Why all of the upsets in the women’s division may not end up mattering.
October 22, 2021 by Jenna Weiner in Analysis, Coverage with 0 comments
Ultiworld’s 2021 coverage of the club women’s postseason is presented by Spin Ultimate; all opinions are those of the author(s). Find out how Spin can get you, and your team, looking your best this season.
The upsets started in Round 1, bright and early at 9 AM. While top seeds San Francisco Fury and Boston Brute Squad were in the midst of putting together comfortable 15-4 wins over their pools’ respective third seeds — Columbus Rival and San Diego Wildfire, respectively — second seeds New York BENT and Seattle Riot were down by multiple goals at halftime to bottom seeds Minneapolis Pop and Florida Tabby Rosa. Both BENT and Riot went on to lose their opening games — albeit in different fashions — and those upsets set the tone for what would feel like a fairly chaotic rest of the day in the women’s division.
Five more upsets happened throughout the day, with Pop and Tabby Rosa both picking up one more upset win each to finish second in their pools with 2-1 records, losing only to pool one-seeds Fury and Brute Squad. Boston Siege and San Francisco Nightlock joined in on the upset party as they piled on the pain for Portland Schwa, while Rival notched a win over BENT that sank the New York team to the bottom of the pool. The pool typically expected to have the most chaos, Pool D, surprisingly did not, going fully to seed with a Raleigh Phoenix universe point win over Vancouver Traffic in the last game of the day to confirm it.
You’d think that having multiple upsets in three of four pools would have a profound effect on the bracket going forward, but past the prequarters round, it appears it hasn’t. With mostly dominant performances by the top three seeds — as well as that universe point win for Phoenix — all four top seeds kept their byes to the quarterfinals. That sets up a situation where, even with topsy-turvy results from pool play that scrambled the initial seeding for the division, there could very well be only favorites left by the time we get to the semifinals.
So what to make of Thursday’s upsets? Can they tell us anything about what might happen during the rest of the tournament? Or should we be less concerned with the early surprises and pay more notice to the favorites who still seem to be coursing for a rather traditional Nationals final weekend in this very untraditional year?
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