San Francisco Fury's stall-zero huck strategy
Deep shots were in style at US Club Nationals
One strategic wrinkle that stood out to me watching US Club Nationals this past weekend is how assertive (aggressive?) San Francisco Fury was in throwing hucks very early in the stall count. Their semifinal game against Molly Brown and championship game against Scandal are both available free on YouTube.
Let's take a look a a few things that stood out about their hucking strategy:
They were simply extremely aggressive
Perhaps the biggest point of note is just how confident and assertive Fury looked catching a disc and immediately—and I mean immediately—releasing a deep throw. Here are a few examples:
They huck during fast breaks
Fury’s not afraid to "start fast and start big" when the opportunity arises. They scored the winning point in their semifinal game on a fast break flick huck.
They huck after stall-zero backwards (or sideways) passes
A little dishy pass on stall-zero gets the disc to a thrower moving forward with a view of the deep cutters. (This is a go-to move for Fury, even when it doesn't end with a huck.)
Call it "hex & huck"?
(I actually thought there would have been more examples of this. Maybe their stall zero dishy passes led to medium gains more often than they led to hucks.)
They get the disc to the break side then huck it before the defense is set
They faced a lot of flat-ish marks so I'm a little unsure what to call the "break side" in some cases. But it seems that one benefit of hucking quickly is the way they can get a backhand huck off before the mark is set, even if the defense is trying to force forehand:
As a bonus clip, here's 2023 Offensive Player of the Year and 2024 Nationals assists leader Travis Dunn using the same technique (yes the mark defender is a bit lazy, but...take the opportunities you're given!):
They sometimes had multiple cutters beating the defense deep
I'm not sure what lesson, if any, can be drawn from this (are they simply more fit than their opponents?), but there were a few times Fury managed to have multiple cutters get on the deep side of the entire defense:
Final thoughts
Molly Brown and Scandal also threw a number of early stall count hucks in these games, but Fury really stood out to me for their aggressiveness in pursuing this strategy. A few other notes:
I'm not sure I like how Molly Brown used a flat force and/or backhand force on such a wind-less night. It was pretty clear to me that most of these throwers are better hucking backhands than forehands, and in a low-wind game giving up those backhand hucks felt just a little too dangerous relative to whatever else you may be gaining by forcing flat or backhand.
While I've focused on the hucks themselves, they are really the end result of something bigger—i.e. a team-wide commitment to playing with pace and starting their cuts early. (More on this in a future post?) Just because it works for Fury doesn't mean you can go to your next game and start using this strategy with unsuspecting teammates!
Did Fury huck the optimal amount? Well, on the one hand, they won the championship. On the other hand, there are certainly a fair number of incomplete passes in the examples above. My intuition is there's potential to refine this strategy a bit and nudge up their completion percentage.
They can play with unbridled confidence because of their star power and general dominance. However, the best women's teams should aspire to turn the disc fewer times like the best open division teams are achieving. To consistently make the right huck/holster decisions at a team level like Rhino did, they will need to look downfield for more than half a second.
A team as strong and well-coached as Fury is capable of tighter play; Their opponents simply aren't forcing them to get serious yet.