CCC 2010 Recaps – The Semifinalists

Sadly, as you may have already seen, we did some damage to ourselves this weekend. Up until today, our right hand looked (and felt) broken at least to a certain extent. While the swelling has gone down, the signs of some kind of deep bruising have gone up. Pain is at a minimum so we’re going to pound this write-up out. Apologies to anyone who wanted more in-depth coverage and specifically to Jojah, who was kind enough to invite our services, not expecting us to be debilitated by the end of Saturday.

We’re going to do things a little bit differently than usual since, by now, you surely know how the tournament turned out.

CCC LIX Previews – Florida Gators

Last year Florida’s season started with a lot of hype.

And then it ended with more hype.

However, the fall of 2010 has been a bit quieter for the Gators. Anyone would be hard pressed to find a team from Nationals that lost a larger percentage of its scoring this offseason than Florida. The departure of Chris Gibson and Brodie Smith will hurt UF tremendously. Just take a look at this video around the 2:25 mark to see what Smith did last season during his team’s Championship run. No one is more aware of this negative impact than the remaining third of Florida’s 3-headed monster, graduate student Cole Sullivan.

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.

W2W4

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.

South Open Regionals: Saturday Recap

Competition and sparks flew fast, often and early in Atlanta today at the UPA South Open Regionals. 16 teams from all over the southern United States met today in order to decide which two teams would move on and all but six teams have been removed from the competition.

(We don’t have photos at the moment but hopefully we will soon. If you were out there today and you’d like to have your photos posted on this blog then e-mail us your pictures!)

Florida: Toeing the Line

 

Photo courtesy of Jesse von Fange.

This picture is interesting for several reasons. Not the least of which being the fact that we are standing in the background of it looking like, how do you say… a chump.

We’ve been interested in Florida since we first started hearing about them early on in our relatively young Ultimate careers. They are a polarizing figure in the Ultimate scene. We have yet to find someone who feels just so-so about the Gators. You either like them or you hate them and it’s no secret that the vast majority of people hate them.

After  spending a weekend studying the character of the Gators and those teams around them, here is our take.

AC Open Regionals – Sunday Recap

Here are the rest of our Sunday recaps. We must say that this was, far and away, the best tournament that we have ever been a part of. It had all the drama and excitement that we could ask for along with excellent organization and logistics. The Ultimate and weather were beautiful and if someone can promise us that every AC College Regionals will play out like this one, we’ll be there forever.

The Game – Florida vs. NC State

We know this is what you all want to hear about anyways, so here it is. The recap, from our eyes of the N.C. State and Florida game-to-go at UPA Atlantic Coast Regionals. Hopefully we’ll have some photos of the action up later tonight Recaps for the rest of the day are coming in due time. Thanks for reading.

A beautiful spring day in Charlotte, N.C. If one didn’t know any better, he/she would say that it was even peaceful. However, in this location, at this time, things were anything but peaceful. The Ramblewood Soccer Complex, a location that will most likely live on in infamy, as it was the location in which the might Florida Gators, the team that was expected … no, supposed to win Nationals, met their match, the North Carolina State Wolfpack.

Morning Pull: Gators First

While we’ve never been partial to the University of Florida, considering we were raised by two Florida State grads and now attend South Carolina we don’t have much reason to be, we were excited to play a small role in the Gator Nation yesterday.

We were contacted about having our Florida preview posted on Gators First. Obviously we were quite excited about the prospect. Not only does it get our name out there but it gets Ultimate out there. The site treated Ultimate with the respect that we would expect it to get treated with and, quite frankly, we were surprised with their interest in the subject.

This is what our main goal was with this site. To provide some semblance of real journalism to Ultimate in an effort to gain some respect for the sport. Let’s face it, there’s no way that site would have requested a copy of the article if it didn’t include quotes from a source or contain anything but opinion. So, on that note, we feel, to a small measure, that we have already exceeded in our goal.

We’ve also seen some awesome numbers in terms of page views and feedback has generally been really positive two weeks into the existence of this blog. We say all this not to toot our own horn (though we are) but more to say thank you for the support thus far and we plan on continuing our efforts throughout the rest of the season.

NUMP Rankings are out, we’ll have those posted later today. We are also in talks with Georgia and Charleston for previews and we hope to have those posted as well.