Hey everyone,
Here is a re-cap of our past weekend in St. Louis for Cultimate's Huck Finn. This is the last tournament NUT will participate in before the official UPA series begins on April 17th.
Saturday:
Temperature: Mid 70s
Wind: 15 MPH
Despite the good weather, Saturday was a pretty rough day for the team finishing 1-3 for the day.
Wisconsin-Whitewater: 6-13 Loss. Not much to say besides this team was ready to play and we weren't. The game was never really close and the strong break throws from the Whitewater players presented a big problem for us.
Michigan: 6-13 Loss. Came out hot and took a 4-2 lead but gave away the lead with poor execution and decision making. Michigan took half 4-7 and easily rallied to take the win. Pretty disappointing loss that reminded the older players of our Regionals loss to Michigan the previous year.
Indiana: 10-9 Win against one of our sectional rivals. Both teams were quite sloppy but we managed to pull out the win after time expired. Not exactly the prettiest win but kept us from going winless in the A power-pool.
Wash U-Alums: 7-13 Loss in our cross over game against the mix of Wash U alums and random older players from St. Louis. Came out with no energy and quickly let the more experienced players dominate the game. Somewhat of an embarrassing loss as we let them walk all over us.
Sunday:
Temperature: High 70s, Low 80s
Wind: 25 MPH
Purdue: 13-6 Win against a sectional opponent that we had lost to twice already this year (though both times were not with full squads). Got some early breaks and played with a lot more energy than any of our Saturday games. Solid win to start out the Sunday championship bracket.
Michigan: 11-10 Win against the likely favorite to win the Great Lakes Region. Our level of intensity and energy was far superior to any game we'd played all season and the team played at an extremely high level. Our O-line scored its first 7 downwind points without committing a single turnover and the D-lines managed to generate turns on every point. Despite the close final score, we played much better than Michigan and had several break opportunities on their upwind goal line that we failed to convert. Huge win to bring some momentum into Sectionals.
Wisconsin-Whitewater: 12-13 Loss in a Saturday Rematch. NUT played much better than in our previous game and both teams traded the whole game. Featured several stellar defensive plays but missed opportunities on universe point led to us losing to Wisconsin-WW for the 2nd consecutive day.
Overall, the Sunday results made up for a very poor showing on Saturday. The weekend helped point out several of our weaknesses that we can hopefully workout before the UPA series begins. The Central Plains Sectionals are April 17th/18th in Naperville, IL-- we would greatly appreciate anyone who could come out an support us!
-Jenga
