First, apologies about not previewing Southerns, Tufts won and that is important for them going into the Series, more on this later.
With all the hype surrounding Easterns, and to a lesser extent Centex, College Terminus is a good tournament that’s remaining under the radar. In some way Terminus is more important than Easterns was. While Easterns featured many of the top teams from around the nation, Terminus features the teams that will determine the bid allocation going into Nationals. Here is what I’m looking at going into the weekend . . .
- Currently the Northwest, Ohio Valley, and Southwest regions all have very tenuous holds on team strength bids. Where those last three team strength bids go will be determined by how teams fare this weekend at Terminus. The lowest ranked team holding down a strength bid is Ohio and #19. The top four seeds at Terminus are #21 Tufts, #19 Ohio, #22 Ohio State and #27 Illinois.
- The number one seed, Tufts, had an alright Stanford Invite with a convincing win over Texas, but also a double game point loss to host Stanford. They followed that up by trouncing lesser competition at College Southerns. The question is, will Tufts be focused after a week of spring break?
- Can Ohio bounce back after a rough Easterns? And how will they fare at their third tournament in four weekends?
- Will OSU avenge their loss to Ohio at the Easterns Qual?
- Can Illinois build on a sneaky good Centex performance (two losses by a total of 4 points) at Terminus?
- What team outside of the top four will play well? Both Middlebury and Georgia qualified for Nationals last year. Georgia Tech and North Carolina had a good amount of early season hype. Also, Stanford and UNCW have both had up and down seasons, and if either of those teams is hot at Terminus they could very well win the thing.
For results throughout the weekend keep an eye on the Score Reporter: http://scores.usaultimate.org/scores/#college-open/tournament/8501
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