UMD Tournament Preview

Maryland will be hosting their annual fall tournament tomorrow on November 15th. There will be a record SIX East Coast teams attending this tournament. Both VCU and Penn State will begin their seasons this weekend and newcomer Stevenson University (based slightly northwest of Baltimore City) will enter their first ever NCDA event. Since this is very last minute I will keep this brief.

Predictions:
Sean Smith                               Kevin Bailey
JMU: 4-0                                   JMU: 4-0
TU: 3-1                                     TU: 3-1
UMD: 2-2                                  UMD: 2-2
VCU: 2-2                                  PSU: 2-2
PSU: 1-3                                  VCU: 1-3
SU: 0-4                                    SU: 0-4

 

JMU (plays UMD, SU, VCU, TU in that order): UMD and TU will be JMUs toughest competition but at this point no team has shown the ability to take out the Dukes so until such time I will continue to predict JMU going undefeated against East Coast opponents.

TU (plays UMD, VCU, PSU, JMU in that order): Having not seen anything from Penn State or VCU I’m going off past history here assuming that Towson will be able to handle business against those two schools. The Tigers will fall to JMU but will put up a strong fight in my mind. Our match against UMD will be tight and hotly contested as always but in my mind Towson takes the Terps down in OT despite not having gunner Joe Tobin available to us this weekend.

UMD (Plays TU, JMU, PSU, SU in that order) 2-2: Maryland is in a tough position this weekend. Yes they are hosting, but there’s the potential that they could be missing some key components due to interests in the university’s football team playing Michigan State on the same day at home. That aside, I think Maryland will take out Penn State and Stevenson and go down in two well played matches to JMU and TU.

VCU (Plays PSU, TU, JMU, SU in that order) 2-2: I originally had VCU losing to Penn Staet but I’ve been hearing good news from their camp and am inclined to think they’ll take out PSU. I have no idea if this is accurate as I have seen neither squad since the fall of 2013, but I believe VCU will pick up their first ever wins in the NCDA while also beating SU. I do believe though that the Rams will fall to Towson and then go down pretty handily to JMU.

PSU (Plays SU, VCU, UMD, TU in that order) 1-3: Again, I have no idea what to expect from this team. Last I saw Penn State they had arm talent, but no solid organization or communication. I expect them to lost to Maryland and Towson, their match with VCU will be close, and I expect them to take out Stevenson. I won’t say anything else because I honestly have no idea what to say.

SU (Plays PSU, JMU, UMD, VCU in that order) 0-4: From what I know Stevenson is only bringing 12 players after putting their team together in the last minute. The mustangs will have the deck stacked heavily against them and I think they will go down in all four of their matches. It will be good exposure for them though and I believe the team will get a lot of our their inducting NCDA matches and hopefully take it into the future with them in other tournaments.

Author: ssmith19

Former Captain and Vice-President of Towson Dodgeball. Sporting #19, Sean's talents as a content writer range from previews, interviews, postgames, and excessive uses of both satire and sarcasm. Also, he is the first person to bring some much needed East Coast flavor to the NCDA site.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.