The 70 Greatest Players of the Last Eight Years: A Ranking

This is the holding pen for the best threads containing quiz bowl talk.
User avatar
1.82
Rikku
Posts: 398
Joined: Thu Feb 05, 2015 9:35 pm
Location: a vibrant metropolis, the equal of Paris or New York

Re: The 70 Greatest Players of the Last Eight Years: A Ranki

Post by 1.82 »

Matt and Jordan have the same number of ACF Nationals titles. People forget that.
Naveed Chowdhury
Maryland '16
Georgia Tech '17
User avatar
Majin Buu Roi
Wakka
Posts: 145
Joined: Sat May 17, 2014 1:52 pm

Re: The 70 Greatest Players of the Last Eight Years: A Ranki

Post by Majin Buu Roi »

Cheynem wrote: (sadly Princeton's program seemed somewhat unstable during his time)
On the non-competitive side of things we've actually been more stable than we look. One of the sillier things constraining tournament attendance is that Pton's academic calendar is, well, wonky to say the least with the result that tournaments frequently fall on vacations. Since I'm a New Yorker, I've been pretty unaffected by that because I can easily hop on a train back a day early.
Last edited by Majin Buu Roi on Sat May 20, 2017 3:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Jason Golfinos
Trinity School '13 (inexplicably in charge, 2011-13)
Princeton '17 (inexplicably in charge, 2015-16)
Cambridge '18
HLS '22
adamsil
Wakka
Posts: 225
Joined: Wed Feb 09, 2011 6:20 pm

Re: The 70 Greatest Players of the Last Eight Years: A Ranki

Post by adamsil »

I'm not sure you could pick either me or Dylan as Northwestern's MVP this year--we traded being the top scorer in games all year long, and I think he generally fared better than I did in games against good teams. He also improved a lot between last year and this year, whereas I got worse in every subject except biology. But I think my transition from generalist at GT-->specialist at NU tended to help my ratings with the voters, because nobody cares about specialists on third-bracket teams, whereas my addition tended to dilute Dylan's generalist points and made his improvement look less notable. (This hurt Greg, too. He played really well in the ICT playoffs.) Dylan's ability to convert tough bonus parts all over the map and pick off questions from specialists in the ICT playoffs was greatly underrated in this year's poll, plus, unlike me, he didn't neg Northwestern out of the top bracket at Nats. :roll:
Adam Silverman
BS Georgia Tech '16
PhD Northwestern '21
User avatar
vinteuil
Auron
Posts: 1454
Joined: Sun Oct 23, 2011 12:31 pm

Re: The 70 Greatest Players of the Last Eight Years: A Ranki

Post by vinteuil »

Cheynem wrote:Both Matt and Jordan had quasi-psychopathic levels of competitiveness.
Maybe. I think Jordan has let the game get to him less than Matt did. We've all read Matt's excellent posts on what this game can do to your psyche and social life (quasi-psychopathic); I certainly thought I noticed (admittedly from fairly limited interactions) the difference he described (happier, maybe a bit friendlier) between 2015 and 2014. On the other hand, Jordan's never come across to me as anything but collegial, uplifting, and super-friendly—not trying to say that he's not every bit as competitive at all, just that it's a different kind of mindset.

At 2014 ICT, Chris Ray tried to spur Jordan on by making a lot of noise about turning him and me into archenemies; obviously that kind of motivation worked well for Matt, but it never seemed to be necessary for Jordan—some people just "gotta know everything." (Yes, we weren't as well-matched as the two Matts, which probably didn't help Chris out.)
Jacob R., ex-Chicago
User avatar
Cheynem
Sin
Posts: 7219
Joined: Tue May 11, 2004 11:19 am
Location: Grand Rapids, Michigan

Re: The 70 Greatest Players of the Last Eight Years: A Ranki

Post by Cheynem »

Perhaps it's because you're more loveable? (No, I guess you're right, that doesn't make sense)

I was half-being facetious with the psychopathic line. Almost every player in the rankings was very competitive, some famously more than others. I wasn't around Jordan all the time and he wasn't as public a player (in terms of posting and IRC'ing) as other folks, so I actually don't know how competitive he is. In my brief experience around him and playing with him, Jordan actually strikes me as being more in the Seth competitive mold in which an easygoing style belies considerable competitive fire. I also see elements of my old teammate Brendan Byrne at his peak in someone striving to remember things and being anguished when he couldn't.

Again, I wasn't around Jordan, so perhaps he was routinely slapping Ophir around, but I didn't see the "weight of not winning a championship" as much publicly as I saw on a few folks, most notably Matt Bollinger during his famous Tour de Spite. Who knows what would have happened though had he continued to not win a championship?
Mike Cheyne
Formerly U of Minnesota

"You killed HSAPQ"--Matt Bollinger
Banana Stand
Wakka
Posts: 158
Joined: Thu Apr 26, 2012 4:38 pm

Re: The 70 Greatest Players of the Last Eight Years: A Ranki

Post by Banana Stand »

I think the basketball analogy works well here, if we view MattBo as Kobe and Jordan as Lebron(lol). Both are obviously insanely competitive people, but Kobe almost always seemed to "need" the win more than Lebron, and went to psychotic lengths to get it. Lebron is more reserved and only kicks it into overdrive a few times a season, and usually not off the court. Obviously, you can't be the best without an insane competitive drive, but you don't see the same levels of pure spite in Lebron that you saw in Kobe, which I think is true of Jordan and Matt.

They share some other similarities, in that Kobe generally had much better supporting casts(Tommy isn't quite Shaq but you get the gist) and won more titles. Also, this is speculation, but Jordan strikes me as slightly more "real" in his areas of expertise(not to say that Matt didn't know a fuckton of real shit himself, but I feel like Jordan has a slight edge) which mirrors Lebron's edge in natural athleticism, the gap being closed by Kobe's competitive drive.

Also, off the analogy, Matt and Jordan basically had identical ppg's their winning years at Nats(87.11 for Matt to Jordan's 87.33). Jordan's team combined for ~26 PPG. Matt's combined for over twice that, with 56 PPG, grailing a 10th place Stanford team on their way to clearing the field. You can argue both ways, that Jordan's single-handed win in the finals gives him a boost, or that Matt's identical PPG on a team with Tommy and "third scorer" Evan Adams gives him the edge, but personally I think Matt's performance that year is hard to argue against. Combine that with the insane ICT performances and it's tough to put him lower than 2. Maybe they're 2a and 2b(I think Jordan's CO performances help him), but it's a cool thing to think about.

Finally, here's Kobe summing up UVA's 2013-14: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttfxmJhKX7I&t=47s
Jack Mehr
St. Joe's NJ '14
UVA '19
User avatar
Cheynem
Sin
Posts: 7219
Joined: Tue May 11, 2004 11:19 am
Location: Grand Rapids, Michigan

Re: The 70 Greatest Players of the Last Eight Years: A Ranki

Post by Cheynem »

I was going to say that both Kobe and LeBron only have three championships until I realized I was blocking out those horrible Celtics/Lakers/Magic Finals.
Mike Cheyne
Formerly U of Minnesota

"You killed HSAPQ"--Matt Bollinger
Locked