While I have not been personally very successful in this situation, other teams have been successful at times against my teams so I can tell you what it seems like they did. You must call tight lines—having players in the games that can create Ds and capitalize on them is imperative. Now is not the time to give players a chance to show their stuff for the first time—use people that are tried and true on D and O. This may mean that these players are playing a lot, but thems the breaks—they ought to be in good enough shape to hang tough through this time. In terms of strategy, it might be time to change something up. If your D has been creating Ds but you just haven’t been able to score, you may think about switching to focusing on either fast-breaking or settling down. If your D has not been creating Ds, you might consider trying a new D.
In the 2008 Women’s Final, which was probably the best comeback to ever occur in ultimate, Fury changed their D sometime around halftime or right after the second half started. It was windy and we run a two handler crashing from behind zone offense. They switched to guarding our crashing handler almost like a box-and-1 with a huge cup around them. This flustered our handlers and we were unable to adapt, opening the door for a huge and devastating comeback by them. I’m guessing that they just took it point by point or broke the points into games to three. Oftentimes teams can be successful just focusing on shorter goals rather than thinking, “we have to score 10 times to be back in this game.” On an individual level, it is important not to focus too much on yourself and take too much of the responsibility of catching up, even if you are playing a lot at this crucial time.
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