Fast Takes with Fast Break: Austin v League City

Authors: Jacob Ehrlich & Fiona Wisehart

A Fight to the Finish and a Fight for Survival

It's Saturday Night Lights this weekend in Texas as the defending champions, Austin Outlaws travel east to face the League City Legends. Going into this season, these teams could not be more different. On one side of the pitch are the Austin Outlaws. Fresh off winning the last Benepe Cup, this team is full of MLQ veterans and looking to make a statement in their opening series. On the other side of the pitch are the League City Legends, a young, scrappy team looking to rebound on their last season in which they only took wins off of a shorthanded Kansas City Stampede.

El Clásico No More

Austin is starting off this season looking to retain the Benepe Cup, and any national champion will tell you that there’s no down time if you want to keep the crown. Under new leadership in Jackson Johnson (who took last MLQ season off), they’re likely hitting the ground running and already game-planning for the championship. While many of these players on Outlaws are friends with each other, they come from two USQ Southwest club teams that focused on defeating each other at every turn. With so many players from Texas Hill Country (THC) Heat and Texas Cavalry (Cav), they’ll have to work to meld the differing ideologies under a Heat coach to begin practicing for the title. We don’t think this’ll be much of a problem, though, since so many of them are current or former USNT athletes. We expect to see a lot of leveraging Cav and Heat players’ USQ chemistry when forming their lines with USQ Northeast player and USQ Cup 2023 champion Michael “Yada” Parada in a ball distributing role. One direction this team could go in would be to have two Cav lines with a speedy Heat line in the middle (using Jenna Adams Tracy and Mel Kite for physicality on both sides of the ball) to throw different types of intense play that no opponent would want to face. Even if Mel Kite and Kaci Erwin need to step into beater, chasers Missy Ghodossy, Kasye Bevers, and Jenna Adams Tracy will have no issue filling wing chaser space from what we saw from them this USQ season, and we might see Kasye switching into her ball handling role up top as well (seen at USQ Cup 2023). 

On the beater end, the biggest question is who we will see Isabella Rios paired with. A beater from Columbia College Chicago, Isabella is coming to an all-Southwest beater core, where all other beaters have chemistry and experience with each other. Even counting utility players Kaci and Mel Kite, every possible beater pair has played minutes with each other at some point, and jumping into that can be overwhelming for a younger beater. If there’s anyone who’s up for the challenge of training a beater to ability in the few weeks before this series, it would be Jackson Johnson and the Outlaws team with an “it takes a village” approach. Multiple high intensity reps with top level beaters of varying styles can quickly help Rios find what works for them and what doesn’t to help them establish their flow on the pitch. Figuring out their beating lineup from top to bottom is a key piece Austin needs as they prepare for the Benepe Cup.

Austin’s expectations for themselves are high this season and we feel the same. Even though it's early in the season, we want to see more from this Austin team than the fast breaks that powered them to a series sweep against League City last year. While we do not expect to see a final product in their opening weekend, it will be worrisome if the team cannot break down the Legend’s defense when they should be able to generate mismatches across lines. This weekend, and every weekend until they land in Des Moines, Iowa, the Outlaws will only be focusing on beating the 2022 Benepe Cup champions. As far as they’re concerned, everyone else is just fighting for second. 

Rising Tides Lift all Ships

League City is also coming into this season focused and hungry. The 2022 MLQ South Division was a hard contest for 2nd, and every spot from 2nd to 5th depended on League City’s last series against the San Antonio Soldados. While they needed one win to clinch their spot for championship,and winning all three games would’ve brought them to 2nd, they were unfortunately swept by Soldados, relegating them to 5th place and ending their season. 

The superstar of this team is Hayden Boyes. Recently named to the USNTDA, Boyes is the full package at the chaser position. He has the ability to drive through people, hit a shot and play excellent point defense. However, the most impressive feature of his game is his ability to make others around him better. In many of Sam Houston State University’s (SHSU) marquee wins throughout the USQ season, Boyes would not score the majority of his team’s goals. Instead, he drew the attention of opposing defenses up top and then distributed the ball to his teammates in open space behind hoops. An extremely cerebral player, Boyes constantly fills dangerous space on both offense and defense. If League City makes MLQ Championships, then Hayden Boyes will be on the shortlist to win South Division MVP. While all eyes look to Boyes to define the offensive ability of League City, we expect points on the board to be facilitated by wing chaser Lisa Reisenauer. With an extensively developed ability to find open space for cuts and many times the first to loose balls after a shot or tackle, Reisenauer is a playmaker for this team in a way that statistics never seem to capture, which is especially useful in a division that historically has issues using their female players decisively. Around swifter chasers like Boyes and Reisenauer, expect League City Legends to employ the SHSU "size matters" approach that brought them to a Final Four appearance against Harvard at USQ Cup 2023. The Legends will need to strategically pick their matchups and rely on beater-opened space to generate success, however, since both of these rosters boast sizable tacklers.

One notable return to the Legends after a season off is utility players Jimmie Evans. The 2022 Legends notably lacked female beaters and could’ve used Evans as an anchor for their younger SHSU beating core. Beaters like Conner Mason, Kyle Easter, and Alex Kinsel would’ve seen greater development under Evan’s veteran ability. Teaming up with Kevin Raber and Carlos Elarba, any beater looks thrown at this team would’ve been more decisively countered. She was a pivotal piece at both chaser and beater for the League City squad in their 2021 MLQ Championship gauntlet. Notching a noteworthy 111 shifts at beater through that season, Evans’ engine rarely ran on empty. She’ll need to play catch up with the current meta but with her athleticism, physicality and sound positioning, she will, once again, prove a valuable asset to this squad.

All in all, much of the core that makes up this Legends team hails from a SHSU program that made the Final Four in the collegiate division of USQ Cup 2023.The willingness to play for each other and pump up their teammates, proved to be the difference maker in their Elite Eight game against Rutgers. Expect to see this same energy and team culture from League City. A team that could be nicknamed “Southern Rochester”, SHSU was known for their physical play, never afraid to put their bodies on the line for the sake of their team. 

Our Parting Words?

Good luck, League City. 

Prediction: Austin 3-0