April 2, 2025 by Patrick Stegemoeller in Recap
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Epic Colorado Semis Comeback Sets Up First ‘Bird Easterns Crown This Century
DENVER – It can all change in a moment. Five and half games of a weekend’s narrative – building on more than five and half years of narrative – reversed by a single point. That’s what happened when Tobias Brooks elevated for a goal that completed #3 Colorado Mamabird’s inspired second half comeback over #1 UNC Darkside, paving the way for their win over #2 UMass Zoodisc in the final and changing the shape of the college season.
What looked to be another UNC procession, another season under the sway of the powers that be in Chapel Hill, turned into the emergence of a dynamic new favorite ahead of the pack in the men’s division.
We have to start with that semifinal, that comeback, which was the defining moment of the weekend. #3 Colorado taking on #1 North Carolina, the team of Saturday vs the team of just about all the days over the past decade of college ultimate. Colorado came in the sharper of the two teams on the back of truly dominant play from Tobias Brooks, but North Carolina were undefeated and looked like they had been holding steady in first or second gear, just waiting for the right opponent to wake them up.
Through the first half of the semifinal, that certainly seemed to be the case. Darkside’s D-line, their stronger unit over the tournament, pounced at the first opportunity, running up two breaks and a 3-0 lead. The lead would grow further, up to 7-3 after a monster layout block from Keller Fraley on the initiating cut off the pull, leading to an 8-4 halftime score. Colorado’s offense, virtually untouchable up until that point had struggled to find it’s rhythm. Centerpiece Brooks had been involved in a few turnovers that seemed to stem from a disconnect with cutters and dump options, a disconnect facilitated by Carolina’s aggressive flat marks and downfield hedges.
It wasn’t a surprise that Carolina’s defense took a starring role, the unit have been growing in status since their win at SMI in March.
“There’s a lot of young guys, stepping up into roles on the D-line that just see the field really well,” said North Carolina O-line star Josh Singleton. “It’s just being smart. We try to pride ourselves on watching a lot of film, being really critical about what we are doing, and the D-line lives that. It’s easiest to play defense when you can trust everyone out there to make a read, to guard one and a half guys, and that’s a lot of what our D-line can do.”
But in the second half Colorado wrested control of the game from Darkside’s D, showing more power and size than anyone could cope with. Mamabird started to turn the tide by opening up space over the top on offense and stymieing UNC’s deep game, eventually leading to tighter avenues for UNC’s offense, and in those tight spaces mistakes started to happen, facilitated by increasingly wet and windy conditions.
“We feel confident against big space teams [like Colorado], we trust ourselves in big space said Josh Singleton. “At the beginning of that game that worked, we attacked big space well. And in the second half we had a few turnovers where we just mis-executed the throw even if they were good looks, and we started to get smaller, and shrunk those spaces ourselves, which their pressure did as well.”
It wasn’t an immediate change. Darkside had the disc up 10-6 with the chance for a break that would surely put away the game. But then the Carolina’s D-line that had been nails all weekend blinked, a dropped swing gave Colorado the hold. From that point there was a distinct energy shift, Colorado’s defensive pressure rising like a tide that threatened to and swallow up Carolina’s lead. The game became a race to see if Carolina could string enough holds together to escape. 10-6 became 11-9 which soon became 13-13.
And for as good as he was all weekend – the player of the tournament without a doubt – it wasn’t the Tobias Brooks show single-handedly bringing Mamabird back. Zeke Thoresen’s return has been a blessing, and, alongside Ryan Shigley and Nanda Min-Fink, he forms a terrifyingly large and athletic trio of ball movers who can also threaten with their size. They combined to stabilize Colorado in the second half.
“O-line needed to decide to stop being cowards and realize [North Carolina] are just guys in shirts” said a smirking Levi Tapper, a member of the Colorado offense. “We knew that as soon as O-line stops getting broken, our D-line is disgusting and will kill any team in the country.”
Tobias Brooks took a slightly more tactical appraisal of what made the difference in the comeback. “We have our classic force middle set on defense, but we made the adjustment to force one way and just hound our guys, trust our one on one matchup defenders. Zoned in on force one way and win your fucking matchup.”
UNC’s Josh Singleton noted a similar change and the effect it had on UNC’s offense. “We didn’t always play at the best tempo [against the sideline force]. We’re at our best when we’re running off our throws and playing with each other, and sometimes I got caught staring upfield,” he said.
Darkside may be on the brink of establishing an unenviable trend of dropping semifinal leads in windy/rainy conditions after last year’s Nationals collapse to Cal Poly SLO. And ‘drops’ is operative phrasing, as little physical errors around the disc gave Colorado free purchase back into the game, which they took advantage of with aplomb.
Colorado took their first lead when they broke to make it 14-13 on bookends from freshman Elliot Hawkins, who picked off a low huck from Josh Singleton and then turned on the jets, ending up on the receiving end of a Brooks huck.
Hawkins is making a late-breaking case for Rookie of the Year with his play. Emblematic of Colorado’s big, athletic defense that has plenty of skill and polish, the freshman has become the key fixture on that D-line carrying himself with the poise of a veteran.
Having finally taken the lead, Colorado weren’t surrendering it back. Receiving on universe point, Brooks made a strike cut from the handler space and never stopped running. His marker Ben Dameron slowed up, perhaps thinking he was in good position to poach the lane and would have help over the top. But give a coach’s point to Levi Tapper for seeing Brooks powering up the line and clearing Josh Singleton out of the deep space, giving Brooks an open field to burst into, elevate, and seal the win.
The loss was a tough one to swallow for North Carolina, who certainly were not at their best in the second half. A mitigating factor is that Colorado’s comeback coincided with Kevin Pignone leaving the came for Darkside with an injury. As Carolina’s offense got boxed into smaller spaces and started making error, Pignone’s importance as steadying force behind the disc was apparent in his absence.
But for Colorado the win was a breakthrough, proof positive that this team had the tools to blow anyone off the field. That energy rolled right into the final against Massachusetts, who had somewhat serenely seen of a fiery Oregon team in semis 15-11, but were not ready for the intensity Mamabird brought from the jump.
There would be no slow start here for Colorado – quite the opposite in fact, as they broke an astonishing five times to start the game up 5-0, their defense seeming as elemental a force of nature as the wind and rain that had worked it’s way up from the Wilmington coast. The opening of the final felt like one astonishing continuation of Mamabird’s second half against UNC.
“Message in the huddle was that the job’s not done,” said Brooks. “That was the message the whole weekend, that we’ve got no other choice but to go hard our next game.”
“We always talk about staying curious,” Tapper reflected afterwards. “Talking about every point, every second, every moment, staying with your priorities, staying with the idea that ‘this is the person I’m guarding and I don’t give a fuck if they score as long as I’m staying present with every second of that,’ and that was incredibly powerful for us to take into the game.”
Colorado’s athletic advantage, especially in big open spaces, was pronounced, and they showed little respect for UMass’s deep game, comfortable living with single coverage downfield and trying to keep things as uncomfortable as possible around the disc. And even when UMass were able to progress down the field, it seemed like Colorado were always able to find the juice to make one extra play, like when Joe Michaud reached back against his momentum to bat away a goal line flip from Luca Harwood that looked to be a sure goal.
But to UMass’s credit, they did not roll over. One of the best vibes teams in the division, their resilience after taking a 5-0 pummeling was impressive, and they were slowly able to crawl their way back, turning the game from blowout to respectable to even injecting a moment of jeopardy when they broke to bring it to 12-10.
Much of it came from Ethan Lieman, who had to water-into-wine a couple holds for UMass through hard earned unders and uplines. And in addition to doing a lot of the offensive gruntwork, he can fly.
But before Zoodisc could seriously threaten a comeback, Brooks put any momentum to bed with a saucy no-look flick through a redzone cup that made it 13-10, essentially sealing the game.
The victory marks the first tournament win on the season for Colorado, and their first time winning Easterns since 1998(!). When asked about what the difference was between their earlier season loss to UNC and this weekend’s triumph, Brooks pointed to the development of the D-line and its depth.
“The D-line really stepped it up, the D-line offense was much cleaner. The O-line has been good, and we still gave up a couple breaks in both games, had a couple skids, but now we can really rely on our defense to get breaks back consistently.”
Winning Easterns is an achievement all on it’s own, but Brooks made sure to point out that the team have bigger goals in mind, and are wary of any letdown.
“Winning is sometimes worse than losing at this point in the season because we still need to push our ceiling. O-line has to be focused on staying focused the whole game, we can’t have these mental errors and a couple skids that let teams back in the game, and D-line has to clean it up even more structurally on offense.”
While losing their third straight tournament final, ultimately, there was a lot for Massachusetts to feel good about coming out of Easterns. Convincing wins over #15 Cal Ursa Major and #5 Oregon Ego (as well as regional challengers #24 Tufts E-Men), and a demonstrable ability to pick themselves up and get back in the fight after a harrowing start to the final bode well for their postseason ambitions. And perhaps most encouraging was seeing Wyatt Kellman cleated up and playing for the first time this season, albeit only for two games on Saturday as he was under a strict PT restriction. On his first point of the season Kellman reeled in a huck for a goal, a nice moment for a great player whose injury problems have hampered almost his entire career.
UMass were also without their center handler Caelen McSweeney for the entirety of the tournament due to a knee injury, but both he and Kellman are expected to be fully back by Nationals for Zoodisc. After the final, Kellman mused that there was no way UMass at full strength would get into such a big hole against Colorado, and with a little luck we may get to see them put that to the test next month.
Flawed but Fun – Oregon, Cal Poly, Carleton
The other semifinalists, Oregon Ego, earned their spot on the back of another stellar weekend from their big stars Mica Glass and Raekwon Adkins.
There may be nothing as certain in the college division right now than Glass letting fly when Adkins goes deep, and though it didn’t always connect the threat kept defenses scattering around in a near paranoid state whenever Glass got the disc.
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