Florida State beat South Carolina 13-10 in the Finals of Joint Summit yesterday. Props to the DUF guys, and props to my boy Pete, a Virginia teammate who is now coaching them. A couple things…
- This is a big win for Florida State. DUF had an up and down fall: it went winless on Saturday at the UOA ACC Championships, rallied to win three of four games on Sunday, and placed 15th after posting a 2-5 record at CCC. Coming out and beating a few Southeast Region rivals in the first tournament of the spring should be a huge confidence boost for a team that has some real talent, and as anyone who has played in college knows, early wins are a huge part of getting people out to practices. We’ll see how DUF does at T-Town Throwdown.
- Joint Summit was a good tournament to check out mid-level teams from the Southeast and Atlantic Coast. Neither region sent any of its top dogs, but teams like South Carolina, William and Mary, Clemson, and Alabama will all challenge to make Sunday at Regionals. In particular, it’s interesting to see East Carolina make Semis, I had heard the Irates were going to be rebuilding this year.
- As you might suspect from the last bullet point, a lot of the teams at Joint Summit relied on 3 or 4 guys to make things happen. For example, I heard that South Carolina has two quality handlers that swing it back and forth while they wait for their two favorite cutters (one of them being #22, Chris Van Thiel. He tried out for the Squires this summer. The word “burly” comes to mind.) to get open deep; sometimes they mix in a strike cut. That sounds about right, as these teams are good enough to win any given game but aren’t dominant because they struggle to keep their role players up to speed. It’s often said that the best teams are there not because of their starting lineup but because of the quality on their bench, and I think the field at Joint Summit is a good example of why that is the case.
- For some extensive prose on the weekend, check it out: http://nolookscoober.wordpress.com/
- Also, I’ve always liked this blog for its focus on one particular area. It’d be cool to see more of its kind pop up: http://bamasecs.wordpress.com/
- It’s hard to say how Joint Summit could affect regional bids to Nationals. I’d assume it gives the Southeast an early edge since Florida State took down both William and Mary and South Carolina, but it’s way too early to tell, and we don’t even know how the algorithm is going to be set up yet.
Nice to see ultimate underway in this area of the country. Next up is T-Town Throwdown, Alabama’s home tournament. As mentioned, Florida State will be there, along with Bama, Auburn, and Emory, but they’ll face much tougher competition in Florida, Georgia, and Middlebury. This should give an even clearer picture of the Southeast, though Georgia Tech won’t be there because they’ll be at the spring ACC Championships in Chapel Hill along with Clemson, Virginia Tech, and North Carolina.
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