Alpha Ultimate, NC State’s men club ultimate team, went 4-0 in pool play on Saturday and was looking forward to a deep run in the bracket on Sunday, but the weather had other plans. The tournament was unable to start on day two and won’t be rescheduled this year.
The Pack went 3-0 in its pool that consisted of Duke, Davidson and ECU and won the crossover game against Richmond. In four games, Alpha outscored its opponents 51-19 with the closest game being a four-point win over Duke.
“We always want the best quality reps that we can,” senior captain Michael Lee said. “We got solid reps on Saturday for sure but we’re disappointed we didn’t get to play into the bracket a little bit and didn’t get to see Virginia Tech or Wilmington. It would’ve been nice to play some of those teams.”
Lee was pleased with the offensive play in its host tournament, as the teams plus-32 point margin was the highest of any team in the tournament. Alpha was 1 of 4 4-0 teams but none of the other three, UNC-Chapel Hill, South Carolina or Tourists, had more than a 27-point margin.
“Our end zone looked a lot better, that was something we talked about doing,” Lee said. “Especially from a dead disk situation, when we are checking the disk in off of a timeout or a turnover, looked really good. Our downfield cutting on offense was pretty good. I thought we hit spaces pretty well and moved the ball to those spaces intensely.”
Even with the best defense of the whole tournament, only allowing 19 points, Lee thinks there is room for improvement. Takeaways are vital for a team’s momentum and success, and despite a dominant performance this weekend, Alpha needs to do even more to compete with the top dogs of Ultimate.
“Our defense still left a lot to be desired, but we were playing some not great teams so sometimes they just gave us the ball back,” Lee said. “I’m certainly not going to complain about that but we can do a better job of taking the ball away.”
NC State beat Davidson 13-2 to start pool play Saturday. Then, after a short break, the team ran through ECU 13-3 before finishing pool play with a closer 12-8 victory over Duke.
“Duke was definitely the best team we played,” Lee said. “They struggled in the first half to punch in those scores. They really made us work for 90% of the field and then had some miscommunications around the goal line so they were definitely the best team we played.”
Then, in a pool-play crossover game, Alpha was matched up with Richmond, which the Wolfpack beat 13-6. The game was close early and Richmond didn’t go down quietly, so the two teams came to a couple of disagreements.
“Richmond brought a bunch of energy to that first half,” Lee said. “They were super excited on the sidelines and it got a little chippy for a second, but they did a good job of making big plays and getting their team excited. That was good because it showed us how important creating positive energy is for our teammates and being excited for our teammates is because they were doing it and having success. In the second half, we came out and made a couple nice plays and got pretty fired up. It was good to see the team respond like that.”
A unique thing about ultimate at this level is that there are no referees. All calls are made by the players on the field and everything runs without a third-party official making the tough calls. That being said, disagreements are inevitable to occur early and often.
“In a self-officiated game, you get to make all your own calls and so in the first half, [Richmond] made a couple of calls, that our team might’ve taken some offense to and there were some words exchanged,” Lee said. “It’s not really a big deal; it happens every once in a while. Certainly not what I want from my team, but sometimes you create energy in different ways so that did create a little energy and was good for us. Not something I want to replicate.”
Most disappointing for the hundreds of fans and parents watching the tournament on Miller Fields, the No. 2-seeded Alpha Ultimate and No. 1-seeded UNC-Chapel Hill did not get the opportunity to meet in the championship game as some expected. However, NC State should get its chance to take down the defending national runner-up at some point this season.
Alpha ultimate will travel to UNC-Wilmington on Nov. 2-3 for the Far Easterns with hopes to build on its early success.
