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Latest sports news & stories from the ultimate worldAUDL Week 7 Preview: Sub .500 Teams Hunting For Wins
Photo by Alex Fraser — UltiPhotos.com
Many of the teams under .500 have big games this weekend as they claw back towards playoff hopes in the AUDL. The big guns are also matched up against some of those teams, which could make for blowout wins or wild upsets. Read more →
What To Watch For On Saturday
Photo by Kevin Leclaire — UltiPhotos.com
2013 College Championships Friday is in the books. Hopefully we’ve kept you more or less up to speed with how things have gone so far, but it can be easy to lose sight of the big picture at a tournament of this magnitude. Here is a brief idea of what to expect from each pool and the tournament as a whole for Saturday.
Pool A
With a win over Colorado, Oregon pretty much has things wrapped up here. They can’t afford to sleep on Dartmouth who, by all accounts, was playing well to their strengths on Friday. That being said, the Ducks looked impressive in their win over Washington and showed flashes of greatness by controlling the Colorado game. Read more →
The Top Women’s Divisions Story Lines Of Friday
Photo by Alex Fraser — UltiPhotos.com
Here are some of the top stories coming out of Friday at the USA Ultimate D-I College Championships.
#1 Seed Oregon Dominant, Unchallenged, or Both?
Of the 20 Women’s Division games that took place today, only 6 of those were decided by five or more points. Both of Oregon’s games were among those six, a sign of their dominant performance thus far in the tournament. The 15-7 shellacking they put on Wisconsin, their #2 seed in Pool A, may have not even been that close as they eased off the gas in the second half. Read more →
The Top Open Division Storylines Of Friday
Photo by Nick Lindeke — UltiPhotos.com
One of the biggest things that an online spectator can miss while following a tournament online are the emotions, trials, and tribulations that go on over the course of a tournament. This article will do its best to shed some light on the storylines that are going on among some of the teams present.
Here are a few storylines from some of the top eight teams at the tournament that I find compelling. Read more →
Round Five Recap: 2013 D-I College Championships
Photo by Alex Fraser — UltiPhotos.com
In the final round of the day on Friday, teams were looking to get a coveted win heading into the evening to grab some momentum for Saturday’s pool play rounds. Here’s a look at the games.
OPEN
Round 5, like every other round on Friday, did not disappoint when it came to excitement.
While the marquee game of the round should have been the overall 4 seed vs. the overall 5 seed in Pittsburgh versus Texas, they were outshined by North Carolina vs. Luther. Read more →
Round Four Recap: D-I College Championships
Photo by Nick Lindeke — UltiPhotos.com
Every team had a game in the books by the fourth round, which made for cleaner play and some thrilling matchups. Upsets became more common with the teams warmed up. Here’s a look at Round 4.
OPEN
Round 4 again featured a marquee 1v2 matchup and, this time, it pitted two of the most athletic teams in the field — the University of North Carolina and the University of Central Florida — against each other.
The game featured an auspicious beginning for UNC as Central Florida jumped out to an early 3-1 lead on the wings of two huge deep blocks by senior Michael Hickson. Though Darkside would close the gap to one point in the first half, UCF would quickly open it right back up and take half 8-4 while UNC’s offense sputtered.
Then, UNC spent the entire second half riding the coattails of a defense that was taking advantage of opportunities that the Dogs of War gave them, clawing their way back into the game. UNC coach Mike Denardis spent the second half calling much tighter lines and trying to anticipate when his team was going to be able to force a turn and be sure that he had a line on the field that had high odds of scoring the disc. Read more →
Round Three Recap: 2013 D-I College Championships
Photo by Alex Fraser — UltiPhotos.com
There were some great games in round three, highlighted by an impressive Carleton victory over Wisconsin. Here’s a recap of the round’s games.
OPEN
The biggest game of the round was a much anticipated matchup of Wisconsin and Carleton College. You could write thousands of words to explain the rivalry between these two programs, but the spectators in Madison — mostly Hodag fans — showed that they knew the bragging rights and pride that were at stake in this early but extremely important game.
In Round 1, Wisconsin coach Hector Valdivia told Ultiworld that he was just fine with taking aggressive shots and that the Hodags were not concerned about the high amount of turnovers they gave to Cornell. It would appear that statement came back to haunt him as CUT defenders got their hands on two early game hucks and jumped out to a lead that they would hold for the entirety of the game.
The story of this game was Wisconsin’s constant struggle to fight back and Carleton’s ability to hold its opponents at arm’s length. Carleton would ride a near perfect offensive performance from Justin Norden and Simon Montague to get the win in spite of Wisconsin tying the game at 5-5 and then getting back within one goal after several Carleton attempts to pull away. Finally, CUT rattled off 2 breaks to close out the game, 14-10. Read more →
Round Two Recap: 2013 D-I College Championships
Photo by Alex Fraser — UltiPhotos.com
A recap of the action in round two today at the College Championships:
OPEN
In the 10:30 round at College Championships, there were no surprise upsets. But, as is often the case in sports, the way things happened was surprising.
In the premier matchup of the round, Oregon and Colorado squared off in the key Pool A game. Oregon jumped out in front early to a 5-3 lead, forcing turnovers by pushing Colorado’s handlers backwards with tight defense and forcing the downfield players out. Oregon continued to ride tight defense and a steady offense to an 8-5 halftime lead. After adding another goal to its lead, Ego forced Mamabird to trade points to an 11-7 score. Suddenly, things started swinging Colorado’s way.
That swing was almost completely willed into existence by senior captain Jimmy Mickle. Colorado came out with several zone looks that forced a few turnovers and Mickle capitalized with quick hucks to streaking receivers and gobbled up a few floaty throws, both on offense and defense, on his own to close the gap to 11-10. Mickle simply took control of the game. Read more →
Round One Recap: 2013 D-I College Championships
Here’s a roundup of the day’s first round:
OPEN
In the 1 v. 5 matchup in Pool B, Wisconsin took down Cornell 15-9 in a sloppy game from both teams. The teams traded points with one break each to 5-5, with each team playing aggressively and fast. That high energy translated into multiple turnover points on every point in the first half.
“We want to come out aggressive in the start of all our games,” said Wisconsin coach Hector Valdivia, who wasn’t worried about the turnovers.
Jordan O’Neill had three goals and Colin Camp added three assists to help the Hodags pull away on a 10-4 run to close out the game. Read more →
2013 D-I Open Championships: Pool C Preview
Photo by Scott Roeder — UltiPhotos.com
For many observers, Pool C looks like the weakest of the tournament. It isn’t. This skepticism is born out of the lack of traditional powers. All season long, however, these teams have fought their into the elite ranks.
North Carolina, despite their draw as the #3 seed overall and the top seed in the pool, still feel disrespected as onlookers routinely overlook their deep and efficient squad. Central Florida, an intensely inwardly focused team, has high end talent that creates some of if not the most difficult matchups in the division.
If the main criticism of Ohio has been that they lack the depth to compete all day, how do they look in a format where they don’t play more than three games in a day? UC-Davis plays a disruptive game with a true stud to power their offense and Luther surprised everyone in their return. Pool C has mostly already defied expectations just to get here, so don’t be surprised when they do it again. Read more →
Editors' Blog
Background & thoughts from Ultiworld
Expanded Navigation Bar
With club teams starting to stretch their legs, professional teams in the middle of their seasons, and college teams on the brink of the national championship, it’s safe to say that there is a lot going on at the moment. Ultiworld is always working towards expanding our extensive, professional coverage to as many divisions and levels as possible. Too much Good Stuff? No way! Recently though, we’ve been thinking that all of this extra content deserves some extra navigation options to go along with it! Nothing has changed too drastically, but the sub-menu we’ve added should help us scale our categories better and should help readers find what they’re looking for faster. Feedback welcome!
If the page is looking wonky, first try refreshing the page.
If that doesn’t help try clearing your browser’s cache.
And if that doesn’t help either, please comment or email orion@ultiworld.com.
D-III Championships Coverage
Want to follow the D-III College Championships action in Milwaukee this weekend? Check out our dedicated tournament page, with live-updating, real-time information, scores, and news. And stay tuned for video highlights, games, and reporting tonight and tomorrow.
Initial Women’s Seeding & Pool Thoughts
With the USAU’s release of the 2013 Women’s College Championships schedule, seedings, and pools, we can really start to get a picture of what Madison will be like. Coaching staffs can begin digging into scouting and fans can begin planning their weekends. For us media folk, it is time to start doing what we do best: talking. Read more →
Initial Open Seeding & Pool Thoughts
With USA Ultimate’s release of the official seeding late yesterday, we can now start to look ahead to some wild pool play games.
First, let’s talk seeding. Read more →
Quantifying The Success Of The Pro Leagues
A reader sent along a final paper for a college course that suggests some ways to systematically compare the Triple Crown, the American Ultimate Disc League, and Major League Ultimate. Read more →
DIII Seeding
I just got a look at the DIII Nationals pools and here are my first thoughts. I haven’t really gotten a chance to go through step by step and create my own seeding chart, but here are my thoughts in a quick eye test. Read more →
Brian Hart for Callahan
Hector Valdivia, Wisconsin’s coach, makes the case for his star:
Dylan Freechild for Callahan
Commenter Patrick Stegemoeller makes the case for Dylan Freechild over Tyler DeGirolamo for Callahan. Read more →
Tyler DeGirolamo For Callahan
It’s quite a year for selecting a Callahan winner in both divisions. Thanks to ever-increasing game footage, players are becoming not just regional but also national stars (also in large part in the Open Division due to the NexGen tour). Despite all of the excellent players and their shining resumes, I would not hesitate to cast a vote for Tyler DeGirolamo. Read more →
Southwest Open Seeding
Things are getting heated in the Southwest.
Teams from across the Open Division are venting both privately and publicly about the seeding of the tournament, which was just made final by USA Ultimate. Read more →
Yellow Cards
I really like the idea of yellow cards, or some more clear mechanism to dissuade cheating, intentional fouling, etc. This actually brings me back to a topic from very early in the college season: the T-Town Spike. Read more →
From the Comments: MLU Fantasy Scoring System
There’s already been some great back-and-forth in the comment section of our MLU Fantasy article.
MLU fantasy will have the same player scoring different amounts of points each week, depending on whether you position him as a handler, cutter, O Line or D Line player. One reader, Alex, takes issue with that divide:
