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furious and jam will play in the game to go (just like last year) and jam will once again take down FG in a close battle

with four bids in womens, traffic should have no worries - except they have found ways over the years to lose "easy ones" - underground at sectionals (albeit a meaningless game), zeitgesit and slackjaw last year - having said that they've also been closer to riot and fury this year than they have for a few years - traffic will finish third (not too earth-shattering a pick)

i have no idea what sort of team blackfish is bringing - if they have been practicing hard with their nationals team, they will finish 9th

for the record "Gauntlet" is made up of about 1/3 of the members of the nationals team and while there have been a few practices, this is essentially a pickup team going to regionals - having said that they will win 2 games and finish 6th

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Open - FG loses to PRZYBILLA on Saturday, drops to the 3rd place bracket playoffs. Meets Blackfish in the first game, beat them 15-6, the play JAM and lose. Or something like that.

Women - Traffic re-bounds and beats Underground, then beats Zeitgeist and loses to Fury for 3rd.

Masters - At least Vancouver shows up, albeit with a bit of a throw together team. Sounds like the level of Masters is taking another step up, not so much at the top level, but in terms of depth. I fear that the long drive back from Oregon will have the bitter taste of 0 wins.

Mixed - TFP continues their perfect record and manages to not qualify for Florida.

m2c

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Womens – TRAFFIC is seeded 5th, but I think that’s a bit underseeded. They had an unfortunate loss to Underground (Seattle2) at Sectionals and have gone 2-2 with them this season. I’d be very surprised if they don’t come out on fire and beat them in the Round Robin. They will also be playing UPA champions Fury(SanFran1) in the round robin, who they’ve had 3 good games with this season, including a 1 pt loss at Labor Day. They’ll likely meet Zeitgeist(SanFran2) or Riot(Seattle1) in the crossovers, unless of course Schwa(Portland) can really get it together.

They’ve beat Zeitgeist in their one matchup this year, and have beat Riot once and lost twice. A win in either of the crossover games will guarantee them a spot, else they might have to grind it out for the final spot…One way or another, I’m sure they’ll grab a spot. The Northwest is hands-down the toughest region, with the 3 women’s team at the Championships last year all making semis. I’m sure the NW could send like 6 teams.

Masters…is back! GAUNTLET is representing Vancouver at UPAs this year. They’re seeded 7th of 7 in a round robin format and will be playing against some more established masters teams from Corvallis, Seattle, Portland and the Bay Area. Sandy Lane has been heading things up for this team but that’s about all I know for sure, so I won’t make any predictions. Best of luck with the new team! Hopefully this team will stick around for a few years.

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FURIOUS has done well with all their new players this season, and Jam has had relatively bad showings at ECC nor Labor Day. Regardless, the pool play game probably doesn’t mean too much here, as both teams will still make quarters (and likely semis). Revolver (SanFran) and Sockeye(Seattle) are well thought of as the 2 lockups for the spots, and it’ll likely be Furious and Jam meeting again in the game-to-go, where it will be anyone’s game. However, upsets are very possible amongst the top 6 teams - Furious could pull out their first win of the season vs Sockeye or Revolver or drop a game to one of the other teams.

BLACKFISH, like Furious, has something to fight for here. It’s the 3rd Regionals we’ve been able to make it to(4th season), and after winning the bottom bracket last year, we are hungry to crack the top 8 for the first time and get some much-needed games against the next-caliber teams before (hopefully) attending Prague next July. However, we are sending only 13 players to Corvallis due to school, injuries, babies, etc, so this won’t be the same team we sent to Nationals Jiff. Strange things happen when a team is short-rostered, and we could really gel here with less than half of our nationals numbers. Look for Colin Clay and Kieran McConnell to be helping with offensive line calling in place of captain Pat Gatien.
Favorite rivals Invictus (Calgary) won’t be there, so we turn our attentions to SCUC, where a pool play win is required to finish 3rd (or higher) and a chance to continue on. A win there would likely pit them against Rhino (Portland) to qualify for quarters. It’s very do-able, seeing that we finished ahead of SCUC last year at Regionals, and lost to Portland’s other, better team by only 2 last year. I guess it’ll really come to down to how much gas in the tank Blackfish has with such a small roster.

There will also be the always exciting Blackfish – Furious matchup Saturday, which is where the real score predictions should be made. Anyone got an over-under on this one? (m2c has this at 15-6 already.)

Don’t think we’ll be twittering this time (Phil?), but they may be updating scores somewhat regularly at:

http://upa.org/scores/tourn.cgi?div=20&id=6092 (open)
http://upa.org/scores/tourn.cgi?div=12&id=6111 (masters)
http://upa.org/scores/tourn.cgi?div=36&id=6105 (womens)

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regardless of my prediction - i'd be very very happy to be proven wrong and see blackfish crack the top 8

the question is will Colin call him self out on a D line?

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In the Open division, Furious looks like they'll end up with a rematch against Jam in the 3/4 game -- well predicted, Jiff. They beat Jam 13-11 in round-robin, so it'll be a close one.

For Women, for the game to go Traffic gets a rematch against Seattle's Underground, who they lost to 15-9 in round-robin play (but beat earlier in the season). Let's hope for a different result today.

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Furious loses in the G2G, but beats Jam in the Round Robin. Probably a slight step forward for the re-development. A return to Florida next year might be in the cards.

Good job Traffic in getting the Win and Lose to the same team in the right order by beating Underground in the G2G, have fun down south.

So most of my predictions sucked, but I also called the Canucks to go 82-0 this season so there you go.

m2c

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