CCC - Women's

I’m officially out of new things to talk about, so I’m pretty much relegated to doing tournament write-ups. At least they haven’t started calling for my head (yet) over on ultimatetalk. When it inevitably does happen, I plan to take the road of seppuku, blocking the rss feed on my site before Idris can pull the plug. I’m currently printing, “Keep Luke on Ultimatetalk” stickers. If you email me your credit card number I’ll send you some.

Pretty much all of the AC region contenders were at CCC this weekend, and things are considerably more wide open than they have been in the past. Florida is for real and is the early frontrunner with their win this weekend, but I think seven teams have a chance of grabbing the AC’s bids to natties. UNC is probably the most athletic team in the region and will be very tough down the stretch. Emory is improving despite poor coaching. Wake Forest rolled over teams on Saturday before losing to a very smart Tufts team in the quarters. UGA’s record this weekend is not indicative of their strength. They basically played their rookies a whole bunch. They still have two Ozone players and will likely be adding a third in the spring. NCST and UVA both lost several key players from last year but both have strong young players. In general the region is very young this year. At this point, I’d say none of these teams are as strong as last year’s big four, and any number of teams could realistically come out on top in the end. Should be a fun spring in the AC.

I’d expect all of the out of region teams to be among the better teams in their respective regions as well. Tufts brought a fairly small squad down but did a good job of taking care of the frisbee. Their low numbers caught up with them late in the day on both Saturday and Sunday. Penn State has some really good top end players – Erin Crider made several big time plays. I’m sure they’ll be battling it out with Cornell for the ME title. I was impressed by Michigan’s handlers and with the Purdue losing everyone, they have to be the frontrunners in the GL. Texas A&M has some big athletes and likes hanging it up to them.

Last year I watched Iowa playing at CCC and thought, “this is a team that could easily make the semi-finals of nationals.” I didn’t really see a team like that at CCC this year. The teams were very good, but none of these teams is a truly elite team yet. Of course, it’s only November so there’s plenty of time for teams to take their games to the next level.