The Midway Conference kicks off their second half of the season with the Annual Zanderthon Throw-Down on February 19th. This will mark the sixth one in its history! It will once again feature the University of Nebraska Lincoln (UNL), the University of Wisconsin Platteville (UWP) and several UWP alumni. The schedule for this Saturday’s event is as follows.
Time | Team 1 | Team 2 | Referee |
10:15a.m. | UWP | UNL | Alumni/Mix |
11:30a.m. | UWP | Alumni | UNL |
12:45p.m. | UNL | Alumni | UWP |
2:00p.m. | UWP | UNL | Alumni/Mix |
Once again the Cornhuskers and the Pioneers will be going at it in another double header. To date this season, UWP and UNL have played each other four times and UNL came out on top in all of those games. See the review of the events at the following link (Recap). In both events, Platteville had slow starts in each of the first games losing 4-1, but made adjustments to make the second games much more competitive only losing 3-2 and 4-3(OT). Both teams will get the opportunity to play a full rostered alumni team which will provide a different style of play than they are used to and it should be interesting to see how they handle it.
University of Wisconsin Platteville
For this event, what can we expect out of UWP? Do they finally have what it takes to final get over that hump and get a win over UNL and push to get that second win. This time around they will need to get off to a faster start and put more pressure on the Cornhuskers or the results will be the same. Platteville will need to get their throws down to reduce the opportunities Nebraska has to get catches as it hurt them last time. If they can communicate effectively, they should have success and make the moves necessary to get the wins. The team picked up valuable experience last semester and are getting more comfortable with the game so it will be fun to see them in action!
University of Nebraska Lincoln
At this event, I’m expecting a lot of the same from UNL. They will have their strategy in place and execute it. They will be on the same page and effectively work together to get the results they want. If they keep making catches and continue to control the pace of the game they should get the wins and solidify themselves as the top team in the Midway Conference. As Platteville picked up valuable experience last semester, so did Nebraska and this is just going to make them even harder to beat this time.
Alumni
It should be interesting to see how the alumni do on Saturday. For most, this will be the first time in a long time that they have played dodgeball so they might be a little rusty. The question becomes, how out of shape did they all get and can they still throw the ball. Are they now all washed up? All of them have a lot of experience so they will definitely work to make it hard for both UWP and UNL. As one of them told me, they are ready to take off people’s faces.
Saturday should be a fun event and it can be expected that we are in for some good matches as both teams are hungry for wins and are ready to go. It will come down to which team can execute their game plans better and who can make the most plays when it matters most. We will try to stream the games so be on the look out for it on UWP’s Facebook page.