The Illini come into the Big Dance as an 8th seed. This places us in pool A for the first two days of competition. With Florida’s hubris and Oregon’s immaturity baring them from this year’s championship, the field is wide open. No team is guaranteed the title, let alone the top seed from their pool. Carleton holds the one seed overall, but even they don’t have an easy road.
This year’s national event is the biggest in UPA history with 20 teams and four days of competition. The games are fairly spread out over the weekend with 2 or 3 games a day for each team. This serves to eliminate the “advantage” of a well placed bye round or an exceedingly large roster.
The Illini are in the same pool as Carleton, Tufts, Georgia, and UCSB. As mentioned before, we’re the second seed in this pool, and I believe we’ll hold that position. But our loss won’t necessarily be to Carleton. In fact, I don’t think anyone in our pool will go undefeated. Carleton is good, but they aren’t invincible. Tufts is having a great year, and Georgia is always tough (by my recollection, I’ve never beaten Georgia). I’m not sure what to expect from Santa-Barbara, but a top twenty team cannot be underestimated.
Our strength lies in our team-style of play. We rolled at regionals by being dominant with every person and position on the field. If one person started faltering, the rest of the team picked him up. If the opponent shut down one of our cutters, the other three got open and made plays. When we played at regionals, we showed a consistency that had been lacking in all of our previous tournaments, but regionals is over. Now we’re playing at nationals.
We’ve been here before, so there’s no pressure. No one expected us to be here, so there’s no pressure. We’re a good team that puts seven solid players on the line every point, so there’s no pressure. I’ve said this many times, and I’m going to say it again: Ultimate is about having fun, and winning is a lot more fun than losing. So let’s win.
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