CCC LIX Previews – Georgia Jojah

Caleb Edwards sends a backhand around his defender at CCC 2009. Photo courtesy of Chad Borer.

Just like a couple of other previews we’ve mentioned, the preview of Georgia’s Ultimate team is going to be more focused on who isn’t there anymore than who is still there. Jojah has become a staple of the Nationals scene and seems to reload on talent every year no matter who leaves but there is no question that last year’s graduating class was one of its best in recent history.

Easterns 2010 – Prequarters

Georgia junior Matt Bailey lays out for and catches a 'mac'ed disc to save a possession for UGA. Photo courtesy of Jesse von Fange. http://www.unitesports.biz

Although most things had gone more or less to seed on Saturday, the only exception being Jojah not winning its pool, prequarters presented an opportunity for many quality teams to go home.

The matchups included: UGA vs. UNCW, San Diego State vs. Cornell, East Carolina vs. Virginia Tech and Ohio State vs. Brown. We only could watch three of these at a time so we can only report that Brown defeated Ohio State 15-11, we do not know the manner or method in which this transpired.

Easterns 2010 – Round Four – UGA Jojah vs. Cornell Buds

Cornell's Ethan Pollack comes down with a catch block over Jojah's Matt Bailey at College Easterns. Photo courtesy of Jesse von Fange. http://www.unitesports.biz

In their final pool play game of the day, Georgia and Cornell squared off against each other in a game that had plenty of meaning. Since Jojah had lost to UVA and Virginia, in turn, had lost to Cornell, a Bulldog victory would create a three-way tie across the pool that would be decided by point differential.

Needless to say, both UGA and Cornell were feeling the pressure coming into the game and with the wind picking up, the game was bound to be an exciting one.

Cornell would mount a huge comeback over the course of the game in order to pull out a 14-13, double game point, victory over the Dawgs.

Easterns 2010 – Round One – UGA Jojah vs. UVA Night Train

UVA's Andrew Wilkes grabs a disc in front of a bidding Peter Dempsey on the way to a Virginia victory. Photo courtesy of Jesse von Fange. http://www.unitesports.biz

Easterns 2010 wasted no time in getting competitive and interesting. In the first round two of the heavyweights from the Atlantic Coast region squared off in an excellent game.

Georgia was coming in off a disappointing finish at College Terminus and Virginia was coming into Easterns with a similarly bitter taste in its collective mouth after finishing poorly at the Wilmington 8s. Both teams were ready to start off on a new foot and it showed in the play as the game, which ended in a capped, double game point style in Virginia’s favor, 10-9.

Easterns 2010 – Previews – Georgia’s Peter Dempsey

Peter Dempsey gets a layout block against Wisconsin in the CCC 2009 semifinals. Photo courtesy of Chad Borer. http://www.frameatatime.com

“TRAP! TRAP! TRAP!”

Peter Dempsey’s bellowing voice could be heard over all the other noise at CCC 2009. Georgia was on defense against Delaware and Dempsey’s cutter had made the mistake of cutting too close to the thrower. Dempsey flashed into the lane and ordered the mark to prevent the dump or anything other than an upline throw.

Stall 6, the thrower looked IO, Dempsey was there. Stall 7, the thrower looked for a loopy OI forehand, Dempsey was there, Stall 8, back to IO and Dempsey was somehow still there. stall 9, the thrower launched a flick right into Dempsey’s chest.

“When I’m playing D, I guess I just think about playing O at the same time,” Dempsey wrote in an e-mail. “I don’t just try to get inside the head of the guy that I’m guarding, I try to figure out what all 7 guys are the other team are thinking.”

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.

CCC LIII: Semifinals Recap

With the bracket narrowed to four, this topsy turvy tournament appeared that it had finally returned to normalcy (with the exception of Georgia Tech). Georgia and Wisconsin were squaring off late in the Championship bracket, like they had so many times before in the history of CCC.

On the other side, last year’s AC  Regional Champion, Virginia, was taking on upstart Georgia Tech.

With the way that these teams had all been playing, and now that they weather was mostly clear, we knew that we were in for quite a semifinal round.