I'd like to present the following games as potential candidates for upset of the year:
Sun God @ JHU: Robert Bork A 235 - JHU A 230
James Kuang/Kevin Wang/Benjamin Xu/Fred Zhang (8-3), the high schoolers of Naveed Bork Memorial High, beat Robert Chu/Eric Bobrow (8-3). Kevin Wang doesn't get any points though.
Sun God New England: Yale B 300 - Yale A 285
James Wedgwood/Hasna Karim/Michael Kearney/Sophie Lai (6-3) give Stephen Eltinge/Adam Fine/Moses Kitakule/Alex Hu (10-1) their only loss of the day by going 6/6/0 with a whopping 13.64 PPB.
Sun God @ UIUC: MSU A 350 - Chicago A
MSU A 395 - Chicago A 190
Evan Suttell/Jakob Myers/Harris Bunker/Erik Bubolz (10-2) defeat John Lawrence/Matthew Lehman/Kai Smith (9-3) in a moment when they are fourth scorer-less. I think this is the advantaged final but since some doofus entered in the stats incorrectly it's hard to tell.
Terrapin @ MIT: House 310 - Yale 260
Shuli Jomes/David Do/David Gomez/Swapnil Garg (4-5) beat a shorthanded Stephen Eltinge/Moses Kitakule (9-2).
Terrapin @ MIT: Yale 370 - Columbia 345
Stephen Eltinge/Moses Kitakule beat Ben Zhang/Rafael Krichevsky/Charlie Dees/Gerhardt Hinkle (8-3) on their own. After Adam Fine arrives they win twice more, but the first is most impressive because it was carried by Moses and Stephen on their own going 3/1/0 and 3/4/0 respectively.
Terrapin @ MIT: Brown 240 - Amherst 210
Ankush Bajaj/Evan Pandya/Ujwal Punyamutyula/Daniel Wang (2-8) show why they were each top players in high school by beating Kevin Wang/Andy Tang/Boyang Jiao (5-6) after they neg 6 times, and then promptly just leave after lunch and forfeit their last three games???
Terrapin @ MSU: Wright State 305 - MSU A 285
NourEddine Hijazi/Aaron Jensen/Hari Parameswaran (8-4) take down Evan Suttell/Jakob Myers/Erik Bubolz (10-4) after out-PPB-ing them while led by high schooler Hari Parameswaran, who also takes them to two victories over Toronto J.
Terrapin @ Washington: UW A + UBC 425 - UW B + Oregon 150
If I'm reading this right, Arnav/Nate (UBC, 6-12) and Vikshar/Alex (UW A, 10-8) beat Ajay/Chris (UW B, 6-12) and Daniel (Oregon, 14-4) after their combined team combines for 6 powers and Daniel negs 4 times.
Terrapin Online: V. S. Naipaul's Drag Race 630 - Chauhan et al. 160
Geoffrey Chen/Neil Vinjamuri/Alex Schmidt/Eric Mukherjee (6-3) watch as Eric Mukherjee shows up after being gone for like 4 rounds and drops 12/1/1 on the otherwise closely matched P.C. Chauhan/Ryan Humphrey/Dylan Minarik/Michael Coates (6-3).
SCT Canada: Carleton A 290 - Toronto A 235
Ian Dewan/Ted Gan/Alex Roeder (5-5) beats Rein Otsason/Zhenglin Liu/Christopher Sims/Paul Kasinski (7-3) after Toronto negs 6 times.
SCT Canada: Toronto A 385 - Toronto J 240
Toronto A 325 - Toronto J 270
Toronto A (7-3) manages to win two games against the much stronger Toronto J squad of Aayush Rajasekaran/Jay Misuk/Patrick Liao (6-4) by somehow having more points than them at the end of the game. It seems like these victories were achieved by getting more tossups each game, while also having a high PPB.
SCT Florida: Florida C 295 - Florida B 150
Jenna Callison/Kayla Kalhor/Joseph Rios/Jason Zappulla (5-5) beat eventual winners Anthony Delgado/William Grossman/Jacob Hujsa/Khanh Nguyen (10-2) by going 1/13/0 and 10.71 PPB after Florida B negs 4 times.
SCT Great Lakes: Carnegie Mellon B 370 - Carnegie Mellon A 295
Ruel Beresford/Muling He/Samuel Hori/Aidan Place (9-4) beat their A team of Gabriel Chuang/Sebastien La Duca/Muzaffer Tasoglu/Jackie Wu (10-2) in DII.
SCT Midwest: UIC 260 - Grinnell 225
Cyril Dela Rosa/Richard Foster/Christopher Salgado/Joseph Shen (2-9) beat Christina Fu/Nick Haeg/Eva Hill/John Stookey (5-6) in a DII game in which Christopher and Joseph combine for 2 powers and 70 PPG (41.5 PPG and 2.1 standard devs higher than their combined average) and UIC gets 17.78 PPB (a full 5.17 PPB higher than their average over the day).
SCT Mid-Atlantic: Virginia A 825 - Roanoke 20
In a stunning victory for the NAQT SCT policy, Nick Collins/Eric Xu/Jack Mehr/Lawrence Simon (12-0) narrowly squeak out a victory over Megan Blackwell/Olivia Long/Sara Moody/Nathan (2-8). Roanoke, a regional powerhouse that routinely sends teams to DII SCT every other year, finished just above West Virginia (0-7), which was a series of empty chairs that forfeited every match.
SCT New England: Amherst A 380 - Yale A 195
Amherst A 360 - Yale A 340
Amherst A 330 - Yale A 290
Boyang Jiao/Andy Tang/Kevin Wang/Eliot Williams (8-1) manages to win against Stephen Eltinge/Adam Fine/Hasna Karim/Michael Kearney/Moses Kitakule (5-4, missing Jacob Reed) 3 times at SCT while getting 18.89 PPB to their 20.94, winning by 185 the first game even after negging 7 times.
SCT New England: MIT A 355 - Yale A 310
MIT A 315 - Amherst A 300
Clare Keenan/Kevin Li/Eric Lu/Josh Xiong (3-6) beat both the two top teams at the New England SCT by going completely ham.
SCT Northwest: Washington B (DII) 245 - Oregon 175
Vikshar Athreya/Ajay Kristipati (3-6) beat eventual winner Daniel Hothem (8-2) in a combined DI/DII field.
SCT Northern California: Stanford A 285 - UC Berkeley A 280
Bryce Hwang/Young Fenimore Lee/Keoni Rodriguez/Marianna Zhang (5-7) beat Eric Chen/Rohin Devanathan/Rahul Keyal (10-3)
SCT South: Texas A 680 - Texas A&M A (UG) 75
Ryan Humphrey/Ashwath Seetharaman/Jaskaran Singh/Graham Stockton (11-0) eke one out against Ryan Block/Manuel Ramirez/Elias Sanchez (1-8) in another stunning win for NAQT's decision to merge DI and DII fields in weak regions. Texas A&M B literally leaves early out of excitement.
SCT Southeast: Auburn-Montgomery 80 - Carson-Newman 60
Myeshia Daughtry/Tydazia Gamble/Dakota Mills/Elizabeth Meads (1-10) take one off Ben Blakely/Tim Quintalia/Chase Smidt/Chandler Everhart (4-8) in Auburn-Montgomery's highest scoring game of the day as they catch Carson-Newman off guard in an atypically weak performance.
PIANO @ JHU: Delgina 300 - More Ravioli 290
Nick Collins/Jack Mehr/Eric Wolfsberg/Rohan Narayan (9-3) beats Jordan Brownstein/JinAh Kim/Ophir Lifshitz/Chris Manners (10-3).
PIANO @ JHU: Tamil Canadu 290 - TJ A+ 255
Jay Misuk/Aayush Rajasekaran/Ian Dewan (5-7) beat Eric Murkherjee [sic]/Will Alston/James Kuang/Fred Zhang (10-2). I'm not quite sure who "Eric Murkherjee" is, but Toronto J + Ian Dewan beat Will Alston and company only one week after they narrowly beat the competition at
Delta Burke @ Purdue.
PIANO/MO: hamburger university lab school 375 - BHSU A 240
hamburger university lab school 335 - BHSU A 260
In a stunning turn of events, Ball Hard So University's varsity squad (7-3) takes two losses to the feeder high school for their rival, hamburger university (10-0). This upset, plus their loss to Figures associated with the titular polity (6-4) in the first round, kept them out of title contention for the first time in years.
ICT: Amherst 275 - Maryland A 190
ICT: Amherst 325 - Northwestern A 240
Combined these two games put Amherst (6-8) in the top playoff bracket and Northwestern in second bracket. Amusingly, Amherst had ~4 ppb less than Maryland A (8-5) across the prelims (1.66 less in that game in particular) and worse PPG but ended up with the first playoff seed because it was granted alphabetically.
ACF Nationals: Amherst A 215 - WUSTL A 210
Amherst (9-5) won a bonus protest to win by 5, pushing WUSTL (9-5) into 3rd bracket instead of being in contention for 1st.
ACF Nationals: Stanford A 325 - Columbia A 165
Speaks for itself really - tbh this should probably win. (7-9) vs (14-3).