I don't mind playing against gief anymore, as gouken can be quite effective against him with the multiangle fireballs, I love it when they stay on the other side of the screen thinking their clever spamming lariat to dodge the fireballs, then I time goukens jumping sweep to hit just as they come out of the lariat. Throwing a fireball out and then just walking forward and sweeping is also quite effective as alot of gief players think they can just walk through everything straight to you and they walk right into the sweep everytime
had a gief player rage quit on me the other day because he couldn't get a hit in.
I had some similar matches to your sakura encounter against an awesome ryu, the guy was way better than me but we had about 10 matches on the trot I learnt alot against him especially pressure tatics, even the really good players start to crack when you don't give them a chance to think.
