As some of you may or may not know, a huge tournament otherwise known as the Stag-Hen is going to start tomorrow. This tournament features the two main teams from California, CMS and Pomona, hosting a ton of great teams on their home courts. This tournament always seems to have a different feel than Indoors, simply because there is a little home-cooking involved and the participants seem to vary almost every year. Unfortunately, NESCAC teams are not yet on Spring Break so they normally do not participate in the annual event other than Bowdoin, sometimes. The Stag-Hen presents the first big outdoor tournament and flies a little under the radar since it’s not really an ITA sponsored event. However, we’ve seen a ton of upsets here by multiple teams and everyone from Whitman to Emory has played in it. This year, the field is as follows.
#1 CMS vs. #8 UT-Tyler
#2 Pomona vs. #7 GAC
#3 Emory vs. #6 Case Western
#4 Trinity TX vs. #5 Kenyon
As is with normal tournaments, the #2 and #3 seeds will be on the same side, playing at Pomona. The #1 and #4 seeds will play at CMS. Finals will be held at CMS, unless Pomona makes it then I don’t know what happens. There are a lot of interesting storylines here and we get to see UT-Tyler on a national forum for the first time this year. Some of the other teams we’ve seen, but could learn more about. It will be interesting to see how Indoors darlings Emory, Case, and Trinity TX fare in the outdoor event as well. Anyways, some of the bloggers have come together to give their initial predictions on the tournament. You’ll definitely see some surprises in the below….
And there you have it! Crazy – we have two people (including me) picking CMS to be upset in the semifinals for the first time in forever. Wow!!! While I think the Trinity TX/CMS potential matchup will be a toss-up, I think CMS has the higher chance of advancing. However, we’ve seen strange things happen before…
Stay tuned with us as we begin to preview the matches and hit you with day to day analysis and recaps of this great event. Check back later for match by match predictions, X-Factors, and other things as we approach the first big outdoor tournament of the year. Unfortunately, we were unable to cook up some DraftKings for you guys, but we’ll just have to revisit that another time. I’ll see y’all later. ASouth, OUT.
