This weekend, Carnegie Mellon’s Men’s ultimate team, Mr. Yuk, made the 8 hour drive out of snowy Pittsburgh to Charlotte, NC for Queen City Tune-Up. This was our first tournament since early November (Fall Easterns) and we have had very few opportunities to actually play ultimate since returning to school in January. While we haven’t had the best winter in terms of training, we did have a very productive fall season, so while my expectation was that we wouldn’t have the of best tournament, it was not unreasonable to think that we could do very well. As it turned out, my expectation was correct both results-wise and performance-wise.
Results-wise we went 3-4, with big wins against UNC, Cornell and NYU, but with upsetting losses to Ohio State and NCSU along with losses to Dartmouth and Michigan. This resulted in us taking 12th place out of 20, behind our original seeding of 10th.
Before I go on, let me just mention that the weather was a huge factor, particularly on Saturday. Reportedly winds were recorded at 20mph with gusts up to 40mph and all of our games were upwind-downwind. This had huge strategic implications for both teams, which ended up punting and playing defense on the downwind side, relying on the strong winds to help generate turns with favorable field position. Apart from Dartmouth, no team could move the disc up the field with any consistency, so upwind scores were hard to come by. Most games were consequently decided by one or two upwind scores.
Sunday was much less windy, but much colder than Saturday. The fields were frozen when we arrived and, at the start of our first game, the temperature was just about 32F. This more or less persisted throughout the day. But without the strong winds, Sunday was much more playable.
Performance-wise, we learned that we have many things to work on. Offensively, we struggled to move upwind against aggressive zone defenses. As I mentioned, part of this was because the winds were particularly strong, and most teams had difficulty doing this, but I think we can certainly improve in this area. Two specific things I think we can work on are keeping the disc off of the trap sideline and keeping the cup moving with fakes and crashes. Defensively, I think our zones need a lot of work; and I’m hopefully that this is just a product of not having practiced together in a couple of months. Our Defense-O and Offensive-D both need a fair amount of work; defensively we had many opportunities for breaks that we didn’t capitalize on and offensively we had trouble recovering the disc after a turn over.
While there are certainly many things to work on in preparation for the series, there were also some things that we did quite well. Firstly, our O-line didn’t get broken in 3 of our games on Saturday. This lead to our three wins of the tournament, all by a difference of just a couple of goals. If the offense can maintain this performance, we will be in a great position to win games in the future. Defensively, we managed to generate a lot of turnovers which is great, but as I mentioned, we had a hard time capitalizing on this. I was also pleasantly surprised with how well our D-line worked through zones, especially considering that we have a lot of people that are uncomfortable with their throws.
Here is a quick game-by-game recap:
- UNC — UNC was the first seed in our pool, and since we had a first round bye, we got in a good warmup and were ready to play come game time. The wind had already picked up a decent amount and we traded downwind O-points for most of the game. Offensively the strategy for both teams was to immediately huck to a receiver streaking deep, and play defense in the event of a turnover. This turned out to be a successful strategy as both teams struggled to work upwind. After a fairly monotonous game, we finally managed to earn ourselves an upwind break, and the subsequent downwind break sealed the victory. CMU wins 11-8 on hard cap, our O-line did not give up a break.
- Cornell — Coming off a huge with against UNC we were ready to bring it to Cornell. The winds picked up even more and this game proceeded much like the last one. We squeezed out a break just before half, and Cornell’s D-line could not score upwind, which resulted a positive result again for us. CMU wins 9-7 on hard cap and again our O-line did not give up a break.
- Dartmouth — While the winds were still raging, Dartmouth did not play the hucking strategy that we had grown accustomed to in the last two games. They had solid throwers that were comfortable both up- and down-wind and they capitalized on our O-lines turnovers to earn breaks. We struggled to move the disc upwind while they continued to be successful in both directions and this lead to a fairly easy win for them. Dartmouth wins 13-4.
- NYU — The last round of the day presented itself with a must-win situation for us if we wanted to make it to pre-quarters. Unfortunately we started out on the losing side of the coin flip, with NYU starting on offense going downwind. The game progressed as the previous ones had with both teams trading down-wind points and it looked like NYU would win in a hardcap situation, simply because they received first. However, just before half (pretty late in the game), our D-line somehow managed to get through NYU’s zone and earn a break. NYU looked about to do the same thing later but some game-saving plays helped us retain the lead and eventually earn the win. CMU wins 10-8 again on hard cap. O-line did not get broken.
- Pre-quarters: Michigan — Michigan is a historically very strong team and their experience certainly showed in this pre-quarters matchup. While the wind wasn’t as strong as Saturday, we did not adapt our strategy and turned the disc over too easily. Meanwhile, Michigan was very conservative, repeatedly breaking our marks and working this disc up the field to earn easy scores. Michigan wins fairly easily 15-6.
- 9th place bracket: North Carolina State — We played NCSU at Fall Easterns and beat them pretty handedly, but they were a much more prepared team this time around. Our O-line got broken several times early on and the D-line never managed to earn all of those breaks back. We went on a run later in the game but never managed to take the lead. In a disappointing loss, NCSU wins 10-8.
- 11th place game: Ohio State — We also played and beat OSU at Fall Easterns in a fun, pretty close game but this time Ohio State’s preparation really showed. Having played two other tournaments already this spring, they were clearly more conditioned, experienced and familiar with each other than we were, and they beat us handedly. OSU wins 15-8, we end up in 12th place, 2 places behind our initial seed of 10th.
We are going back to North Carolina (this time Wilmington) in a couple of weeks for Eastern’s Qualifier. With a lot of the same teams, we certainly have the potential to make some noise, but we cannot perform as we did this passed weekend in Charlotte. Stay tuned for what I hope will be some more exciting news.
akshaykrish 