Metro East Recap

For the third year in a row, The Cornell Buds are kings of the Metro East. After being relatively unchallenged for most of the tournament NYU decided to give them a scare early in the finals. To read about the finals, check out the recap on USAU.

http://www.usaultimate.org/news/recap-2011-college-open-d-i-regionals-metro-east/

Pool Play Saturday:

Most of pool play went according to plan, with the exception of a few upsets.

Pool A:

Cornell swept the pool as expected, but had a relatively close game with Princeton. I thought Rutgers would at least attempt to challenge Cornell, but by the looks of it, they were preparing for the cross over game. Brockport played Princeton competitively, but were savage most of the day.

Pool B:

Connecticut had no problem sweeping this pool, comfortably winning every game. There was a surprise upset with Cornell-B beating Queens on universe point to advance to the cross over game. Otherwise it was business as usual.

Pool C:

NYU had little trouble with the teams as they were content to get a few breaks and trade points till the end. Syracuse played a close game against Yale, but in the end held seed. RIT was eliminated from championship contention, going 0-3 in pool play.

Pool D:

Since I was following Buffalo, I saw most of these games in detail. This pool ended up completely scrambled from the initial seeding. Buffalo cruised to victory against TCNJ getting up early and trading out to win. Columbia had no trouble with any of its first two opponents and saved energy for the Buffalo game.

The Buffalo Albany game was a lot closer than expected, partially due to a bet between Albany’s current players and a Buffalo Alumni. Albany came out with everything they had, despite a savage roster. “Charlie” Brown from Albany, who has played for Bashing Pinatas, gave Buffalo the biggest match-up problems. After gaining an early lead, Buffalo relaxed a bit too much and went down 8-7 at half. They had to play their starters the rest of the way to pull out the 14-10 victory.

Seeds were holding until the final round. Columbia had the edge over Buffalo due to play by Kerry Chang and Milo Synder.  Chang would routinely run Buffalo’s best around, leaving a dust trail behind him. After Buffalo  adjusted to guarding the in’s and letting Columbia take deep shots, Buffalo found itself back in the game 5-6 after being down 6-3. From there, Columbia would extend it’s lead and take over the game, winning 13-9. Albany surprised TCNJ with an upset after they held an 11-9 lead. Supposedly, Greg Owens was resting to gear up for the cross over game when Albany was able to get back into the game. Albany would win 12-11 on universe, but forfeit the final cross over game due to not having enough players to compete.

Cross overs

There were no surprises in the cross overs as Buffalo cruised to victory over Princeton, Wesleyan would defeat Syracuse 15-13 in a close game, Yale would dispatch Cornell-B easily and Rutgers advanced due to an Albany forfeit. The top 8 seeds had all made championship play, with the 5 Seeded Columbia defeating the 4^th seeded Buffalo.

Quarter Finals

I was over concentrating on the NYU Buffalo game, and wasn’t able to pay attention to the others as closely. Columbia took care of Yale easily, where Connecticut found a way to beat an early season rival Rutgers, 15-11. Cornell was up on Wesleyan big before they managed a slight comeback. Buffalo seemed to start the game off on the right foot with a break, going up 1-0. However, Buffalo had no way to contain NYU’s high flying hucking  offense, and were soon down 4-1 and 6-2. Buffalo didn’t do themselves any favors, displaying  a lack of fundamentals in the early part of the game.

Buffalo was able to get some breaks and keep the score around 6-2, but was unable to mount a comeback. The players
I’ve talked about, David Ferraro, John Bain, and Zack Smith, were  too gassed to play at their best. NYU had much more depth, and just kept rolling through with intense physical defense.

Semi Finals

Cornell didn’t have much of an issue of taking care of Columbia, being 10-3 at one point in the game. The Connecticut-NYU game was much more contested. Early on, the teams were trading hucks back and forth, as Connecticut relied on its size with high release break throws and deep hucks. Husayn Carnegie really turned up the intensity, and started making great athletic plays after another.  Not just skying dudes, but legitimately catching layout Ds.

NYU would go up 6-4 off of a couple of breaks, and would continue to roll with Connecticut dropping the pull to make it 7-4.  Had Connecticut not made those early mistakes, this could have been much a different game. I felt like these two teams were relatively even in play, but NYU was executing better and much more organized. Having a coach, and a system, is much better in the end, then having players who just have played together for a long time. That being said, the game wasn’t out of reach and the second half consisted mostly of trading points, leading to an NYU victory.

Finals

I’ve already written up a review of the finals, so you can go ahead and check that out at USAUltimate.

More pictures to come, thanks to Quinton Ma.

 

I’ve got the final play below and then an interview with Alex Kadesch, Captain of Cornell.

 

My All Region Picks (I didn’t get to watch Rutgers, Yale or Wesleyan)

Consideration for first team

• Alex Kadesh- Cornell
• Neil Butler-Cornell
• Garret Bernstein-Cornell
• Husayn Carnegie-NYU – Player of the tournament, game changer, reason why NYU had a chance
• Kerry Chang-Columbia – Motor that didn’t stop, deserving of it for sure
• Greg Owens-TCNJ- While his team didn’t preform, this kid has a ton of talent and ups
• Milo Synder-Columbia – When Buffalo tried to guard him even, he destroyed them
• Brian Grundy-Cornell

 

Consideration for 2^nd Team

• Lu Wang-NYU – Steady Handler
• Ben Weyers -UConn
• David Ferraro-Buffalo
• Kamil Swarek-Uconn
• Zack Smith-Buffalo
• John Bain-Buffalo
• There were many unidentifiable players on NYU, several cutters with good puts
• Austin Raymond-Uconn
• Brian Varis -Uconn

There were players that I didn’t watch from Yale (Yuri Shandusky) and Rutgers who I didn’t get to watch, so I didn’t put them on here. I’d love for those to post about the tournament talking about who they thought was worthy of consideration.

Talking with teams after the fact, it looks like the Metro East should still be very wide open in the following year. All the teams that made the quarterfinals should use that as motivation.