The Quizbowl Resource Center

Talk amongst yourselves...I'll give you a topic. . .

Would Illinois teams place higher at national tournaments if we faced tougher competition during the season? Unlike our friends in DC/MD/V/DE, for example, most of our tournaments are in the northern part of a very large state and surrounding states (outside of Michigan) have very small circuits, and is travel an option for most teams? (Maybe geography is the reason we we don't see large circuits in ID, MT, WY, NM, etc., but then this doesn't account for MA, ME, RI, etc. ).

But I digress....if you accept my premise, the same ten teams plus a handful of others are at virtually all of our tourmaments. is there anything we can do about this?

Speaking with zero - count it, zero - empirical evidence on the subject, it seems to me that playing tougher competition would foster improvement in that it would give you additional motivation to improve. If you're, say, Auburn, and you see Stevenson beating you in bonus conversion at tournament after tournament, culminating in a tourney defeat at ATROPHY and Stevenson's higher placings at both nationals, it could (and should!) inspire Auburn to study harder. Two problems with this, however - A: one would expect Auburn to not need additional motivation to study harder, as they should already be working at full steam. B: with the exception of the ATROPHY results, the same things apply for State College to Auburn, or MW to Auburn - just look at tourneys run on the same set and compare stats to see that Auburn has room to improve.

So the only thing I haven't addressed is the impact of being in the same room for one-to-three games a weekend. You could see where they're beating you on tossups (now I need to know that clue to expect to get tossups on such-and-such...) and what bonus parts they're converting that you wouldn't have. You're not only motivated to improve (why did we lose that question?) but you're offered the knowledge that you need to make that improvement (just write it down and study it later. Done!) That's big, and that goes for teams at all levels. So I think that playing tougher competition would help in that way.

But to answer the other question, there isn't any top-tier talent around here that teams haven't encountered. DCC is willing and able to make it to IL tourneys (NTV and Huskie Bowl this past year), and they're the only perennial powerhouse in Michigan anyway. Kentucky teams don't seem to want to drive to Carbondale, let alone Chicago (Midwest Championship excepting, possibly because of the guaranteed additional strength from DCC that can't be guaranteed for any of our events yet). No other state perennially has teams making top-10 national status, and when a team stumbles upon a one-man powerhouse, it's probably hard to make long travels because there isn't a precedent in making that sort of excursion. Without flying out east (like New Trier did for 2007's Weekend of Quizbowl), I don't know if IL teams can face a good amount of external top-tier talent in the regular season. And as long as Dorman and LASA are flying up to NYC, it's likely IL teams will fall further behind. That's not to say the work can't be done in Chicagoland alone, but rather a testament to how important the aforementioned head-to-head illustration of ability is.

Those good teams also do something Illinois teams should do a lot more of: play college tournaments. State College did very well in the second bracket at ACF Nationals, and Tommy was a solid contributor to a top-bracket VCU team.

Going to Fall won't cut it. Get out to Winter, Regionals, and other upper-level tournaments.

dtaylor4 wrote:Those good teams also do something Illinois teams should do a lot more of: play college tournaments. State College did very well in the second bracket at ACF Nationals, and Tommy was a solid contributor to a top-bracket VCU team.

Going to Fall won't cut it. Get out to Winter, Regionals, and other upper-level tournaments.

This seems a little too strong to me. Yes, playing hard questions is fun and will prepare you well for the NSC, but it's not worth your while unless you're ready. Here's how it works: late-middle and post-ftp clues in college are often equivalent to lead-ins and third parts in high school sets. If your team's competitive matches are usually decided by how many tossups you power, then yes, going to college tournaments and reading college sets is one of many efficient ways to improve. However, if you're getting high school tossups fairly late, then your fastest way to improve will be to learn middle clues, which come up far more often, and which will fit more easily into your cognitive map. To be a truly good team, you need to have the basics locked down.

Really, college tournaments are neither necessary nor sufficient to get good. They're one guide you can use to look up key facts about important, difficult answers, but don't expect to get many points against good teams just by memorizing titles from packets. I attended 3 of the 4 ACF tournaments this year because I enjoyed challenging myself, but don't feel pressured to go to those events unless you want to, and don't expect to improve dramatically just from listening to those questions.

dtaylor4 wrote:Those good teams also do something Illinois teams should do a lot more of: play college tournaments. State College did very well in the second bracket at ACF Nationals, and Tommy was a solid contributor to a top-bracket VCU team.

Going to Fall won't cut it. Get out to Winter, Regionals, and other upper-level tournaments.

I'm not speaking necessarily from an Illinois standpoint, but this isn't feasible for a ton of teams. Trips cost a lot of money, and a lot aren't really in close proximity. Also, a lot of the upper level tournaments (I'm thinking of levels harder than winter) won't be particularly helpful because 70+% of the clues won't make it anywhere close to the high school canon.

(Note: I don't have a lot of quantitative to give so the following is pretty subjective) To get more on topic, competition is a great way to motivate people. There seems to be a strong correlation between quality of opponents faced on a regular basis and performance in quizbowl. However, I think going to tournaments held on good quality questions and practicing on good questions on a regular basis are the best ways to improve. I think there is a stronger correlation between number of good quizbowl tournaments within a school and performance in quizbowl.

I think if there are more tournaments on good questions you would see a large improvement on quizbowl skill within a region.

The problem here is one of time and money (and if you believe that time is money, then the problem is the same). Most of the elite Illinois teams are in the northern part of the state, except of course for Carbondale, who should be commended for driving 5 hours every weekend to go to most of the tournaments. Within that 5 hour radius of northern Illinois, we have Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Indiana (states with little quizbowl prestige to my knowledge), and Michigan (with DCC being the only perennial program, since DCD loses Neil Gurram). I believe Northmont is from Ohio, and it was nice to see them make it to NTV. There are strong programs in Minnesota like Eden Prairie and programs in Kentucky like Dunbar and Manual (they're Kentucky right?), but they probably don't have the time or money to travel to our state for a tourney.
Likewise, the other nodes of strong quizbowl--the Mid-Atlantic, the Southeast, Texas, even California--are simply too far away for most Illinois teams to travel, not to mention the budget constraints that most programs face. So Donald Taylor's idea of playing nearby college tournaments would seem to be the only tourneys at which the top Illinois teams could face higher competition. Although Carbondale is probably close enough to Kentucky that it could, if it wanted, play some tournaments there against teams like Dunbar.

I don't know about high schoolers playing hard college tournaments to prepare for, say, the NSC, but there is absolutely no harm in attending sites of (ACF Regionals/ACF Winter/T Party/Terrapin/etc.), of which there are many and several in Illinois alone, to be exposed to deeper clues about familiar high school topics.

To clarify my post:

My reading of this topic is that the goal is to get teams to place higher at national tournaments. Thus, my target was aimed at teams like Auburn, St. Ig, and Stevenson.

Carbondale is in range of tournaments in Missouri, and I know WUSTL and Mizzou host tournaments.

Chicago hosts tournaments, Minnesota hosts tournaments, Michigan hosts a tournament or two. There are discounts for high school teams at ACF tournaments.

The opportunities are there, and the best teams take full advantage of them. If you want to reach that level, you should look to emulate what sets them apart.

I wouldn't rule out DCD so fast; they've been a force to contend with in the past and might well reload.

Yeah, DCD is perennially an excellent team. Michigan's often good for another elite team or two. Of course, there are occasionally elite teams from Ohio and Missouri. I haven't seen much from Iowa, Wisconsin, or Indiana yet, but those states have programs, so hopefully they can bear fruit at some point.

To take up the more general point, it does seem to be the case that there's a high degree of correlation between frequent, high-level competition and national success. I'm not quite sure why that is and a number of different explanations suggest themselves. I am sure it's so.
Fortunately, the trend in Illinois has been for more and more of that to happen as in-state elite teams play each other and elites from out-of-state more often and on better questions. To improve further, I do think the natural steps are what Donald suggested: foster even more such competition and play up at college tournaments. As has been mentioned, this is leaving lesser teams even further behind but, frankly, if you're going to break through at nationals, you're going necessarily to have done that.
Fortunately, everything I see says that Illinois is on the verge of such a breakthrough, with a number of national playoffs-caliber teams. All it takes is one of those getting marginally better and we'll see an Illinois team in the finals or perhaps even winning a national title. Please understand that we're not there yet and that there are very tough teams to get through to get there and probably always will be; it just seems to me that we're about as close as we've ever been.

Looking it all over, it's hard not to like the trajectory the state's on. To my mind, the last big hurdle for a truly healthy state quizbowl-wise is the backwardness of the state format. Even if that proves impossible to change, it's entirely possible that we can have an active circuit of elites capable of producing national contenders without changing it, c.f. Texas, California, Virginia before a couple years ago. It's difficult not to worry that national-format tournaments are always vulnerable to attack in the view of some as long as our state format is so backwards, c.f. coaches' letters in recent numbers of Scholastic Visions. The changing of the state format to something closely approximating a national format would do much toward sealing up that vulnerability.

M

While travel to a couple of tournaments probably would help, it certainly is not necessary. A few Illinois teams have put themselves in position to be nationally elite teams next year, and it is up to them whether or not they will take the next step up. If they read lots of packets from various levels and study in various other ways and attend good high school and college tournaments next year, of which there are many in and around Illinois, they can be awfully good. Four of Illinois' best returning players are about to spend a lot of time on the road together, and that's a great opportunity to start getting serious about next year.

The best players should consider themselves welcome to make demands on coaches and tournament directors for whatever will make them better. Consider yourselves supported.

Westwon wrote:The best players should consider themselves welcome to make demands on coaches and tournament directors for whatever will make them better. Consider yourselves supported.

Dear Best Players (and all other players):
Please demand that noted TD and coach David Reinstein not waste 10%, 5%, or any positive proportion of Solo on computation. It will make you better.

Sincerely,
Jonah

jonah wrote:

Westwon wrote:The best players should consider themselves welcome to make demands on coaches and tournament directors for whatever will make them better. Consider yourselves supported.

Dear Best Players (and all other players):
Please demand that noted TD and coach David Reinstein not waste 10%, 5%, or any positive proportion of Solo on computation. It will make you better.

Sincerely,
Jonah

I am demanding that noted TD and coach David Reinstein not waste 10%, 5%, or any positive proportion of Solo on computation, as those questions will not make me better or teach me things. I feel very strongly about this and might not attend solo next year if they are included.

Computational math is disgusting. Get it out of solo. I am considering not coming back to defend my title next year solely due to the inclusion of computational math.

Computational math is bad. Lots of other things are good. I think good things are better than bad things so let's make solo better by replacing bad things with good ones.

If I get a report back from Laudermith and Riley after this weekend that the top quizbowlers in Illinois are dead serious about getting better, then I will meet this request.

Perhaps it's silly for me to say this, as by no means an elite player from a newly and perhaps barely elite high school team, but getting better at quizbowl is a fairly simple process. Obviously you need to do specific category or topic-based studying, but so much improvement comes from playing on a good MIX of questions. I believe the Auburn team got better by taking time to practice on questions basically on our level, as well as questions one or two or three degrees above our level. Now you're playing to listen and pick up new information from hard questions, and you're using that knowledge to do better on regular questions. We learned so much more once we started using only college questions in practice. Also, read lots of packets. So yeah, playing in college tournaments is a big deal, because you get practice on hard questions against good players. People become practice kings where they answer questions with no pressure and no competition...but competition is a whole new ballgame.

Donald Taylor at some point made a comment about how the best Illinois teams don't have the experience to beat the elite teams. Initially I was skeptical, but, in retrospect, I'm a believer. The best teams in the country just know how to win. From the two close losses we had to two elite teams (Gov and GDS), what stands out to me is not the (obvious) knowledge advantage Greg Tito or Tommy Casalaspi or Matt Jackson had over us; it is the composure they had even as they were losing or in ties late (very late) in the game. Whether it's the discipline to not neg or the aggressiveness to jump on a clue and win a buzzer race, the best teams have it. The only way to acquire it is to play against them, because you don't have a prayer of beating them without it. Stevenson, St. Ignatius, and Loyola are all great teams, but in order to gain the correct intangibles, you need to play against teams that are definitively better than you, not teams that are about at your level. I don't think any team in Illinois can really claim to be head and shoulders above any other.

Having seen meltdowns by some Illinois teams when they have gotten down in matches, I would agree with Zahed to an extent. However, greater knowledge is the best way to get better. With greater knowledge will come the decrease in stupid negs, and you won't have to win a buzzer race, since you will know the answer earlier than the other team.

Marty McFly wrote:a whole lot of stuff

Quite frankly, while all of the teams you mentioned are very good, none of them are as good as they would need to be for it to be much different than playing local teams. I really hope those teams understand that I'm not trying to deprecate them when I say that, for a top Illinois team, you shouldn't be getting really excited about playing most teams that aren't NSC top-bracket quality. That leaves a really small number of teams, but here's the thing, and it's my assessment of top Illinois teams' standing in the national scene: there's a relatively tiny number of teams that are as good or better than us (just look at the PACE results), but the teams that are better are definitively better. So there are two mentalities that need to go. (1) Drop the insularity that tends to pervade in Illinois quizbowl discussions, and try to think of Illinois teams as part of the national quizbowl scene first and foremost, losing most of the satisfaction you have with relatively petty accomplishments; winning a tournament is good, but putting up stats (especially powers and PPB) that are the best or among the best in the nation on a mirrored set is more impressive to me, and tournament wins will be a natural, residual effect. (2) Drop the inferiority complex and aspire to get good enough to compete with the best teams in the nation. Then only can you join their ranks.

Charley Pride wrote:Donald Taylor at some point made a comment about how the best Illinois teams don't have the experience to beat the elite teams. Initially I was skeptical, but, in retrospect, I'm a believer. The best teams in the country just know how to win. From the two close losses we had to two elite teams (Gov and GDS), what stands out to me is not the (obvious) knowledge advantage Greg Tito or Tommy Casalaspi or Matt Jackson had over us; it is the composure they had even as they were losing or in ties late (very late) in the game. Whether it's the discipline to not neg or the aggressiveness to jump on a clue and win a buzzer race, the best teams have it. The only way to acquire it is to play against them, because you don't have a prayer of beating them without it. Stevenson, St. Ignatius, and Loyola are all great teams, but in order to gain the correct intangibles, you need to play against teams that are definitively better than you, not teams that are about at your level. I don't think any team in Illinois can really claim to be head and shoulders above any other.

Finally, someone agrees with me! I promise, there was no coercion.

In all seriousness, the idea of high schoolers practicing on college questions goes back years. I believe that the TJ 05 team practiced on ACF Regionals in preparation for the NSC, and at times even practiced on nationals questions. Much like most trends in good quizbowl, Illinois is slow to catch on. The thing is, now even more than ever, the best teams will be the ones who put in the work. I am not in a position to determine what that entails. I said this before, but look to the elite teams. They go to a ton of college tournaments. Hell, State College and Maggie Walker had players at ACF Nationals (through dual enrollment, Tommy was allowed to play for VCU). Yes, Auburn, Kevin, etc. have put in a lot of work. Those costs are sunk. Now you have to do more work than ever. If you want a SNIFF of a national title, you have to catch up to State College, and then surpass them. And you better believe they're gonna be putting in a lot of work. The resources are out there, but you gotta get your butt into gear and take advantage of them. No excuses. It is time to roll up your sleeves and get ready for hard work, or move your sorry butt out of the way, because someone will.

You know what would go a long way towards this whole Illinois vs. the nation thing? If the guys can beat State College tomorrow morning. Best of luck tomorrow!

Also - Lloyd? 45/1 through 12 games? Holy crap dude, nice.

Well done guys, bring it home tomorrow.

jonah wrote:Please demand that noted TD and coach David Reinstein not waste 10%, 5%, or any positive proportion of Solo on computation. It will make you better.

Sincerely,
Jonah

^THIS.

I have read through a bunch of old Solo packets of late, and I must say that the non-computational math is almost always better than the computational math in terms of being interesting and engaging and encouraging the study of mathematics. I say "almost" though, because comp math has one distinct advantage over non-comp, which is that it is very easy to write an intelligible comp math question (Look: "FTP, what is 2^24?". I totes just wrote that off the top of my head!) whereas sometimes the non-comp is difficult to read, misleading, or in VERY RARE cases wrong (although I don't recall any of these being in Solo packets).

As a mathematician and scholastic bowl coach and a teacher, I would love to see the comp math replaced with good non-comp math.

There should be an announcement about the distribution of this year's Solo coming forth in the very near future. It's not mine to make, but I think it will be well-received.

No comp

Westwon wrote:No comp

Where's the spoiler alert? Oy.

Westwon wrote:No comp

I love you.

Is it too soon to ask what the distro is?

If Illinois teams want to do well at national tournaments, we're going to have to work harder in April and May. We started moving in that direction this year thanks to NIU and Coach Garcia, but that trend needs to grow if we want to get better. Our current schedule is designed to have teams peak in March rather than May and June. I think it's fair to say that the top two or three Illinois teams were better than DCC in the middle of the season, but DCC was better than our top teams at the end of the year.

I admit that I have not been a leader in addressing this issue.

Westwon wrote:Our current schedule is designed to have teams peak in March rather than May and June.

This can be easily remedied.

1. Fill up the April Saturdays. ATROPHY's got one of them, and I'd like to see NAQT State take another (point 2 below), but there are still two more. Perhaps Stevenson or OPRF would be interested in hosting a tournament?

2. Move NAQT State to after IHSA State. One potential downside to this is less participation from non-nationals caliber teams because the current setup does promote shutting down in mid-March; however, once a few more tournaments join the April calendar, this will be less of a psychological issue. This might be a good idea in 2012, but I don't know if there's enough "tradition" fueling more than the top ten to go to NAQT State regardless of date quite yet.

3. Host a turnabout event for non-Regional champs on IHSA Sectionals Saturday. You want the schedule to stop setting up a barricade in March? It's got to continue with both ATROPHY-style nationals tuneups AND novice or regular difficulty tournaments for everyone, at least as long as top-caliber teams are at times led by coaches who feel that March barricade.

Westwon wrote:No comp

If the forums were ever compiled in some way, this would end up being the "Jesus wept." of the compendium.

styxman wrote:2. Move NAQT State to after IHSA State. One potential downside to this is less participation from non-nationals caliber teams because the current setup does promote shutting down in mid-March; however, once a few more tournaments join the April calendar, this will be less of a psychological issue. This might be a good idea in 2012, but I don't know if there's enough "tradition" fueling more than the top ten to go to NAQT State regardless of date quite yet.

On the other hand, I could also see this increasing participation in NAQT State, because I have heard from some coaches who don't want to take their team to a tournament so different from IHSA right before IHSA.

jonah wrote:

styxman wrote:2. Move NAQT State to after IHSA State. One potential downside to this is less participation from non-nationals caliber teams because the current setup does promote shutting down in mid-March; however, once a few more tournaments join the April calendar, this will be less of a psychological issue. This might be a good idea in 2012, but I don't know if there's enough "tradition" fueling more than the top ten to go to NAQT State regardless of date quite yet.

On the other hand, I could also see this increasing participation in NAQT State, because I have heard from some coaches who don't want to take their team to a tournament so different from IHSA right before IHSA.

The problem is that most teams/coaches still consider the season to conclude with the State Series. What we really need is to convince people that the NAQT championship is just as legitimate of a title. I'd really like to see the NAQT championship to drastically increase in size over the next few years.

Dresden_The_Moderator wrote:
The problem is that most teams/coaches still consider the season to conclude with the State Series. What we really need is to convince people that the NAQT championship is just as legitimate of a title. I'd really like to see the NAQT championship to drastically increase in size over the next few years.

Yeah, speaking from personal experience, the will to play quiz bowl disappeared from everyone else at Latin except Sam after IHSA state. Although we didn't attend NAQT state anyway, I'm sure there would be no interest if it happened after IHSA.

Still, maybe the only way we can start the change is to go forward with moving things to April and hope teams come around.

If I'm right, I think that the Culver Midwest Championship happened after Illinois NAQT States, and only one team (Loyola) made it out. Almost all of the teams that went this year have committed to attending next year, so if you're concerned about your team "giving up" after March, I encourage you to enter Midwest Championship. The level of difficulty of the questions and talent of the teams help in the transition from States to HSNCT.

jonah wrote:On the other hand, I could also see this increasing participation in NAQT State, because I have heard from some coaches who don't want to take their team to a tournament so different from IHSA right before IHSA.

We had this problem, too. Michigan NAQT States was the weekend before KMO states, but we were able to make the transition by just having multiple practices in the week between NAQT and KMO States.

DrCongo wrote:If I'm right, I think that the Culver Midwest Championship happened after Illinois NAQT States, and only one team (Loyola) made it out.

Hey!

DrCongo wrote:If I'm right, I think that the Culver Midwest Championship happened after Illinois NAQT States, and only one team (Loyola) made it out. Almost all of the teams that went this year have committed to attending next year, so if you're concerned about your team "giving up" after March, I encourage you to enter Midwest Championship. The level of difficulty of the questions and talent of the teams help in the transition from States to HSNCT.

jonah wrote:On the other hand, I could also see this increasing participation in NAQT State, because I have heard from some coaches who don't want to take their team to a tournament so different from IHSA right before IHSA.

We had this problem, too. Michigan NAQT States was the weekend before KMO states, but we were able to make the transition by just having multiple practices in the week between NAQT and KMO States.

I'll respectfully disagree with you. As I said upthread, teams like DuPont Manual, DCC, and Dunbar are all very good, and sure, they provide a unique challenge as teams we don't play very often at all, but it's really hard to justify, if only because those teams aren't at the top of the upper crust of quizbowl teams in the country, making that trip when time is premium (ACTs, exams, projects) and budgets are tight. Combining any three or four, if not more, quizbowl tournaments we attended last year would have been a smaller investment, financially, than going to MAQ. And I'd contend that the competition quality was similar (St. Ig and Stevenson and even Loyola are either similar in quality or better than those teams. I'd rather have more good tournaments that are close by.

And to pre-empt any "well we do it, so you should" arguments: it's good for you that you can make that investment comfortably; however, it doesn't mean other teams can handle it.

Please don't construe this post to mean I am discrediting certain teams' quality.

EDIT: Names are fun, eh?

I didn't mean to offend anybody, and I should have mentioned that I understand that many teams toward the end of the year are tight on money; so are we. All I meant to say was that the more good teams you get to play, the better. Going to this tournament was a well-meaning suggestion, I didn't mean put anybody down for not going. I also totally understand other things like the ACT and exams getting in the way as well.

Charley Pride wrote:Please don't construe this post to mean I am discrediting certain teams' quality.

No worries, I didn't take it this way.

Dan-Don wrote:

DrCongo wrote:If I'm right, I think that the Culver Midwest Championship happened after Illinois NAQT States, and only one team (Loyola) made it out.

Hey!

Sorry about that!

Also, few (if any) states have the privilege of being able to play against so many good teams within such a short distance of each other. There are 5 or more schools capable of making the top bracket of NSC next year in Illinois - not many schools have the opportunity to play that many good schools while driving only 2 hours.

jdeliverer wrote:Also, few (if any) states have the privilege of being able to play against so many good teams within such a short distance of each other. There are 5 or more schools capable of making the top bracket of NSC next year in Illinois - not many schools have the opportunity to play that many good schools while driving only 2 hours.

Are you serious? The whole east coast is built on exactly the opposite of this. But they're willing to drive 4+ hours as opposed to us pansy Illinoisians who will barely drive 30 minutes.

Maybe this was true in the past, but now that we DO have a strong circuit of nationally competitive teams, driving 30 minutes and playing teams that are as good or better seems like a pretty good option.

jdeliverer wrote:Also, few (if any) states have the privilege of being able to play against so many good teams within such a short distance of each other. There are 5 or more schools capable of making the top bracket of NSC next year in Illinois - not many schools have the opportunity to play that many good schools while driving only 2 hours.

When you say "capable" you mean "five or more schools that will certainly not all make the top bracket, but any of them could, right? Because having five of the sixteen best teams in the country would be totally, totally unprecedented.

BGSO wrote:

jdeliverer wrote:Also, few (if any) states have the privilege of being able to play against so many good teams within such a short distance of each other. There are 5 or more schools capable of making the top bracket of NSC next year in Illinois - not many schools have the opportunity to play that many good schools while driving only 2 hours.

Are you serious? The whole east coast is built on exactly the opposite of this. But they're willing to drive 4+ hours as opposed to us pansy Illinoisians who will barely drive 30 minutes.

Pretty much. We go to Richmond from Dover, Delaware and it's about three or three and a half hours. Everything else we go to is often around DC which is just a convenient two hours.

We literally went to one tournament this year that didn't have St. Anselm's, Georgetown Day, Charter, or Maggie Walker... and Whitman and Richard Montgomery were still at this one other one.

jdeliverer wrote:Maybe this was true in the past, but now that we DO have a strong circuit of nationally competitive teams, driving 30 minutes and playing teams that are as good or better seems like a pretty good option.

I point you to Earlybird. Loyola, Carbondale, and New Trier. DCC brought two. No St. Ig, no Auburn.

Crazy Andy Watkins wrote:

jdeliverer wrote:Also, few (if any) states have the privilege of being able to play against so many good teams within such a short distance of each other. There are 5 or more schools capable of making the top bracket of NSC next year in Illinois - not many schools have the opportunity to play that many good schools while driving only 2 hours.

When you say "capable" you mean "five or more schools that will certainly not all make the top bracket, but any of them could, right? Because having five of the sixteen best teams in the country would be totally, totally unprecedented.

I mean, it would be wonderful if 5 teams all did at the same time, but that seems quite unlikely. Still, Auburn will still have Lloybid, Stevenson will still have Kevin/Zach, and Ignatius will have Deveau. All three of those teams are definitely candidates, in addition to others that could make a run like OPRF, Lisle, Loyola, and Carbondale. And of course Glenwood.

Illinois played great at PACE & NASAT. And if you are correct about returning players, it should have an excellent year next year as well.

But if you extend the radius of travel a little, we were within 3-4 hours of 7 teams that made the top bracket at PACE, and 6 more, counting ourselves, that made the 2nd bracket. Many of these teams competed at the U of Maryland, Harvard & Penn in the Fall, and at GDS' tournament in the Spring, with some traveling 2-3 hours North, others 2-4 hours South...

The 7 top bracket teams? State College, MWGS, GDS, St. Anselm's, Hunter, Whitman & Thomas Jefferson A;

The 6 2nd flight teams from PACE, counting our own team : Charter, Walter Johnson, Richard Montgomery, Quince Orchard, Thomas Jefferson B, and my own Saint Joe's.

In addtion, there were several national calibre teams from this region that did not go to PACE (I think some, if not all, went to the HSNCT); I am referring to Kellenberg, Caesar Rodney, Bergen Academies, Livingston & Seton Hall Prep.

How many of these will compete on the same level next year? Certainly State College & Hunter, both of whom are returning teams composed entirely of underclassmen; as for the rest, I do not know. But from Northern Virginia to Pennsy & New York, there were a great number of outstanding teams this year, as the lists above indicate.

But this takes nothing away from the excellences of the Illinois schools you mentioned, several of which I had the pleasure to watch first hand.

Maybe we should make our own thread, Mr. Powers.

Hello Trey!

Maybe we should. Care to do the honors? If so, what would you name it? On 2nd thought, surprise me!

And, if you recall last year, I suggested that Delaware was the perfect meeting ground for this near score of outstanding teams---about 3 hours at most for just about everyone. So---given this, will there be a Caesar Rodney Rider Bowl II to lure this score of teams into one great local event next year?

Sorry for borrowing your thread, Illinois, but it is also a "national" thread as well, so its not a pure usurpation, and, maybe just maybe you too have a central locale, like Delaware for us, to lure the best teams from Illinois and neighboring states as well---with 3-4 hours being the target max to travel in any one direction? Maybe Coach Blessman's Indiana?

Edward Powers wrote:Hello Trey!

Maybe we should. Care to do the honors? If so, what would you name it? On 2nd thought, surprise me!

And, if you recall last year, I suggested that Delaware was the perfect meeting ground for this near score of outstanding teams---about 3 hours at most for just about everyone. So---given this, will there be a Caesar Rodney Rider Bowl II to lure this score of teams into one great local event?

Sorry for borrowing your thread, Illinois, but it is also a "national" thread as well, so its not a pure usurpation, and, maybe just maybe you too have a central locale, like Delaware for us, to lure the best teams from Illinois and neighboring states as well---with 3-4 hours being the target max to travel in any one direction?

New thread: created! And yes, there will be a CRRB II!