NY/NJ/CT/PA/DE Discussion '19-20

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NY/NJ/CT/PA/DE Discussion '19-20

Post by Pedro/HCHS »

What teams will do well in the circuit next season? I'll add the poll later, once we have a better idea of what new teams should replace the old teams on it (also, because I didn't really like the vote-for-one-team format). In the meantime, speculate away!
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Re: NY/NJ/CT/PA/DE Discussion '19-20

Post by A_Failure »

Hi everybody! I found the midseason players' poll from last year to be very interesting, so I decided to run a pre-season one for this year. You can go vote in it here. In order to avoid running into the "what counts as this region" debate that came up in the last poll, I have specifically defined this, and you should read about it before you fill out the form. Anyone can vote, as long as you know things about the region (this is why there is a "justification" section).

In terms of actual predictions, Hunter remains at the top of the region. We're probably a clear second, and then there seems to be a massive glut of teams after that, any of whom would break into the top tier if they can improve over the summer. I'll have a more detailed writeup later.
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Re: NY/NJ/CT/PA/DE Discussion '19-20

Post by thederpyaxolotl »

I’m going to say millburn will top the region this year, with Hunter a close second. I’ll come up with more complete predictions later.
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Re: NY/NJ/CT/PA/DE Discussion '19-20

Post by AGoodMan »

Would any school be interested in hosting a HFT mirror in the NY/NJ region? I know some of the schools here will compete in the HFT main site in November or the Richard Montgomery mirror in January 2020, but we would still love to see a mirror in between those two locations. I believe there are a number of strong teams in this region that could find HFT fun and challenging. If anyone is interested, please email us at [email protected]. Note the mirror is $10 per team this year, as opposed to $15 of last year.
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Re: NY/NJ/CT/PA/DE Discussion '19-20

Post by A_Failure »

Hi everyone,

I have written up some predictions for the upcoming season (based mostly off of my votes in the preseason poll). Before I dive into that, I also wanted to say that I decided I'll be releasing poll results at some point tomorrow night, so if you want to vote, this is your last chance. I'll accept any ballot sent to me before I post it here, and will be dropping the highest and lowest votes for each team to ensure quality.

With that being said, here are some predictions and commentary.

1. Hunter A

Returning off of a t-12 HSNCT finish, Hunter is probably the frontrunner going into the season. While they lose top-10 player Daniel Ma, the depth of their program is unparalleled, and their results at Livingston last year (where DMA was absent) suggests that they won’t miss a beat. Lead by History/CE players Pedro and Cerulean, they clearly have the edge on NAQT tournaments, but might be beatable on housewrites.

2. Millburn

I think we’re pretty clearly the #2 team going into the season, since We retain the vast majority of scoring from our t-19 team at HSNCT. Between Ben and I, we should have most of the distribution covered (namely, history, fine arts, science, geo, and probably philosophy). Ethan adds history insurance (although he may be splitting time on B team) and we’re working on adding a lit player. I think we’ll be overshadowed by Hunter on NAQT tournaments, but stack up pretty comparably on housewrites due to the diminished CE/Geo and more FA and philosophy.

3. Darien

I might be high on them, but they were a pretty good team last year with tons of upside (notably playing spoiler at LIFT and Bardbowl). John and Alex form a powerful one-two punch, and they have plenty of other players that can provide support (unfortunately I don’t know their categories). Their HSNCT finish wasn’t great, but I believe that their upside puts them at the top of the second tier.

4. Hunter B

Hopefully the roster shenanigans will depart with DMA, but Hunter B adds an MSNCT championship team to the core of one of the best 5-5 teams at HSNCT (which Jacob did play on). Last year, the various incarnations of Hunter B/C beat other competitive teams like Tenafly and Teterboro, and I have faith in the Hunter machine to make this team even better.

5. High Tech

They probably start around here, but they might have a chance to break into the top tier. Having Deepak alone probably makes this team one of the top three or four in history in the region, and Max has turned into a scary fine arts specialist. With that being said, they have some pretty gaping holes in lit and RMPSS with no obvious solution. If they can find players to cover those categories, they might finish the season in the top 3, but if not, I don’t see them moving up very much.

6. Tenafly

They were a solid playoff team that made it a couple of rounds, and return literally everyone. Unfortunately, I haven’t played them very much so I can’t say much about them. I’ve seen all of them get good buzzes in history, but don’t know how much knowledge they have outside that. From stats, they seemed to be excellent on lower difficulties, but dropped off considerably on higher difficulties (to be clear, they were still good, but not stellar). I see this team as solidly consistent but without the upside to win against the top teams.

7. Teterboro

Nick probably enters the season as the second best generalist in New Jersey, if not the region, and the best animal science player we will ever see. His teammates seem to be fairly competent, but not outstanding (although Raymond is a very good history player). They will be a pretty good team, but have inconsistency issues and some problems scaling up. Watching them will be interesting.

8. Clarke

This team came out of nowhere last year to make playoffs at HSNCT. They are a tough out, capable of capitalizing on mistakes (see us almost losing to them at Prison Bowl last year), but their stats from last year aren’t super flashy and they haven’t had any high-profile finishes yet. They should another solid team, beating most of the teams weaker than them but also losing to the stronger ones.

9. Hotchkiss

Cooper on history is scary. Like, really scary. He almost singlehandedly carried his team to second in JV History Bowl last year, even defeating Hunter. Unfortunately, he falls off from incredible to solid outside of history, and his support last year was limited. He’s definitely someone to watch out for, and I think he’s capable to taking a game off of one of the top two in the region, but they’ll probably drop more games than they should to weaker teams.

10. Livingston

Ackerman was a good generalist, so it’s hard to tell how much he shadowed Carolyn and Rosa, who are both very good players. They’re definitely better at NAQT than housewrites, and I can see them winning games against teams better than them.

Here are some other teams that I didn’t rank but merit discussion, in no particular order:

East Brunswick

Honestly, they should probably be on here, but I know basically zero things about this team. They seem to graduate most of their A team, but B team seems solid (finishing fourth at Millburn Invitational and almost winning against us at PHSAT). If they retain a majority of their players, they should be a good team, but even if not, they still sent 5 teams to Livingston, so they probably have someone good.

Wilton

The brothers Koutsoukos are a pretty good duo, but aren’t really a complete team. They should be able to compete with most teams, but I don’t think they’ll consistently beat teams in the top 10.

Penn Manor

Connor is pretty good. Unfortunately, they didn’t come out to NJ/NY to play, so I don’t know very much about his teammates. Like with Wilton, they’re too good to be counted out, but unless Connor does get good support, I don’t think they crack the top 10.

Friends Select

If I remember correctly, they were a t-31 team and retain most of their scoring. Matt was a pretty good player, and I imagine they’ll be taking another step forward this year.

Ridgewood

A very good History Bowl team making the transition into quiz bowl, they have plenty of upside. I was hesitant to put them on my ballot because they played two pyramidal tournaments before this, but I can totally see them ending up in the top 5.

I look forward to what the season has in store for us all. Good luck to everyone reading this!
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Re: NY/NJ/CT/PA/DE Discussion '19-20

Post by Subotai the Valiant, Final Dog of War »

Hopefully the roster shenanigans will depart with DMA
I highly appreciate this mention of my flexible rosters.
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Re: NY/NJ/CT/PA/DE Discussion '19-20

Post by A_Failure »

The preseason poll results are as follows:

1. Millburn (87 points, 6 first place votes)
2. Hunter A (84 points, 4 first place votes)
3. Darien (59 points)
t-4. Tenafly (52 points)
t-4. High Tech (52 points)
6. Hunter B (33 points)
7. Teterboro (32 points)
8. Clarke (26 points)
9. Wilton (13 points)
10. Livingston (12 points)

Also receiving votes: East Brunswick (9 points), Hotchkiss (8 points), Friends Select (3 points), Ridgewood (1 point)

The full ballots (with names redacted for those who requested) is available here.

Thanks to everyone who voted, and good luck in the upcoming season!
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Re: NY/NJ/CT/PA/DE Discussion '19-20

Post by thederpyaxolotl »

A_Failure wrote: Fri Aug 30, 2019 7:26 pm

10. Livingston

Ackerman was a good generalist, so it’s hard to tell how much he shadowed Carolyn and Rosa, who are both very good players. They’re definitely better at NAQT than housewrites, and I can see them winning games against teams better than them.

Here are some other teams that I didn’t rank but merit discussion, in no particular order:
Our ranking is probably a bit high to be honest; even with Jon's shadowing, we're nowhere close to him, especially at the beginning of the season. If we can get a few of our new players involved though, we could cover some of the huge holes we have across the distro. I'd put EB A above us.
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Re: NY/NJ/CT/PA/DE Discussion '19-20

Post by thederpyaxolotl »

So, post-first-IS set, any new opinions on the region?
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Re: NY/NJ/CT/PA/DE Discussion '19-20

Post by jacobhb »

Millburn A & Hunter A

Still very evenly matched in basically everything, Hunter won the game between them but Millburn seems to neg much less, which could give them an advantage.

High Tech A

Still scary, with stats behind Hunter and Millburn but not by that much. Could end up beating one of them if they have a good game. Deepak finished 5th individually and has some pretty solid support. They also had a grail. However, they did only get 5 tossups in the game against Hunter B.

Hunter B

Solid stats overall, 4th behind Hunter A, Millburn, and High Tech in terms of powers and PPB. We have the ability to go on crazy runs, neg ourselves into oblivion, or do both at the same time. We had 11- and 12-tossup runs respectively in the games against EB (where we came back from 70-200 at TU 9) and High Tech A. If we had a really really good packet, we could maybe beat Hunter A or Millburn. We had several close afternoon losses, partially because of negging too much. Overall, we could probably end up anywhere from 3rd to 10th.

Manheim Township A

Will and Aizaaz together put up some impressive stats and Manheim was the only team to beat Hunter. They seem pretty good, despite not being ranked on the poll.

East Brunswick A

Pretty good and consistent stats overall, seems like a clear second tier team.

Livingston A

Similar to EB, lost the game between them by 5.

Tenafly A

Not really sure what was going on with them leaving the tournament. Can't comment on them until next tournament.

Wilton A

Seems solid but not top tier yet. They need more support. They seem to be a playoff-level team, but didn't do that well in playoffs.

Penn Manor

Similar to Wilton. They only had 1 playoff win and every buzz by them that game came from Connor.

Ridgewood

Good but not quite playoff-tier yet. Aum was 3rd individual scorer and has some support. They didn't make playoffs (but they were in a bracket with High Tech A and Livingston) and they finished in the middle of top consolation.
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Re: NY/NJ/CT/PA/DE Discussion '19-20

Post by Speedygrapes »

The situation that arose last Saturday with our team was due to a poor miscommunication on our part. We apologize to anyone who was either directly or indirectly affected by this.

On the topic of Tenafly, I definitely wouldn’t count us out after Princeton. Our A team was at half strength, due to Alex Slusarev and myself not attending. Juno Lee and Jerry Feng duoing finished the morning with stats roughly in the middle of the pack in both P/G and PPB. While this is nowhere near where we want to be, both Juno and Jerry ended the morning with very similar stats playing duo as they did with the full team at other IS sets late last year. This means that their ppg is not inflated/there is little shadowing. Therefore, I expect us with a full roster to perform much better than our performance on Saturday may show.

With that being said, seeing the strength of High Tech, Hunter B and others makes me question if we are ranked too high. Hopefully us at full strength we will be at their tier. Our next tournament will probably be either Clarke Fall or LIFT, so it looks like we have a while to see.
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Re: NY/NJ/CT/PA/DE Discussion '19-20

Post by Gerald Ford's Economics »

Although only two teams from the region went, and there are no official stats yet, I think that Hunter and Millburn's EFT stats are an interesting point of discussion.
Hunter: 50/80/32, 18.74ppb*
Millburn: 33/97/10, 18.3ppb*
*These may be slightly off
Both teams finished 5-2 in prelims and 2-2 in playoffs (2-3 if the prelim loss carries over), making the top playoff bracket. Hunter lost to Rutgers A and Yale A in prelims, and Princeton A and Penn A in playoffs. Millburn lost to Hofstra A and Penn A in prelims, and Princeton A and Hunter A in playoffs (I'm using letters even if there was only one team represented). Hunter beat Millburn A and NYU A in playoffs, while Millburn beat NYU A and eventual winners Rutgers A in playoffs. Both Dean and Ben from Millburn won scoring awards, with Ben getting the science award (as a high school sophomore, too). Overall, I'm not too sure what conclusions to draw from this, other than to say that this season will probably be a fascinating one for the Northeast.
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Re: NY/NJ/CT/PA/DE Discussion '19-20

Post by benchapman »

Now that the first half of the season is drawing to a close, are there any new predictions/takes people have?
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Re: NY/NJ/CT/PA/DE Discussion '19-20

Post by thederpyaxolotl »

Well, seeing as that Quaker Fall and MaroonBowl are the only tournaments left before next year, I'd say it's a good time for a midseason poll, if there's interest.
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Re: NY/NJ/CT/PA/DE Discussion '19-20

Post by a Joe »

The mid-season poll has returned!

Same format and region restrictions as the pre-season poll, but only the first five slots are mandatory, much like I did last year. Here's a link. Poll closes the day after Thanksgiving.

Enjoy!

P.S. Come to my tournament
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Mid-Season Poll Results

Post by a Joe »

The results are in!

Hunter A: 216 Points
Millburn: 199 Points
High Tech A: 175 Points
East Brunswick A: 119 Points
Hunter B: 106 Points
Manheim Township: 80 Points
Darien A: 74 Points
Livingston: 52 Points
Tenafly: 40 Points
East Brunswick B: 20 Points
Hotchkiss: 19 Points
Ridgewood: 16 Points
Penn Manor: 12 Points
Kellenberg: 9 Points
W.T. Clarke: 7 Points
High Tech B: 5 Points
Darien B: 5 Points
Teterboro: 4 Points
Ithaca: 3 Points
Wilton: 2 Points

Congratulations to all the teams named! Raw data is at this link. Comments are on in case of errors.

Also note that responses were given uniform formatting: I.E. the 20 spellings of Manheim Township I received were all standardized as Manheim Township.
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Re: NY/NJ/CT/PA/DE Discussion '19-20

Post by Technomario »

There might be a couple PA teams that are being overlooked in that poll that merit mentioning; Great Valley A and B and Henderson.

Henderson recently won Philly Fall and made playoffs at Princeton. They have two players who came off a T-12 run at HSNCT last year and don't look to have lost too much.

Great Valley had their A team win last weekend at Henderson and their B team finished 3rd. They also attended the aforementioned Philly Fall tournament and did quite well.
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Re: NY/NJ/CT/PA/DE Discussion '19-20

Post by High Dependency Unit »

Hi everyone,

Some of us who go to college or went to high school in the northeast are collaborating to edit a HS set for Fall 2020 that we hope will be written primary by high school players from the region. All experience levels are welcome, and more information is on the call for writers here: viewtopic.php?f=109&p=364428#p364428
Michael Borecki
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Bowdoin College (club president) '21
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