Central and Eastern powers gather in Florida to set the tone for the season.
January 31, 2024 by Edward Stephens in Preview with 0 comments
Ultiworld’s coverage of the 2024 college ultimate season are 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.
With 25 teams – including more than half of our power rankings! – in action, nine of the ten regions represented1, bespoke Friday/Saturday schedules, the USAU algorithm in miniature2, season debut exuberance, warm weather exuberance, and plain old college ultimate exuberance, Warm Up is a delightful affair every year. It’s also a lot to keep track of. Here are a few of the storylines worth picking up as you prepare to watch the splashiest men’s division tournament of the early spring.
Tournament Profile
- Date: February 2-4
- Location: Tampa, FL
- Weather: Lows in the 50s and highs in the 70s and upper 60s, with rain and 10-15 mph winds forecasted for Sunday
- Top 25 teams: 13
- Schedules & Results
Streaming Schedule
All Ultiworld Standard and All-Access subscribers will have access to watch the live broadcasts from this year’s Florida Warm Up, where we will have one game in each broadcasting round.
The broadcast schedule can be found below:
All times are ET.
Friday, February 2
9:00 AM: Georgia vs. Northeastern [M]
10:50 AM: Emory vs. Virginia Tech [M]
12:40 PM: Brown vs. Michigan [M]
2:30 PM: Florida State vs. Wisconsin [M]
4:20 PM: BYU vs. UMass [M]
6:20 PM: Florida vs. Texas A&M [M]
Saturday, February 3
9:00 AM: Cincinnati vs. Cornell [M]
10:50 AM: Pittsburgh vs. Vermont [M]
12:40 PM: Texas vs. Tufts [M]
2:30 PM: Carleton vs. Washington University [M]
4:20 PM: Quarterfinal – TBD [M]
6:20 PM: Quarterfinal – TBD [M]
Sunday, February 4
11:00 AM: Men’s Semifinal [M]
1:00 PM: Men’s Final [M]
Tournament Preview
The Challenger Class
You won’t see #1 UNC Darkside among the championship-level teams traveling south this weekend – they just finished their undefeated debut at the less-bombastic Carolina Kickoff – but there will be a bevy of teams who could realistically thwart their quest for a fourth consecutive national title. Topping that list have to be the three New England teams Darkside beat in the bracket last year in Ohio: #2 Massachusetts ZooDisc, #4 Brown Brownian Motion, and #11 Vermont Chill.
UMass announced their presence in a major way last year by winning Warm Up undefeated, and they appear to have similar potential again in 2024. What can Noel Sierra, Caelan McSweeney, Wyatt Kellman, and the rest of a really deep roster get done this season as they prepare another march toward greatness? As good as UMass were, though, Brown were the team that truly tested UNC at Nationals, pushing them all the way to universe point. They bring back their top five players from that team in Jacques Nissen, Leo Gordon, Eliott Rosenberg, Cal Nightingale, and Jason Tapper. A win at Warm Up would be a nice prelude. And what of Vermont? Both lines are going to look a little different after they graduated some major load-bearers from 2023. This weekend will show what kind of ceiling CJ Kiepert, Zack Watson-Stevens, Declan Kervick, and the rest of Chill can have after turning a page.
Looking to Make the Leap
Another class of teams could make the jump up to contender status with the right kinds of results. #10 Minnesota Grey Duck made the Warm Up final last year behind stellar play from Anthony Jirele, Ian Mccosky, and Paul Krenik – and they bring back all of them plus basically everybody else. That continuity could yield excellent fruit in 2024. The other two 2023 Warm Up semifinalists, #7 Georgia Jojah and #12 Carleton CUT, don’t quite return everyone from last season, but their top playmakers from a year ago are ready to ride again. Keep your eyes on Georgia’s Aidan Downey and Adam Miller or Carlton’s Declan Miller and Daniel Chen if you’re looking for a good show.
If that’s not enough to float your boat, throw in a pair of national quarterfinalists in #8 Texas TUFF and #9 Pittsburgh En Sabah Nur. TUFF had an up-and-down Warm Up last year, but John Clyde, Saaketh Palchuru, and Xavier Fuzat (among others) are ready to carry the torch this season. Pitt’s returners, headlined by 2023 Player of the Year Henry Ing, feature some of the division’s strongest top-end talent, and they’re aiming very high in preparation for a run in Madison on Memorial Day Weekend.
Other Notes:
- #14 BYU CHI enter their traditional eight-games-in-two-days Warm Up weekend in unfamiliar territory: as underdogs. They couldn’t muster enough offensive consistency to hit their traditional standards at last weekend’s Santa Barbara Invite, dropping a pair of games. They have a lot of talent, but they’ll need to find their feet on offense if they want to repeat the kinds of strong results that they’ve managed in the past.
- #20 Northeastern Huskies and #21 Tufts E-Men both need a big weekend as they look to concentrate bids in New England and give themselves a better shot at getting back to Nationals. The good news is that both should be capable of it.
- Aaron Bartlett just won a men’s division club championship with Truck Stop. Theo Shapinsky made it to the mixed division final with Hybrid. Can that experience help lead Michigan MagnUM back to the kind of high-level season that eluded them last year?
- There’s a bit of preseason buzz around some of the unranked teams at the tournament. Cincinnati Bearcats have rookie Will Wettengel; Texas A&M Dozen bring on Mark Henke; Alabama-Huntsville Nightmares have inked a one-year deal with Kenni Taylor for his final season of extended eligibility; Georgia Tech A Tribe Called Tech begin their second campaign with the sensational Adam Grossberg. Which of them, if any, can convert that buzz into on-field results?
