08-09 Pre-Season Poll Results - Congratulations Charter!

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ClemsonQB
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Re: 08-09 Pre-Season Poll Results - Congratulations Charter!

Post by ClemsonQB »

They aren't on a level with Charter, while neither is WJ or Hunter.
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Re: 08-09 Pre-Season Poll Results - Congratulations Charter!

Post by TheKingInYellow »

Ha ha fair enough, but still...
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Re: 08-09 Pre-Season Poll Results - Congratulations Charter!

Post by aestheteboy »

I guess I can contribute to this too. I'm sure there are more worthy teams, but I only ranked teams I've seen recently.

Charter right now is probably the only team that excels at everything from lit, history, science, other humanities, and trash. Henry is an excellent generalist player and also has great depth in some few key categories, particularly history. Raja is always impressive at lit - he's probably better than me right now. Apparently, they also have an International Bio Olympiad gold medalist. They're a good team.

Hunter is also one of the few teams with no obvious weakness. I hope Guy wouldn't mind if I said that we are pretty similar in terms of what we know and how much we know. The difference is that he has excellent teammates, although unfortunately, I haven't even learned to match their names with their faces yet (sorry!). They're like a less intimidating version of Charter.

Dorman is still a mystery to me because I haven't played them yet this year. They've lost to Brookwood and Blake, but losses in NAQT packets don't affect my opinion too much. From what I've seen and heard, Todd is one of the top three hs lit players, and Freddy is one of the top three hs science players. I vaguely think that they're weak at history and other humanities compared to other top 5 teams, but again, I haven't seen them play yet. George has no reason to worry that this team would drop below top 10 in the nation.

GDS is definitely underrated. Ian works hard, and he transformed himself from a good player to an excellent player last year. Matt is also an excellent player, who reminds me a bit of Shantanu. I still haven't figured out their strengths and weaknesses yet, but they seem better at history and science than lit.

TJ seems a lot better at NAQT than ACF. Naren is obviously one of the very best players at geography and current events, and they are pretty competent at trash and "random crap." That helps them in NAQT. On the other hand, while Naren is awesome at science, he and his teammates seem average or below average on history, literature, and fine arts (again, relative to other top 5 teams). At UMD, they lost to us 160-480, and they almost lost to K-berg. That's rather worrisome, even if they were missing their lit player.

WJ, in contrast, is a lot better at ACF than NAQT (I'd rank WJ a lot lower if I thought NAQT was really relevant). We're probably one of the only teams in top 25 that can't break 20 ppb in NAQT. I consider myself a solid generalist player, capable of getting tossups on anything except trash. At the same time, I'm not that great at anything . . . except math computation, I guess. My teammates are getting better so I'm still optimistic about our chances at PACE and ACF Div II.

State College looked good when we played them at TJ. I don't think they are going to be top 5 in this nation this year though, and I vaguely think that they would be weaker on ACF things. I hope they'll be coming to more DC tournaments.

Gov is a nicely balanced team, which is always good. They are pretty good at everything, but not stellar at anything either. I ranked them 8th, but a few of their players are extremely dedicated, and they will only go up from here.

Gonzaga is the most one-man of all teams in top 10. Dan is one of the best humanities player in the nation, but it would be really difficult to beat the top five teams consistently without either helpful teammates or some basic science knowledge.

DCC may deserve to be higher ranked, but I haven't seen them much. They seem like Gov with perhaps less potential to suddenly rise up and surprise everyone.
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Re: 08-09 Pre-Season Poll Results - Congratulations Charter!

Post by closesesame »

To be fair, not having our literature player (and trust me, I don't know literature anywhere near as well as Josh Hahm does) makes a huge impact. If he were there, our team dynamic would have been a lot different because the PPG would have been spread around, and it's rather amazing what Josh knows that would enable us to get points on bonuses. I believe our bonus conversion at UMD was also lower than normal. I wouldn't say we're below average on history and fine arts, but we definitely are not at the level of Charter/Hunter/WJ right now, and thus we've got our work cut out for us. The game against Kellenberg at UMD was general dejection after 10+ rounds as well as some inter-team strife (when one person on the team has to pull 100 PPG to guarantee a win, there's bound to be some tension). It should not have been that close, and with Josh that probably would not have happened. As for the game against you, there's no doubt you gobbled up the history and literature, but the game would have been a lot closer had I not negged on a couple of the science questions.

That being said, Charter is really the team to beat right now. From what I saw of Hunter at UMD (though we haven't played them), Daichi is absolutely correct. And what did I tell you, Daichi? Your Asian modesty prevents you from seeing that you really are one of the nation's best all-around quizbowl players. GDS is very underrated. What really helps them out is that both Ian and Matt average high PPG, so it "spreads the work around", so to speak, but they still get high scores.

Dorman had a pretty amazing comeback yesterday, while State College seemed solid on NAQT. I have no idea about either of them on mACF events, though.
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Re: 08-09 Pre-Season Poll Results - Congratulations Charter!

Post by TheKingInYellow »

I's say about 75% of our team right now is Ben Geselowitz, and he certainly is much better at ACF than NAQT. That being said, we haven't actually been to a non-NAQT tournament this year, so....
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Re: 08-09 Pre-Season Poll Results - Congratulations Charter!

Post by warpoet »

Directed at anyone who ranked Santa Monica: Why? I mean, I appreciate it, but it's completely undeserved...
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Re: 08-09 Pre-Season Poll Results - Congratulations Charter!

Post by Gunnells »

For the several schools that have mentioned they would like to play Dorman more often, just travel to almost any tournament in the Southeast. They play every mid-sized to big event in SC-GA-TN, and several of the smaller ones. It would also be nice to see some head-to-heads between the GA and DC teams without the onus to travel being placed entirely on the Southern teams.
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