The Mo Factor

The Mo Factor is something I normally joke around about. The Mo Factor is the intrinsic connection between motivation and momentum. The way to build momentum is to have lots of motivation, and momentum drives motivation. The Mo Factor is the entrance ramp to this highway of awesomeness.

This last weekend Illinois struggled to maintain control of the Mo Factor in Kansas City. Expectations were extremely high as the team cleated up in 2 inches of snow. Thoughts of potentially winning this tournament went through the teams mind as soon as the pools and tournament bracket went up on Score Reporter.

Saturday opened with a game against Colorado State, a game that we were in complete control of from start to finish. Kansas State brought the first challenge of the season. It was a fairly physical game that also brought the first game time injury of the season. After getting up ridiculously high Chris Hidaka came down awkward and suffered an injured ankle injury that knocked him out for the rest of the weekend. The rest of the Kansas State game remained tough and Illinois pulled it out with a two point win.

Rounds 3 and 4 against Truman State and John Brown went by pretty quickly as the team attempted to gear up for Kansas. Throughout the day great plays were made by new comers to the team. Most notably Dane demonstrated his ability to make ridiculous plays in the air and Gibby unleashed layouts that were somewhere between peoples hips and shoulders.

Kansas was Round 5. They were one team that we wanted to play and really wanted to win. The game played out to be an excellent test of Illinois’ abilities. The game would be very typical of a Kansas Illinois showdown and neither team ever provided a knockout punch until the game was completely over. At the end of the game Kansas was the team cheering and Illinois was the one accepting the bitter pill of defeat.

The team dispersed to the Krieger’s and Hirshman’s homes for some sweet home cooked food.

SUNDAY! If you can’t get up for Championship Sunday you should probably quit Ultimate. Missouri S&T and Illinois squared off in the quarterfinals for the chance to face Iowa. Sunday morning belonged to BSmith who punched in 3 scores to help the Illini get to semis.

Iowa, Iowa, Iowa… In the past year and a half Illinois had a 2-1 record against the cornfed IHUC. They exploded out of the gate with two breaks. Finally the Illinois Oline closed a point and gave the Dline a chance to run. Picking up the slack of the Oline the Dline drove a pretty strong run into half time. It was 8-5 at half in favor of the Illini, and 9-5 right out of half time. But, the rest of the game belonged to Iowa. A Callahan and a bunch of break later they were pulling to us up 14-13. A point of several turns later and Iowa was off to the Championship round and Illinois was busy trying to convince Arkansas to play. Arkansas decided to check out early and Illinois’ weekend ended 2 hours too early.