Arguably the best rivalry in college ultimate will be played this Sunday for 1 spot to nationals. CUT v. Hodags in Iowa City. Only 1 bid from the Central Region. Very tough.

First, there is absolutely 0% that any other team will be in the finals. Unless a natural disaster hits Northfield or Madison within the next 3 days. I think Luther, Iowa St., Minnesota, Whitewater, etc. all have some good players and will be better in the future. None of them have a shot at playing for nationals. I am very comfortable saying this even though I have watched 60 minutes of college frisbee this year.

Second, is there a better rivalry in college? The way I understand it, they have hated each other since the early 90s. They have always been in the same region. The last year they did not play each other in the finals was 99. Besides the occasional Iowa team, these 2 have dominated the Central Region since the new regions in 99.

So who wins this game? It comes down to CUT's throwers v. Hodags' athletes (not to say CUT has no athletes and vice versea). But I do not think you can argue with the strengths of these 2 teams. CUT will break your mark and throw long in many ways with several talented throwers. Madison will beat you deep and under as well as d you.

The format favors Madison. They seem to have a deeper bench and seem to rely on guys who are able to replace one another. I believe they will have 3 games on Saturday and the finals will be the 3rd game on Sunday. The only time they face will be the 6th game of the weekend. CUT will have to have 3 or 4 of those games to be ez. If it is windy and they can play zone, that could easily be accomplished.

I think it helps CUT if weather becomes a factor. They can play more zone, probably get easier goals on D, and maybe people will play more zone against them. That way their main throwers can get more of a rest.

I do not know if Madison has a good zone, I am assuming they do with their ability to put athletes deep and on the wings. But when I look at their roster, it seems to me they will crush with a man to man d.

Madison has obviously had the better season. I heard rumors of a CUT injury or 2, but we scrimmaged them last weekend and their full squad looked healthy, fast, and ready to go.

If I were Madison, I would worry about slowing down the top 4 or 5 throwers. I don't think physical is the way to go, those guys were abuse physical marks by taking the free throw, etc.

If I were CUT, I would worry about Madison's ability to put it deep and high and not necessarily being able to do anything about it.

Madison is the favorite I believe (winning Centex, Terminus), but I do not think that means anything between these 2. Madison was the obvious favorite last year. A freak wrist injury and the next thing you know CUT has a big lead and takes the region. Hasn't CUT won regionals the last 3 years? That has got to mean something.

I anticipate the best college game of the year, so far. No region has these stakes. No region has the history between the teams. No region has the stud players of these 2 teams. I think all the other teams going to regionals are excited to watch this game.

I wish I could be there. The only thing I will predict is that both teams will be in the finals (the ez prediction). No way, will I attempt to predict the outcome.

Going back to the 1998 college season, I left off at regionals. This was the last year of the 6 region system. So Colorado, CUT, Madison, and Iowa all were in our region. And at that time, much better than us. Plus, Oberlin + ND were pretty good.

I feel like anyone who played at this tournament remembers it. Or at least, anyone who played on Sunday. The weather was probably the worst I have ever played in.

We hosted regionals that year. Regionals is always during Finals or Graduation for Michigan. We were afraid of travelling to Colorado for regionals, so we hosted it. And by hosted it, I mean Jon Bakija did a lot of work and we played at Concordia College.

Saturday was absolutely beautiful. When I think about days playing ultimate, Saturday was the ideal. A little chilly in the morning, maybe upper 40s/lower 50s. But almost no clouds. Gorgeous sun. And a little breeze. Nothing too bad, but enough to kill any bad throws.

There was a Klink-friendly format used, meaning pool play. 4 pools. I believe everyone else had 5 teams, we only had 4. We were the 7th seed and in CUT's pool along with IU and Miami Ohio.

All games to 17 and we started with Miami, OH. Continuing with the tradition of absolutely killing the bottom team in our regionals pool, we crushed Miami. This game as well as our drubbing of IU really do not stand out. The games were not close and we were excited to play CUT.

At this point, we had never played CUT before. Some of our guys played them during fall regionals in Lexington, so we were pretty stoked. We had a bunch of people out watching us, the weather was great, and the wind was starting to pick up a little. Still not bad, but it was a little more intense.

They start on O, after a couple of turns they go up 1-0. Then 2-0, 3-0, 4-0... Take half 9-0. 10-0, 11-0, 12-0, 13-0. Luckily, we were playing to 17. Ugly. We did not really have an O and D team at this stage, but we definitely had guys who mainly played O and guys who mainly played D. Well, the guys that mainly played D were not too happy at 13-0. I feel like we tried everything, punt + zone, 3-man weave, etc., but everything we did resulted in the same thing a turnover followed by a goal (sometimes multiple turns). Somewhere in the early tens, our d guys started to play. I do remember Rook (probably our sketchiest O player at that time) scoring the first goal. 13-1. Yeah! The game ended 17-3. I am fairly sure this was the worst defeat in terms of point diff I have ever experienced. I wish I had some sort of stat sheet from this game. Just to see points played and turns.

So we were devastated, but still in the quarters. Against Iowa who had already beaten us a couple times that year, but we felt we could play with. So all was not lost. I drove home w/ Karl, probably our main d guy. Meaning he didn't get to play much in the last game. He was p.o'd at me since I called the subs. That was fun. I get home, take a long nap, go over to Jaegs and most everyone on the team is over there bbq'ing and drinking. Pretty much the only thing to do at that point.

We are still throwing, the wind is picking up, it is cooling down, and we drink for a while. Most of us end up at the party, which I think was at the nectarine, a fine local club in Ann Arbor. Funny place for a frisbee party, but still good times. After having way too much fun at nectos, Pfil and I stumble back to our respective places in very cold and very rainy conditions. Very different from earlier in the weekend. I leave Pfil, but he would return to my place 4 hours later picking me up to go back to Concordia and rain.

That morning I woke up and watched the weather channel. The weather continued to get worse from about 6 pm on Saturday until then, ~8 am on Sunday. There was a 40 degree difference in temp and there was a lot of precipitation. It was very cold, but not cold enough for snow. It was a nice rainy/ice mixture. Plus, there was a greater than 20 mph wind.

At the stage in my ultimate career, I only had cotton. So I took maybe 2 cotton long sleeves and my uniform and headed out the door. We get there and a big meeting about playing regionals. Well, no lightning so it was going to be played. Dave Hunter gets the biggest score by getting McDonalds to donate a couple things of coffee.

We "warm up" with some throwing drills, which for us meant a lot of chasing.

Finally, we play Iowa. These conditions really played to Iowa's advantage. They had an excellent 4 person cup zone. They had 4 or 5 strong throwers, that were not necessarily the most athletic, but they could throw very well. They were much more experienced. Oh, and they had Ryan Nation. By the second half of our quarters game, we had lost 2 of our best throwers, Bischoff and Reiks, b/c they could not throw a disc. (Sidenote, they were graduate students who both went to undergrad in the south).

Iowa's 4 man trap was killing us. We rarely got it off the line and when we did, it was a dying blade from myself or Bakija to the middle of the field, hoping someone would catch it. The final was something like 15-6 or 8. Never that close.

So we drop down into the backdoor bracket to face Madison. A team that usually crushes us. It was getting colder and windier. There were now several guys on our squad just in cars and not playing b/c they were too cold to play. Since people were so cold, our rotation was pretty small, maybe me, Jaegs, Hales, Pfil, Wu, Paul, Karl, Dave H., Gus, and Jon. About only half our roster was playing, if you sat on the sideline for too long, you were no good. Maybe if you were drinking coffee you had a chance.

Madison comes out in a 3-man cup zone and this gives us almost as much trouble. When we do get open looks, we are too tentative. Brian Lane (sort of coach) is screaming at us to just bomb it anytime we get an open shot. Basically, we are turning it over anyway, why not turn it over with a chance near the endzone? We do eventually score, but we are down 7-1 at halftime. We huddle around the coffee and Brian Lane is telling the only thing we can do is bomb. And so we come in half #2 and that is what we do. First, Jon to Paul, then Me to Paul, and Jaegs to Pfil. 7-4, all on deep passes after one swing of the disc. They score to go up 8-4. But a couple hucks later and a couple of big grabs by Paul, 8-7. It is all of a sudden a game. They go up 9-7, the cap goes on (most of the points in the 1st half were very looooong). So now game to 11. They go up 10-7, I believe. 10-8, then 10-9, and finally 10-10. We are extremely psyched. We have all the momentum and we are forcing the issue. We pull to them, out of bounds, so they take it at the brick.

What happens next I remember very well. Charlie, current teammate former arch-rival, walks the disc to the brick mark. I am guarding someone last in the stack. We are forcing flick. I-o flick to Ben Jammin off the front of the stack. He immediately catches the disc, stops, pivots back to his left-handed backhand invert, and launches it to my man. I feel I am right on my guy and can easily make this play. He was in front of me, but as the disc gets close, I now have the inside position and he is to my right with the disc up and on my left. As it comes in, I remember thinking that it was mine, I line up my jump, get up, and the disc sails over my hand. At what point do you realize you can't get the disc? I did not realize this until I reached my peak, I have no idea how close I was to it. But I could not believe I missed it. It felt like there was no way I was going to miss it, I was stunned. I immediately look back and my man has caught the disc for the game winning score. UGH. 11-10. Madison beats Michigan, again.

I did not stick around too long as I was dealing with exhaustion and I was unbelieveably cold. I was escorted home by a future mom, dethawed on the couch, finally took a shower getting my core temp back to 98 degrees. Ate some lunch at the brew pub, studied, and played some "Go" at a local coffee shop.

I am not sure how many times I thought about missing that d over the next 24 hours...

As bad as that ending was (And really the whole tourney), so many good things happened for myself and our team. I feel like that weekend we realized what we had to do to be a better team. We had to play better comp throughout the season. We all had to be able to play O and D. We all had to play during the summer and improve. We all needed not to wear cotton shirts in really crappy weather. We needed a coach. Most importantly, we finally believed we could compete with the best in our region. That was definitely not true at the beginning of the weekend. We immediately started talking about the 99 season.