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I have been very impressed so far with both Seton Hall and Chaska. Good luck to both!

I'll agree with Egan: I don't know how a small comment like that could damage NAQT. Even with us promulgating that statement around this board, it doesn't hurt NAQT. If he decides to change the title of his QU website to "NAQT sucks!", it still won't hurt NAQT.

Now if QU's title changed to "PACE eats your children..." that could be construed as fighting words.

I also am not sure where the QU site specifically attacks PACE. Brock's quote is about 20/20, which is more an affront to the college ACF standard tossup system rather than the NSC. Besides, I don't recall Defiance ever attending NSC. It's not on our historical list of teams.

I read "Brock's" statement as "NAC, the tournament for teams so bad at quizbowl that the idea of buzzing in before the last clue of a pyramidal tossup has never even occurred to them."

It seems clear that Chip and Panasonic are on the way out, judging from all this desperate flailing by Chip. The issue now is no longer fighting them, it's finding the capacity for these new teams at NAQT and PACE once the tournaments completely collapse.

By the way... was there ever an "audition" for the Who Wants to Be a Game Show Host contest? I didn't see anything written up about it anywhere (here or QU site).

Something is "fishy" with the seeding of the playoffs. According to the "official" scoresheet outside of the main ballroom, these are the teams making playoffs. (Seeding is based upon record, then ppg.)

1. SHP 6-0 370
2. Chaska 6-0 287.5
3. Charter 5-1 409
4. Hastings 5-1 347.5
5. Manheim 5-1 320
6. Plano East 5-1 314.16
7. St. Thomas 5-1 293.33
8. Lincoln NE 5-1 274.16
9. St. John's 5-1 240
10. Center Grove 4-2 297.5
11. Hickman 4-2 283.33
12. Plano 4-2 271.66
13. Fishers M. 4-2 269.16
14. Plano West 4-2 262.5
15. James Bennet 4-2 261.66
16. Southside 4-2 257.5
17. Chicago Latin 4-2 248.33
18. Lee 4-2 228.33

So, assuming two "play-in" games for the 15 & 16 seeds ... the playoffs should like like this ...

1. SHP v. 16 Southside/17. Chicago Latin
2. Chaska v. 15. James Bennet/18.Lee
3. Charter v. 14. Plano West
4. Hastings v. 13. Fishers M.
5. Manheim v. 12. Plano
6. Plano East v. 11. Hickman A
7. St. Thomas v. 10. Cedar Grove
8. Lincoln NE v. 9. St. John's Prep

Instead, Chip has this:

1. SHP v. 14. Plano West/18. Lee
2. Chaska v. 15. James Bennet/16. Southside
3. Charter v. 13. Fishers M.
4. Hastings v. 12. Plano A
5. Manheim v. 11. Hickman
6. Plano East v. 10. Center Grove
7. St. Thomas v. 9. St. Johns
8. Lincoln NE v. 17. Chicago Latin

While I cannot seem to figure out the 8v17 game (or the play-in games) it seems that Chip is basing his seeding on "16" instead of "17".
Where all first-round games should have combined seeds of 17, five of the eight first round games have combined seedings of 16.

?????????????????????????

SHP Pirate wrote:Something is "fishy" with the seeding of the playoffs. According to the "official" scoresheet outside of the main ballroom, these are the teams making playoffs. (Seeding is based upon record, then ppg.)

While I cannot seem to figure out the 8v17 game (or the play-in games) it seems that Chip is basing his seeding on "16" instead of "17".
Where all first-round games should have combined seeds of 17, five of the eight first round games have combined seedings of 16.

?????????????????????????

How many times do we have to say it? The tournament is fixed.

SHP Pirate wrote:Something is "fishy" with the seeding of the playoffs. According to the "official" scoresheet outside of the main ballroom, these are the teams making playoffs. (Seeding is based upon record, then ppg.)

Either it's yet another Chip screw-up, or it's "punishment" for you and Charter daring to not love this tournament. Your call.

There wouldn't be a discrepancy if Latin was 5-1. I don't know if the mistake is incorrect result posting or incorrect pairings.

Chip's bracket indicates to me that he erroneously grouped Latin with the 5-1 teams or had erroneously listed them as 4-2. That would place them 9th by their score average.

Chip's incidents of bracket-fixing are more blatant than this, folks. This is just another mistake.

Just as an example of blatant bracket fixing: the 1995 Houston area Texaco Star Academic Challenge bracket was 32 teams for 31 televised matches. There were several remarkable things about this bracket. First, the first-round matchups were 1 v 17, 2 v 18 down through 16 v 32. Secondly, seeds 1, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 were all in the top half of the bracket. The 1 lost to the #5 seed (eventual champion Memorial) in the round of 16. The #26 seed in this bracket beat the #10, #14 and #8 teams to reach the semifinals and qualify for Chip's national tournament. That team thrived on super-quick buzzes on questions being re-used from previous national tournaments which the team's captain had attended as a spectator at Rice University each summer for three years.

Since the #26 team lost its semifinal by 10 points to the #2 seed, foiling Chip's preferred final matchup with Memorial, he subsequently scheduled the teams against each other at nationals in Washington, D.C. At that tournament, two of Memorial's four preliminary matches were against other Houston-area teams: Memorial beat Bellaire in a rematch of Chip's top-bracket semifinal, winning their season series 4-3; then Memorial lost to that #26 seed in a match Chip scheduled himself to judge. I don't really know to what extent that game was rigged; I don't remember any repeat questions from it, but there was an absurdly easy bonus category that was fed to Memorial's opponents.

Memorial advanced as a best 3-1 team and eventually lost decisively to Maggie Walker in the quarterfinals.
#26 was 3-1 with a lousy PPG ranking, so we went home.

SHP Pirate wrote:Something is "fishy" with the seeding of the playoffs. According to the "official" scoresheet outside of the main ballroom, these are the teams making playoffs.

1. SHP 6-0 370
2. Chaska 6-0 287.5
3. Charter 5-1 409
4. Hastings 5-1 347.5
5. Manheim 5-1 320
6. Plano East 5-1 314.16
7. St. Thomas 5-1 293.33
8. Lincoln NE 5-1 274.16
9. St. John's 5-1 240
10. Center Grove 4-2 297.5
11. Hickman 4-2 283.33
12. Plano 4-2 271.66
13. Fishers M. 4-2 269.16
14. Plano West 4-2 262.5
15. James Bennet 4-2 261.66
16. Southside 4-2 257.5
17. Chicago Latin 4-2 248.33
18. Lee 4-2 228.33

ReinsteinD wrote:There wouldn't be a discrepancy if Latin was 5-1. I don't know if the mistake is incorrect result posting or incorrect pairings.

I do have Latin at 5-1.

Fishers... MANGO?

cornfused wrote:Fishers... MANGO?

Their other team was Fishers Habanero .....

As Chip introduced them (brace yourself)

THE FIRST SCHOOL IN THE 26 YEAR HISTORY OF THE TOURNAMENT to enter two teams, and NOT call them A and B.

AND .... they had an actual MANGO on the table with them ..... I did not see habanero, so I can only assume they brought a pepper along.

Tegan wrote:THE FIRST SCHOOL IN THE 26 YEAR HISTORY OF THE TOURNAMENT to enter two teams, and NOT call them A and B.

HISTORIC GIMMICKRY ITT

Seriously, will repeat what I said in my NSC thread - Weiner's Law #1 needs to be enforceable at tournaments.

leftsaidfred wrote:

Tegan wrote:THE FIRST SCHOOL IN THE 26 YEAR HISTORY OF THE TOURNAMENT to enter two teams, and NOT call them A and B.

HISTORIC GIMMICKRY ITT

Seriously, will repeat what I said in my NSC thread - Weiner's Law #1 needs to be enforceable at tournaments.

That's great...except it's not true!

In 2004, Auburn (from Rockford, I think?) sent two teams and called them Red and Black.

Byko wrote:

leftsaidfred wrote:

Tegan wrote:THE FIRST SCHOOL IN THE 26 YEAR HISTORY OF THE TOURNAMENT to enter two teams, and NOT call them A and B.

HISTORIC GIMMICKRY ITT

Seriously, will repeat what I said in my NSC thread - Weiner's Law #1 needs to be enforceable at tournaments.

That's great...except it's not true!

In 2004, Auburn (from Rockford, I think?) sent two teams and called them Red and Black.

West Chester East has been calling its A and B teams "Varsity" and "JV" for years.

For purposes of the Byko ratings: The information I have directly from Fishers is that Mango is basically their B team compared to Habanero. Apparently these are the chosen names when they go to restaurants and play trivia, a la NTN.

Both teams were decent though. The difference was Habanero (A) had a brutal schedule, having to play both Charter and Seton Hall plus two other playoff teams.

To answer another leftover question, "Who Wants to be a Game Show Host" was won by a Fishers student. Not surprisingly, he was one of the few (only?) auditioners who actually treated it like a job interview, dressing in a suit and eschewing the normal shout-outs to buddies. The runnerup was also from Fishers, a girl who was on Teen Jeopardy earlier this year.

I can confirm it was Rockford Auburn that had red/black teams, as those are our school colors.
For the record, we last attended NAC in 2005 have since seen the light.

Sorry, I messed up, it hurts NAC for that statement, and NAQT and PACE are the best tournaments to go to. I would rather go to NAQT than NAC, and Fishers Mango and Habanero also is annoying, it could just be Fishers A and B.

scquizbowl wrote:Sorry, I messed up, it hurts NAC for that statement, and NAQT and PACE are the best tournaments to go to. I would rather go to NAQT than NAC, and Fishers Mango and Habanero also is annoying, it could just be Fishers A and B.

NO!!! What if someone's feelings got hurt?!?!

Buzz Buzzard wrote: EDIT: FWIW the answer was "Ahmadinejad". The mod. in Superior C (was that Brick Barrientos?) commented, upon one of the teams guessing incorrectly on, I think "Fidel Castro" or some such, that it was in fact "The other wacky world leader".

Nope, wasn't me. I was home watching the Cubs and the Dodgers. I'm also surprised any of the other NAC moderators could be confused with me. Quintong or DeJesus at a TRASH tournament I would understand.

etchdulac wrote:Just as an example of blatant bracket fixing: the 1995 Houston area Texaco Star Academic Challenge bracket was 32 teams for 31 televised matches. There were several remarkable things about this bracket. First, the first-round matchups were 1 v 17, 2 v 18 down through 16 v 32. Secondly, seeds 1, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 were all in the top half of the bracket. The 1 lost to the #5 seed (eventual champion Memorial) in the round of 16.

I seem to remember that was Texaco's idea in order to have more competitive first round matches.

Brick! Haven't seen you in a while!

I can confirm that the coach said that while the two Fishers teams were close in ability, he considered the Habanero to be the A team and Mango to be B.

Here's your quarters:

Manheim v Hastings A
Lincoln NE v Seton Hall
Center Grove v Charter
St Thomas v Chaska

Manheim survived a close 40 points scare against Hickman.

I'm not too upset by the "discrepancy" since most years the posters had mistakes on them. Or Matt could be right and there was minor meddling.

Oh look! The MN vs. MN matchup!

Ben Dillon wrote:The runnerup was also from Fishers, a girl who was on Teen Jeopardy earlier this year.

Ah yes, I remember Chip giving her a shout out during the match when she answered a question .... "I think I remember you from Jeopardy!"

ILoveReeses wrote:Oh look! The MN vs. MN matchup!

When I played NAC for Chaska in 2006, we won the DC phase and were absolutely "shocked" to discover, in Chicago, that the two semifinal games "coincidentally" pitted us against St. Thomas and the two New York teams against each other.

Hey guys. Results are in from the finals. Booker T Washingon beat the Charter school of Wilmington 385-300. It was an excellent match to watch. It was expected that Charter was expected to win coming from a 590 points score the int semi watch against John Cooper.

Here's the rest of the tournament with the scores I have:

Chicago Quarters

Hastings A def Manheim
Seton Hall def Lincoln NE
Charter def Center Grove 500-190
Chaska def St Thomas

Chicago Semis

Seton Hall def Hastings A
Charter def Chaska 465-235

Chicago Final

Charter def Seton Hall 425-275

Championship Series

Charter def John Cooper 590-170

Booker T Washington def Charter 385-300

Congrats to Booker T. The score was tied going into the Stump the Experts rounds. They had good speed and won most of the buzzer races.

Congrats to Booker T, Charter and everyone else for their performances at this... event.

Hey, I have a "stump the experts" question: Name a team that is not, in a million years, better than Charter at actual quizbowl.

Matt Weiner wrote:Hey, I have a "stump the experts" question: Name a team that is not, in a million years, better than Charter at actual quizbowl.

... among those playing at QU NAC, that is.

But seriously for Charter, while I wish they could have walked away with a trophy, to finish runner-up at NAQT, top 12 at PACE, and runner-up at NAC... that's not an easy thing to do for a team going three weeks straight to various nationals.

That's a pretty awesome run. Congrats to Bill and his guys! Next year you guys will be going over the top.

Hahahahahahahahaha what a joke. I don't care how much of an "underdog" Booker T. Washington is, but I just feel like reiterating the fact that Wilmington Charter would kick the crud out of Booker on questions that actually reward teams for knowing things.

No naughty words in the high school section! —Mgmt.

Hasn't Booker T. Washington been fairly active (at least in Chip) for awhile? Does anyone know what the odds are, if any, of them branching out into NAQT/PACE type stuff? Or maybe to put it another way, are they not coming to mainstream national events due to lack of knowledge that good quizbowl exists, lack of availability of good tournaments where they are, or just adherence to tradition?

I would guess there are probably a few decent events in the general Oklahoma area, right?

NoahMinkCHS wrote:I would guess there are probably a few decent events in the general Oklahoma area, right?

I would not know, but there was an Oklahoma team at PACE.

I know for a fact thety attend local NAQT events and have gone to HSNCT.

The 2003 Booker T. Washington team with Dan Benediktson attended HSNCT, beat four playoff teams (Wilmington Charter, St. Andrews, Eleanor Roosevelt and Solon), and lost in the playoffs to Walton and one of (St. John's, Eleanor Roosevelt, Wilmington Charter, Cutter Morning Star). They were definitely a good team, but were probably a second or third tier team that year (First tier being TJ/Dorman/Maggie Walker/etc. and second tier being teams like DCC/State College/Fort Mill/etc. that weren't quite at the elite level but pretty close). In 2004 and 2006 they went 5-5 at HSNCT.

Booker T. Washington was also at the 2002 HSNCT where they took a 17th. They have been to the NAC every year since 1997, which is as far back as my complete records go, making playoffs every year. And probably before that as well, since they won the NAC in 1992.

They didn't attend the NAQT State Qualifier at Oklahoma State in March.

NoahMinkCHS wrote:Hasn't Booker T. Washington been fairly active (at least in Chip) for awhile? Does anyone know what the odds are, if any, of them branching out into NAQT/PACE type stuff? Or maybe to put it another way, are they not coming to mainstream national events due to lack of knowledge that good quizbowl exists, lack of availability of good tournaments where they are, or just adherence to tradition?

Booker T. Washington has been going to NAC for over 20 years; in fact, I think they have the record for most consecutive appearances. As for NAQT and PACE, I can only assume that they do not attend those tournaments out of tradition and loyalty to NAC.

When I was at Booker T., there weren't as many options for nationals: NAQT had their first Nationals when I was a junior (at OU, of all places), and PACE was also in its infancy. But now, with HSNCT and NSC so successful and firmly established, I am ashamed of my alma mater for not truly testing themselves at the highest levels of competition.

As for local events, we (Tulsa) have hosted nine NAQT tournaments, and Booker T. has attended only three, maybe four, of them; OSU has hosted another 8-10 tournaments, as well, with Booker T. only coming to a handful of them.

Typically, they will attend one NAQT tournament a year, perform well (thus ensuring a bid to HSNCT), and be content with that. I blame the coaches more than anyone for this trend.

Stats for BTW at a local NAQT event this fall can be found here and here.

According to those stats, they averaged 32 points per bonus in the playoffs (thanks to a championship match in which they scored 365 bonus points without answering a single question), which means that they could kick TJ's and Dorman's butts. The rest of the stats look reasonable. They won the tournament, and I think one or two of the teams they beat were at HSNCT, though none of those teams did well at HSNCT.

Except there's only thirty points in an NAQT bonus.......

aarcoh wrote:Except there's only thirty points in an NAQT bonus.......

Meet the point of Mr Reinstein's post.......

aarcoh wrote:Except there's only thirty points in an NAQT bonus.......

Dude, I don't think that was the biggest problem that Mr. Reinstein was point out...

DReinstein wrote: Thanks to a championship match in which they scored 365 bonus points without answering a single question

However, they did go 18.72 PPB is the prelims, which sounds about right for a 1st/2nd-tier team. Given the low power rate, though, I don't think they would finish top 12 at HSNCT.

Congratulations, Booker T Washington and Charter. Now, if we could get Booker T. Washington to switch away from Chip, I would be pleased.
(Also, I disagree that Charter would win every single pyramidal game against BTW. However, given how good Charter is, and what little we can ascertain from that one tournament's results, I think the incidence of BTW winning on pyramidal sets would be quite low)

Bryce, top tier high school teams routinely average like 22 ppb on IS sets. 18 won't get you far at all, although 18 at nationals is much better.

Yeah...18 ppb on regular IS is....decent. At THS 1138, held on regular IS questions, Charter A had a beastly 28.3 ppb. Now that's a good bonus rate! And yes, in a regular pyramidal game, Charter A would massacre BTW. I mean no disrespect to BTW but Charter A is just that good.

Deesy Does It wrote:Bryce, top tier high school teams routinely average like 22 ppb on IS sets. 18 won't get you far at all, although 18 at nationals is much better.

Lets assume for a second that BTW could average 16 PPB at HSNCT. No team at HSNCT this year with >16 PPB missed the playoffs. So I think it would be fair to say, acknowledging small sample size and whatnot, that BTW would be a playoff team. (Although I'm waiting to hear back on the regression from Christian, and then I will feel more comfortable calling them an HSNCT playoff team)

Playoff doesn't mean top tier. I don't disagree that they probably would make the playoffs as well, but I do disagree that they could beat any of the, say, top 10 teams.

It was IS 70. Here are some Illinois teams on the same question set. It's not exactly the same in terms of the competition level (though both tourneys had some teams that would have been better off with A Sets), number of rounds used, timed rounds vs untimed, but it's a point of comparison. If somebody wants to, they can probably dig up the stats from Princeton, Brindlee, Michigan, and/or a few others that used the same questions back in October/November/December.

New Trier got 20 PPB on IS 70 and 16.45 PPB at HSNCT. I'm pretty sure that BTW would have made the playoffs at HSNCT. One other thing to keep in mind is that we don't know whether or not they had all their top players at the Tulsa Tournament. Last year, I thought Harrison was horrible when we played them on an IS set, but I later found out that they were playing shorthanded that day.

Lets assume for a second that BTW could average 16 PPB at HSNCT.

Well, I'm not sure why you'd do that. Top tier teams were averaging anywhere from 24 to 28 ppb on that IS set, and they were hitting around what, 18-22 ppb at nationals? I'm not sure why BTW, who clearly practices much less on nationals levels questions and clearly has much less deep knowledge (see: lack of powers), would see a bonus conversion reduction at a rate about 300% better than the the teams who specifically gear up for that kind of competition and display excellent depth of knowledge. Or, in short, why in the world does it matter if they would do ok or bad or great at NAQT? They still should play NAQT/PACE, still are nowhere near as good as Charter, and still need to stop playing chip because chip is the devil.