Buzzer Beater: Upsets Galore [UFA Week 4, 2025]

Three winless teams got their first Ws of the season against top competition.

May 20, 2025 by Alex Rubin in Rankings, Recap

Hi everyone, welcome back to my weekly Buzzer Beater column. Here I will focus on one major storyline each week. The column will also share some news and notes beyond that big story and will be the place to share our most up-to-date power rankings. If you have questions about the UFA, you can also write in to [email protected] to fill up the mailbag.

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Any given week, right? Entering the season, there seemed to be a pretty clear list of title-contending teams, and a pretty clear list of teams who would struggle to find more than a win or two. Exiting week four, three of those supposed bottom-feeders beat three of those championship contenders, and the UFA standings suddenly became a lot more intriguing. As always, we’ll touch on every game this week (and there were several more good games than I’ll have the bandwidth to write about in full), but we’ll start with the three that drew the most attention and chatter in our Discord, in order of surprise.

Ranking the Upsets

1. Houston 23-17 Colorado

Let’s be clear–this was not a flukey win by a thin margin in bad weather. This was a team that had never beaten any team other than now-defunct Dallas absolutely stomping a team with Championship Weekend ambitions. Houston scored three breaks each in the first three quarters. The Havoc’s completion, hold, break, and red zone percentages were all higher than the Summit’s. Houston recorded more blocks and fewer turnovers than Colorado. And this was not a skeleton squad Summit team either; Alex Atkins, Quinn Finer, and Noah Coolman led the team in points played.

It is hard to state how unusual this result is. Prior to tonight, the Havoc were 0-18 against non-Dallas opponents. For the Summit, this is the largest loss in franchise history. Colorado viewed their 2025 season as a chance to get back to Championship Weekend while Houston certainly is happy to get into the win column now that Texas also-rans Dallas are out of the league. Fans might heap credit onto Havoc offseason additions like Dalton Smith and Chase Cunningham, but it is clear also that role players like Mark Turner, Kyle Kolafa, and Tyler Reinhardt all have major parts to play in the Havoc’s success this season. Houston can keep their momentum going with a game next week against Los Angeles while Colorado needs to rebound with a get-right game against Oregon before facing division leaders Oakland.

2. Oregon 20-19 Seattle

Is this the promise of a team in Portland? Oregon finished dead last in the West division each of the last three seasons while Seattle represented the West Division at Championship Weekend last season. Just considering games between them, Oregon won their inaugural game against Seattle (29-24 on May 1st, 2022) and then Seattle won their next six meetings. This was a nearly full strength Seattle team too, with 2024 Defensive Player of the Year Lukas Ambrose, 2024 Second Team All-UFA selection Garrett Martin, Zeppelin Raunig, and Tommy Li all taking the field.

For Oregon, the debuts of David Barram and Ben Thoennes could not have come soon enough. They are the two most creative and daring throwers on the team and act as a hub around which an offense can center itself. A 6-1 run midway through the second quarter opened up the game for the Steel, but Seattle chipped away slowly throughout the second half and brought the game to overtime. Oregon is not typically known for their patient and consistent offense, but they stayed calm throughout overtime and let Barram, Antonio Rueda, and Quinn Buermeyer march the disc down the field time and time again. Oregon has a winnable game against Las Vegas next week, as they search for back-to-back wins and potentially a path to playoff positioning. Seattle heads into a double-header weekend on the road in Salt Lake in Oakland, two tough places to search for a rebound win.

3. Montreal 24-23 New York

After losing Tobe Decreane and seeing every other division rival stock up on new talent, hopes were high in Montreal entering this season, but expectations were not. In any other division, Montreal has enough talent to genuinely feel like a playoff contender, but it just didn’t seem in the cards this season. Yet, the Royal played New York close last week and took home a win in a rematch, upsetting the Empire 24-23 at home. This is Montreal’s first win over New York in nearly seven years (their last win in the matchup was on June 23, 2018). Since that win, the Royal have lost the last ten in a row to New York. After losing to Boston on Friday night, the Empire have lost two games in a row for the first time since June 16-17, 2018. The Empire’s normally stingy defense had trouble getting a stop; this is only the second time in New York’s last 70 games that the Empire have allowed an opponent to score 24 goals.

New York was playing without Jack Williams and Antoine Davis, while the Royal had everyone necessary in attendance. Jeremy Hill has not played a full season since 2022, but was a key addition for Montreal this offseason. His ability to connect the downfield and handler layers kept the disc moving quickly for the Royal and never really allowed New York’s defense to settle in and find the mojo that made them the league’s most dominant line from 2021-2023. The loss pushes New York out of the playoff seeding for now, with Boston, Philadelphia, and DC all ahead of them. It’s early and the Empire absolutely have time to turn their season around, but at some point, they will need to earn wins if they want to return to the playoffs.

 

News and Notes

• New York’s weekend actually started with a loss in Boston. The Glory built a four goal lead before letting New York tie the game late and send the match to overtime. The Empire defense could not get enough pressure to get Boston to give up the disc and the Glory held on to keep their division lead.
• Boston also beat DC 14-11 on Sunday. Playing primarily on D-lines, Tannor Johnson-Go led the team with two assists, two goals, three blocks, and zero turnovers. Windy conditions led to a low score, but the Breeze’s inability to generate offense in the wind is starting to become a legitimate concern rather than just a funny joke based on their nickname.
• Like New York, Colorado suffered through a winless weekend. Aside from their shocking loss in Houston, the Summit also lost in Austin a day later. Kyle Henke finished with five goals and three blocks in the 18-16 win.
• Atlanta went 2-0 against Carolina this week. They won both the re-scheduled Week 2 game that had been postponed due to weather and their regularly scheduled matchup a few hours later. Brett Hulsmeyer dropped five assists and two goals in the second game–an impressive feat considering the fatigue that must have been setting in. While many UFA players are used to playing more than one game per day under college or USA Ultimate club rules, the UFA games are physically more taxing due to the bigger field and larger number of points played in a game.
• Madison beat Pittsburgh 20-14. Anthony Gutkowsky scored more than one-third of Madison’s goals, finishing with seven; he added four blocks too!
• San Diego earned another win over Los Angeles, their third of the season. Casey Wu was a standout contributor, with a 2A/5G/1D/0T stat line. San Diego started the game on a 5-0 run to set an early tone and really put the game out of reach.
• In their highly anticipated season debut, the Chicago Union trounced the Minnesota Wind Chill in Minnesota, winning the game 16-11. The low scores and high turnover count (each team had more than 20) can be attributed to strong winds, but Chicago clearly dealt with the conditions better than the Wind Chill. The depth of this Union team is hard to overstate, but it should be emphasized that they scored a break on nearly two-thirds of their defensive points.

 

Mailbag

Have a question about the UFA? Send it in to [email protected] with UFA Mailbag in the subject line. Subscribers can also DM me in the Ultiworld Discord or post questions in the UFA channel so others can chime in.

 

UFA Power Rankings Week 4

• Lots of changes this week, but none at the top. Boston goes 2-0 against New York and DC to keep their spot as the top team in the league.
• Atlanta’s and Chicago’s strong starts round out the top of the leaderboard.
• Minnesota drops to the lower half of the top ten with their big loss at home.
• Colorado, Seattle, and New York all fell to varying degrees, with their foes Houston, Oregon, and Montreal all bumping out of the bottom six.