2002 Black Tide Tournaments

Saturday:
1st game: U of Washington
A close game the entire time with teams trading points most of the game. No one had many successive scoring drives. It was the first time all year our A-team got a chance to play as one team and it showed, lots of miscommunication on offense, no timing on cuts, etc. However, we ended up winning 12-11.

2nd game: NCSU
I was fired up to play these guys. Last time I saw then was in the finals in 1999. We didn't play that badly but untimely errors kept them in the game, and with the hard cap on we won 11-9.

3rd game: Chico
It took to the second half of this game for us to finally start playing like a team, and we started to look good and won 13-8. Overall we had a good combination of deep hucks and underneath stuff.

Feature game vs. Ohio St.
Ohio State was the second seed in the tournament, but they went 1-2 during pool play. They stepped it up and had some success throwing it deep. It was the first time this team had seen a horizontal stack in a couple of years. Whit and Edmun both had good games with Ed getting a deep D and then a hand block on the same point. Ohio stayed closed and it was 12-12 hard cap at 15. We scored the next one, and then Whit had a great layout D on game point to put it away. Even though the feature game was in our stadium almost everyone was rooting for Ohio St. Brook took the majority of heckling for our team by the UCSC guys.

Saturday:
Our first game was against Georgia Tech. We traded points to 3-3 with GT hucking for their scores. Then we started shutting them down and took half 7-3. In the second half we mixed up our defense with some Zone, Tool Box, and Man. Georgia Tech couldn't get anything going and we were now getting D's on their hucks and we won 13-4. Next was against Texas A&M. They were really fired up to play us and had a "Rock Them, Shock Them" cheer. We traded points till 6-6 and took half 7-6. Texas was running a lot of dominator offense and sending Taylor as a roving defender shut them down on two consecutive points, and we started to pull away and we won 13-8. Our last game was against Indiana, 13-4. We were in control throughout the game and the only thing that came out of this game was Jomo injuring his foot, keeping him out of Sunday.

Sunday:
On Sunday our pre-quarter game was against U. Wisconsin Stevens-Point. Sunday was different because there was a lot of wind. Wisconsin scored downwind then scored upwind and then downwind again and were quickly up 3-0. We settled down and started scoring downwind but we didn't score upwind for a few points, but we eventually tied it at 5-5 (I think). They took half 7-6, and it was an extremely long first half. The game was capped and with a lot of other teams already finished and watching, we won 9-7. In the quarterfinals we played the University of Georgia. We started downwind and scored. All goals in the first half were downwind so we took half 7-6. Throughout the game we came really close (within feet of the goal line) to scoring upwind but something unfortunate always kept us out. So the downwind goals continued until we turned it over near our own endzone while going downwind and Georgia was able to put it in upwind for only upwind score. We lost 13-11.

Saturday:
Tide vs UCSD-B 13-0
Tide vs SLO 13-4
Tide vs Humboldt 6-13
Tide vs Duke 12-13

Sunday:
Tide vs Brown 10-6
Tide vs Michigan 0-1 when the game was called due to rain

Local California teams sent home due to rain;
non-local teams continued playing on Monday.

Saturday:
vs Brown....12-13
vs UCSC....10-9
vs Stanford..6-13
vs Cornell...15-7

First they played Brown. I wasn't there, but I'm told Brown was up 7-4 and maybe 10-7 before the Tide tied it at 12-12. Brown then scored to make it 13-12, but the hard cap was on and the game ended. Tough loss. The second game was against U.C. Santa Cruz. UCSC has a very good team this year, and the game was close until near the end. The Tide pulled ahead 10-7, then 10-8, the hard cap was called, UCSC scored to make it 10-9 for the final score and a Tide win. The third game was against Stanford. The Tide made too many unforced errors on offense, and Stanford capitalized on all of them to beat the Tide 13-6. The fourth game was a pool crossover game against Cornell; the Tide won 15-7 to qualify for quarterfinals.

Sunday:
vs Oregon ...16-14... quarterfinals
vs Stanford..10-15....semifinals

Quarterfinals against Oregon (#1 seed Sunday) was one of the most exciting college games I've seen in a while. In fact, the last game this exciting was also at the Stanford Invite, on the same fields, two years ago against Colorado in the finals where the Black Tide came back to win 16-14. This time the Tide had to play the #1 seed in the quarters because they barely made it to quarters. The game started poorly and the Tide were down 5-8 at half. Then things changed, the stars aligned, and the Tide began scoring. They tied it at 12-12, then 14-14. The Tide pulled to Oregon, got the D and scored: 15-14. The Tide pulled again, again forced the D, and again scored for the win 16-14. Needless to say the sidelines of Tide supporters went wild. This game proved the 2002 Tide are ready to play at the highest levels; they just need more consistency.

Semifinals against Stanford (seeded #3) started like quarterfinals; the Tide were down 5-8 at half again. Things got worse and the score went to 6-12. But the Tide never give up, and they went on a run and brought it back to 10-12. But lo, that was the end of the cheering. Stanford scored 3 unanswered points and won 15-10. It was great seeing the team in the semifinals; they came in seeded 6th, and finished in the 3/4 spot.

In the finals, Stanford beat Davis.

Note: Weather was awesome, and part of the Stanford band and cheerleaders played at the Stanford/UCSB semifinals game. It was great music and cheerleading. I wish more colleges would bring out their bands at ultimate tournaments. The other very nice part of the day was seeing so many Tide parents on the sidelines. I know the guys appreciated it.

Saturday:
UCSB 15 Cal Tech 1
UCSB 15 UCSD B 1
UCSB 15 UCSD C 0 (forfeit)
UCSB 15 UCLA 7

Sunday:
UCSB vs Oxy 15-3
UCSB vs UCSD 15-8 (finals)

[recap compliments of Kevin B.]
We went 5-0 in pool play, and the way the tournament was set up the two pool winners played for first place. This meant a showdown with UCSD who we hadn't played since President's day last year when they beat us in the semi-finals. The first half featured many long points with each team turning it over a few times. Both teams were bidding all over the place. At half we had an 8-4 lead. San Diego started the second half by slapping on their 4-man cup. We turned it over quickly the first two points and all of the sudden it was 8-6. Then on the third point Justin broke the cup with a hammer throw to Kevin who hucked it deep to Brandon for a score. After that we showed good control in handling their zone. Justin, Nick, Taylor, and Mike B. did most of the handling and did a very good job of moving it around the field. We went on to a 15-8 victory.

[recap compliments of Kevin B.]
This year's Regionals was set as a double elimination tournament with no pools, and the 16 teams arranged in an NCAA tournament style bracket. Since two teams dropped out, the 1st and 2nd seeded teams got first round byes so we didn't have a first game. Our second game on Saturday was against the CU Mamabird B team. There was so much crosswind that passes were virtually impossible to complete, and the game was basically each team hucking it as far as possible and trying to catch it and then playing zone defense. The game was extremely sloppy and involved no signs of organized frisbee play by either team. We won 8-3 and that did it for Saturday, one game played.

On Sunday we faced U of A in the semifinals. Before the game the U of A coach sat in front of the board showing the matchups and talked about (right in front of me) how he didn't like that after they beat us they would have to wait 2 hours to play the finals. That fired us up a lot, and we came out against Arizona and took a 5-0 lead and rolled from there and won 15-6. Then we had to wait for the finals against CU.

We came out awful and nothing was going our way and CU looked crisp. They jumped out to a 4-0 lead on us, and we never really put up a fight. The wind started up again which hurt us even more and we lost badly 15-4. Then came the backdoor finals.

UC San Diego who had lost to U of A on Saturday had fought their way through 3 games already on Sunday and were fresh off a redemption win against U of A. They went up 3-0 then we scored to make it 3-1. I don't remember what happened next, but next thing I knew it was 7-3 San Diego; but we charged back to tie it 7-7, and they took half 8-7. The wind had died down a bit and wasn't nearly as bad as the gale force winds of Saturday, but it was there and it changed direction frequently. No joke, but I swear we had times when we were going upwind for 4-5 consecutive points cause the wind would constantly change on us. After half, San Diego pushed their lead to 11-9 and were 4 points away from their first bid to Nationals. By now the sidelines were full of people, many yelling at us that we were going to be the team that let UCSD go to Nationals. However, some big D points by Ian and others helped bring us within one at 12-13. UCSD pulled it out of bounds, and Justin brought it in and called a deep play to Nick Fiske. There was some strong wind now but Justin launched a flick down the field and Nick made a great catch right in front of the endzone. Justin sprinted down and Nick tossed up what was supposed to be an easy goal, but Justin had to lay out for it and made a nice catch to tie it at 13-13.

Then the ensuing pull, nothing special just an easy floater right down the middle, was dropped by Kringer (UCSB's secret #1 fan). We scored and had our first lead of the game 14-13. The Tide was one point away of qualifing for Nationals and sending home UCSD. We got seven on the line for the point and called a zone defense. The pull went up, a UCSD guy brought it down, tossed it over to another Squid on the sideline who wound up to huck it down the field. Justin, who got down on the pull, leaped up and took the huck in the throat. The Tide had the disc on the sideline 5 yards from the endzone. Kevin picked it up and all the Squids on the sideline were yelling at the mark to watch the high backhand, but they never saw the step around flick to Taylor who was standing inches inside the goal. The observer called him in and we went nuts, then the far line judge came running out saying Taylor hadn't been in. The two talked it over and the head observer stuck with his call that Taylor was in and that was that. Tide wins 15-13 in a nail-biter.

Nationals
May 24-26
Spokane, WA

UCSB GAME SCORES:

Friday:
16-14 UCSB vs Michigan
15-10 UCSB vs Texas
6-15 UCSB vs Stanford

Saturday:
15-10 UCSB vs Cornell (pre-quarters)
10-15 UCSB vs Carleton (quarterfinals)

Ian Ranahan with the disc,
Nick Fiske in the foreground in the hat,
and Justin Hanan with the shaved head and headband.
Pool play against Texas.

Black Tide X team	Black Tide Y team
Saturday: vs Humboldt 13-10 vs Davis 11-13 vs SLO 13-2 Sunday: vs Humboldt 6-13 (quarterfinals)	Saturday: vs UCLA 13-6 vs Chico 5-13 vs Stanford X 2-13 Sunday: vs UCSC 9-7

Pool A	Pool B	Pool C	Pool D
Carleton	Oregon	Stanford	Cornell
UBC	Berkeley	Santa Barbara	Humboldt
Ohio State	San Diego	Brown	Davis
Chico State	Tufts	Santa Cruz	Michigan