The Quizbowl Resource Center

It will be Bellarmine vs. DCC in the finals, with Bellarmine having a one-game advantage.

wardb4: No one gives a s*** about your quizzathon. #hsnct #unfollowed [via Twitter]

Congratulations to Bellarmine for winning this year's HSNCT!

Bellarmine's the first team from California to win either HSNCT or NSC.

Congratulations to Bellarmine A, which defeated DCC A in the second game of an advantaged final to win the 2012 NAQT HSNCT! The small school champion was Beachwood. Full stats and results will be available on naqt.com in the near future.

Fred wrote:Bellarmine's the first team from California to win either HSNCT or NSC.

Are they also the first team to do so with less than a full team?

Charbroil wrote:

Fred wrote:Bellarmine's the first team from California to win either HSNCT or NSC.

Are they also the first team to do so with less than a full team?

They were only less than full yesterday. They had a full team today.

Jeremy Gibbs Paradox wrote:

Charbroil wrote:

Fred wrote:Bellarmine's the first team from California to win either HSNCT or NSC.

Are they also the first team to do so with less than a full team?

They were only less than full yesterday. They had a full team today.

Also, State College won NSC last year with three players (they were missing Monica).

Not to clog up the forum but just wanted to say hats off to Bellarmine and DCC - that was a thrilling end to a great tournament. Running a 240-team tournament on schedule was amazing, but to cap it off with that two-game finale was just incredible. Highly recommended viewing on iHigh if you weren't there. We were lucky to get funding to go to Atlanta this year and we had a wonderful time, despite getting knocked downstairs by Ladue and pushed off the table by LASA. It's hard to complain about losing to such great teams. Thanks, congrats, and we'll see you in St Louie.

bt_green_warbler wrote:Full stats and results will be available on naqt.com in the near future.

How will the fact that Nikhil only played in the playoffs be handled in the final stats? It seems unsatisfactory to only have three players listed as playing for Bellarmine as is recorded now.

Wouldn't they just list him as playing however many playoff games?

This was a great tournament and CR had a really fun time. Thanks NAQT. Congratulations to Bellarmine, DCC, and all the great teams who played so well.

I will add one thing though: the consolation rounds Sunday morning appeared to be a mess, and we stood around for a half hour trying to sign up to play them without any success. So we said forget it and just walked to the World of Coke instead and spent a good 2-3 hours there. It's not a huge deal, because we enjoyed our Sunday anyway, but i'm not quite sure why it looked so disorganized and like nothing was really happening.

Smuttynose Island wrote:

bt_green_warbler wrote:Full stats and results will be available on naqt.com in the near future.

How will the fact that Nikhil only played in the playoffs be handled in the final stats? It seems unsatisfactory to only have three players listed as playing for Bellarmine as is recorded now.

If I remember correctly, individual stats for overall (i.e. prelims+playoffs) aren't usually posted because the wildly different numbers of games played makes it less than useful.

Were individual stats kept in the playoffs?

Ignore this stuff
Regarding whether Nikhil will be listed; a similar thing has happened a couple of times in Minnesota. The player who only plays in the playoffs will not be found on the individual stat page but will stay get a player id for that tournament on the NAQT site and can be found by typing that in. The player ids for players on the same time are usually (always?) in a row.

Example: at the 2011 GINVIT Do-Hyoung Park only played the playoff rounds for St. Paul Central. He isn't listed on the individual stat page but you can find his results during the playoffs by looking at http://naqt.com/stats/individual-perfor ... _id=128143 [the other members of St. Paul Central had ids 128141, 128142, 128144]. Presumably Nikhil will also be assigned a player id and his stats will be at http://naqt.com/stats/individual-perfor ... member_id=[Nikhil's 2012 HSNCT student id].

EDIT: Perhaps the HSNCT does things differently as from what has been posted so far this has not been the case.


Stats for Nikhil http://naqt.com/stats/individual-perfor ... _id=160297.

During the first Bellarmine/DCC game, Jeff was giving 6 or 7 seconds on the bonus answers that Bellarmine was trying to milk the time on. It ended up not mattering, but that would have affected the game since it happened every bonus they received in the second half.

Down and out in Quintana Roo wrote:During the first Bellarmine/DCC game, Jeff was giving 6 or 7 seconds on the bonus answers that Bellarmine was trying to milk the time on. It ended up not mattering, but that would have affected the game since it happened every bonus they received in the second half.

This happened during every game I saw Jeff moderate for, which included the LASA v. Hunter and LASA v. DCC games; the team with a lead during the second half in those games waited as long as possible to answer as well. I'm not sure if you're accusing Jeff of impartiality, but that would be stupid and cruel of you given that Jeff was taking about the same amount of time to ask for an answer in the rest of the games he read.

A second is a defined length of time, and all NAQT staffers should seek to understand how long a second is, and by extension how long he/she should wait until saying "Your answer?"

I'm going to ignore the seconds thing, because it strikes me as pretty much asinine, and ask something that is more important to me:

In the final four, the situation was that if DCC or LASA won, they clinched themselves second place. However, if Centennial won (against a tougher opponent), the same would not be true for them.

1) Was this fair?

2) Is there a fairer way to handle this situation?

Fred wrote:I'm going to ignore the seconds thing, because it strikes me as pretty much asinine, and ask something that is more important to me:

In the final four, the situation was that if DCC or LASA won, they clinched themselves second place. However, if Centennial won (against a tougher opponent), the same would not be true for them.

1) Was this fair?

2) Is there a fairer way to handle this situation?

I think the only alternative worth considering is the contingency of what should have happened if Centennial had beaten Bellarmine. Fred's description of the way NAQT set it up is accurate. The only alternative I can think of is that, in the case that Centennial had beaten Bellarmine, giving Centennial the bye into the final and having Bellarmine play DCC for 2nd place and a shot at Centennial. This change would mean that winning the top bracket would only guarantee a team 3rd place rather than 2nd place. The change would also mean that the winner of the DCC/LASA game would only be guaranteed 2nd place if the other match went as predicted, and they would have to beat the winners' bracket champ to get out of 3rd place otherwise. (You couldn't use cards for the last few matches if you did things this way, but I don't think that's something anybody should care about, since you can put it in the rules and announce it before the match, and it affects a very small number of teams.)

I suppose another option would be to have Centennial play Bellarmine immediately a 2nd time if Centennial wins the first match, with the winner of that match in a one game final against the DCC/LASA winner. This alternative does not fix the issue Fred raised.

I'm having trouble thinking that one of these three scenarios is much better than the others, but I think my first alternative is at least worthy of consideration.

Fred wrote:In the final four, the situation was that if DCC or LASA won, they clinched themselves second place. However, if Centennial won (against a tougher opponent), the same would not be true for them.

Not sure if it makes a difference, but DCC and LASA would only be able to clinch second place if they won and Bellarmine won.

I guess another alternative is to somehow arrange the 3 remaining one-loss teams to eliminate each other before facing Bellarmine, perhaps by seeding them so 2 v 3 and then winner plays 1.

Anything else would involve a deeper change to the bracketing for the last few rounds to the loser's side of the bracket.

Fred wrote:I guess another alternative is to somehow arrange the 3 remaining one-loss teams to eliminate each other before facing Bellarmine, perhaps by seeding them so 2 v 3 and then winner plays 1.

This would add another round to the tournament.

Then the question is, is the cost of writing/editing that extra round worth determining second place more fairly?

I am just a high schooler, so clearly my opinion doesn't matter. And i am totally foreign to this format. But why would the problem not just be solved by going into the Final Four with a traditional semifinal? The winner of the winners bracket already received a bye anyway right? Because i haven't been to HSNCT and am totally new to the format, it seems that HSNCT is all about winning the right games, not necessarily about winning them all. Of course thats easier said than done.

ProfessorIanDuncan wrote:I am just a high schooler, so clearly my opinion doesn't matter. And i am totally foreign to this format. But why would the problem not just be solved by going into the Final Four with a traditional semifinal? The winner of the winners bracket already received a bye anyway right? Because i haven't been to HSNCT and am totally new to the format, it seems that HSNCT is all about winning the right games, not necessarily about winning them all. Of course thats easier said than done.

Because under your proposed format, a team could win every game until the final four, lose one game, and end up 3rd or 2nd. Your proposal places greater emphasis on winning specific games.

EDIT: Clarity

HSNCT is about not losing two games. Your solution could have two teams finish with the same record, but one would be the champion because of when the losses occurred. The current system has the team with the best record crowned as champion. (What Donald said.)

Also, we don't judge opinions based on the person making them.

As to Fred's question, it's not my decision to make, and I don't have a strong opinion either way beyond thinking it's a fair question.

In addition to being fairly short, the current system for the final four teams also has makes any one of the three one-loss teams win three games to win the championship. The other proposals do not seem to retain this property which I think is a good reason to keep the current system. Additionally, while the team that plays the no-loss bracket winner has the disadvantage of always needing to win another game to make the final they have the advantage of always getting to play for third place if they lose. The loser of the game between two of the one-loss teams will automatically get fourth if the winner of the no-loss bracket loses. This somewhat mitigates the disadvantage of having to play the no-loss bracket winner. I also think the disadvantage that the team that plays the no-loss bracket champion is considerably less than the advantage that a team would get from a bye if there was no cross-over game and two games were played among the one-loss teams to see who plays the no-loss bracket champion in the final.

ah i understand. i just didnt think of that.

I'm very interested in hearing what players/coaches thought of the overall level of competition this year. It seemed to me that the field was very, very strong as a whole--far tougher than last year. I have absolutely nothing to back that with (since I haven't seen any stats yet, I can't compare), and it is purely based on my own observations during play and in scanning the playoff results, but I wonder if others shared that point of view.

I think the NAQT-style Final Four (which I've also seen in some brackets for NCAA baseball and softball, and possibly Little League as well) is an appropriate balance of efficiency and fairness. The one change that I think might be worth looking at is having a reseeding at lunchtime, whether it be on the Sunday morning seeds or accumulated two-day statistics, so that the Super Seven play 2-7, 3-6, 4-5 provided that they not have repeat games from earlier in the day (with a pre-written procedure for avoiding such repeats).

bt_green_warbler wrote:Complete stats

There appears to be a mistake in the stats of our game against St. Joseph's A. We shouldn't have 36 PPB; this probably stems from us being listed as having no powers in the game, when I remember at least 2.

The Predictable Consequences wrote: There appears to be a mistake in the stats of our game against St. Joseph's A. We shouldn't have 36 PPB; this probably stems from us being listed as having no powers in the game, when I remember at least 2.

Noted. We'll pull the scoresheet and figure out what the correct version should be.

It turns out that this spreadsheet was actually put together before the tournament, but, due to some miscommunication involving me, is only being made public now. Sorry about that.

If anybody wants to help finish it off, go for it. Instructions:
A) Do not do anything with the team columns--just enter scores. It's fine to enter a score for both teams even though only one team is listed for that match, and you should just leave the other team name blank with the assumption that it will pop up once other results are entered.
B) Make sure the score on the left matches the team on the left and vice versa. Basically, if you are looking at results for the team on the left, then enter the score as it appears. If you are looking at results for the team on the right, then enter the score in the opposite order from its appearance.
C) If you find a mistake--two teams scheduled to play each other who didn't actually play each other--find the previous erroneous result and fix it or let me know about it.

Just to be clear--this is boring work that doesn't really lead to anything significant, since NAQT has already posted full results. You almost certainly have something better to do, but help is welcome anyways.

Leucippe and Clitophon wrote:It turns out that this spreadsheet was actually put together before the tournament, but, due to some miscommunication involving me, is only being made public now. Sorry about that.

If anybody wants to help finish it off, go for it. Instructions:
A) Do not do anything with the team columns--just enter scores. It's fine to enter a score for both teams even though only one team is listed for that match, and you should just leave the other team name blank with the assumption that it will pop up once other results are entered.
B) Make sure the score on the left matches the team on the left and vice versa. Basically, if you are looking at results for the team on the left, then enter the score as it appears. If you are looking at results for the team on the right, then enter the score in the opposite order from its appearance.
C) If you find a mistake--two teams scheduled to play each other who didn't actually play each other--find the previous erroneous result and fix it or let me know about it.

Just to be clear--this is boring work that doesn't really lead to anything significant, since NAQT has already posted full results. You almost certainly have something better to do, but help is welcome anyways.

How do you edit it? So far all i can do is look.

Fixed. It should work now.

Leucippe and Clitophon wrote:C) If you find a mistake--two teams scheduled to play each other who didn't actually play each other--find the previous erroneous result and fix it or let me know about it.

Just to be clear--this is boring work that doesn't really lead to anything significant, since NAQT has already posted full results. You almost certainly have something better to do, but help is welcome anyways.

So, someone sorted by score and screwed up basically the entire spreadsheet. I got it back to where only about half(?) of the spreadsheet is screwed up, but we might not be able to recover a fully-functional version unless we revert to basically the original.

EDIT: Something was definitely screwed up before that; we've got the teams in row 142 going to 3 different places at least, so I'm not sure what's happening here.

I'm utterly at a loss as to why people are manually filling in scores on a Google Doc when the stats have already been posted, but I guess I'll note as a general principle that you can roll back to any version of the file using file --> see revision history.

I just rolled it back to the 11:20 version, so I think it's OK now. Let me know if I'm wrong. If I'm right, it's actually in decent shape.

As a side note, don't sort the document, moron.

Spreadsheet is done.

Thanks for the help. I disabled public editing. If anybody finds a mistake or has a reason why they should be able to edit it, email me. If you want to play around with it for some reason, copy and paste into Excel. Also, feel free to ask me publicly or privately about the Saturday schedule if you have any questions. Matt Bruce designed the Sunday schedule.

What's the deal with the audio on some of the iHigh videos? In one I tried to watch there is none for like 2 minutes at the beginning, and in another one the video seems to skip over the parts where players buzz and give an answer. Other videos are playing fine, but is this a browser issue, or just one of those "sorry, the missing recording of the opening of Ladue v. E.O. Smith has been lost for all time" things?

Also, the somewhat casual and somewhat frequent cursing on the audio of the first game of the final (by the cameramen? audience members? who is that?) is a little disheartening. It's not really something that i think the families of the teams involved quite needed to hear.

Down and out in Quintana Roo wrote:Also, the somewhat casual and somewhat frequent cursing on the audio of the first game of the final (by the cameramen? audience members? who is that?) is a little disheartening. It's not really something that i think the families of the teams involved quite needed to hear.

I can't really see how this is a big deal. Quizbowlers curse casually and frequently, just like all other teenagers in competitive activities. Perhaps these easily offended people should stay away from basketball and football games as well. Or, they can Deal With It.

Prof.Whoopie wrote:

Down and out in Quintana Roo wrote:Also, the somewhat casual and somewhat frequent cursing on the audio of the first game of the final (by the cameramen? audience members? who is that?) is a little disheartening. It's not really something that i think the families of the teams involved quite needed to hear.

I can't really see how this is a big deal. Quizbowlers curse casually and frequently, just like all other teenagers in competitive activities. Perhaps these easily offended people should stay away from basketball and football games as well. Or, they can Deal With It.

Missed the point entirely.

the return of AHAN wrote:

Prof.Whoopie wrote:

Down and out in Quintana Roo wrote:Also, the somewhat casual and somewhat frequent cursing on the audio of the first game of the final (by the cameramen? audience members? who is that?) is a little disheartening. It's not really something that i think the families of the teams involved quite needed to hear.

I can't really see how this is a big deal. Quizbowlers curse casually and frequently, just like all other teenagers in competitive activities. Perhaps these easily offended people should stay away from basketball and football games as well. Or, they can Deal With It.

Missed the point entirely.

Yeah. Thanks Jeff. I'm glad somebody understands why i pointed that out from the recording.

Yeah, like, we have coaches who are hesitant to run a pyramidal event because they're concerned about the use of adult questions that mention standard fare things like descriptions of people getting with prostitutes in fiction or whatever. Stop acting like the laissez-faire DC circuit where anything goes is normal, it's not, there are parents or teachers who might want to watch that who would be bothered by the swearing.

Realistically, I'm not sure what can be done about such an issue. Is iHigh even able to do some kind of ten second delay? Would that be worth it?

You can at least ask people to keep it clean on camera.

Seriously though, where are they coming from? It is the cameramen? Or someone right in the front row? I assume it's someone in the audience... they seem to be remarking about DCC's perceived lack of enthusiasm and energy for playing in the final, or something.

I dunno, i played the video for my kids at our last practice the other day and just was not prepared for 4 or 5 f-bombs on it.

Yeah even though I do swear during matches, I made a conscious effort not to do it on camera. I don't think Nikhil, Sameer, or John are responsible either, as they generally don't drop the f bomb when swearing.