Oktoberfest Preview
PC: Tori Nutt and Kielan Donahue
Author: Brandon Borges
Introduction
Oktoberfest is shaping up to be one of the most competitive college tournaments of the fall, as the No. 1-ranked University of Virginia heads to New York to clash with No. 4 Rutgers and No. 9 Harvard in a double round robin. The timing couldn’t be better: last week’s Fast Break News rankings had players and fans buzzing, and now all three programs have to prove they deserve their early-season hype on pitch. Will UVA show why they’ve been treated as the national benchmark, or will one of the rising Northeast contenders land another shockwave win over a favored opponent?
Schedule (all times ET)
UVA vs. Rutgers @ 9:00 AM
UVA vs. Harvard @ 10:15 AM
Rutgers vs. Harvard @ 11:30 AM
UVA vs. Rutgers @ 12:45 PM
UVA vs. Harvard @ 2:00 PM
Rutgers vs. Harvard @ 3:15 PM
Bavarian Beater Battles
In a season where UVA has only logged four official games, all against unranked opponents, Oktoberfest’s double round robin is first and foremost a beater exam. The Cavaliers bulldozed James Madison earlier this fall by unleashing their press at the half line, with Rhett Krovitz and Joey Beh spearheading waves of pressure and Anne Marie Pritchett cleaning up anything that slipped through. Against Harvard and Rutgers, though, Krovitz will be staring down peers who specialize in the same brand of long-range punishment, most notably Harvard’s David Chen and Rutgers’s Joe Colantuono. All three are tall, hard-throwing snipers whose accuracy forces chasers to widen their spacing or risk their pass options getting beat before the ball even travels to their recipient.
From there, the styles start to diverge. Harvard’s rotation runs deep in the throw-happy direction: Jason Wang plays similarly to Chen, happy to exchange early in a press and then whip quick, compact beats around the hoops when the game slows. Behind them, Ashley Yu and Alisa Lee tend to live on the backline, reading cross-field swings and backdoor cuts and turning “flip the field” passes into turnovers. Rutgers, by contrast, plays a very patient style of defense that stems primarily from its beater play. Justin Mok and the rest of the Scarlet Knight beaters sit side-by-side in front of the hoops, rarely overextending and shoot out only when they can turn a single beat into a full stop. Paired with Rutgers’s tight hoop zone, that discipline has smothered wing play and forced opponents to earn every inch in the lane.
UVA’s identity lands somewhere between those poles, but with a physical edge. Beh never shies away from a press opportunity, but that is just one small aspect of his game. If he’s not leading the press, he’s hunting contact, happily stepping into tackles or bodying opposing beaters off their spots to pry them away from the chaser game. Beh and Pritchett are comfortable chucking dodgeballs back toward their own hoops after exchanges, then sprinting straight into their counterparts’ space, trusting Krovitz and the vaunted UVA chaser defense to finish possessions.
Harvard’s high-octane exchanges, Rutgers’s patient wall and UVA’s smashmouth disruption are three unique styles of beater play that may define Oktoberfest. The team that either imposes its preferred tempo early or shows flexibility by adapting to the other teams could walk away with both the highest win total and a big narrative win heading into winter.
Rookies Chasing Stardom
The rookie storyline is a fascinating throughline of Oktoberfest, starting with a top-tier class of chasers in Harvard. Missing veteran stalwarts Mac Mertens and Kevin Hu, the Horntails are about to find out just how far their first-years have come. Toby Cheetham has been the most complete rookie so far, a wing or top-ball option who can drive in space, finish in transition and hold his own defensively. Bruce Lowmanstone has flashed as a stout center-hoop defender and developing finisher, but this weekend Harvard will ask him to run more of the offense from up top, reading and organizing sets against two of the most punishing defenses in college Quadball. Ryder Batkiewicz, previously a behind-hoops release valve and spot shooter, will likely pick up stretches in the green headband; how quickly he adapts as an initiator could swing entire lineups.
Rutgers, by contrast, have already inserted rookie Tommy Nickles as a primary ball-carrier in their starting line, and it has paid dividends. The Scarlet Knights’ star rookie has been an offensive engine, diming up teammates like fellow rookie David Chang on cuts into lanes, popping into soft pockets for Jalen Brooks and Manvi Kona to hit and then cashing in with textbook finishes. On top of that, Nickles’ drives have been devastating. Whether he’s exploding out of a turnover for a fast break or attacking from the wing after beating his mark, Nickles has filled up the score sheet in every phase. Oktoberfest will be his biggest stress test yet. Harvard and UVA both throw pressure at primary ball-carriers heavy and early; seeing how Rutgers scheme Nickles into a comfortable position, and how he responds when the opposing teams make those positions uncomfortable, will tell a lot about their ceiling.
UVA, meanwhile, might boast the deepest rookie crop of the trio. Tristan Schneider has already stepped into a ball-carrier role usually reserved for veterans like Emma Rollins, pushing tempo and making reads within UVA’s free-flowing system. Khamari Parker brings rare physicality as a downhill finisher who can bulldoze to the rim and still finish softly, while Elizabeth Reinhardt has combined imposing hoop defense with fearless drives from the wing and behind. Add in Ava Foulk’s relentless on-ball pressure and scramble defense, and it’s clear why head coach David Littleton has been comfortable throwing first-years into high-leverage minutes, just as he did with Chantal Siodlarz’s rapid rise last season. It is because UVA’s rookie development has been top-notch that Oktoberfest could be the weekend where these rookies don’t just earn rotational spots, but start swinging games in UVA’s favor.
Expectations for Ranked Squads
The expectations at Oktoberfest start at the very top. Fast Break News has pegged Virginia as the best team in college Quadball since the preseason, and the most recent November poll backed that up with nine of twelve first-place votes. It’s easy to see why: last year’s USQ Cup silver-medal run featured a core of still-ascending stars, and that run may have cemented Nathan Jun as the most dangerous scorer in the college game. He’s only expanded his arsenal since, flanked by fellow risers Rylan Moraes, John Evans and Eric Thompson in a chaser unit built to finally finish the job in April. But that pedigree comes with a target on their backs, and anything short of a 4-0 weekend will invite skepticism, similar to what surrounded fellow juggernaut Texas State after the Bobcats dropped a game to Sam Houston some weeks ago. With Rutgers and Harvard both holding recent wins over No. 10 10 Boston University, and fellow title hopefuls Texas State and No. 2 Creighton also suiting up to compete at the Diamond Cup this same weekend, UVA’s performance will signal to the league how dominant, or how beatable, they truly are.
Rutgers enters with very different but equally loud expectations. The Scarlet Knights made the biggest jump in the latest rankings, going from unranked to No. 4 off the back of wins over BU and RPI (albeit the latter in unofficial competition). Voters saw the full-rotation competence: Brooks and Kona carving defenses with patient playmaking, Colantuono and Mok playing a calm but ruthless beater game and shot-blockers like Frank Puchalski anchoring a rugged hoop zone. Rutgers hasn’t dropped a game in MQC play yet and has looked every bit like a team that can hang with anyone. Still, a rise that dramatic naturally begs the question: is the sample big enough? Their wins over BU and RPI ended as tight affairs, with flag-runner periods turning into bruising, physical stretches where their early leads were repeatedly chipped down by hard-driving offenses. Against UVA and Harvard, two teams happy to run in transition and initiate contact, Rutgers will need to prove they can thrive, not just survive, when the game turns into a fistfight.
Harvard arrives with the murkiest expectations of the three. The Horntails opened their official season on a tear, dominating Brown and outlasting BU in a statement upset behind a suffocating beater corps that smothered nearly every offensive look. But the shine dulled slightly at Harvard Homecoming, where they needed a huge post-catch comeback to sneak past RPI, a gutsy performance, but not the emphatic win many anticipated. Now they head into Oktoberfest down key personnel, most notably their best tackling chaser, Mertens, and other veterans who usually help steady the defense. That puts the weekend’s goals into sharp focus: does Harvard lean in and chase a rankings climb with a shorthanded roster, or do they treat this more as an advanced lab, feeding high-stress reps to rookies like Cheetham, Lowmanstone and Batkiewicz? Either way, UVA and Rutgers will be merciless in testing whatever cracks appear.
