UMASSACRE 2002

Date - April 6-7, 2002
Where - Amherst, MA
Official Site - N/A
Pictures - Here
Team Members - Evan, Zack, Jay, Nina, Dan, Nate, Aman, Staples, Mike, Dave, James

The Rundown
The first annual UMassacre featured 23 teams from the New England and Metro East regions.  With teams ranging from national championship competitors like Tufts, Harvard, and UMass down to teams like... well... us, this tournament gave us a chance to play with some great competition and show the world what Bullet is made of.

The tournament directors decided to decided to have two power-pools with the top ten seeds from the tournament only playing each other, and letting the rest of the teams battle it out for the six remaining spots into the Sunday winners bracket.  Our pool had us playing Amherst Colege, SUNY Binghamton, and Brandeis University along with a crossover game with a team from another pool.  We were seeded third in our pool, and 19th overall in the tournament.

Our first game was against Amherst College, the top seed in our pool.  We'd played Amherst before, the last time being at our own 4321 tournament in October.  They had beaten us fairly easily that day, so we were hoping to give them a better game than before.  They came out strong and quickly scored four unanswered points before we even realized what had happened.  We were able to work it up the field against their tight defense to score one point in the first half, but Amherst didn't have any worries as they took half 7-1.  The second half was more of the same.  We were able to work it up the field for one score, but Amherst's D was super tight, and with a solid O were able to capitalize on our turnovers.  At the end of the game we were battered but still in high spirits knowing there were better games ahead.

Our next game was with SUNY Binghamton.  None of us knew anything about their team, except that they were seeded one beneath us, so someone must have thought we were better than them.  Our level of play was still not as high as it could have been, but SUNY wasn't able to capitalize on our mistakes like Amherst was.  This game had a few long points with a lot of turnovers from both teams, and you could tell neither team was playing their top game.  We were able to pull out to an early lead and we never looked back.  Hard cap was called and the final score was 10-7.

The last team in our pool was Brandeis University.  Two weeks earlier we played them in the quarterfinals at Ultimate Mayhem IV in Rhode Island and had lost 13-4, even though we played them hard.  This time we played them even harder.  We kept up with them score for score, playing good defense and smooth offense.  Both teams were able to score upwind on the other, and we even took the lead for a bit. Brandeis responded and took the half 7-6.  In the second half we kept our intensity level high as we continued to match them every score.  Finally, hard cap was called during the point when the score was 11-10 with Tron leading.  Since the game was within one we kept playing, and with the downwind advantage we tried to work it downfield but unfortunately turned it over.  On the turn Brandeis capitalized on our sloppy transition to defense and put us away.  Final score 12-10 Tron.

Our final game on Saturday was against Harvard B.  We had heard that they had broken seed in their pool and were better than expected, so we knew we needed to keep our intensity up.  While the Harvard boys were able to give us a good game, we were in control throughout, and finished the day winning 12-8.  We were pleased to have gone 2-2 while giving Brandeis a tough game and holding seed in our pool.

Having finished third in the pool, we didn't qualify for the winners bracket on Sunday.  Instead we were placed in the consolation bracket along with Bridgewater State, Harvard B, UMass B, Northeastern, Drew University, and SUNY Binghamton.  Our first game was against Drew University.  None of us had ever heard anything about this New Jersey team, so we didn't know quite what to expect from them.  We knew we should play hard, but none of us seemed to want to.  While we were making good cuts and playing decent defense, we had a lot of drops and bad throws, which allowed Drew to capitalize and take the game 13-8.

That loss put us in the super-consolation bracket, and it was now single elimination.  We would play SUNY Binghamton again, and this time around it was pretty similar to our game with them the day before.  We played much more solidly than we had against Drew, and were able to put Binghamton away 13-7.  The highlight of this game was an awesome in-the-cup D block to Callahan score by Jay.  It was pretty sweet.

Our next game was the super-consolation finals.  We would play Harvard B in a rematch of the previous day's crossover game with them.  While we were able to maintain a lead throughout most of the game, including at game point 12-11, we were tired and not playing our best.  We allowed 3 straight points and ended the weekend as super-consolation runners-up, losing 14-12.  

Overall it was a great tournament, very well run and with great spirit and play by all teams in attendance.  We're already looking forward to next year's massacre.  It was a great experience for our team, as we learned a lot about each other and about our play on the whole.

Results (3-4)
Saturday Pool Play
Game 1 - Loss to Amherst College. score 2-13
Game 2 - Win over SUNY Binghamton, score 10-7
Game 3 - Loss to Brandeis University, score 10-12
Game 4 - Win over Harvard B, score 12-8
Sunday Consolation Bracket Games
Game 5 - Loss to Drew University, score 8-13 
Game 6 - Win over SUNY Binghamton, score 13-7
Game 7 - Loss to Harvard B, score 12-14