2014 Masters Championships - Day 2 Recap
Posted: July 19, 2014 09:08 PM
Men's Masters
As expected, Horse and Surly won their pre-quarterfinal games this morning, creating 1 v. 2 and 3 v. 4 match ups in one half of the quarterfinals bracket, but that was all she wrote for either team. No team that survived the pre-quarterfinal round also won their next game.
Against Surly, Tejas continued to dominate. With the exception of their final pool play game against Black Cans & Highlands, Tejas has posted large margins of victory in each of their games this weekend. They took down Surly 14-10 and headed to a semifinal match up against Reckon. Reckon had followed suit and eliminated the second of four pre-quarterfinal winners when they took down Horse in the quarters with a dominant 15-8 win.
In the semifinals, Tejas prevailed yet again and handed Reckon their first loss of the weekend, forcing the end of the 2014 Masters Championships bid and leaving them finished tied for third. Tejas is headed to the finals.
While the top seeds were battling it out on one half of the bracket, on the other side, the nine seed was facing the six, and the fourteen seed was pitted against the five seed. In this instance, the higher the number, the better. The Floridians of Woolly Mammoth continued their run in defending their home turf and knocked out OhiOld (6) while Philly Masters managed to survive their run in with BAM! (5).
Determined to stick around Sarasota as long as possible before beginning their drives back to all corners of the state, Woolly Mammoth served up a tough loss to Philly Masters in the semifinals, 14-8, and earned themselves a spot in tomorrow morning's championship final against Tejas.
Women's Masters
While the men's masters teams were slogging their way through the early stages of the championship bracket, the women's masters teams finished up pool play.
Second-seeded Mint rallied on day two to earn themselves a pair of wins to close out pool play, bringing their record to 2-2. With the help of point differential, it was enough to get them into the championship bracket, but they couldn't get by the COUGARS in the quarterfinal round, falling 11-10. They'll play Yeehaw tomorrow morning for fifth place.
Hot Flash was forced to start their day against the overall one seed, Ripe. Despite the chemistry they gained on day one, they couldn't get past the North Carolinians. But Hot Flash did enough with their two wins on day one to make it through to bracket play where they defeated Yeehaw 13-11 in the quarterfinals. Their reward? A rematch with Ripe tomorrow morning for a spot in the finals.
Ripe has not yet been truly tested, but if trends continue, they look destined for a showdown with Pool B winner Philadelphia Loose Cannon. There is a fair amount of familiarity between these teams - former teammates, players formerly in the same mid-atlantic region, etc. - so the match up, assuming it happens, should be an exciting one.
Like Ripe, Loose Cannon also rolled through their final two rounds of pool play, winning 15-4 and 15-1 over Yeehaw and Restless, respectively. Their day was over by 1:00pm, leaving them plenty of time to rest up for their semifinal match up against COUGARS tomorrow morning at 9:00am ET.
Grandmasters
Again in the grandmasters division, no team that made it through the pre-quarterfinal round also survived the quarterfinals.
The biggest surprise in the division came in the semifinal round - both of last year's finalists, No Country and Georgetown Brewing, were eliminated, guaranteeing there won't be a back-to-back champion in 2014. Both teams lost their match ups on double-game point.
There is still a chance for a repeat champ. Surly blew past WSUC 15-9 in the quarterfinals before meeting Georgetown Brewing in the semis. It was a rematch of last year's semifinals, but this time, Surly came out on top with an 11-10 win. Surly last won the grandmasters title in 2012 when the event was held in their home state.
Even though, as predicted, the semifinals included the top four seeds, tomorrow's final will be fought between the three and four seeds: Surly v. Shadows. Another finals team that hasn't yet seen many challenges, Shadows arrived in the semifinals with an average win margin of 8.5 before taking down the defending champions by a single point, 10-9.
Despite being such a hotbed of ultimate, a Bay Area team has never won the grandmasters championship - until tomorrow, perhaps? The first pull of the championship finals goes up at 11:00am tomorrow.
Photos (by UltiPhotos)
#mastersnats
In yesterday's recap, we put out a challenge to the masters teams to show off their twitter skills. Below is a smattering of some of the team tweets since the first day ended.
When it comes to grading masters tweets, three teams really rose to the challenge. From a reporting perspective, @ohiold had a strong showing, but @WoollyUltimate earned the highest marks for the level of detail, with bonus points for reporting on other games going on. From both a photography and creativity standpoint, @nc_ripe and @HotFlashUlti did a great job storytelling their team's experience on, but especially off the field. @WoollyUltimate also did a great job mixing in photos to supplement their play by play reporting. The best use of hashtags was a draw between @WoollyUltimate and @HotFlashUlti, with Mammoth making good use of word play on their name, and Hot Flash blasting out the hashtags til late in the night. Overall, it was too close to pick a winner, but we applaud all these teams for their efforts in bringing something extra to the event.