Weekend Roundup: In Which Teams Actually Play Ultimate

Three (nearly) full tournaments were played this weekend, in what proved to be the first weekend of the preseason that was not severely affected by inclement weather. That being said, teams attending Queen City Tuneup had to deal with snow and shortened round times while teams attending Mardi Gras had to deal with bayous encroaching into the middle of the field. Meanwhile, President’s Day frolicked out West like one would expect Californians to.

After the jump is this weekend’s recap. It may be of some interest to many of you but we are making some efforts to get in touch with the UPA, Mike Gerics and George Mason’s Ultimate program to try and sort out just what went down this last weekend. It would be somewhat of a tragedy in our opinion if the UPA decided to go through with what, at the moment, seems like a rash and harsh decision.

That being said, we’re reserving judgment for the time being because, having played against Gerics and knowing his history, we would not be the least bit surprised if this suspension was deserved.

Perhaps we shouldn’t say anything in order to avoid alienating any of the parties involved but we wanted you, the readers, to know that we’re on the case to get the story from all involved. Good luck to all teams searching for sanctioned games.

Weekend Roundup: In Which There is(n’t) Trouble in Vegas

College Trouble in Vegas has been a tournament that has brought us some of college Ultimate’s very finest memories. However, between this season and last season, factors like an overgrown population and weather have seriously hurt the tournament’s reputation.

This season left many unsatisfied and even angry at the way things were handled by Cultimate. We spoke with Notre Dame captain Andrew Schroeder and discussed the problems TiV has encountered. Though he seemed relatively unhappy about the way things went down we both seemed to come to one conclusion.

Vegas is going to happen and it’s going to be well attended for as long as Cultimate wants to put it on. The fact of the matter is, it’s a weekend in Las Vegas with your team. That’s a tournament, completely disregarding any Ultimate (or lack thereof), that can only be rivaled by Mardi Gras. So, rant and rave against TiV as much as you want, in all likelihood, it won’t change. If it doesn’t, it still might be the most popular tournament every season. If it does, it still might be the popular tournament every season.

Onto the results!

We weren’t able to speak to many folks in the power pools but our worst fears from last season were realized. Few people have forgotten the sad ending to Oregon Ego’s season last year and if the early results are any indication then we might end up wondering what might have been last year if Ego had gone to Nationals last season.

We spoke to Florida fifth year captain Brodie Smith about the power pool play. He told us that Oregon looked strong. He had this to say about Oregon’s play.

“(Ego) just had a very in sync offense and (they) were playing a force middle defense i think against carelton that gave (CUT) some trouble,” Smith said.

Ego took Carleton to a double-game point situation but were defeated after the above video led to a questionable travel call by the defending champions. The call has been much debated on RSD but what can’t be debated is the fact that many of the top teams in the nation are evenly matched with each other.

Carleton’s two other games were decided by a total of three points. As a matter of fact, the only team in the power pools that didn’t have a win decided by two or less points was Florida, beating Cornell, Virginia and Wisconsin by at least seven goals each.

“Even without two of our starters playing, I felt pretty good,” Smith said. The Gators were missing Andrew Peterson on offense and Travis Catron on defense.

Cornell and Virginia certainly struggled the most out of the power pools both turning in 0-3 records. Elsewhere on the bottom half of the power pools stood Wisconsin and Stanford, both with 1-2 records. The Hodags were, in all likelihood, venturing outside for the first time since their CCC win in the fall. (Seriously, we imagine in Wisconsin, they have underground heated tunnels to go from place to place. How else would they survive?)

In the middle of the pack roamed perennial powerhouses Colorado and Carleton. Smith recapped their performances by saying that Mamabird’s youth shone through this weekend in an unimpressive performance and CUT looked as good as one should expect the defending national champions should look.

Of course, it’s hard to judge results of simply three games. It’s early in the season yet and who knows how all of these teams would have performed over an entire weekend. Trouble in Vegas wasn’t at all what we were hoping it would be and that is a bummer but the preseason rolls on, straight into a gigantic weekend of Ultimate.

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Mardi Gras

Teams to watch at Mardi Gras include Wisconsin, Notre Dame, Minnesota, Illinois, Texas and Luther. We’ve got contacts at this tourney and we’ll be playing in the co-ed bracket with many kings and queens.

President’s Day

Alas, living on the east coast has left us far from the west coast and we’ve know not a single person or team (personally) attending the tournament. That being said, based on results keep an eye on UC and UCSD. The No. 1 and No. 2 seeds at this tournament have to be the favorites to win this tournament after both teams lost on double game point to Colorado at The Santa Barbara Invite.

Queen City Tune-Up

The East Coast elite are assembling for the biggest early season tournament on the right side of the nation in the early season. The top seeds in the tournament are all likely to have a good tournament, but don’t forget about Georgia Tech, who had a strong showing at CCC and have the talent to go deep in every tournament they play in this year.

Weekend Roundup

Believe it or not, all three tournaments that had any college open ramifications whatsoever were cancelled this weekend. We thought that, in the absence of Big D in Little d and The ACC Ultimate Championships we could bring you the story of Greenville, SC’s third annual Frozen Goose tournament. Alas, the wintry mix that swept the nation descended even on Upstate South Carolina.

In the wake of no actual Ultimate, RSD has been awash with the controversy between the UOA and the UPA, Crazy Frank being crazy, and some awesome photos from Joint Summit.

Like this one (Yes, it is a foul. Yes, it is still awesome.):

South Carolina's Marshall Walker strongly challenges Jojah's Peter Dempsey for a disc on game point in the semis of Joint Summit Classic 2010. Photo by Jesse von Fange.

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As for next weekend, let us hope that better weather comes for one of the preseason’s most anitcipated tournaments: College Trouble in Vegas. We encourage you to check out Neeley’s discussion on the seeding and tiering format the boys at Cultimate are using this year for he is in the know about these things. All we can tell you is, some will people will grumble about it and some people will love it, but the vast majority will just want to play Ultimate in Las Vegas.

We’ve got a couple contacts headed out to hit The Strip and throw the disc but our coverage will hardly be comprehensive. Hopefully, we can give you a pretty solid account of what went down in the power pool and some snippets about what is happening on the rest of the fields.

There should be some lower level action in the AC at Discs over Georgia and some South Regional rivalries playing out at T-Town Throwdown. Unfortunately, neither of these two tournaments have any more information up at the moment. We may bring you some information about these tournaments but, they are far down the priority list when it comes to changing the face of the National picture for this season.

Weekend Roundup

We know this is a little late this week but we’re thinking it’s in everyone’s best interest if we use our Ultimate contacts from around the nation to keep you as posted as possible on what’s going on in the college scene.

Last weekend posted some of the first sanctioned tournament results of the season.

Joint Summit Classic

We played in Joint Summit last season and won the tournament. From what we can tell, competition was much improved this year from last season. With the canceling of The Dave Baldwin Tournament Georgia scrambled to find someplace to get its early season tournament in. Fortunately, Clemson was able to accomodate them.

The weather was miserable for the whole tournament and, as we discovered at CCC, weather can be a great equalizeer. South Carolina captain Kevin Anderson told us that standing water and mud on the field was expected every round and it was a miracle the tournament was even allowed to continue.

East Carolina started the tournament as the two-seed and managed to break that seed for the weekend by beating a Georgia team that was struggling with a new offense and missing a number of injured players in the finals.

Congratulations to East Carolina for the victory in what proved to be a tougher tournament than anyone expected. Word on the street is that Jojah’s Peter Dempsey balled hard over the weekend. If you don’t believe us, look at his stats.

We’ll have to do some research as to what affect wins like this one have on the final allotment of bids to Regionals. While Jojah might be able to shrug this one off, under the new system, a game like this may mean one more bid to Regionals for the North Carolina section and one less for the GA/SC section.

On another note, if you want to know just how much Ben Slade means to his team this is food for thought. Slade did not play on Saturday and Clemson lost to in-state rival South Carolina and unheard of Warren Wilson. However, Slade laced up his cleats on Sunday and Clemson promptly took care of business against previously undefeated Alabama in the quarterfinals.

Santa Barbara Invite

Another tournament that struggled with rain. We didn’t have any contacts at this tournament (the struggle of living on the east coast). However, results seemed to go more or less as expected.

Colorado came out on top thanks to three straight universe point wins. Beginning during the crossover on Saturday, taking out Stanford 11-10, and then continuing all the way through bracket play. Cal-San Diego and Cal-Berkeley both took Mamabird to double game point.

Could this finally be the year that someone challenges Colorado in the Southwest? Mamabird has won the region since the years of the Condors but if UGMO and UCSD is at the top of its game, could they prove to be too much for Colorado over the course of Regionals weekend?

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We know, original right. These are the tournaments we’re keeping our eyes on.

We’ve got contacts headed to Big D in Little D and the ACC Ultimate Championships. We’ll be sure to let you know how things turn out but you can probably count on the directors at ACCs to keep score reporter updated consistently.

If you’d like to be a contact of ours at any tournament, shoot us an e-mail.

If you haven’t seen The Coaches and Captain’s Top 25 yet, click that link.