Ultimate Mayhem IV

Date - March 23-24, 2002
Where - Kingston, RI
Official Site - N/A
Pictures - Here
Team Members - Evan, Zack, Jay, Mark, Nina, Dan, Nate, Austin, Aman, Staples, Greg, Rick, Mike, Tonzi, Dave

The Rundown
Being our first tournament of the spring season, Ultimate Mayhem was going to be a good indication of how our team would do during the upcoming college season.  All in all it went very well.  We had a few too many dropped passes and throw-aways, but considering that it was the first time most of us had played in a tournament in months, we let them slide.

The weather was typical URI....windy.  Very, very windy.  Saturday was the worst, with sustained wind speeds around 20+ MPH, with gusts even higher.  That meant that many of the games played were going to be battles of who could get the most upwind points.

When we arrived on Saturday and saw the pools that had been made, we knew we had a decent chance to do well.  Our pool was made up of six teams, which meant there would be five straight games, and no byes.  We would be playing BU, Rochester, Bryant, RPI, and Quinnipiac.  We knew BU was going to be good and a tough game, but we'd played Bryant in the fall and beat them.  We'd also played Quinnipiac last year and did well against them, so we were hoping to win both of those games.  Rochester and RPI were unknowns, but we knew we'd have to play our top game all weekend if we wanted to do well.

Up first was Boston University.  The tournament started well with Jay winning the ro-sham for pull, but it quickly went downhill from there.  The Ozone Pilots capitalized on our dropped passes and was able to consistently score upwind points on us.   The first game of a tournament has traditionally not been our best, and this was no exception.  While we didn't play terribly, BU just outplayed us, with a final score of 13-4.  

Next was University of Rochester.  Ask anyone on the team what they thought of this game and they'll tell you we should have won it.  The final score of 10-4 doesn't make it sound like a close game because it really wasn't.  But it should have been.  We played far below our top level with a lot of drops, throw-aways, and loose defense.  This was a game most of us want to forget about.  Perhaps we'll get to play the Rochester guys again and throw our A-game at them, but until then, this game is stricken from memory.

Our third game was against Bryant College.  We had played them in the fall at our own 4321 tournament and had beaten them there.  So we had high hopes for this game.  Bryant didn't put up too much of a fight, but gave us a really fun game.  Our level of play still wasn't up to where it should be, but we were improving, as we won 13-4.

Our next game was against RPI, and with Tonzi  and the choir boys Mark, Greg, and Rick leaving, we were down to eight players.  What we lacked in numbers we made up for in our play, as we really put it all together and put an end to all the unnecessary drops.  We were able to really work it upfield through some tight RPI defense.  There were quite a few long points as both teams tried to work it into the strong headwind.  After a hard-fought game, hardcap was called and we were victorious.  Final score 9-5.

Our final game of pool play was against Quinnipiac University.  Famous for having the same color jerseys as us, Quinnipiac had been at a similar level to us in the past, so we knew we'd need to keep up the intensity that we had in the last game.  Seeing as the Bus is dead, jersey color wasn't an issue, but we ended up playing 6's when one of their players injured himself.  We didn't complain since we were low on numbers as well.  We kept our crisp throws and tight D from the last game, and while we weren't necessarily very intense, we had plenty of patience and were again able to work it upwind very effectively.  After a tough game, we ended the day on a high note with a 13-7 win.

We came back on Sunday morning to find out that it was going to be a single-elimination bracket.  We also discovered that since Rochester didn't show up, that meant we would be second seed in our pool.  Unfortunately, that didn't help us when the bracket was made, since they had us playing the number 2 seeded Brandeis from the other pool, while the third seed from our pool RPI played the number 3 seeded Bridgewater.  We didn't complain and we played.  We came at the massive Brandeis team with all we had.  We opened up the game strongly keeping up with Brandeis score for score.  We played with intensity and we played like we wanted it.  Unfortunately, we started the day at, as Mace put it, 8 out of 10.  And while we needed to bring it up to 11 to win, we were never really able to bring it up to the level Brandeis was playing.  While the final score was 13-4, it didn't really reflect the game well, as we made them work for every point, especially during the first half.

The loss to Brandeis in the quarterfinals left us with no more official games, but we set up a scrimmage with URI and had a fun game with them, although we ended up losing to them, too.  The final score was something like 13-8 or 13-9 or so.

Overall it was a great weekend, and a great start to the spring season.  We played a lot of 1-3-3 zone and had some tight man defense.  The tournament gave us a good starting point to build off of for the upcoming tournaments leading up to sectionals.

Results (3-3)
Saturday Pool Play
Game 1 - Loss to Boston University. score 4-13
Game 2 - Loss to University of Rochester, score 4-10
Game 3 - Win over Bryant College, score 13-4
Game 4 - Win over RPI, score 9-5
Game 5 - Win over Quinnipiac University, score  13-7
Sunday Elimination Rounds
Game 6 - Loss to Brandeis University, score 4-13