Lol... I was lucky to have one of my many metagross to meteor mash Lucy's shuckle to death. Poor thing... two meteor mashes and it was out. It was the milotic that almost killed me- if it wasn't for my Latios's thunderbolt, I would've lost.
As for Noland, yeah, he's kind of hard. I got the gold symbol from him, but both times when I faced him, he had pokemon that matched up to each one of mine. I did face him with my planned frontier team, Zapdos( or was it Milotic?), Latios, and Metagross.
The hardest for me was Dome Ace Tucker, round two. He used a Swampert, Latias, and Metagross. I used a Tyranitar, Latias, and Metagross. The match up: Latias vs. Latias and Metagross vs. Metagross. Tch... his Latias got in a lucky critical hit.