The winners and the results from this year's D-I contests, including our revamped and refreshed #TheGame
June 15, 2026 by Keith Raynor in Fantasy
With the 2026 USA Ultimate Division-I College Championships in the book, the Beat Charlie Challenge and #TheGame are all wrapped up. We picked the winners, guessed the props, and tried to find the upsets and which favorites to target. Hopefully, following along was fun. We keep trying to improve the mechanics to make it as fun as possible!
This year, we tried hosting #TheGame at Unbenchable, which gave us live updates and an easy to enter layout. If you have any thoughts on that, please let me know!
#TheGame
The Winners
Armed with both champions, Sammy Abusab gathered 359 points. UMass M and Carleton W each won 110, but Contenders Pittsburgh M and Penn W each earned 40. Even Sammy’s Underdog, Western Washington, garnered 30 more. Sammy also hit on three of the four bonus questions.
Sammy wins a free month of All-Access subscription and Combat Candy prize pack.
team aura finished second with 349, with the same champion pairing and WWU in the Underdog slot. Oregon W and SLO M filled the Contenders slot, and Oregon only brought in 30 points. Since team aura also got three of four bonus questions, that left Fugue accounting for the gap between this squad and the champion.
Scott Dunham finished third, with Carleton W and Carleton M leading the way, and Tufts W tallying 55 as a Contender. But Scott is ineligible for a prize, so let’s look at Chico You Know, who scored 339. With another three out of for bonus Qs, Carleton W, UBC W, and Tufts as a Contender, this was a strong lineup. Underdog Georgia Tech M, despite a strong showing in the standings, only had 20 points.
team aura and Chico You Know each win a free month of Standard subscription.
Selection Stats
Top 5 Bonus Teams
- Colorado M (21.7%)
- Oregon M (11.5%)
- Carleton W (9%)
- Carleton M (9%)
- UBC W (8.3%)
In our first edition of doing this, the clear preferred strategy was snapping up two Favorites. That proved prescient, as even with a no. 5 seed, UMass, winning the title, having the title winners was still the best path to points. If we had had a deeper run from the lower tiers, maybe things would have changed, but people weren’t expecting that or willing to bet on it.
Expecting scoring changes to further incentivize a wider spread of bonus selections.
Top 3 Favorites Selections
- Carleton W (71%)
- Colorado M (37%)
- UBC W(18%)
Top 5 Contenders Selections
- Cal Poly SLO M (55%)
- Tufts W (42%)
- North Carolina W (36%)
- UC Santa Cruz M (17%)
- Penn W / Pittsburgh M (9%)
Top 3 Underdog Selections
- Georgia Tech M (28%)
- Western Washington M (28%)
- Vermont W (16%)
Happy to report that every single team got picked, even though we had quite a few with only one selection. These Underdogs, along with Michigan Men (13%) captured the lion’s share of the sleeper picks.
The Bonuses
How many top 4 seeds will make semifinals? (11 pts)
61% of entrants correctly selected six. Only one single entrant said all eight would make it, shout out to that brave soul.
What will be the result of the men’s division game Carleton vs. Cal Poly SLO matchup? (9 pts)
SLO +1.5 was not popular, getting selected only 10% of the time. Carleton wins by 3 was the most popular (40%), but the correct answer of Carleton wins by 4 or more was not far behind (32%).
How many games will the combined seeds no.9, no. 10, no.11, and no.12 seeds win in pool play? (9 pts)
The three seeds were not popular this year! A whopping 71% of entries selected this group to underperform their expected 16 wins, and they were right!
What will be the result of the women’s division game Washington vs. Penn matchup? (9 pts)
Washington wins by 4 or more was the most popular option (41%), though curiously, Penn wins or loses by 1 was the second most popular (25%). But all four options seemed in play and the Washington wins folks got pretty bailed out by both team’s having their fates sealed by the time this match was played.
Beat Charlie Challenge
But let’s see how Charlie did, talk about the popular picks, and announce the winners for this round of the BCC.
Charlie’s Picks
A middling performance that just about matched his last total. With 25 points, Charlie was beaten out by 57 entries, giving him a 66th percentile score. The average score was 24,4, so he was slightly above that mark.
Charlie’s Most Recent Result: 67th percentile (Club Championships 2025)
Charlie’s All-Time High: 97th percentile (D-I Championships 2021)
Charlie’s All Time Low : 47th percentile (Club 2023)
This run’s top scorers: Tony Cao stood well above the entire field, with 34 points. Tony got all but two quarterfinals from the women’s division. Nobody else got over 30, though Zep, Myles P, and Scott Dunahm all hit 30.
Women’s Division
- Quarterfinals
- #1 Carleton
- #2 UBC
- #3 UC Santa Cruz
- #4 Stanford
- #5 Washington
- #6 Tufts
- #7 UNC
- #9 UPenn
- Semifinals
- #1 Carleton
- #2 UBC
- #3 UC Santa Cruz
- #5 Washington
- Final
- #1 Carleton
- #2 UBC
- Champion
- #1 Carleton
- Scored: 13
- Avg. Entry: 12.5
Charlie’s long been a “chalk in the women’s division” picker, and this end result was absolute chalk. Of the roughly 340 final slots across all entries, fewer than 50 had a team other than Carleton or UBC reaching the division’s last game, and 78% of entries had Syzygy winning the title. The points to pick up where with semifinalists Tufts and Stanford, who both lagged behind UC Santa Cruz and Washington in selection rate, which helped Charlie since he called for both of the teams that missed to reach semis. He did get 6 of 8 quarterfinalists.
Men’s Division
- Quarterfinals
- #1 Oregon
- #2 Colorado
- #3 Carleton
- #4 UNC
- #5 UMass
- #6 Cal Poly SLO
- #7 Oregon State
- #12 Texas
- Semifinals
- #1 Oregon
- #2 Colorado
- #3 Carleton
- #4 UNC
- Final
- #1 Oregon
- #2 Colorado
- Champion
- #2 Colorado
- Scored: 8
- Avg. Entry: 9.4
Like yours truly, Charlie faded UMass in favor of UNC, and that was obviously a painful mistake. UMass was the more popular semi pick (43% to 32%), although that shrunk to 13% in the final and somehow 0% to win the title. Charlie’s below average performance was also in part to taking a shot on two teams to make quarters – Oregon State and Texas – that missed, while missing Pittsburgh and Penn State.
Fantasy
Denotes a a pick that was in the top ten for the category. An additional point is awarded if the player selected was top 3 the division.
- Women’s Div. Goals: Mika Kurahashi
- Women’s Div. Assists: Quincy Booth
- Men’s Div. Goals: Xavier Fuzat
- Men’s Div. Assists: Mica Glass
- Total: 4 points
Interestingly, Charlie picked the same two assist leaders as he did last year. And they both scored for him! Quincy Booth (the second most popular choice behind Chagall Gelfand) even hit the top 3 leaderboard again. Mika Kurahashi (the most popular fantasy pick in any category, with 40%) also contributed, giving Charlie and improved four-point fantasy total. The average entry had just 2.4.
The Winners
Tony Cao takes home the top prize of a free month of All-Access subscription as the top scorer.
Tyler Mahony and Isabelle Russell were randomly selected players who outscored Charlie who will both also receive a free month of Standard subscription.
Feedback Welcome!
Did you play? Did you not play? Why or why not? What rules would be fun to play with? What tweaks can be made?
This is perhaps the most satisfied I’ve been with outcomes here from a game-design standpoint. But I’m always open to new ideas!
We want the Beat Charlie Challenge and #TheGame to be fun and have different strategies be viable without being too complicated for lots of people to enter. You can contact me by emailing [email protected].
