3/2-3/3/24 - Stanford Invite
Stanford Invite was the Air Squid's last tournament of the regular season and we went in with high hopes and expectations. We came out strong in our first game building a 3-break lead against Illinois. However, we were unable to hold onto that lead after halftime and ended up losing on uni. After a bye, we played our second game against Wisconsin. This game was neck and neck for the whole 90 minutes, with both teams getting crucial upwind breaks and fighting hard for each point. After an intense battle, the game got pushed to uni where the Squids fell short of a win. Our last game of the day was against Tulane in the pre-quarterfinals where we took half with a 2-break lead. Unfortunately, due to the weather, bad calls by Tulane, and a possible overuse of observers, the second half only consisted of 3 total points which Tulane was able to score on each one, giving the Squids their third uni loss of the day.
Due to our performance on day 1, the coaches thought it would be the most beneficial to play our second day with open lines. We started against GCU, which was a fairly clean win (11-4) but still left plenty to work on. Next, we played Dirt which was a game full of highlights but we did end up losing. Although we ended the tournament 1-4, we managed to get a positive point differential, losing all day 1 games by 1 point, our final loss by 2, and winning our only victory by 7. Throughout the weekend, there was a strong wind, especially toward the later part of day 1. This became a large issue for our throwing. As most of the team is not used to playing in strong wind, only a handful of guys could effectively throw upwind. This led to many turns which negatively affected our play all weekend. Overall we take this result and work towards improving before sectionals and the series.