Pace Nationals Results

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vcuEvan
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Pace Nationals Results

Post by vcuEvan »

Maggie Walker A defeated TJ A in the final game. Don't know much more.
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Post by Matt Weiner »

The above is correct. Also, Richard Montgomery A and St. John's were semifinalists, and TJ B was in fifth place. Any teams who took only two losses on Sunday morning would be tied for sixth but as I'm not sure I remember all of them I'll wait for the official results.
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Full results

Post by Byko »

The Maggie Lena Walker Governor's School for Government and International Studies A defeated Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology A in a thrilling 395-345 final match earlier this afternoon. MLWGSGIS A trailed by 150 points with 6 questions to go in the game before rallying to victory.

MLWGSGIS A defeated semifinalist Richard Montgomery A 385-205 in one semifinal round; Thomas Jefferson A upended St. John's 480-230 in the other semifinal.

As each of Thomas Jefferson B, MLWGSGIS A, and St. John's finished 4-1 in quarterfinal rounds earlier today, they played mini-match tiebreakers to determine the two of the final four from that group. St. John's scored 170 total points, MLWGSGIS A scored 165 points, and Thomas Jefferson B had 145 (each went 1-1 against each other in mini-matches as well), putting Thomas Jefferson B in fifth place.

Rounding out the placements, Eleanor Roosevelt (3-2 in quarterfinals) was 6th, Dorman and State College A (2-3) tied for 7th, Detroit Catholic Central and New Trier (1-4) tied for 9th, and Princess Anne and Raleigh Charter tied for 11th.

In the consolation bracket, Blake came from the #15 seed entering the day to defeat #1 seed Detroit Country Day 340-220. #6 seed Gonzaga defeated #5 seed Solon 385-190 to claim third place in the consolation bracket.

Full statistics will be processed throughout the week.
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Re: Full results

Post by Paragon1 »

Byko wrote:In the consolation bracket, Blake came from the #15 seed entering the day to defeat #1 seed Detroit Country Day 340-220. #6 seed Gonzaga defeated #5 seed Solon 385-190 to claim third place in the consolation bracket.
I can't speak for the playoff brackets, unfortunately, but the competition in the consolation brackets was intensely close. From my experience, it seemed as though most teams from that 13-33ish range could have had intercheangeable scores.

For instance, we beat Maggie Walker B by <100 points, blew our lead against Blake with 3 or 4 negs to lose at the end (and congratulations to them on the consolation victory, they are a very sharp, very fast team), and lost to Pikeville and then Okemos both times on the very last question (as fate would have it, the former was on the Fort Knox question). Disappointing at the time, but in retrospect, playing so many teams of such a tight caliber made for a hell of a tournament.

Throw in Fisher Catholic, Centenniel A, State College A (which might have been having an off-round since they made the playoffs), and St. Andrew's A from the day before, and 9 out of our 12 rounds were within about 100 points either way, which is 3 or 4 TU/Bonus cycles. So while I can't speak for the top, all the teams in the middle really duked it out and I could compliment each one of them on certain different strengths.

Also, thanks to PACE for an awesome, well-run tournament. The moderators and the questions were the best we've ever had (even if some of the questions--especially category bonuses--were HARD). From the time we checked into the Super 8 to the time we left the CD and Game Exhange (12 cds for $1! The legends are true!) we had a great weekend. Special congrats also to the winners and playoff teams of course, and the Cooper award winners, especially Matt Weiner, without whose site we would never have been able to start a quiz bowl team this year.
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Post by First Chairman »

I'll also chime in (now that I'm home... okay, in my lab): I think I counted it correctly that only 4 teams did not show for Sunday matches of the 28 slots for consolation round play. To have 24 of 28 teams at least start off the day playing essentially five power-matched rounds on Sunday morning, despite the weirdness of having to stretch that across three buildings and multiple reader speeds was simply incredible and a wonderful statement for the competing teams in the consolation bracket. And yes, the consolation bracket was certainly not anything to sneeze at, and is probably comparable in difficulty to just about any other good high school invitational out there.

I really really commend everyone who competed this weekend, and I cannot thank Dan Greenstein, Derek Winkler, and Jessie Connolly enough (even when I did thank them on Saturday night when I didn't think they were in the room). Thank you to all the question-writers and the volunteers who supported our competition, and we hope that anyone else who may be interested in being part of this event next year will contact us.

I mention it over and over again, the enthusiasm showed by all the participants really made this year's tournament extremely worthwhile. It was competitive, but not over-the-top cutthroat. And certainly I felt that throughout the course of play, even if the questions were really tough, the level of play just kept getting better and better. Beginning with the triangular tiebreaker series to qualify for the championship elimination semifinals, it felt that the tournament just got more and more exciting until the very end.

Please post your impressions, as you see fit anyway. Also, if anyone has pictures they wish to share online, please send me a JPEG copy to post online on the website or the mailing list.
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Post by gosaints »

I'm sorry that our 2 teams (St. Andrew's) did not show up for the consolation rounds. The reality is that our players were exhausted and really wanted to sleep in.

I would like to commend the PACE staff on an excellent tournament. Although the matches seem a bit long, especially if you're used to the NAQT format, my players and I feel that the questions and format produce extremely fair match results.

Keep up the excellent work!
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Post by sidar »

Princess Anne did quite well, making it to the playoffs despite having only two players.

As for Solon, we didn't do as well as we did at NAQT, but nonetheless, we gave this tournament our best effort. I would like to congradulate Gonzaga for "creaming" us in the final Consolation match.

And that's all my Academic Challenge/Quiz bowl for me until next school year. Good luck to those who are entering the large world of academia (as I will have to do next year).
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Web site...

Post by First Chairman »

Oh to let you know... somehow or another the folks who administer websites at Case Western Reserve changed passwords or administration rights again, and I no longer have access to change the files on their server. Will try to get a mirror/updated pages up on another server, probably here at Duke.
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Post by rchschem »

Raleigh Charter thanks the PACE staff and players for showing us a good time. We look forward to coming back next year. My players learned a lot by seeing truly great teams and great people play some good quiz bowl. Maybe next year there will be a little less statistical thermodynamics in the science questions, too! They did bring back fond memories of PChem, though.

Congrats to Gov. A for the win. Great players and nice guys, too.

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Post by jewtemplar »

I'll only echo the praises already stated and thank the tournament staff, writers and moderators for an excellent tournament. The questions were truly hardcore, and for the most part very well written. Congratulations to all teams, especially Gov for one of the most impressive comebacks I have witnessed. I am tremendously glad to be playing on the same side with them this coming weekend. We will certainly be back next year in Orlando.

One question though: Why was a bonus about rotational motion labeled as one on nonlinear dynamics?
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Post by AE Ismail »

Hmm. Personally, if I were playing, I wouldn't mind a 1/1 distribution of statistical mechanics, but that might have something to do with that being one of my doctoral subjects. :-)

Perhaps there was too much statistical mechanics in the packet set this weekend, but, generally speaking, statistical mechanics provides a good way of unambiguously (albeit somewhat obliquely) specifying a particular thermodynamic concept right off the bat. Many other definitions--particularly in classical thermodynamics--can lead to other, alternative answers being correct early on.

But, I don't think we ever asked a question whose sole factual information was statistical mechanics. Lead-ins, definitely (I've written a few of them myself), but the give-aways are always based in classical thermodynamics.
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Congratulations New Trier!

Post by jagluski »

On behalf of the Washington University in St. Louis Academic Team and our annual WUHSAC Tournament, I would like to congratulate New Trier for their 9th place finish at PACE Nationals. You guys did a very good job and we're very happy for you.

As an aside, as a former Illinois high school player(Stevenson Class of '00), it's nice to see New Trier represent Illinois so well and show that we can in fact compete with the rest of the country. Hopefully more Illinois teams will start to venture outside of the state.

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Post by Captain Sinico »

jewtemplar wrote:One question though: Why was a bonus about rotational motion labeled as one on nonlinear dynamics?
This was the result of an error on my part, for which I apologize. I hope this didn't hurt your performance, or that of anyone else, on that question.

MaS
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Post by rchschem »

lone1c wrote:But, I don't think we ever asked a question whose sole factual information was statistical mechanics. Lead-ins, definitely (I've written a few of them myself), but the give-aways are always based in classical thermodynamics.
You didn't. And I thought the questions were well-written--no matter how out there the lead-ins were, the questions were always answerable, which was nice. I just haven't heard the ward "equipartition" so much in a long time. :) It was actually nice to hear new information about things like R and L that you don't normally hear in QB questions.
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Photographs

Post by First Chairman »

I have posted some of the photographs from this past weekend's tournament on the Yahoo groups web site for college quiz bowl at

this link .
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Post by jbarnes112358 »

How prophetic were these words of Dr. Chuck of June 07 on another thread in this board:

"I warn my NSC compatriots with two words: Smarty Jones.

They are formidable, but everyone will gun for them. And as they say, you never know."

When TJ A went up by 150 points with 6 questions to go, it was like Smarty Jones pulling ahead down the back stretch. Did anyone watching that race believe that any other horse would win? Did anyone watching in that room on Sunday believe that Maggie Walker Governor's had a snowball in hell's chance at that point in the match? Apparently Wren and his team did.

I thought we had a decent shot at winning going into the game. We had been performing very well all weekend on those packets. But hope was almost totally exhausted going into question 23.

It was, indeed, an incredible comeback. Outscoring that superteam by 200 points in the final 6 questions, and with the difficulty of those final round PACE questions, is totally insane. Four of six were powered with amazing bonus conversion, which allowed TJ only 30 bounceback points in that run. Wren answered 5 of those 6 toss-ups himself (Lyric powered the other one.) They simply were not going to be denied in the last game of their high school careers. Wren entered some sort of supernatural mental zone, like some Jedi knight or Samurai warrior or something.

But, we have seen that kind of run before when these teams met this year, except usually it was the TJ team making the surge.

But, in the end, this was only a single game. Nothing that happened in that game should detract from TJ A's dream season on the whole. I believe their status as the best team of all-time should remain intact. (But, if someone wants to nominate State College 2000, I won't quarrel with it.) As good a team as we had this year, maybe being among the top 2 or 3 in the country, this was the only time we beat them in what, 6 or 7 tries? TJ A , when the A team was intact, demolished teams, good teams, very good teams. Look at where they play. The mid-Atlantic region ruled this year. Look at how they did at NAQT and other tournaments populated with national contenders. But, no one could prevail against them.

It is an honor to be co-champions with TJ this year. I am so proud of our team. That final game will be one for the ages.
Last edited by jbarnes112358 on Tue Jun 15, 2004 12:32 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by welhai »

Please, Dr. Barnes. "Jedi Knight?" It was a good game, but nothing supernatural was involved. Down big, we knew we had to play fast and loose to have a shot at even making the game respectable. Those risky buzzes just ended up paying off.

Like Sam, I'm just really glad TJ and us will be on the same side this weekend at Panasonic.

Thanks to Dr. Chuck and PACE for a great tournament, to Dan, Jessie and the rest of the UMD folks for a monumental first effort at hosting a nationals, and to Matt and all the question writers for a superb set of packets.
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Post by jbarnes112358 »

welhai wrote:Please, Dr. Barnes. "Jedi Knight?"...
hehehe. Just trying to bring a little drama to my account of the proceedings, Wren. But, what ever force you WERE conjuring, you picked a nice time to do so.

Good luck to you at Panasonic, and may the force be with you. 8)

I do know that you guys will be a force to be reckoned with.
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Post by sidar »

Well, this was my first time at PACE, so I cannot compare how well it was run to previous nationals.

Anyways, the quality of moderators in my bracket was lacking, having at least one who could barely read (and barely read loud enough, and keep score). I realize that a lot of effort is put into this tournament, and it is unfortunate that there weren't enough moderators at hand.

Timing became an issue due to this problem.

Compared to NAQT, PACE wasn't run as well, but the timed format is completely different.
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Post by Matt Weiner »

Sidar: If you could give a little more information on who that person was (preferrably by email to Dr Chuck) we will take your, uh, feedback into account when assigning staff in the future.

I'll start another thread on the greatest team issue.
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PACE notes

Post by Jason84 »

As a first-time PACE advisor [having played in three NAQTs for Livonia Churchill HS, 2000-2002], I had a marvelous time.

Kudos to Dan and Jessie from the U. of Maryland and Young Ambassadors David Bykowski and Matt Weiner for their work, at PACE in particular and around the high school circuit generally.

It was a singular pleasure to meet Dr. Emil Chuck at last.

PACE has the best HSQB format I have yet seen. Why?

-- The Stretch Round prevents teams from sitting on a lead. In NAQT format, one team's run of four or five questions can decide a game's outcome.

-- Unlike NAQT, which is 10%-15% trash, PACE is 2-4% trash, and PACE questions reward in-depth knowledge of academic subjects more than NAQT questions do.

Two suggestions for next year:

1) More consistent rounds: On Sunday, we finished Round 10 and went to our Round 11 room - but that room's Round 10 game had yet to begin. Two other times, we had a 20+ minute wait between games.

2) Perforate the category-round sheets so that the moderators don't need to tear them in half :wink:

I hope, schedule permitting, to work at next year's PACE tournament. During the year, I will play for Mich. State's college team and moderate on the MI HS circuit.

Peace,
~Jason

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Post by bigmac »

RM also thanks the PACE staff for a great weekend and congratulates GOV for doing what few would have predicted. The well-written questions were hard and some of the matches grueling, but they need to be if good teams are going to be facing each other. Speaking of which, no one seems to have mentioned the clutch mini-match by St. Johns. After scoring 10 points against GOV in a five question match they put up 160 points (out of a possible 200) in order to advance to the semis. Heck of a team, those Texans.

With a few major exceptions, I appreciated and enjoyed most of the readers, especially the fellow from Florida who read our games with DCC and Dorman (Who are you?). It was nice to put a few more faces to userids. BTW, who won the moderators' pool?

Till next year. . .
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Post by jbarnes112358 »

Those minimatches seemed to be a weird method for determining who advanced. If you are going to use total points from the minimatches to determine who adavances, why not use total points from the playoff rounds themselves? It was a round robin after all. It is not as if any team had an easier draw than any other. We all played the same teams. In that 3-way minimatch round robin, St J had 170, Gov had 165, and TJ B had 145. A question or two swing and the ordering is totally different. We felt lucky to make it past that little exercise to get into the final four. It would seem that total points in all the games would be less subject to chance, as well less of a delay to the tournament.

On the other hand, the minimatches were exciting from a spectator's point of view, I suppose.
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Post by Matt Weiner »

There's a few reasons that we don't eliminate teams from championship contention based on PPG. We don't want to pressure people into running up the score in blowout games if they are not comfortable doing that, and we don't want to be in a situation where we have to resolve dozens of protests, none of which affect the outcome of a match, because points might eliminate someone. By playing the minimatches and announcing ahead of time that only points would count, everyone knew what to focus on.

With that said, the only guiding principle is that paper tiebreakers such as morning PPG cannot eliminate a team from contention. Within that framework, and given that we have a reasonable number of tiebreaker questions available, any resolution is possible. If anyone has suggestions for how to break three-way ties in the future we will take them under advisement, but the triangle system seems to have worked well over the past few years.
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Post by bigtrain »

Well, it appears that this was a great national championship. Unfortunately my team chose to go to another "national championship" in the midwest rather than the one right in our backyard. Congratualtions to Governor's School on their victory. My team was pulling for the local teams to do well, which they did. Richard Montgomery, Eleanor Roosevelt, Blake and Centenial all represented the state very well. I wish I could have seen the amazing displays of quizbowl strength demonstrated during every match at PACE.
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Post by jbarnes112358 »

I would be interested to hear people's impressions on the relative strength of the fields of NAQT vs. PACE. It seems to me that PACE might have had a little stronger field. The top 7 or 8 teams at NAQT were at PACE. Plus, teams like Richard Montgomery, Eleanor Roosevelt, Raleigh Charter, Gonzaga, New Trier and several others were strong additions to the field. We had seen all of those save New Trier during the year, and already knew how good they were.

As a side note: How could Gov A and DCC go to four of the same tournaments this year and not once play each other? That was strange.
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Post by jbarnes112358 »

Matt Weiner wrote:There's a few reasons that we don't eliminate teams from championship contention based on PPG. We don't want to pressure people into running up the score in blowout games if they are not comfortable doing that, and we don't want to be in a situation where we have to resolve dozens of protests, none of which affect the outcome of a match, because points might eliminate someone. By playing the minimatches and announcing ahead of time that only points would count, everyone knew what to focus on.
Understood. But just a few points in Rebuttal:

1. Since the morning rounds were among playoff caliber teams, one would not expect many blowout games.
2. I have not encountered many teams that minded "running up the score." In my experience, teams play as hard as they can for the entire game, regrdless of score.
3. As for excessive protests, you could just have a rule that a protest will not be adjudicated unless it affected who wins the match... period.
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Post by NotBhan »

bigmac wrote: With a few major exceptions, I appreciated and enjoyed most of the readers, especially the fellow from Florida who read our games with DCC and Dorman (Who are you?). It was nice to put a few more faces to userids. BTW, who won the moderators' pool?

Till next year. . .
The aforementioned moderator was Valencia CC coach Chris Borglum, who will be hosting next year's PACE NSC at Valencia in Orlando. I don't know if he's ever posted on this board.

This was my first time attending a national HS tournament, and it was a lot of fun. The only attendees I'd seen before were the Ransom Everglades and Martin County teams, so it was fun to finally see teams like TJ, Dorman, DCC, and RM. I was amazed at the level of the high school game. TJ A was extremely impressive in the two matches I moderated for them, a 630-185 win over DCC and a 570-295 win over RM. The players showed good sportsmanship and were forgiving of my array of moderator errors in the first few rounds on Saturday (sorry, Solon). Added compliments to whatever team (RM?) did the pre-game chant and played the Wagner music before the playoffs -- nicely done, sirs.

Certainly there were some logistical things which could have been done better on the first day, but those should be ironed out next year, especially the longlonglong gap between the last Saturday match and the actual departure for dinner. But the second day ran pretty much on schedule -- as a result, I got to watch the final before heading for the airport, and I'm glad I did.

My thanks to the various organizing folks, and my thanks to the assorted teams and players for making it a fun weekend. Adios --

--Raj Dhuwalia, UF
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Post by First Chairman »

bigtrain wrote:I wish I could have seen the amazing displays of quizbowl strength demonstrated during every match at PACE.
I was there, and as I hear about various matches, sometimes I wish I could see those matches too. ;)
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Post by jbarnes112358 »

jbarnes112358 wrote:
1. Since the morning rounds were among playoff caliber teams, one would not expect many blowout games.
Except of course with teams like TJ A where you can expect many blowouts, as the prior post reminded me..
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Post by NoahMinkCHS »

jbarnes112358 wrote:I would be interested to hear people's impressions on the relative strength of the fields of NAQT vs. PACE. It seems to me that PACE might have had a little stronger field. The top 7 or 8 teams at NAQT were at PACE. Plus, teams like Richard Montgomery, Eleanor Roosevelt, Raleigh Charter, Gonzaga, New Trier and several others were strong additions to the field.
Looks to me like, of the top 7 teams at NAQT, all but Cutter Morning Star (tied for 6th) attended PACE, which, as you say, speaks well of the field quality at NSC -- which, even pre-tournament, looked mighty impressive. Drop below that top tier, however, and only one of the five "8th place" teams and one of the six "13th place" teams from NAQT came. Not that that's particularly relevant, though I think one could argue that the teams you mentioned in your post might have finished in similar positions -- in other words, the top-tier teams went to both, while most second-tier national caliber teams chose one or the other.

It does appear, though, that some top teams at NAQT finished lower at PACE. I can't say, though, if this results from a stronger field, an "off" weekend, or the NAQT familiarity that some mentioned earlier on this board, to such a degree that it helped their Houston performance while having an adverse effect (or maybe had no impact) on their College Park matches. Maybe someone who attended both tournaments (especially if they performed noticeably better at one or the other) can say what accounted for their performance.
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Post by JohnDCC »

NoahMinkCHS wrote: It does appear, though, that some top teams at NAQT finished lower at PACE. I can't say, though, if this results from a stronger field, an "off" weekend, or the NAQT familiarity that some mentioned earlier on this board, to such a degree that it helped their Houston performance while having an adverse effect (or maybe had no impact) on their College Park matches. Maybe someone who attended both tournaments (especially if they performed noticeably better at one or the other) can say what accounted for their performance.
We (DCC) finished 4th at NAQT and 9th at PACE. I think most will agree the field at PACE was definitely stronger; Richard Montgomery comes to mind as a team that would have had a good shot at the trophies in Houston, had they come.

As far as any "NAQT familiarity" is concerned, DCC has traditionally performed better at NAQT than at PACE. The inconsistent play of this year's team could very well be due to the fact that we practiced so much NAQT throughout the course of the year, and that the seemingly heavier load of science at PACE threw us a little.

For some reason, we were just in a losing mindset on Sunday at PACE; we were slow on the buzzer, and at times seemed afraid to turn things over. An early-morning drubbing at the hands of TJ A may have had an impact in this regard; never have I seen such speed and accuracy in a team. After that, we played poorly against Richard Montgomery and Dorman; though both are excellent teams, we did not help ourselves.

All in all, though, we had a great time at PACE. And we're still pretty happy with our finishes at the two national tournaments, especially considering the team's relative inexperience on the varsity level (1 year in total). That said, DCC should definitely improve in the future; watch out for them in '05 and '06.
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Post by First Chairman »

To let everyone know, I have set up the PACE website, now at Duke (since I cannot make changes at the CWRU website). Everything has been copied over now, and the pace-nsc.orgURL now forwards to my Duke account.

Stats and other things will be posted there as it comes in from analysis.
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Gloriously Wroooooong Answers...

Post by sabine01 »

The 2004 Edition will be up later tonight after NTN. Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid... (maniaical laugh) :twisted:

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Post by FCquizbowl04 »

Congratulations to all who attended PACE. I am sorry that Fisher Catholic did not perform better, but for some reason, we seemed to lose almost every game, except for one or two by only a question or two. Our speed was severely lacking, probably due to a lack of sleep. :D I was impressed by both Okemos and DCC, our first meeting with each team. Also, kudos to Pikeville, another good team. Congratulations once again to all.
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Post by what? »

I think the lower finishes of some teams at PACE (as compared to NAQT) can be at least partially attributed to the different format and questions. In my experience, PACE rewards deeper knowledge and has less "trash" questions, which can hurt a team that capitalizes on the trash and has broad, but not necessarily deep, knowledge.
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Post by FCquizbowl04 »

I have to agree with that. Coming from a small school, with a very limited class offering, with only a few AP course, for example, we lack some of the in depth knowledge that PACE requires to do well. As ashamed as I am to admit this, we do also pick up a fair number of points from "trash" questions. So yes, these can hurt a team, but I did enjoy playing, and I hope to see many of you next year in college bowl.
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Post by quizbowlmike »

Martin County has finalled arrived home. (I have, but the team is still at Beta for Nationals there.) We would all like to thank everyone involved with PACE for putting on a wonderful tournament. Our team was one of the few teams that stuck around for all of the festivities at the end and I suggest to the teams that left to try to stick around for next year.

Now, my thoughts on some of the teams... WOW! We played Gov. A in our 4th round... going into that round we were 3-0. We got the first question, going up 20-0 (that was actually the question where a team answered cervix for iris) and at that point, i'm thinking to myself, "maybe they arent as good as everyone says they are." They were, in fact, better than everyone says they are. At the end of the first round it was 20-240. After that 580-120 loss, we never recovered.

As for the consolation playoff, almost all of the teams there were interchangable. We lost to Solon by a question in the sweet 16. The day before, following our 14-hour-sleep-depriving drive, we scrimmaged Blake twice. Both games came down to the last question and both games, unfortunately, had them winning by 15 points.

ER and New Trier were big surprises to me. Both teams were very quick on the buzzers and were very well rounded.

Best of luck to everyone next year, I hope to see you all there.
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All-scholars mentions

Post by First Chairman »

The names of the designated all-Scholars team, with honorable mentions accorded to individuals who were also eligible for the team but did not play.

Selection to the team consists of the top 4 highest-scoring individuals after 12 rounds of play, followed by students chosen among the teams and staff of the tournament.

Wren Elhai
Maggie Walker Governor's School

Sarah Hickman
Fisher Catholic High School (OH)

Michael Kettler
Gonzaga

Joel Knight
Detroit Catholic Central

Sam Lederer
Thomas Jefferson Science & Technology A

Kannan Mahadevan
Eleanor Roosevelt

Seth Samuelson
Richard Montgomery A

Steve Young
Thomas Jefferson Science & Technology A

Andrew Brantley
(honorable mention)
St. John's

Adam Hersha
(honorable mention)
James Blake

Chris Higgins
(honorable mention)
Richard Montgomery B

John Lesieutre
(honorable mention)
State College Area A

Tobin Marcus
(honorable mention)
Richard Montgomery A

Noah Rahman
(honorable mention)
Solon

Daniel Rowland
(honorable mention)
Eleanor Roosevelt

Tim Svenson
(honorable mention)
Detroit Country Day School

Everyone is encouraged to be sure that mistakes are not made in the rosters that are posted online under Results on the PACE NSC 2004 website. The records page is partially updated at this time.
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Post by solonqb »

Where are the individual stats?
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Great Time

Post by ValenciaQBowl »

I'm Chris Borglum, coach of the Valencia CC quizbowl team and host of next year's PACE NSC in Orlando. I was fortunate to read at the NSC in College Park and really enjoyed seeing the high caliber of play displayed by all the teams. I consistently walked from the readers' room thinking that one or two questions would be out of range for even strong high school players, and I was just about as consistently wrong. And the thing that most impressed me was how well players seemed to get along and the sportsmanlike manner in which protests and other problems were handled by players and coaches. That's certainly not always been the case at college tournaments at which I've played or moderated.

Congrats to Dan, Derek and the others at UMCP for putting on a good tournament and thanks to all the PACE staff as well. I look forward to seeing many of you in Orlando in 2005.
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Post by jonpin »

jbarnes112358 wrote: 3. As for excessive protests, you could just have a rule that a protest will not be adjudicated unless it affected who wins the match... period.
That could be an even bigger problem if you use total points to advance. If two teams are tied for the last playoff spot, Team A has 1380 points, and Team B has 1375 points, you'd send Team A through. But let's say that in one game that they won 400-150, Team B gave an answer they thought was right on a 10-point bonus and were called wrong. They've clearly won the game, so their protest won't be heard (and they probably won't even bring up the fact that they'd want to protest), but it would have apparently cost them the playoffs. And that would Suck.
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Post by ElectricOtter »

Have there been any tournaments in which that problem has been an issue though? While I definately see that concern, the odds against it are quite stacked. You can make a hypothetical situation to justify any rule, regardless of how likely it is.
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Post by AKKOLADE »

From just the stats for the middle school tourney I've fully ran as a TD, here's the differences in play-off fields determined by ppg that could have been made by a decision made on the protest of a single question:

Bobcat Bowl 2 (middle school) 4 matches per team, w/ 12 playoff teams:
#4 Blennerhassett A 790 points
#5(T) Tippecanoe 780
#5(T) Ripley A 780...
#8 Buckhannon-Upshur 600
#9 Charleston Catholic A 590
#10 Ripley B 580
#11 Bridgeport B 570

Basically, what I'm trying to say, is that while a protest won't always come into effect in determining who's seeded where/if a team gets in the play-offs, it can drastically change the face of an event.
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Post by NotBhan »

ElectricOtter wrote:Have there been any tournaments in which that problem has been an issue though? While I definately see that concern, the odds against it are quite stacked. You can make a hypothetical situation to justify any rule, regardless of how likely it is.
If you're referring to the protests and total points thing, I was involved in running a tournament that faced a somewhat similar situation. At a Florida CC State tournament in March, the general setup was a round robin among 10 teams with the top 2 advancing to a final match -- the tiebreaker for advancing to the final was total points. After 5 matches, we had the makings of a circle of death, and that did indeed hold for the rest of the tournament [with 3 teams finishing 8-1]. And the point totals were extremely close. During rounds 6 or 7 or so, the issue of whether to resolve protests not affecting the outcome came up. We decided against it because similar protests had not been resolved in the early rounds, since it would be unfair to do so in some rounds and not others. So it's not exactly the same situation, but it's close.

In general, if I'm running a tournament where total points are used as a tiebreaker, I stay with a rigid rule of not resolving protests unless they affect the outcome of the match. And if a team complains, too bad for them. The logistical hassle of resolving every last protest isn't worth the time, and the potential protests tend to balance out over the course of a tournament. And besides, the team got itself into a tiebreaker situation by losing one or more matches in the first place, so the complaints are a bit hollow.

--Raj Dhuwalia

P.S. I'm not advocating total points as an ideal tiebreaker; I'm simply saying that if they are used as a tiebreaker, it's not absolutely necessary to change the usual handling of protests.
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Post by Matt Weiner »

For what it's worth, the policy at this year's tournament was that if resolving one or more teams' protests might affect ordinal PPG in a situation where that is used for any purpose (order of tiebreaker games, seeds into playoff brackets, etc) then all protests resolvable without reseating the teams would be reviewed. For example, a team protesting that they should have gotten credit for a bonus answer would have received a ruling, but a team protesting that an opponent's tossup answer should not have been accepted would not get a ruling, because that would require reseating the teams to play a replacement question.

Of course, protests which affected the outcome of a game were resolved as soon as the game in question was finished, so that replacement tossups, etc, could be read if needed.

For as long as I can remember the NSC policy has been, without exception, that a team cannot be eliminated from championship contention by any means except losing an actual match, be it a regular round or a tiebreaker minigame. Any tournament that uses that guiding principle will find that disputes over PPG become less important because they can't knock teams out of the tournament on their own.
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Post by vcuEvan »

When can we expect full stats from this tournament?
Last edited by vcuEvan on Thu Jul 01, 2004 9:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Byko »

Soon. I'm working on them this week.
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Post by solonqb »

Can we expect them on the PACE website or will you just link ot them off of your own server at Furman or wherever?
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Post by First Chairman »

I'll probably ask to have the files sent to me and post them (since I'm the webmaster).
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