Fast Takes with Fast Break: MLQ Championships Power Ranking Pt. 2
PC: Major League Quidditch
6. San Antonio - Naresh Edala
Early season projections saw a Soldados team fighting for the top spot this season. However, it felt like this San Antonio squad was never able to piece it all together. They started off strong with a 3-0 sweep against New Orleans but followed that up by getting swept by Austin, dampening the idea of the Soldados fighting for the one seed. However, there were definitely positives to take out of this result, as games 1 and 2 were a one-goal difference at 20 minutes. San Antonio has shown that they can compete with the presumed best team in the country, and yet that series feels like a microcosm of their season. Flashes of brilliance that are not able to be replicated through the long run, as seen by their valiant effort against Kansas City where a limited roster still put up a great battle that ultimately fell short. Finishing up the season with a sweep against League City allowed the Soldados to finish the season strong. However, San Antonio finished with the worst record (7-5) in their franchise history.
The quarterfinal match-up against Minneapolis will continue the Soldados v North matchups that we have seen at championships the last few years. They are looking to keep the undefeated streak intact, and they have the talent to do so. The pairing of Katherine Hayworth & Baldemar Nunez will face off against Gracie Johnson & Cody Narveson, and this beater battle could really be classified as the matchup of possibly the two most underrated pairs in the country. However, all of this will have to be done without Miguel Esparza, who was often the offensive machine for this Soldados squad. Their best bet will be to let Melissa Kite run the offense to set everyone else up, as their off-ball wing chasers can be deadly with their catch and release. A huge advantage they will have in this matchup will be their ability to catch the snitch. Jay Stewart is the headline in the seeker game, and with their snitch record of 8-4 this is a team that knows they have the chance to get the 35-point swing in every game.
The Soldados will be looking to get back to the semi-finals, a feat that they have accomplished each year in their history as a franchise. It will be similar to the position they saw themselves in last year without the services of Esparza. However, this year they have Daniel Williams and his ability to dominate a pitch which will help their chances of keeping the streak alive. While I think this team is good enough to make the semi-finals, I don’t think they have the offensive firepower to keep up with Boston, and while the beater matchups in this potential series can be electric, the overall strength of the Boston core will prove to be too much for the Soldados.
5. Minneapolis - Christian Barnes
The Minneapolis Monarchs came into this season quiet and strong, winning their division with a strong consistent presence on the field. While they have had games where opponents remained close at intermission, Minneapolis has consistently used snitch on pitch to punch up the quaffle goals to a win. What is tThe secret to their snitch on pitch play? Many teams must make a decision between quaffle and snitch since many teams use their beaters to lead their plays. Minneapolis, instead, strategizes to increase the pressure in both places. At North Division Championships, they maintained a dominant snitch on pitch beating core with standout performances by Gracie Johnson and Cody Narveson, while on quaffle, assistant coach Alexander Obanor and Terry Carlson ran drive after drive. Even on an unsuccessful shot, chaser Emma Persons off ball is ready to finish the possession or stop the opponents from starting a fast break with her physicality. After a decisive win over the Detroit Innovators early in the season, they went on to face rivals Indianapolis Intensity. Increasing the pressure post intermission provided them a second sweep. North Division Championships provided an underwhelming conclusion to their season. With Rochester missing some of their main quaffle players, Minneapolis steadily continued their lead on Rochester during all games, only broken temporarily by a snitch catch for Rochester’s Ashley Dolan. Even then, Minneapolis cleanly swept to maintain their title as the North Division Champions for the second year.
Minneapolis Monarchs will be looking to fly to greater heights this championship, after being sent home by the Boston Forge last year (a disappointing showing since they chose Forge to be their quarterfinal matchup). This year, the team faces off against the San Antonio Soldados, choosing to fight them over the New York Titans. This matchup is interesting, as both teams have strong beater cores who duel on every part of the pitch, and chasers who take advantage of that distraction to drive, hit, and shoot as if two separate games are happening at once. The biggest issue facing Minneapolis is the double edged sword of their biggest strength. Minneapolis has played a calm, cool, and collected seeker floor game. They're rarely far above close opponents (looking at previous seasons as well). The problem with being close at intermission comes in their snitch catch percentage- only 11%. San Antonio has a snitch catch percentage of 66%, and that could clinch them a win. It'll be up to Mike Devine and Zeke Majeske to get a clutch catch when it counts to help Minneapolis soar to semifinals.
Last year, Minneapolis came to championships at the top of their division and was sent home without any wins. This year, even if they're able to come out on top of Soldados, they face Boston in the semifinals again. While their style of play this season has pumped up the type of intensity needed to beat the East Division champions, the strategic knowledge of Alexander Obanor and Cody Narveson carries years of experience, and we may see a new style pulled from their arsenal to fight back against Boston Forge. Their best-case scenario will be to spread their wings in a new way against Soldados and land in the semifinals to challenge the Forge to a championship rematch.
4. Washington - Ben Mertens
The Admirals enter championship weekend with their best record in franchise history— 8-4— but still ultimately below expectations. The team failed to seize winnable series against their rivals the Boston Forge and the New York Titans, ultimately losing both series 2-1 and finishing third in the East. Their most recent performance, a 15 minute stretch against Boston to finish game 3 of that series which had been cut short by darkness, was uninspiring, as Washington looked completely flummoxed by Boston using the trees/hoops zone— a zone Washington themselves have used in the past. Even more concerning is the absence of Rachel Heald, the team’s star facilitator, due to an injury suffered training with team USA.
Even with these concerns, Washington is the heavy favorite to advance out of the play-in bracket. They will first face the winner of the New Orleans Curse vs. Toronto Raiders game, and Washington should overwhelm either team with sheer talent - although look for Curse, with a set of smart, veteran beaters, to break out that same hoop zone. Assuming Washington makes it through, they will face one of Kansas City, Indianapolis, Charlotte. With Kansas City’s roster a shell of itself, expect one of Indianapolis or Charlotte to be the matchup. Washington swept Charlotte in the regular season, although game 3 was a tight affair. The absence of Heald looms large, Washington will need other players to take on more ballhandling responsibilities and need Paige Bellamy and Juli Nuetzel, who are very talented but have been sparsely played all season, to step up. Indianapolis, a well-coached, disciplined team, could also pose a threat, as Washington has struggled to adapt to unorthodox defenses all season.
Despite the challenges, expect Washington to emerge as the first team out of the play-in bracket, which will set them up with the Austin Outlaws in the quarterfinals for the third year in a row. Austin has swept both of the previous matchups, but Austin looks far weaker on paper this year and Washington far stronger than in any prior matchup. Despite this, Austin is fresh off yet another 12-0 season and are playing the smart, mistake-free style that has led them to so many titles, even if they are less imposing on the whole as in the past. For Washington to spring the upset, they’ll need better coordination between beaters and chasers than they’ve shown all season, the patience to break down the various zones Austin will throw at them, and to avoid the sloppy turnovers that plagued them in their matchups with New York and Boston. If Washington’s underrated beater corps, highlighted by the pairs of Bernardo Berges & Katryna Hicks and Zain Bhalia & Melissa Smith, can have a great series and their top ballhandlers Tyler Trudeau and Justin Cole can keep the offense working without Heald, Washington has an outside chance to spring the upset, setting them up for rematches with New York and Boston. The likeliest outcome, however, is that Washington’s road ends in the quarterfinals once again.
3. New York - Ben Mertens
The new look for the New York Titans, who turned over most of their chaser group from last season, strung together an impressive 9-3 season, highlighted by a gut check season-opening series win over the Washington Admirals and a commanding sweep of the Charlotte Aviators. The regular season came to a bitter end, however, with a 2-1 series loss to their old enemies from Boston, capped by a blowout defeat in game 3. Their performance was good enough to finish second in the East, sending New York straight through to the quarterfinals for a matchup with their in-state but out of division foes, the Rochester Whiteout.
Expect New York to be well prepared for this matchup, and to have put the Boston series behind them. Head coach Frank Minson and his staff— Rachel Ayallea-Silver, Jon Jackson, and Lindsay Marella have had this team ready all season, and have kept the team steady through tough moments like the loss of Ayella-Silver to injury, which could have proved devastating. Instead, the Titans have continued to operate at a high level, with Tessa Mullins comfortably filling Ayella-Silver’s shoes and the rest of the beating corps stepping up their game. Rochester is a solid team, headlined by veterans like Mitch Brown, Alyssa Giarrosso, and Sollie Gominiak in the chasers game and Patrick Callahan and Emily Hickmott at beater. Without Basem Ashkar, however, Rochester probably lacks the firepower to challenge New York, and Tate Kay, Devin Lee, and Mullins should prove dominant in the beater game. Expect a New York victory here.
Advancing to day 2 most likely sets New York up for a semifinals against their old foes the Austin Outlaws. Make no mistake: New York can beat Austin this year. The Titans should match up better against Austin in the beater game than they did last summer, particularly with Kay now playing for New York. Austin retains star beaters like Kaci Erwin, Kyzer Polzin, and Jack Wang and can send Augustine Monroe in at beater if forced to do so, but New York should feel good about the beating matchup. Expect Minson and co. to have some smart defensive looks ready to bottle up Austin, which has looked more dependent on players like Monroe and Sammy Garza creating 1-on-1 opportunities than in past years. Particularly if New York can come up with some clutch snitch grabs, their long-awaited dream of knocking off Austin is fully within reach. If they can do so, they’ll most likely be looking at a finals match against the Forge, with a chance to redeem their regular season loss and grab their first ever franchise championship in the process. New York has made the finals twice before, but this year may just be their best ever chance to take home the Benepe Cup.
2. Boston - Naresh Edala
With just 4 crucial goals last weekend, Boston Forge secured the East Division title for the first time since 2019. An impressive feat, considering that both the Washington Admirals and the New York Titans were favored over Boston coming into the season. Now Boston is on the opposite side of the bracket of Austin and New York. To make it to the finals, they will have to play a play-in team and then the winner of Minneapolis/San Antonio. Unless Charlotte and Washington both make it out of the play-in bracket, Boston is assured that they will not play Washington, as MLQ takes Division into account. This is huge for Boston as the FBN staff rank Washington as the fourth-strongest team at Championships this weekend.
But how will Boston play this weekend? Due to scheduling conflicts and a series of injuries, Boston will be missing some key players this weekend, including Leeanne Dillmann, Morgan Bertram, Fiona Wisehart, Tyler Beckmann, and Zach Doyle. However, Boston has a deep enough roster to be reasonably confident of their chances to make the finals. Max Havlin, as always, has had a consistently dominant performance. Lulu Xu, after tearing her achilles last MLQ season, has come off of her injury with a vengeance. She started off the season strong and has only played better each series. As of the time of the publishing of this article, official MLQ statistics list Ian Scura as second in the league for goals scored and second in the league for assists, behind Miguel Esparza and Augustine Monroe respectively. His seemingly tireless play and his chemistry with Doyle has been the make-or-break factor in regular season series.
Without Scura’s favorite assist partner, expect this fastbreak-heavy team to continue to rely on fastbreaks, especially since this team has at times struggled to convert halfcourt offenses into goals. One bright spot in this respect has been Athena Mayor, whose calm, confident ball movement was critical against New York. Forge has consistently been strong on defense and will be relying on Harry Greenhouse, Chris Labudde, and Rachel Manhardt to hold the line this weekend. With the absence of so many talented players, expect Boston to play closer games than expected this weekend, but have the beater talent and depth, as well as the seeker talent and depth in Harry Greenhouse, Greg Bento, and Stephen Trempel.
1. Austin - Naresh Edala
“Business as usual” would be selling this Austin team short. Coming off of a dominating 2021 performance, this Outlaws team saw a decent roster turnaround and yet even with players playing new positions or players being put in situations that they haven’t been before, this team has come out as the only undefeated franchise in MLQ this summer. The anchor of Augustine Monroe in the quaffle game with the star power of Erin McBride and Kayse Bevers as wing chasers make this a matchup nightmare for teams that are trying to narrow down a single offensive threat. Combined with the ability of Josh Johnson to create fastbreaks out of thin air, this team is as deadly as ever. This is what we saw much of the season as they were able to sweep every matchup and with most of these games not being close. However, there have been some cracks in this team over the course of the season. Multiple times, teams have been able to go on runs against Austin, but no one has truly been able to beat them during the snitch-on-pitch portion of the game. As seen by their 6-1-5 snitch record they have made it a point that either they will be the ones to catch the snitch or no one will catch. It will have to be seen if any team can match their snitch on pitch dominance they have exhibited this year.
If the play-in bracket breaks the way it has been projected to, we most likely will see the rematch between Austin and Washington, which has the makings to be a lot more exciting than last year. This Austin team’s success historically has been their ability to dominate the beater matchups in nearly every series. However, with Washington boasting improved beater play and hopefully a chance to review what went wrong against Boston last weekend, they should be able to give Austin the hardest test they have faced all season. However, there is no reprieve after the Washington matchup- because Austin will likely have to play New York if they advance to the semis in a contest that should prove to be as close as it was the last time the two teams played each other in the semi-finals (2019). This is a series that has the makings to be an all-time classic and should be a true three-game bout that will see the winner of this series coming out as the favorites to win the Benepe Cup.
