with our height and deep game but on the flip side we will have trouble dealing with their handler skill and quickness. Another thing that will make a difference in the course of the week is how deep some teams will be. 6/7 days of tough ultimate will exhaust players who play too many points. I don't care how good a team's top player is, after six days of playing 3/4 of his team's points, that dude won't be able to function at 100%. Teams that will dominate are teams that can manage the fitness of their strongest players and to do that you need your depth players to get you to the last two days with a lot of wins.

Another factor in a long tournament like World's is injuries. In 2002 we showed up with 23 guys and by the end of the week we had lost 10 guys to injury. Players will get injured, the teams that succeed are the teams that will deal with those hiccups better than the others. I'm hoping that we don't have the same injury nightmare that we experienced in Hawaii but you never know.

Now we just need to wait for the schedule to come out to see which teams we get to play.

DF