2023-24 Collegiate Player Poll: I'm Doing It This Year

[InfinitePeng]

Hello!

Welcome to the 2023-2024 iteration of the player poll run by me, Alice Wang. You know the drill: any player who played either ICT or ACF Nationals is eligible, vote for your top 25 overall players, your top 15 in lit, history and science and your top 10 in other categories. Additionally there a few other "bonus" questions which I have added like 4th scorer of the year, rookie of the year, set of the year etc which I will post if I receive enough responses. This poll will close on May 26th, 2024 though if I do not get enough responses in time I may extend the deadline slightly. This thread will be used for analysis and discussion of potential players you believe should be ranked, any non game-related discussion should probably go in the Player Appreciation Thread. I would highly recommend Ryan Rosenberg's College Quizbowl Stats website as it contains a multitude of advanced stats for your perusal. Looking forward to seeing the responses!

Oh, and the ballot can be found here.

[Serpentine284]

(I already had this written up, I swear I’m not that fast at writing)

It’s hard for me to talk about everyone I want to, so I’ll focus in on a few players who I think really deserve to be higher on everyone’s ballots and that I think I can provide good analysis for.

I think there are two types of generalists that play in QB. The first is like myself: doesn't get the flashiest buzzes but is consistent at getting middle clues across the board. The second is like my ESPN teammate Forrest Weintraub, because she has the deepest pockets of anyone I've ever met in every category. She can drop first lines in ancient history, physics, astronomy, AFA, jazz, philosophy... the list goes on. You can never count her out on any tossup, she will obliterate the top specialists to their best categories more than you'd expect. If she isn't in your top 15 overall ballot, put her there right now. She's also absolutely t3 AFA and belongs somewhere on your science ballots.

I highly doubt anyone would leave him off their ballot, but I would go even farther to argue that Richard Niu is a top 10 overall player this year. Don't believe me? He top-scored Cornell at both nats with two of the best literature players in the country shadowing him *and* with a top 5 AFA player stealing buzzes. He is absolutely untouchable at what he knows: I can see no world in which he isn't top 5 science and top 10 literature, and I don't think it's controversial for me to claim that he's number 1 on my AFA ballot. Outside of Tim Morrison, I don't think there's a "specialist" I would rank higher than him.

I think Andrew Zeng really showed up at nationals this year, putting to bed the "NAQT one-trick" allegations against him (mainly leveled by me). He's a phenomenal history and “other” player (easily t10 in both), but it's worth noting how good he is at literature and areas of FA as well. Playing next to Tim cannot be easy for your lit points, and yet Andrew put up an impressive 3/8/0 statline on ICT literature and went 10/0 on ACF Nats lit. I'm not sure I would put him t10 literature, but he could definitely be there next year; deserves a t15 vote though.

If you're making your list based on who the best players at the national tournaments were, I could *maybe* see an argument to put Arya Karthik outside of the top 5. However, if you're like me and are creating your ballot based on what players you think are the best, Arya cannot and should not be outside of your top 5. Their knowledge is beyond 99.99% of players, and despite their high neg count at ICT, they also put up the third-most powers at the tournament. I think they were a bit rusty in their playing style after coming back from a long break from anything Quiz Bowl-related, so mark my words, next year, those neg numbers are going to go down and those power numbers are only going up. They should absolutely be top 10 on science, literature, and thought ballots.

Here's a bunch of extra takes:

Matt Jackson is 1.
Raymond Wang is a top 10 overall player; should be top 10 in your literature, VFA, and AFA polls as well.
Nathan Zhang is top 30 overall easily, potentially cracking into top 20; he could sneak in to your literature and VFA polls, but almost certainly is a top 3 philosophy player (weigh that in the thought poll how you will).
Jason Hong is top 15 overall, very strong argument for top 10, dude turned into a ridiculous generalist in just a year. He should also absolutely be top 5 in your history and top 10 in your science polls.
Vincent Du should be in your top 10 overall, and I think he has an argument to go as high as 6-7. He should also be top 3 in any potential League of Legends polls.
Likewise, Rasheeq Azad should be t10 science minimum.
Cooper Roh is top 10 history, no debate. He could also slot into that top 5, he's got the knowledge for it. Think he has a strong case for best freshman as well.
Don't forget the Toronto or Waterloo players, they all performed exceptionally at the nationals tournaments. Mattias Ehatamm especially should be in your top 10 on literature. Ben Chapman also has a very strong argument for top 10 on science and top 10 "dawg" ranking.
Aum Mundhe is a sleeper pick for back end of top 30 overall.

Vote me on your science ballot, I think that would be pretty funny.

[geohsgraduate]

Having seen Brown's team members play and improve throughout the year, I hope I can provide an accurate analysis so they can get the recognition they deserve.

Megan Wang should be your vote for newcomer of the year. Megan had not touched a buzzer prior to this school year, yet has rapidly improved to become a strong music player in just months of playing the game. Many of Megan's buzzes come from real knowledge, which she is able to translate into impressive pulls on the hard parts of bonuses in both history and music.

Jason Hong has transitioned from a science/history specialist to become an incredible generalist this year. In addition to his extremely wide breadth of knowledge across the history distribution, Jason has numerous pockets of history that he will consistently dominate on—when a question is read that sounds anything like "Jason content," you can count on him to absolutely destroy it. Jason has repeatedly said that his "weakest" subcategory of history by far is American History, yet at ACF Nationals he got 11 of 17 tossups heard. Jason should definitely be top 5 in your history poll.
Jason is also a beast at science. Specifically, Jason is a menace on chemistry and biology, while also being very strong at the rest of science. I buzz exclusively on science questions, which lowers the numbers he puts up, but numbers aside his knowledge is truly on a different level when it comes to chem and bio. Put Jason in your top 10 for science, and very possibly top 5.

[rhn26]

I’m sure I’ll be back with more opinions on the overall and subject polls later, but for now, some thoughts on a couple of the bonus categories in the poll:

I’d like to submit my teammate Jacky Xu as a candidate for Newcomer of the Year, and a possibility for Rookie of the Year as well. To my knowledge, they’ve never played pyramidal quizbowl before college (besides possibly some scuffed tournament in China like once which, come on).

Despite somewhat of a language barrier in the beginning, Jacky quickly proved that their depth of knowledge in so many categories was unmatched. The amount of real knowledge they have in wide swathes of European and world literature, European and ancient history, philosophy, and social science is mind-boggling, and the best thing is that they’ve actually read it all. My greatest joy at Nats might’ve come from seeing Jacky give increasingly obscure (correct) answers to history bonuses that we had no chance in hell otherwise of getting. This is, of course, not even mentioning the absolute lock Jacky has on any content Chinese, be it poetry (where Jacky 30’d both Chinese poetry they heard and was the only one to convert the guan part), history (cf. Zhou Gong tossup and the numerous bonuses Jacky would’ve crushed had we heard them), or anything else (thanks for dropping that Hami clue so early). I must give a shoutout to Michał from Stanford here for getting the stone from Hong Lou Meng over us. Jacky’s also quite underrated on biology and I really wish I had listened to their answers on at least a couple bonus parts in bio/chem because they were right.

This is all rather anecdotal, but Jacky scored 15 ppg on a top bracket ACF Nationals team with the highest average buzzpoint out of all its members while being shadowed extremely hard on literature and slightly less so on history and thought. At ICT, which favors them much less, Jacky still put up 4/25/9 on a second-bracket D1 team and tied as top scorer among that team. Their regular season stats are no slouch either.

Of course, there are other strong newcomers and rookies out there—I was especially impressed at the squad Jason Hong of Brown was able to assemble around him after suffering the loss of three quarters of the previous year’s A team. The effort Jason has put into maintaining his club fortunes is staggering, and I'm glad it paid off. Megan has put up amazing stats in AFA all year (particularly impressive for a newcomer), and Mason is an amazing science player who’s able to scale to 4 dots as a freshman and put up insane numbers alongside noted good science player Jason; frankly I would vote Mason in the science subject poll. I don’t know anything about visual arts, but I’m told Alex is very solid on that subject as well. It would also be remiss of me to not mention Cooper Roh in this breath about Northeast rookies: a genial yet truly fearsome history player who went 3/3/0 against us at UG Nats in a game where Columbia put up over 500, and he dropped 12 (!!!) powers at ESPN. Playing this guy in the future on history isn’t going to be fun for anyone. (Edit: somehow forgot Cooper's teammate Jack Rado is a freshman too; this guy scales to the moon on humanities—we got tyrants firstlined over us by him—and is already a terrifying generalist at the college levels.)

[Adventure Temple Trail]

I’ll start by putting on my T.M. Scanlon hat and laying out some impressions that (hopefully) “no one could reasonably reject.”


Matthew Lehmann is, at least, the second-best player in the country, and it’s not close. (That is at least, not at most.) He had the scariest statline of anyone who played SCT this year, getting (if I’m not mistaken) more powers as an individual than any other full team. His recall of “that’s a clue that used to come up” across philosophy, literature, visual fine arts, and more (including physics, which he is able to beat Adam Fine to semi-regularly) is unparalleled. You are not a serious person if you have him ranked any lower than 2nd on your overall ballot, and should rank him near the top in most subjects too. He’s also a Very Nice Person and I wish him the best in becoming one with The Law or whatever it is lawyers do.


In some order, three other generalists played this past year who could (and, in one case, did) clearly make top bracket at nationals solo if necessary. These three, in some order, round out my top five.

Five years after playing their last tournament, Jakob Myers strolled back into ACF Nationals this year as if no time had passed at all (which is very hard), and put up more first-buzzes (19) than any other individual player in the field. Jakob is remembered primarily as a history player, and still dominates at that category (while sitting alongside two other Ph.D-candidate historians), but their buzzes at Nats spanned a much wider range, showing a player very much in what JL would call the “supergeneralist” mold. If it were plausible to put a non-Matthew Lehmann person second, Jakob would be that person.

Arya Karthik didn’t always play tournaments this past year, but when they did, they played with undeniable intensity. While my concerns from last year persist about their high-neg playstyle when in the “team leader” role, that barely dented GT’s ascent to the ICT top bracket and swung only two or three of the team’s games.
I’ll also add that I admire Arya’s voracious reading and their vision of quizbowl as an avenue for personal and communal intellectual enrichment. I look forward to more of their contributions in whatever form those take, and I hope they have an invigorating year abroad in the “city of dreaming spires,” where they will very obviously be the best collegiate player in the U.K. by default.

While we were of course devastated to lose him, and to fail in our Sasuke Retrieval Arc at the Hyatt Regency Valley of the End this year, Amogh Kulkarni remains committed to gaining power(s) in his own way. The top-8 cutoff to the playoffs of DI ICT is one of the toughest challenges a quizbowl team faces; to do it solo is ridiculous. Amogh is clearly pushing himself to learn high-difficulty material across wide swaths of the canon and it’s paying off. He's an auto-rank for your lit and history ballots, and should be in the mix for most other categories.
Also, I’m absolutely thrilled that he heeded my call to share his high-difficulty writing prowess with the world with ARGOS; you’re gonna love it.


Below that, we have some combination (a) strong generalists who shine most brightly with strong backup, (b) elite specialists who scare us with their depth, and (c) people who are to some degree both of those things at once.


Adam (middle initial redacted) Fine continued his rampage this year, somehow managing to 30 many science bonuses and get that much-delayed Career Triple Crown without knowing any science easy parts. Perhaps he can now Sharpie over that “#2” on his “#2 Science Player” tank top and replace it with a “#1”. Even buzzing ~90% on science he was pivotal enough at both nationals that he should probably be overall top 10; remember also that he is often shadowed out of many other things he knows (including VFA, AFA, and mythology, where his buzzpoints were sadly not recorded at Penn Bowl, Regionals, or SCT this year).

Cornell followed up on last year’s ICT win with what could be called our first-ever “undergrad Triple Crown.” Raymond Wang (VFA, lit, religion) and Nathan Zhang (more lit, philosophy) continue to be top-of-the-game specialists with growing generalism. It seems like Geoffrey Chen has stepped away from quizbowl, but Richard Niu stepped in at a similar level on science without missing a beat, adding in top-flight buzzes in auditory fine arts and some spots of literature. I, for one, am on the “chard chrain,” and would look askance at any ballot that doesn’t include all three of Raymond, Nathan, and Richard.
Plus, Amogh Kulkarni thinks they’re good people, which means they must actually be good people.

We saw less of Stanford than we should have this year. Tim Morrison and Michał Gerasimiuk both brought their all at both ICT and Nats, sinking sick buzzes left and right. Tim is probably the best active drama player and is also very strong in math, philosophy, and social science; I’m not really sure what Michał is good at because he is one of those people who buzzes on a wide smattering of questions across categories and could always do so unexpectedly. Natan Holtzman also contributed 17 powers to the ICT team that had the most powers of any team in the field. All three of these players should be on your ballot.
I’m unsure whether and where Ethan Strombeck lands, if only because I’m very sad he declined to play either national this year and only has one statline (from Regs). But he gotta be pretty good at quizbowl to get 40 tossups in 11 games next to Tim and Michał, and oh yeah he edited ESPN.

Andrew Wang, quizbowl’s pre-eminent sayer of the syllables “a” and “un”, remains a scary memory for his era’s Illinois Scholastic Bowl alums over a decade later, and has made scary memories for even more people with his return to UI-RockfordUC this year. While perhaps primarily known for recognizing mythical figures from allusions in Japanimation and negging science clues that do not point to any single answer, he’s one of those players who could truly buzz on any question at any point, which is very unnerving to play against.

Charles Hang put up some of the stats of his 15-(plus?-)year collegiate playing career while sitting next to an ever-more-absurd Matthew Lehmann. He’s a reader of many history books and it shows. Any honest ranking includes him.

Hometown-ish heroes UNC presented a rather balanced attack en route to their heroic 3rd-place finish at this year’s Nats; Vincent Du, a chemist (and physicist?) by training and capable generalist to boot, anchors them and leads them in scoring.

Forrest Weintraub at Columbia is similar, having pulled away as the usual top scorer on a squad with many strong specialists; she’s something of a specialist herself, with breadth and depth in auditory fine arts as well as physics. Other players who fit a similar capable-generalist-with-strong-specialties play pattern include Christopher Sims of Northwestern (who is great at music and as real as they come on econ), Eve Fleisig at Berkeley (who is great at literature), and Joel Miles at Minnesota (who has beaten me to philosophy several times).

Not enough people are saying Claire Jones and Ned Tagtmeier, who put up ludicrous buzzes while playing through (someone's gotta say it) some of the most brutal shadow effects ever seen in quizbowl. (Which include pretty large shadow effects on each other, especially in British lit.) Their playstyles are quite different -- whereas Claire is icily efficient, often waiting to strike until she’s dead certain of her scholarly engagement with the topic, Ned is much less predictable, communing with “Vibes” in a manner not dissimilar to Chris Ray’s “The Voice.” You should at minimum have Ned ranked pretty highly on your Lit and Thought ballots (he’s the top “they talk about this guy at debate tournaments” player in qb), and Claire on your History ballot, though that doesn’t do full justice to her cross-category dominance on Britain, Brazil, and various global phenomena both academic and pop-cultural.

To some extent Caleb Kendrick’s luck leading Maryland to high top-bracket finishes at ACF Nats ran out this year, but he’s still a hell of a player. While obviously a game-breaking philosophy player, he’s also a solid generalist across other categories such as literature. I encourage him to have better takes on the distinction between literature and philosophy.

This Jason Hong guy at Brown seems pretty good at scoring points at nationals difficulty. I didn’t play against him this year, so others can speak to his category strengths better than I can.

Jack Lewis of MTSU didn’t attend Nationals, but put up a pretty impeccable solo performance at Regionals. I’d strongly consider ranking him.

You should probably have some Waterloo people on your ballot -- I’m not as familiar with their subject strengths, and they seem relatively balanced as a team, but Mathias Ehatamm and Michael Du are numerically good contenders. Peruse the Canadian player poll thread for more info, if you dare.


More stuff on category

On subject specific stuff, people did not give Alex Akridge enough attention last year and they really should start; he continues to be able to pick off Physics and OSci against pretty much any team. #3 science player in the country seems fair, and it may be #2 depending on your level of faith in Adam Fine and Richard Niu.

Max Brodsky of Illinois is an absurd music player.

Simone Weil coined the term “decreation,” which describes what John Marvin does to tossups on anything he’s studied (which includes much of the Religion and Philosophy distributions). He’s also the realest jazz enthusiast I know. I'm glad he was able to make time for tournaments through the haze of studying for oral exams, which he of course passed with flying colors, on the day after ACF Nationals, no less!

Danila Kabotyanski, Breaker-of-Horses, was a strong Beliefs player back when it was “RM” in 2011, and he’s even stronger now, with more knowledge especially of traditions from Asia and a cooler buzzing style.

Subhamitra Banerjee Roychoudhury at Michigan effortlessly destroys religion questions from all faith traditions.

Some people I know less about, but whom The Data from ACF Nationals suggests should be under consideration -- if you know more about one or more of these players or think someone got left off, please do share:

• Lit: Bryan Ugaz, Ethan Ashbrook, Karsten Rynearson, Andrew Hanna
• History: Ashish Subramanian, Sanjay Srihari, Jason Hong, Cooper Roh, Jason Huang, Chinmay Murthy, Jacob Hardin-Bernhardt, Lexi Terman,
• Science: Rasheeq Azad, Shahar Schwarz, Rohan Shelke (it’s interesting how non-overlapping the Bio/Chem and Phys/OSci lists would be if they were split)
• VFA: Halle Friedman, Annabelle Yang, Joy An
• AFA: Jeremy Cummings, Sky Li, Kevin Park, Jared He, Aum Mundhe, Joy An, Eric Gunter
• Belief: Chinmay Murthy, Ben Sterling, Quynh Phung, Ashish Subramanian, Chinmay Murthy, Conor Thompson
• Thought/Social Science: James Stevenson, Jaik Havlik, Cory Smith, Jonathan Shauf, Benjamin McAvoy Bickford, Conor Thompson
• Geo/CE/Other: it’d be really cool if ICT kept buzzpoint stats for these

Rookie of the Year: As an extreme old I am not super familiar with who came up from high school this past year, but of people whose names I recognize, Sinecio Morales has put up some strong stats (especially, from the looks of Nats numbers, on fine arts both visual and auditory) and looks quite dedicated to being a good community citizen, playing a role in publicizing the semi-guerrilla Nora Barnacle Memorial guerrilla lit set, and editing for the upcoming set PLAYTIME. [sic]

Newcomer of the Year: I was gonna hype up Jacky Xu (Cornell), whose stats repeatedly had us asking “yo, who the F is this?,” but Richard said everything I’d say and more from more direct firsthand experience. Jacky fits this award perfectly and is well poised to improve a lot from here (is it too early to imagine a Jordan Brownstein-like trajectory?), so yeah, have fun everyone else.

Fourth Scorer of the Year: The Correct answer is a co-nomination of Claire Jones (ICT) and Ned Tagtmeier (Nats), who could each be (and have been, and may soon again be) lead scorer on a champion-level team.
Technically Michał Gerasimiuk had the fourth-highest number of points on Stanford at ICT, but it seems insane to think of him as a fourth scorer given how much he anchored the team there and at Nats, so I just won’t.


I am also struck, in Literature and History (the categories where region is a first-level subcategory), by how different the Nats get rates, average buzz position, etc. were from region to region. It’d be more work than we should put on Alice now, but it’d be interesting to see informally a list of “top America player,” “top India player,” “top China player,” etc. as I suspect that kind of knowledge cluster is also very relevant in high-level quizbowl play.


Anyone else find it weird that the listed number of replies for this topic is 1 less than it should be?

[forrestw]

Richard Niu has rightfully gotten a lot of attention in this thread, but not enough of it has been given to the fact that he scored 50 ppg in the prelims of ACF Nationals while being teammates with Raymond, Nathan, and Jacky. Rank him first in music, second in science, top 5 in literature, and top 10 overall.

While I'm on the subject of science, the numbers, great as they are, really do not do justice to Geoffrey Wu. He's shadowed more than any other science player in the country and still manages to accumulate lots of clutch buzzes in all four subcategories. He put up 12/13/4 (!!!) on science in 12 rounds of UG Nats, including a ridiculous 7/3/0 on osci. I'll be ranking him fifth, but the absolute lowest he should go on a sane ballot is eighth. He's also one of the best all-around social science players out there, and it's a shame that philosophy and social science aren't separate categories in this poll. Lastly, Geoffrey should merit some consideration for fourth scorer of the year, particularly for his UG Nats performance.

Mason Yu's science performance at ACF Nationals also hasn't gotten the recognition it deserves. Putting up 140 sci points in second bracket is already quite impressive, doing it next to noted top 10 science player Jason Hong is outstanding, and outscoring him on bio with 6 gets is herculean. Mason should go somewhere in the 11-15 range.

Your Rookie of the Year vote should either go to Cooper Roh or Jack Rado. At this stage I have no idea which one of them I will choose, since they're both so talented and so different as players. Cooper is so, so, good at history and I've never seen anybody get first and second line buzzes as consistently as he does. He should be top 5 in history, and his ability to score with volume in basically one category is unparalleled among freshmen. That being said, he got second at IPNCT for a reason and can get sick buzzes in lit, visual art, beliefs, or other on clues you didn't even know were history-adjacent--I especially enjoyed his third line buzz on Robert Louis Stevenson at nats this year. Jack is just as deep and just as brilliant as Cooper, but spreads it more evenly across the distribution. In addition to being a very capable lit player, he has incredibly deep pockets in thought (he outpowered me in phil at UG Nats), arts (he had the first buzz on Rachmaninoff at ACF Nats), and even history. Be prepared for him to make a huge leap next year and appear in the overall ranking as well as multiple subject rankings. It was so inspiring watching these two lead their team to the finals stage at D2 ICT and either of them is a worthy Rookie of the Year.

One last stray observation: Columbia B went 13/0 on music at ACF Nationals, with John John going 7/0 and Jack going 6/0. They're both insanely good AFA players with lots of real knowledge and haven't had the chance to shine all year. Consider them when filling out the bottom of your music ballot.

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

I would just like to point out that Eve has a lot of coverage outside of literature; at Nats she was 6th in global first-buzzes and 4th in top-3 buzzes, with impressive gets in music, visual arts, and other history contributing to those figures.

[Shahar S.]

I wanted to shout out the Berkeley team specifically, cause I think they’re awesome and I’m worried that even though we demolished our respective consolation brackets, we might get overlooked because not as many voters have seen us do our thing.

In addition to being a kind person, awesome baker, and just generally one of my best quizbowl friends over my time in undergrad, Eve is also a stone cold killer on literature and fine arts and should be ranked extremely highly on both those polls. I have her projected as top 5 lit, top 10 in both VFA and OFA, and top 15 overall. I’m super proud of the team we’ve built together over the last few years and I’m excited to see her lead the team to bigger and better things next year.

Nathaniel was the glue that held our team together this year. He’s a super calm, friendly, and consistent player who made all of us better players by example. I have him somewhere in the top 6 to 8 range on history. He’s also a very underrated generalist, I wouldn’t say he’s as good at anything else in particular as history but he’ll routinely get great buzzes across categories like myth, VFA, and literature. I think he’s good enough to warrant a ranking in the high 20s in the main poll as well because of it.

At the beginning of the year I was hoping to make it onto the top 25 list this year, and I think I got close but ultimately fell short by a bit. I picked up some generalism over the past year (enough to solo ILLIAC and duo Booster Shot without feeling uncomfortable) but generally am not at a place I’m happy with in any category but science yet. I will say though, I think I’m DAMN good at science and think I should be ranked very highly there. I had the most points on bio at nats (I have 10 less points than I should have on the advanced stats because they gave my second line on Cas proteins to Swapnil), and T2nd most on chemistry (tied with fellow criminally underrated science player Rohan, who I’ll get to in a bit). While I’m not as strong at physics and osci, I’ve still managed to get good buzzes on both those categories at most tournaments we played, even while being shadowed by other great Physics/Osci players like Swapnil or Kevin. I’m putting myself 4th overall in science behind only Adam, Andrew, and Rasheeq (my god people please rank him high; those nats stats are nasty).

Swapnil is so much fun to play with. He has this combination of light-heartedness and conviction that I really appreciate (even when he’s protesting against our own correct answers unironically in the middle of the game). Swapnil is enough of a lockdown on physics and osci and strong enough at physical chemistry that I think he warrants a top 15 spot on the science poll. He’s also probably the best high level generalist we have on the team, as he’ll routinely get insane pulls on super difficult answerlines across history, current events and geography, thought, and religion. I hope he gets some votes for best 4th scorer (even though he has to beat out Ned and Jim to get there which I admit is not an easy task).

Anuttam is probably the most improved player on Berkeley from last year. He’s picked up a ton of high level answerlines in a very short amount of time, all while being extremely supportive and helpful at actually running the club alongside me over the last year. Anuttam really shines at RMPSS and literature, and I think he should be under consideration for top 15 in both this year.

Ryan is a great overall player with very deep pockets of knowledge in a lot of different places. In basically any game you play against him, you have to accept that Ryan is going to get at least one crazy buzz on history, mythology, VFA, or lit, and you just have to sit there and take it. He’s also the best player I’ve ever seen at high school quizbowl.

Rohan’s stats from regular season games don’t reflect his immense skills as an overall science player. Playing in NorCal means you have to play against some combination of me, Swapnil, Kevin, Vinu, Aditya, Arjun, Tim, Natan, Eric, Michal, and Allan across just 4 teams every tournament, and yet he still is a force to be reckoned with on that category on every tournament we’ve played. I’m glad he got a chance to show off what he can do at nats this year, he’s just so damn good in that category and has been for years. Rohan should be in your top 15 for science this year, easily.

Vinu had to prepare for a qualifying exam so couldn’t make it to nats this year, but I wanted to point out how insane his buzzes are sometimes. Vinu has the highest ratio of crazy “how on Earth did you know that” buzzes to normal buzzes I’ve ever seen. I think he should be under serious consideration for the “other” poll.

[The Blind Prophet]

People have mentioned Vincent Du in this thread, but I think that he's better than even some here are suggesting-- I consider him strongly in that second tier of players behind the Matthews. He may not have the requisite generalist ability to make top bracket solo, but he just dominates the game a different way-- by being unshakably dominant on 7/7 or so of the distribution. He makes it incredibly easy to build a team around him, hence why UNC has been able to have a different supporting cast the last several years and still make top bracket (or only miss to a TB as happened in 2023). He may not get as many late buzzes across the distribution and thus not boost his ppg against weaker opponents as much as other players of a similar caliber, but those points are much more easily replaceable by teammates. He's also even better on bonuses on tossups; he had an outsized influence on us having the second highest ppb in the Nats field this year. We had the highest ppb in the field in physics (by some margin!), the fifth highest in AFA, highest in OFA, fifth highest in VFA, and second highest in osci, all almost entirely guided by him.

I think it may already be a foregone conclusion that Adam Fine will top the science player polls, but with no disrespect to Adam, I would encourage voters to consider Vincent's case for this position as well. If I've done my math right, he got the most science tossups of anyone at nats this year, with 38, two more than Adam. I think he's been considered in the group of players right behind Adam over the past few years, but this year he's added bio to his science coverage, and tied for collecting the second most bio tossups of anyone at this nats. In my opinion, he's crossed that threshold to become the best. Even if you disagree with that, I think he is clearly at least the second best science player right now; the only competition for that I think is the subject of my next paragraph. Also consider him for your top 5 positions in the arts categories; I don't think I need to say too much here because the numbers speak for themselves. The numbers don't really indicate his dominance in thought categories this nats, but consider him for the poll in this category as well-- he's both shadowed a bit by me and BMB getting a fair amount of thought now, and this tournament was definitely an exception to his usual dominance of philosophy and social science. I think past nats stats bear this out as well.

On the topic of science, you should also be ranking Rasheeq Azad very high in that department. He was second by my numbers in total science conversion this nats behind Vincent, at 37. And lest you think he's getting these numbers by feasting off late buzzes in fourth bracket, he was fourth in the entire field in first buzzes, and the three ahead of him are not science players. He also led the field in top 3 chemistry buzzes, was second behind just Adam Fine in top 3 physics buzzes, and led the field in top 3 osci buzzes (and also led total conversion in the field in this category by a disgusting margin). So I think it's safe to say his numbers are not going to decline much no matter what bracket he's in. Having played many tournaments with both Vincent and Rasheeq, I can also say that it is a real question who the best science player at UNC is. Given that I've just made the case that Vincent is the best science player, this puts Rasheeq at the very top of the conversation here. Vincent considers him the best science player if that means anything; I will have him #3 in my poll and I don't think its reasonable to put him much lower than that.

Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford should also be in your Top 25. We had to wait until pretty late in the year to see how the combination of him and Vincent would work, and I think its fair to say it has worked very well. To compliment the reliable 4 or 5 tossups a round Vincent is giving us in his categories, Ben adds in the x factor of being able to get tossups in just about any category (with the exception of chemistry and physics) in any given round. He's also just a "pure hooper," as Henry Goff would say-- he plays each question as they come to him and very rarely makes ill-advised buzzes or gets frustrated; he always stays in the game now matter what the score is. He also has one of the realest knowledge bases of any player in the game, which in combination with the aforementioned qualities allow him to scale frighteningly well, especially for this only being his second year in college. The harder the competition and the questions, the better he gets-- I think this is showed by the fact that he raised his ppg in the playoffs. There were several playoff games where despite a bad Vincent round and me and Jim not doing much, we won anyway because Ben just dropped like 60. There are also several subject polls where Ben should be considered: I think the stats bear out him being in the running for history, beliefs, and oac. He's also better in these categories than pure conversion numbers would tell you-- they are always super clean buzzes that no one from the other team has a chance of beating him to.

Consider Jim Fan for your lit poll, he converted 20 lit tossups total at nats, which puts him seventh in top bracket. He may not be always putting up super early buzzes, but he has incredible breadth extending to every nook and cranny of the canon. Lest you think this breadth-focused approach might hurt him against stronger competition, he too was able to raise his game in the playoffs, proving he can buzz more early and aggressively when the situation calls for it. The fourth scorer of the year thing is weird since I only outscored him because he negged twice more than me, and this is the only tournament since spring 2021 at which I've outscored him (and the sample size there is very large), but if you are going to consider him our fourth scorer his case for fourth scorer of the year is very good.

Finally, I will second the case for Sinecio Morales for rookie of the year-- I've admittedly only played him once at ACF Winter, but he was a very scary player who went toe to toe with BMB that game and we only won by like 5 or something. He's one of those players that I forget is only a freshman sometimes; the way he plays the game and especially the way he scales make him seem like a multi-year veteran of college quizbowl. I think JHU can go very far with him as their lead scorer over the next several years.

[weebyjeebys]

I feel like Toronto is getting underrepresented when they had a 4th overall prelims scorer at ACF Nats and a 4th place finish at ICT just saying

[Borrowing 100,000 Arrows]

To some extent Caleb Kendrick’s luck leading Maryland to high top-bracket finishes at ACF Nats ran out this year, but he’s still a hell of a player. While obviously a game-breaking philosophy player, he’s also a solid generalist across other categories such as literature.

Yeah, I laid a massive egg in prelims with the sole exception of the game where we upset Stanford. Outside of thought where I improved some due to editing CO and UG Nats, I definitely regressed as generalist due to my pesky dissertation making it impossible for me to study

To hype up some people from the Mid-Atlantic, Sinecio has really improved a lot over the course of the year, and I could see JHU becoming a top bracket team next season if he continues to improve at this rate. I've always been a big proponent of Vincent going back to the 2021 poll when I ranked him #8 above Chris Ray (now Chris Ray is retired so you have no excuse!) and Benjamin also definitely deserves to be in your top 25 as he was a major reason they finished so high this year. (edit: I don't know why I called you Trevor lmao)

Also, holy shit Eve is cracked. By far some of the most impressive buzzes I saw in the second bracket were hers in the game where Berkeley just ran roughshod over us.

[The Blind Prophet]

I feel like Toronto is getting underrepresented when they had a 4th overall prelims scorer at ACF Nats and a 4th place finish at ICT just saying

I personally would love if someone in the know would discuss some Canadians and their relative position in comparison to American players in the polls, as I don't know a whole lot especially about what categories especially the Toronto people are good at (though I guess I could also brave reading more deeply into the Canadian pol thread, as frightening as that prospect is). Presumably Gareth and Ben are somewhere in the history and science discussions here but its hard for me to know where they are relative to others without having played them or having category stats about them.

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

In line with a suggestion I recently made on Discord, I'd like to submit a tier list based on stats from the two nationals. I don't mind if people shout out their friends, teammates, and rivals, but if nobody posts a ballot, it becomes hard for old people like me to distinguish between players of different levels. Effectively, it becomes Matt Jackson and Matt Lehmann in one tier and then 30 other players in another, which seems unfair to the excellent players in the 3-10 range.

My criteria are as follows:

Tier 1: Elite supergeneralists
Tier 2: Strong, upper-top-bracket generalists
Tier 3: Elite 7/7 specialists, lower top bracket/upper second bracket generalists
Tier 4: Elite 4/4 specialists, second-bracket generalists
Tier 5: Narrower specialists and lower-level generalists

When I say "top bracket" and "second bracket," those categories don't exactly correspond to the outcomes of the two nationals. Some teams would have made the top bracket four out of five times, but took a couple of unfortunate losses in the event; in those cases, I chose to rank players according to what I suspect was the most likely outcome for their teams. I also extended the list to 30 to make the tiers more balanced.

My ranking is below; if you disagree with anyone's placement, I encourage you to suggest corrections or post a ranking of your own.

Tier 1: Matthew Lehmann, Matt Jackson
Tier 2: Jakob Myers, Forrest Weintraub, Tim Morrison, Amogh Kulkarni
Tier 3: Arya Karthik, Andrew Wang, Richard Niu, Raymond Wang, Natan Holtzman, Eve Fleisig, Chris Sims, Vincent Du, Caleb Kendrick
Tier 4: Adam Fine, Joel Miles, Charles Hang, Andrew Zeng, Michal Gerasimiuk, Ben Chapman, Gareth Thorlakson, Jason Hong
Tier 5: Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford, Connor Thompson, Shahar Schwartz, Nathaniel Hull, Claire Jones, Robert Condron, Chinmay Murthy

[MMSANCHEZ]

I thought I'd share some light on the Canadian players in contention for this years poll, as they've been criminally underranked this far.

Toronto A is perhaps the strongest and certainly the most balanced team Canadian team ever to grace the buzzer. Benjamin Chapman and Gareth Thorlakson both dominate their 4/4 specialties like few others in the game. It would be an act of malpractice to have Ben any lower than 5th in science, or Gareth any lower than 5th in history, or either anywhere outside of your overall top 15. Sky Li was 4th overall scorer at ACF Nationals for a reason, putting in a performance very comparable to Caleb Kendrick, who has been extremely high on this lists in previous years. Rank Sky no lower than 18th. Tony Chen rounds out the formidable squad. To me, Tony is the quintessential rainy weather player. When Toronto’s ringers are going off, he’ll stand back and contribute 10s where he can. However, when they are having an off pack, he’s more than capable of still stepping into the team leading generalist role he embodied so well for many years at Western. A ranking lower than 20th would be a grave error.

I can't say enough about the Waterloo A team that won D2 ICT last year, and then didn't skip a beat, finishing tied for 4th at ACF Nationals this year. Mattias Ehatamm is quite possibly the best active literature player. I'd have him at 3rd minimum there and probably 15th to 20th on the overall ballot. Liam Kusalik is a force of nature all over the science distribution, but especially in physics where he gives even Ben a run for his money on the regular. A top 10 spot on your science ballots is long overdue.

Finally I'd like to shout out Henry Atkins and Lia Rathburn. They've only gotten better since their illustrious college careers and would both be top 5 players if eligible today.

[The Blind Prophet]

A couple more miscellaneous shout-outs: Ashish Subramanian is as others have mentioned, very good. The sample size at nats isn't really sufficient to demonstrate this but he's certainly the best geography player in the country. He's also very good at history and beliefs and worthy of consideration for those polls. Ivvone Zhou is extremely good at AFA- shes splitting that category with Eric on UNC B but even so she put up great stats in that category. She's also by far the best opera and musicals player I've ever seen-- since these categories are small they won't show up in the stats as much but all of this considered I think she is definitely worthy of consideration for the AFA ballot. Graham Troy is also a super elite history player-- at ESPN he outscored me and Ben combined on history. If you're at all considering me or Ben for your history ballots, definitely also consider Graham. If you care about sick buzzes, he also gets some of the most ridiculously early buzzes you'll ever see.

I'll go ahead and post my current Top 25. This isn't final and I will probably make some more adjustments before I submit, but this is what I have right now.


1 Matt Jackson
2 Matthew Lehmann
3 Jakob Myers
4 Vincent Du
5 Arya Karthik
6 Amogh Kulkarni
7 Forrest Weintraub
8 Caleb Kendrick
9 Charles Hang
10 Jason Hong
11 Richard Niu
12 Tim Morrison
13 Raymond Wang
14 Natan Holtzman
15 Andrew Wang
16 Adam Fine
17 Michal Gerasimiuk
18 Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford
19 Andrew Zeng
20 Chris Sims
21 Joel Miles
22 Eve Fleisig
23 Nathan Zhang
24 Claire Jones
25 Ben Chapman

[quynh mccool]

I don't spend enough time looking at stats to put up a full ranking of my own, but I would like to submit for your consideration the names of my ACF Nats teammates who helped us make our run to top bracket.

I have absolutely no clue why Matt Schiavone's name hasn't been brought up, but he should be ranked on your science ballots. Top scorer in chem and top 6 in osci at ACF Nats is no joke, and despite playing on a team of four STEM majors he dominated the science distro in our games. He also is one of the best classics knowers in the world; his Greco-Roman history and mythology coverage is elite. He has probably the most consistent work ethic in our club when it comes to carding, and he's going to just continue to improve in the coming years.

Ben Dahl and Eylon Caplan are both very good literature players. Their ACF Nats numbers are depressed from playing on the same team, but we saw at Penn Bowl that both of them can dominate the category at an elite level on their own. Ben specifically is one of the best Brit lit players I've ever seen.

For most improved player, I want to shout out David Mathew. Within our club we've been calling him the most improved player all year, and I don't know of any player more deserving or more slept on than him. To go from 2 ppg at his first college tournament at 2020 ACF Fall to 30 PP20TUH at SCT and 20 at ICT this year is absolutely insane, and it's been so awesome to see him grow as a player and find his footing. His deep pockets of knowledge in literature and social science have impressed me time and time again this year.

Finally, despite not using MODAQ and not having precious buzzpoint stats as a result, category stats do exist for the tournaments Purdue hosted this year thanks to the tremendous work Reilly has put in, so I would just like to submit them for your perusal for ranking Midwest players (selfishly also because I think they provide a much better picture of my religion and philosophy knowledge than the ACF Nats stats):

• Penn Bowl
• ACF Regs

[Halinaxus]

+1 to everything Quynh said, especially the bit about Davidmat.

Since she was too modest to broach the subject herself, I'm here to tell you that Quynh belongs on your overall poll, probably around 20th or wherever the break between tiers 4 and 5 is. Although she mains categories outside the big three (more on that in a moment), she's one of the best "vacuum cleaner" generalists I've seen, capable of getting middle buzzes on literally anything except bio and chem (and playing on the same team as a chemical and a biomedical engineer probably has something to do with that). Quynh also has very, very good neg control for the leading scorer on a top bracket team.

As for Quynh's strongest categories, she should be highly ranked for both belief (in which I believe she scored the fourth-highest points at ACF Nationals) and philosophy, in which she is second only to Matt Jackson within the Midwest.

[Stan Melkumian]

My two cents:

Although he plays minimally now, Pranav Sivaram is still a top ten science player. He has the most real knowledge (from actual, published research and science olympiad) I have ever seen. When I am studying, he is the person I go to whenever I have a science-related question.

I believe Max Brodsky was rightfully mentioned, but I am surprised no one has mentioned Justin Wytmar. On top of being a deadly fine arts player (notably five-worded SCT FA), he is also a very strong and consistent history player. Max and Justin are the only two players who have ever completely locked me out of fine arts (I do not like playing them for this reason :P). They both easily are worthy of being ranked in fine arts.

m

[rhn26]

Here's a spitball of names to consider for your science poll, after glancing at the aggregate Nats stats for the category:

Vincent Du is a top 2 science player (and possibly 1). He went 38/4 for 360 points in top bracket while being remarkably consistent; his lowest points on a subcategory of science was 70 (on osci).

I would probably pick Andrew Wang to round out my top 3. I especially admire his ability to buzz on every chemistry tossup.

Rasheeq Azad’s stats were freakish at Nats and he should be top 5. While we don’t know how he would’ve done in top bracket, his dominance on chemistry, physics, and (especially) other science combined with very high celerity suggests he wouldn’t have fell off that far, if at all.

Alex Akridge and Matt Schiavone are probably both in that 4-8 range for me. Alex seems particularly apt at physics and other science while Matt is a monster at chem, but they’re both more than capable of buzzing across all 4/4 (as I experienced firsthand at nats). I’d probably give Alex a slight edge due to being more balanced across the subcategories, but know that they’re both very, very good.

Liam Kusalik’s 22/2 statline (before UG finals) impressed me a lot; for the first time playing against such tough opposition in top bracket, he got a lot of tossups while being very efficient at it. Do not leave him off your ballot.

Shahar Schwartz scored a ton of points while having noted good phys/osci player Swapnil shadowing him on those categories. Rank him highly.

Geoffrey Wu is shadowed on every single subcategory of science yet still puts up solid numbers and is a beast on bonuses. Jason Hong is of course Jason Hong. Rank both of them highly.

Arya Karthik, Ben Chapman, and Natan Holtzman all didn’t play Nats this year but should be a lock for the poll (highly). I'm beginning to sense that I've probably advocated for like 10 players to be in the top 6 or something, but I really have no clue what to do here.

Ryan Humphrey scored a lot of science points in top bracket while not getting an other science tossup, which speaks to his depth in the other subcategories (especially biology).

Forrest Weintraub, Mason Yu, and Rohan Shelke are excellent candidates for the 11-15 section of the poll. Forrest has evolved from buzzing on just physics/astronomy to shadowing Geoffrey all over the science distribution; Mason scores comparatively to Jason on science when the two play together; Rohan’s stats speak for themselves.

Personally I think some of the people who vouched for me in this thread overrated me by quite a large amount (thank you though!), my bonus numbers weren't very good and I have a liability to go all-or-nothing in some games. I would put myself top 10, but honestly I'm not sure where.

I'm not sure if they have the overall coverage for top 15, but some of the soon-to-be Doctors™ (Annabelle Yang, Moses Kitakule) are frightening to play on biology. Consider them too.

Naturally, by the Pigeonhole Principle, I'm at a complete loss. Would definitely appreciate other people's takes on this matter!

(Edit: Vote Amogh on your science ballot, I think that would be pretty funny.)

[L.H.O.O.Q.]

I haven't really left the Great Lakes region much this year (and when I did, I didn't see the best players), but having observed a lot of Ohio State practices and games, I have to endorse Simon Zimmerman, not just for Most Improved, but also for History and Literature leaderboards. While Shourjo Ganguli was probably their best player at the start of the year, Simon outpaced him heavily as the season went on, culminating in him carrying the team on his back in the late season despite being the least-experienced player on their roster.

[rdc20]

My ranking is below; if you disagree with anyone's placement, I encourage you to suggest corrections or post a ranking of your own.

Tier 1: Matthew Lehmann, Matt Jackson
Tier 2: Jakob Myers, Forrest Weintraub, Tim Morrison, Amogh Kulkarni
Tier 3: Arya Karthik, Andrew Wang, Richard Niu, Raymond Wang, Natan Holtzman, Eve Fleisig, Chris Sims, Vincent Du, Caleb Kendrick
Tier 4: Adam Fine, Joel Miles, Charles Hang, Andrew Zeng, Michal Gerasimiuk, Ben Chapman, Gareth Thorlakson, Jason Hong
Tier 5: Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford, Connor Thompson, Shahar Schwartz, Nathaniel Hull, Claire Jones, Robert Condron, Chinmay Murthy

Ned Tagtmeier should be in tier 4. Playing next to Matt does his stats no favors, but he is clearly a stronger player than me at least.

[DavidB256]

In my incredibly biased opinion, Sinecio Morales is certainly up there with Jack Rado, Cooper Roh, and Braden Booth for Rookie of the Year. Sinecio is a great fine arts and literature player, gets heavily shadowed in his science prowess on a team of four STEM students, and carries over incredible generalism from being a HS top scorer, with multiple correct buzzes in 13 different 1/1's at Nats and (tied with Braden Booth) the most powers by a long shot at DII ICT. Though I will make no attempt to assess CULT, Sinecio should also be commended for his prodigious and efficient writing, which involved contributing vast swathes of our packet submissions this year in a fraction of the time that I could manage.

[On a lurgid bee]

As I like to do every year, I wanted to write a post discussing the people I know well and where I think you should be ranking them! I’ll talk about everyone who played a national for WUSTL to start.

To begin, Charles Hang. Charles noticeably improved throughout the year and really picked it up during the nationals season. In my opinion he belongs somewhere definitely in your top 10 and possibly in or around your top 5. Charles was the fifth highest scorer in the top bracket of ACF Nationals, only finishing behind Matt Jackson, Forrest Weintraub, Jakob Myers, and me. He was pretty much even with me for the entire playoffs, and his playoff PPG went up (!!) relative to his prelim PPG. Of the players who made the top bracket of ICT, Charles finished as the 6th overall scorer. Charles’s statistics are roughly comparable to Forrest’s (4 PPG less at nationals, 10 PPG less at ICT but Forrest was in the second bracket). Forrest is obviously an incredible player, who I think is going to be universally ranked in the 3-10 portion of your ballot. I strongly believe that based on his statistics at the two nationals (with me shadowing him pretty substantially, perhaps more than the other extremely impressive members of Columbia shadow Forrest), that Charles is a comparable player. Other potential comparisons in the “solid generalist with high level specialist knowledge” mold include Richard Niu (Charles outscored him in the playoffs at nationals by a solid margin, and was roughly comparable at ICT), Tim (Tim outscored Charles substantially at ICT, Charles was noticeably higher at the playoffs of nationals), and Vincent (only played at Nationals where Charles outscored him by 6ish PPG in the playoffs). All of these players are likely to be in the 4-10ish spots in your ballot, and Charles is pretty comparable to all of them, and he may experience a greater shadow effect! (Aside from almost certainly Richard, who is shadowed by the rest of the Cornell humanities knowers, all 3 of Richard, Nathan, and Raymond are insane and should probably be in your top 15). At Nationals, Charles finished with the 10th most first buzzes on the set, and the 6th most top 3 buzzes (probably the more important metric from a “would beat almost anyone in the field to this” perspective) finishing 2 behind Eve in fourth (rank her very highly, she’s so good!) and 1 behind Tim. You may be tempted to just keep ranking Charles where he has typically been ranked over the past half decade or so, but he got noticeably better this year and we absolutely couldn’t have finished as well as we did at both nationals without him turning into a (statistically pretty uncontroversial) top 10 player this year. I think there are reasonable cases for any of the players I mentioned over Charles, but I want to make sure he gets his due as being every bit as good as everyone outside the top 3 or so this year.As for category polls, Charles is an incredibly dominant history player. He absolutely lit up nats this year and certainly deserves a ranking in your top 3 in a history player ranking this year. As Matt indicated, he reads lots of history books and is capable of buzzing for real with depth and breadth. I would say that he’s contending with Jakob Myers and (from a quick perusal of nationals statistics) Jason Hong for the second best history spot behind Matt Jackson. Charles is also probably a top 3 “Other” (Geo/CE, other stuff) player, with Matt Jackson and Jakob Myers clearly rounding out the other 2 spots, which was particularly helpful at ICT. Charles was very good at the social science at nationals and ICT as well, he merits consideration in your thought poll, and I shadow him a fair bit on philosophy and then some social science. He’s also quite good at belief, particularly classics, and solid at literature, I think he merits consideration for both of those as well, and he brings sneaky science knowledge in as well!
TL,DR: Charles should definitely be in your top 10, should possibly be considered for your top 5 (I think I’ll probably end up with him somewhere between 5-8). I’m very excited to see where he can lead the team next year!

Second, Annabelle Yang. Annabelle remains one of the strongest Belief players and Fine Arts players I’ve ever gotten to see, and this year a combination of her already substantial bio knowledge and STEP I studying led her to being one of the best players at nationals in that category. Annabelle will get her buzzes essentially regardless of the opponent, as it’s rare that her buzzes aren’t among the most impressive in the field. 15(!!!) of her 26 gets at nationals were top 3 in the field, a ratio that I’m pretty sure does not exist for any other player in the field. She gets shadowed pretty hard by me, Paul, and Charles all being able to buzz and buzz reasonably well in her categories, and yet nonetheless she still puts up incredible numbers. I think you should definitely consider her for your top 25. I typically like to round out my top 25 with players who can buzz extremely well across a sizable portion of the distribution, and that description certainly fits Annabelle. Also we took fewer losses than we typically have in the past at nationals, and it’s difficult to attribute that to anything other than the beanies she made for us (commissioned by Charles!) So consider her for a Nikola Jokic like “Advanced stats” impact on the game, those beanies were probably worth 2-3 wins at each national. For category rankings: A bonus of her doing “doctor stuff” like STEP all year was that she absolutely demolished the biology at nats, getting 2 first buzzes and finishing with 5 (!) of her 6 biology buzzes being top 3 in the field. 2 of Paul’s 3 bio gets were also top 3 in the field with one of those being a first buzz, which gives you some idea of the shadow she had. It was a relief hearing a bio question and knowing that not only was there a substantial probability of it going our way, but it was probably going to go our way early, which means fewer bio things I have to listen to! This bio buzzing complimented her among the best in the field abilities in religion, mythology and visual arts. Her visual arts performance at nationals in particular is worthy of praise. I think everyone is generally aware that Annabelle is a top 3 belief player, but her visual arts buzzes were frequently on things I would’ve been clueless on, like lacquering. I’m confident she could pick up the painting I buzzed on a lot easier than I could what she buzzed on, definitely rank her above me and also probably in your top 3 with Halle and Matt? She tied for the fifth most painting and sculpture points at nats (fourth most in the top bracket) and I don’t think anyone above her had a 6 tossup (and 1 neg ☹) shadow effect.
TL;DR: Consider Annabelle for your science (the bio alone is superb, and she can pick up buzzes across the rest of science), consider her top 3 for your beliefs and top 2-3 for visart (along with Matt Jackson and Halle). Also consider her for your top 25.

Paul Lee should be considered in the 8-10ish part of your science ballot. Annabelle shadowed him pretty hard on the bio at this nationals, and Charles and I take some buzzes from him across the science categories but he remains a fantastic biochem player, a very solid physics player, and he’s also capable of getting good buzzes in most parts of other science. It’s difficult for me to tell which of me or Charles was more flabbergasted by his correct pull on the metric tensor bonus part at nationals, but it was very impressive. He clutched out several science buzzes in a bunch of our key games, including 2 against noted Very Good science player Richard Niu, without which we certainly would’ve lost to Cornell. Finally, he, like Annabelle, gets an “advanced stats” boost for immediately and drastically improving our performance at nationals as soon as he got there. We scored 265 points in round two, and 235 in round 3, and then scored 380 and 350-and 480 at various points throughout the rest of the prelims. He brought extra tossups, extra bonus help, and extra good vibes from the moment he sat down, which was impressive because he took a red eye flight to nationals from California that would’ve killed a lesser man (me)!

Washu B had the tied for fourth best bio PPB, the fifth best chemistry PPB, and the 9th best physics PPB. All three of the players listed below are quite good at science, consider them for your science ballots!

Jeremy Cummings had an incredible ICT and deserves some consideration in science ballots, and he should be on your auditory arts ballot for sure. Jeremy is a fantastic music player, he scales up very well (almost too well, I’d love to see him on an Arrabal level music set!) and he combines very very good “score clue” buzzing with a substantial knowledge of the lives and works of composers. Jeremy did an excellent job at getting efficient early and middle buzzes while basically not negging at ICT (if the mathematicians are to be believed one of his negs should have been a power instead, which would make his line 6/12/1!). He was a very strong third scorer on a high placing ICT team, he is Very Good. For categories, Jeremy is probably one of the better math players in the country, a fantastic physics (tied for fifth on points at nationals) and astronomy player, and he’s capable of snapping up some solid buzzes in chemistry and bio as well! I think he deserves consideration in the bottom part of your science ballot. He also knows a solid amount of lit, including really, really good Shakespeare knowledge which was extremely helpful to have for ICT. Finally, contrary to his own assertions that he doesn’t know geography, he’s quite strong on geography.

Amith Punyala also deserves consideration for your science ballot, and for your “Other” ballot as well. It was truly heartening watching him card geography on the way to ICT simply because I’d just randomly asked him one day if he’d be interested in learning some. For science, I’m willing to bet that the fourth (!) best bio PPB on Nats was primarily due to him, although I’m sure that Neal and to a lesser extent Jeremy were helpful there. Amith was also a crucial science specialist for our ICT run, getting “his” science tossup in all but one game of the playoffs and contributing many impressive bonus pulls. He also crushed the Geography at ACF Nats, and got a first buzz on a current events question, so his "Other" game is quite strong and he'll be on my ballot for sure! I was lucky to get a chance to play with him this year, and our run at ICT this year wouldn't have been possible without him.

Neal Joshi is rapidly improving, and I’m excited to see how he can perform next year if he keeps it up! Neal is a very strong lit player, and an extremely capable chemistry player (particularly on organic chemistry). He combines an extremely real knowledge off how organic chemistry “actually works” (couldn’t be me) with an expanding knowledge of “named” things (now that's more like it). He also has a lot of “real” knowledge related to his major (Philosophy Neuroscience Psychology). I’m excited to see how much he can improve in the next year, since his knowledge base is quite strong, quite real, and perfectly compliments Charles and Annabelle for the A team next year.

I should really stop typing at this point so I don’t take over the entire thread, so I’ll just do Chicago quickly, since I remain a fan! I do think it’s important that we recognize just how special Matt’s season was. I’m sure people will be looking at it for years to come. His only loss this year was to an otherwise full Chicago A team, by himself, and if I recall correctly it took a successful protest to even get that win! His performance at both nationals, essentially doubling the next closest top bracket scorer at ACF nationals, also deserves as much praise as is possible to give. Chicago A outscored the rest of the top bracket at both nationals by over 110 points per game, I’m not sure that’s happening again. I could really list stats about Chicago A in general and him in particular all day, but I guess I can sum it up by saying he’s either clearly number 1 or in number 1 consideration in literally every portion of the player poll category ballot except science (Which Adam should be number 1 on!) and auditory fine arts (which he’s also fantastic at, and should be ranked fairly highly!).

Which brings me to my last point, the rest of Chicago! I think it should be very uncontroversial to have all four Chicago A members in your top 25. I think Adam should be in or around your top 10. He’s an elite specialist and an underrated generalist (look at Regs!). I think him and Vincent are pretty similar in depth, breadth, and overall playing quality, and he should be ranked accordingly. Similarly, with Claire and Ned I would recommend looking at the stats from Regionals and Sectionals. Chicago A without Matt was clearly the top team in the country in A-value and D-value (aside from Matt himself). Claire, Adam, and Ned each performed extremely well at both tournaments, with Adam taking the lead at regs, and Ned at SCT. I think if you said the top team in the country for a particular year had 3 balanced scorers with great specialties and solid generalism, that would be a certain rank in the top 25 for all three of them. It should remain that way this year. Also if you look at literally any of their buzzpoint stats Ned and Claire both get absolutely killer buzzes, plus any buzz you’re getting next to Matt is going to beat just about anyone else in the field. Please rank Adam, Claire, and Ned in your overall poll, and then rank them highly in their specialties as well.

[rhn26]

I’m once again back with some more takes on various other portions of the ballot. Apologies for yet again clogging this thread, hopefully this will be my last post here.

Firstly, my teammates:

I feel like Nathan Zhang is overlooked as a player more than he should be; this dude fights for every category he knows on this team (the 1/1 he has closest to himself would be philosophy, but the rest of us combined for 4 philosophy TUs at nats and the rise of Jacky doesn’t suggest an end to this anytime soon) yet turned it up to 11 in the playoffs to go nearly even in scoring with Raymond and myself (although a few of our tossups were attributed to him). You all also saw his pivotal literature and philosophy (!) buzzes in the finals. Please don’t leave him off your overall and (top 10) literature ballots and consider ranking him for thought, especially with his dominant playoffs philosophy performance.

I’m sure the last thing Raymond Wang wanted at the start of the year was for yet another literature/FA player to join him after we lost the best history and science players in the country, but he’s dealt with it incredibly well. Raymond was the most willing out of the three of us to learn categories that we were weak in (history, religion) and did so while working a full-time job. I think this year Raymond’s grown from a lit/fa specialist at the Nats level to someone who can truly buzz across the distribution; peep his buzz on “number of clusters” (real knowledge btw). In my opinion, Raymond should be ranked right around where I am, perhaps just below the top 10. We'll miss him dearly.

Yared Tadesse is an excellent teammate to play with, not only because of his quizbowl skill and dedication to learn but also because of his cheerful, upbeat attitude that many of us lack. Just his presence and positive energy was a vital force in our ICT run. That being said, Yared is a very strong “Other” player (esp. NAQT) and should be considered there. (I would rank him highly in any “dawg factor” poll as well: our game against UCLA at ICT went down to the last tossup, which he got, and he top scored us in game 2 of the UG finals sequence against Georgia Tech.)

Other people that I know well:

I’ll say it because nobody else has: Forrest Weintraub, in my view, is the clear-cut number one AFA player in the country. Call me biased In this case, the stats do capture how pog she is. Nats wasn’t a fluke - she put up performances of the same caliber at UG Nats (6/4/1) and ICT (2/7/0). There are, of course, other contenders for number one (I think the two others in this conversation are Chris Sims and Max Brodsky). This is not to say that I will hold it against you if you don’t vote for Forrest number one. But you definitely should. Also Forrest’s overall Nats performance is definitely worthy of top 10 overall this year.

Aum Mundhe’s transition into a lit player this year has been terrifying to watch and this culminated in a gaudy performance at Nats after his other lit player bailed. While Aum probably isn’t t15 lit currently, look for him to catapult high on this list next year. (While I'm on the subject of under-the-radar lit players, Rosa Xia is still as good as ever but unlike the rest of us doesn't suffer from a crippling addiction to qb.) Literature isn’t even Aum’s strongest category, which would be fine arts and/or philosophy. Aum is also an underrated generalist as a whole, and consider him for the bottom range of the overall poll.

I’ve mentioned Jason Hong’s dedication to rebuilding his team upthread, and while part of this involved finding amazing teammates, the other part involved Jason turning himself into a generalist through sheer force of will (and learning literature more or less from scratch). Please don’t leave him out of your top 15.

Andrew Zeng puts up efficient and excellent history points on a stacked Stanford roster, while somehow managing to score triple-digit lit points (without negging) next to Tim Morrison at both nationals. He’s scary. His teammate Michał Gerasimiuk dropped a whopping 7/1 on us at Nationals, including multiple very early buzzes, in what was probably the most impressive individual game I saw at Nats alongside Jakob Myers’ 9/0 on us (more on that later). He’s scary too.

Amogh Kulkarni is a top 5 player. He’s a frightening generalist with exceptional depth in literature and RMPSS, and (unfortunately for my career) soon to be science.

Some more scattered observations from playing in top bracket:

Mattias Ehatamm knows a whole lot more than just literature. I feel like people here haven’t really considered him yet for overall, but they really should.

I got sniped by Matthew’s post above, but Charles Hang was on another level with his nats performance. Going even with the (at minimum) #2 player in the country in top bracket playoffs is absolutely absurd. If that’s not top 10, I don’t know what is. I also forgot that Annabelle Yang got China content over Jacky in our game (Nüwa), which means please vote her in beliefs.

Our game against Indiana felt the most “unwinnable” of all. Apart from Alex sweeping the science, Jakob Myers seemed to have their best game of the tournament, going 9/0 and getting insane buzzes for most of them.

Jisoo Yoo played really well on the literature in our game. Also Chinmay Murthy is a god at anything Indian.

Joel Miles made the Minnesota game extremely tough for us despite Raymond taking both vfa and phil off them, which I understand to be their stronger categories. They’re very good at everything.

Someone on Chicago B (I think it was Henry? not sure) 30’d the weird fiction bonus against us in about 10 seconds, that was epic.

The game against Chicago A was actually quite close, but Ned Tagtmeier getting 2 lit tossups over us sealed it. Don’t forget about ranking Ned in lit just because a teammate of his went 36/0 on lit.

[A Dim-Witted Saboteur]

I'm not filling out a ballot this year, but here is a partial list of players who impressed me at Nats:
My teammates Justin Hawkins, Danila Kabotyanski, and Alex Akridge.
Looking at ICT, SCT, and Regs makes it clear that Justin has the chops to anchor a team as a generalist, and advanced stats at Nats demonstrate that he's been rapidly building capacity in Literature and Art. In my time here he's already taught me a lot about the game and how to play it. He's worth your consideration.
I imagine this is true of a lot of players, but it is especially true of him: if there were a category called "Danila content," Danila would easily be the #1 player in the country at it. He was top 25 at Nationals in both first buzzes and Top 3 buzzes, and I think the statistics make it abundantly clear that he should be on your Belief poll. Like Justin, he frequently pulled out crazy history buzzes and hard part pulls playing next to two historians.
As other people in this thread have already said, anyone who doesn't think Alex is top 5 in science doesn't strike me as a serious observer.

Eylon Caplan splitting literature 3/1 with us in our game against Purdue was an unpleasant surprise. The stats seem to suggest that maybe it shouldn't have been surprising, though. Quynh Phung also had a great game in a way that it seems that she is wont to do.

Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford and Cooper Roh impressed me a lot, especially for younger players. There is a certain kind of history that Cooper is probably close to unbeatable at, and it was good to see a demonstration of that at the National level.

It's been noted above, but Claire Jones seems good at History.

Mitchell Shadden and Chinmay Murthy both had great games when we played Texas.

I do not know science, but Vincent Du managing to shut out Alex on it was quite impressive to see.

[Protean]

Sky Li was, until three days ago, considered the best active closed player in Canada. As of three days ago, they narrowly lost the throne to Ben Chapman by 3 total points across 28 ballots and actually received more first-place votes than Ben did. For comparison to Sky's second-place finish in the Canadian poll, some other Canadians who have been (deservedly) mentioned in this thread placed third (Gareth Thorlakson), fifth (Mattias Ehatamm), and tenth (Michael Du). Sky is one of the strongest if not the strongest generalist in Canada, as demonstrated by their leading our ragtag crew of narrow specialists comfortably into the second bracket at Nats, coming within a tossup of upsetting UNC (uh, sorry about that neg, team) and snagging an ACF Nationals All-Star nod along the way. For your overall ballot, Sky should be considered in the same tier as the other top Canadians who may perhaps have a bit more name recognition.

They are also both the best AFA (third most AFA points at Nats, 30 points fewer than Forrest Weintraub and only 5 fewer than Filthy Turncoat Christopher Sims; average AFA buzzpoint only ~3 words later than Chris) and most complete overall FA player we have to offer (third most VFA points and tenth most OFA points at Nats). If I'm not missing someone, Sky also had the third-most overall FA points (270) behind Matt Jackson and Forrest (300 each) and was the only person other than Forrest to be top 10 in all three FA categories, albeit doing so from the second bracket. Among the Canadians who have received category nods here, Sky's FA (and especially AFA) is on par with Gareth's history, Liam's and Ben's science, or Mattias' literature and they should absolutely be on your arts ballots.

[benchapman]

I would like to second everything Raymond said about Sky — they are an outstanding player and teammate (as are Gareth and Tony). Sky is hurt by the NAQT distribution/style much more than the rest of Toronto A and Nationals is indicative of their true strength as a player.

I would also urge people to vote for Liam Kusalik on their science polls. He is definitely the best science player in Canada.

[Serpentine284]

To revive this thread somewhat, I guess I'll share my thoughts on the "bonus" section of the poll:

I'm voting Ned Tagtmeier as fourth scorer of the year, and everyone else probably should too. If we're going on an absolute sense of "who was the best player who also fourth-scored a nats this year?", I would probably vote for Michał Gerasimiuk, but I really don't think of him as a fourth scorer, as Matt said.

I don't really know who only started playing this year, but as far as I can tell, Jacky Xu from Cornell probably washes them all; their performance at ACF Nats was absolutely absurd for a newcomer.

The Most Improved Player could honestly be a few people. I've already glazed Richard and Forrest enough, but they both should definitely be in contention there. An underrated pick, in my opinion, would be Kevin Park; as far as I know, he was mostly just the fine arts player for Claremont last year, but he quickly evolved this year into an incredibly strong generalist.

He's an auto-rank for your lit and history ballots, and should be in the mix for most other categories.

I'm most certainly not an auto-rank on history, I think I'm probably around the 17-20 range. However, I do think I'm probably top 10 in thought and pretty underrated at VFA, so if you're missing a name at 9-10, there you go.

[InfinitePeng]

Hello!

We are four days out from the ballot submission deadline and only sitting at 12 responses at the moment. Please submit a response soon if you have any interest in doing so! If I do not receive more responses by the deadline: I may push it back by a week or so before I publish results.

[InfinitePeng]

Hello everybody!

Thank you very much for bearing with these delayed results as I navigated an exploding computer and an exploding life among other problems. After all this time, here are the results! Thank you very much to Amogh Kulkarni and an unknown amount of other people for helping me finish this.

Thank you also to our voters

Mason, Brown
Megan Wang (Brown)
Matt Jackson, Chicago
Aum Rutgers
Andrew [Stanford]
Tony Chen, Toronto
Max Gedajlovic
Sarah Benner, Purdue/Ohio State
Ned Tagtmeier - UChicago
Matthew Lehmann, WUSTL
Jonathan Shauf, UNC Chapel Hill
Amogh Kulkarni (GSU)
Justin Wytmar (Illinois)
Henry Goff, UNC alum
Jacob Hardin-Bernhardt NYU
Ashish, Duke
Forrest Weintraub [Columbia]
Eva Wang, Mizzou
Richard Niu (Cornell)
Michal Gerasimiuk, Stanford

After quite possibly one of the most dominant seasons of all time: who else could it be at the top except Matt Jackson. A well deserved congratulations on an amazing capstone to a legendary career.
Overall:

1. Matt Jackson: 398 (highest 1, lowest 3)
2. Matthew Lehmann: 385 (highest 1, lowest 3)
3. Jakob Myers: 363 (highest 2, lowest 7)
4. Amogh Kulkarni: 319 (highest 3, lowest unranked)
5. Arya Karthik: 315 (highest 3, lowest unranked)
6. Tim Morrison: 306 (highest 3, lowest 17)
7. Vincent Du: 276 (highest 3, lowest unranked)
t-8. Charles Hang: 245 (highest 4, lowest unranked)
t-8. Richard Niu: 245 (highest 9, lowest 18)
10. Forrest Weintraub: 238 (highest 5, lowest 17)
11. Natan Holtzman: 221 (highest 7, lowest unranked)
12. Andrew Wang: 219 (highest 4, lowest unranked)
13. Raymond Wang: 218 (highest 6, lowest unranked)
14. Jason Hong: 214 (highest 4, lowest unranked)
15. Eve Fleisig: 178 (highest 7, lowest 20)
16. Adam Fine: 171 (highest 7, lowest unranked)
17. Caleb Kendrick: 165 (highest 5, lowest unranked)
18. Michal Gerasimiuk: 100 (highest 10, lowest unranked)
19. Chris Sims: 89 (highest 11, lowest unranked)
20. Andrew Zeng: 80 (highest 13, lowest unranked)
21. Ben Chapman: 59 (highest 11, lowest unranked)
22. Nathan Zhang: 47 (highest 14, lowest unranked)
23. Sky Li: 41 (highest 13, lowest unranked)
24. Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford: 35 (highest 18, lowest unranked)
25. Joel Miles: 33 (highest 17, lowest unranked)
also receiving votes

Gareth Thorlakson: 29 (highest 8, lowest unranked)
Ned Tagtmeier: 15 (highest 17, lowest unranked)
Conor Thompson: 13 (highest 7, lowest unranked)
Claire Jones: 12 (highest 20, lowest unranked)
Ashish Subramanian: 12 (highest 14, lowest unranked)
Todd Maslyk: 6 (highest 18, lowest unranked)
Nathaniel Hull: 5 (highest 19, lowest unranked)
Mattias Ehatamm: 4 (highest 19, lowest unranked)
Andrew Hanna: 4 (highest 18, lowest unranked)
Rasheeq Azad: 3 (highest 10, lowest unranked)
Chinmay Murthy: 2 (highest 16, lowest unranked)
Halle Friedman: 1 (highest 20, lowest unranked)
Tony Chen: 1 (highest 23, lowest unranked)
Aum Mundhe: 1 (highest 21, lowest unranked)
Jack Lewis: 0 (highest 24, lowest unranked)
Joseph Chambers: 0 (highest 8, lowest unranked)
John Marvin: 0 (highest 17, lowest unranked)
Kevin Park: 0 (highest 19, lowest unranked)
Fred Garvey: 0 (highest 22, lowest unranked)
Nathan Sheffield: 0 (highest 24, lowest unranked)
Michael Du: 0 (highest 24, lowest unranked)
Jack Rado: 0 (highest 25, lowest unranked)
Jacky Xu: 0 (highest 25, lowest unranked)



History
1. Matt Jackson: 161 (highest 1, lowest 3)
2. Jakob Myers: 148 (highest 1, lowest 5)
3. Jason Hong: 143 (highest 1, lowest 7)
4. Charles Hang: 140 (highest 2, lowest 8)
5. Matthew Lehmann: 91 (highest 2, lowest unranked)
6. Claire Jones: 89 (highest 5, lowest unranked)
7. Cooper Roh: 77 (highest 5, lowest unranked)
8. Andrew Zeng: 72 (highest 5, lowest unranked)
9. Gareth Thorlakson: 49 (highest 7, lowest unranked)
10. Nathaniel Hull: 44 (highest 5, lowest unranked)
11. Chinmay Murthy: 40 (highest 9, lowest unranked)
12. Caleb Kendrick: 32 (highest 7, lowest unranked)
13. Amogh Kulkarni: 29 (highest 5, lowest unranked)
14. Justin Wytmar: 16 (highest 9, lowest unranked)
t-15. Ashish Subramanian: 12 (highest 8, lowest unranked)
t-15. Michael Du: 12 (highest 9, lowest unranked)




Science
Sci (14 ballots, 29 voted)
1. Adam Fine: 174 (highest 1, lowest 3)
2. Vincent Du: 165 (highest 1, lowest 5)
3. Richard Niu: 149 (highest 2, lowest 5)
4. Andrew Wang: 137 (highest 2, lowest 7)
5. Rasheeq Azad: 130 (highest 1, lowest unranked)
6. Alex Akridge: 129 (highest 4, lowest 8)
7. Arya Karthik: 82 (highest 4, lowest unranked)
8. Jason Hong: 69 (highest 3, lowest unranked)
9. Geoffrey Wu: 55 (highest 5, lowest unranked)
10. Matt Schiavone: 52 (highest 6, lowest unranked)
11. Shahar Schwartz: 50 (highest 6, lowest unranked)
12. Forrest Weintraub: 38 (highest 7, lowest unranked)
t-13. Natan Holtzman: 34 (highest 6, lowest unranked)
t-13. Ben Chapman: 34 (highest 7, lowest unranked)
15. Ryan Humphrey: 12 (highest 10, lowest unranked)






Literature (13 ballots, 27 voted)
1. Matt Jackson: 163 (highest 1, lowest 2)
2. Tim Morrison: 154 (highest 1, lowest 3)
3. Matthew Lehmann: 129 (highest 2, lowest 8)
4. Eve Fleisig: 115 (highest 2, lowest 9)
5. Amogh Kulkarni: 96 (highest 3, lowest unranked)
6. Richard Niu: 95 (highest 4, lowest unranked)
7. Raymond Wang: 91 (highest 3, lowest unranked)
8. Arya Karthik: 84 (highest 4, lowest unranked)
9. Ned Tagtmeier: 73 (highest 5, lowest unranked)
10. Nathan Zhang: 58 (highest 4, lowest unranked)
11. Mattias Ehatamm: 53 (highest 8, lowest unranked)
12. Ethan Ashbrook: 47 (highest 6, lowest unranked)
13. Jakob Myers: 35 (highest 4, lowest unranked)
14. Will Orr: 20 (highest 7, lowest unranked)
15. Andrew Hanna: 15 (highest 4, lowest unranked)




VFA (13 ballots, 19 voted)
1. Halle Friedman: 99 (highest 1, lowest 4)
2. Matt Jackson: 86 (highest 1, lowest unranked)
3. Annabelle Yang: 83 (higheset 1, lowest unranked)
4. Matthew Lehmann: 71 (highest 1, lowest 9)
5. Raymond Wang: 67 (highest 1, lowest unranked)
6. Vincent Du: 49 (highest 4, lowest unranked)
7. Eve Fleisig: 31 (highest 4, lowest unranked)
8. Joel Miles: 26 (highest 4, lowest unranked)
9. Sky Li: 15 (highest 6, lowest unranked)
t-10 Sinecio Morales and Justin Wytmar: 12 (highest 6, lowest unranked) and (highest 5, lowest unranked) respectively

AFA (16 ballots, 20 voted)
1. Forrest Weintraub: 136 (highest 1, lowest 3)
2. Richard Niu: 109 (highest 1, lowest 6)
3. Chris Sims: 105 (highest 2, lowest 5)
4. Max Brodsky: 91 (highest 1, lowest unranked)
5. Jeremy Cummings: 49 (highest 1, lowest unranked)
6. Natan Holtzman: 44 (higheset 2, lowest unranked)
7. Raymond Wang: 40 (highest 4, lowest unranked)
8. Vincent Du: 37 (highest 3, lowest unranked)
t-10. Sky Li: 26 (highest 4, lowest unranked)
t-10. Jared He: 26 (highest 4, lowest unranked)

Belief (11 ballots, 17 voted)
1. Matt Jackson: 89 (highest 1, lowest 2)
2. Danila Kabotyanski: 58 (highest 2, lowest 10)
3. Chinmay Murthy: 51 (highest 2, lowest unranked)
4. Conor Thompson: 48 (highest 4, lowest unranked)
5. Annabelle Yang: 41 (highest 1, lowest unranked)
6. John Marvin: 35 (highest 4, lowest unranked)
7. Subhamitra Banerjee Roychoudhury: 33(highest 1, lowest unranked)
t8. Andrew Wang: 28 (highest 4, lowest unranked)
t8. Michał Gerasimiuk: 28 (highest 3, lowest unranked)
10. Quynh Phung: 25 (highest 3, lowest unranked)

Thought (12 ballots, 24 voted)
1. Matt Jackson: 100 (highest 1, lowest 2)
2. Caleb Kendrick: 89 (highest 1, lowest 3)
3. Matthew Lehmann: 62 (highest 3, lowest unranked)
4. John Marvin: 41 (highest 4, lowest unranked)
5. Forrest Weintraub: 40 (highest 2, lowest unranked)
t6. Arya Karthik: 33 (highest 3, lowest unranked)
t6. Tim Morrison: 33 (highest 3, lowest unranked)
8. Joel Miles: 31 (highest 4, lowest unranked)
9. Amogh Kulkarni: 20 (highest 3, lowest unranked)
10. Nathan Zhang: 15 (highest 5, lowest unranked)

Other (9 ballots. 27 voted)
1. Matt Jackson: 59 (highest 1, lowest unranked)
t2. Charles Hang : 56(highest 1, lowest unranked)
t2. Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford: 56 (highest 1, lowest unranked)
4. Jakob Myers: 50 (highest 1, lowest 10)
5. Conor Thompson: 36 (highest 4, lowest unranked)
6. Ashish Subramanian: 24 (highest 2, lowest unranked)
7. Chris Sims: 12 (highest 3, lowest unranked)
8. Natan Holtzman: 10 (highest 2, lowest unranked)
9. Amith Punyala: 9 (highest 6, lowest unranked)
10. Chinmay Murthy: 8 (highest 7, lowest unranked)


4th Scorer of the Year (17 ballots, 8 voted)
Congratulations to Ned Tagtmeier of Chicago for taking this category with 6 votes! Michal Gerasimiuk placed runner up with 3 votes.


Rookie of the Year (17 ballots, 5 voted)
In what was certainly our closest category, congrats to Sinecio Morales of Johns Hopkins for taking it with 6 votes! Missouri's Braden Booth finished runner up with 5 votes and Columbia's Cooper Roh rounded it out with 3


Newcomer of the Year (16 ballots, 3 voted)
In a near unanimous victory: congrats to Cornell-ite Jacky Xu for winning Newcomer of the Year with 14 votes out of 16 ballots cast!


Set of the Year (15 ballots, 5 voted)
ACF Regs prevailed with 6 votes! ESPN finished with a strong 3.

Most Improved (16 ballots, 8 votes)
Forrest Weintraub of Columbia takes this category with 6 votes! GSU legend Amogh Kulkarni finished runner up with 3 votes.


Thank you all very much for a great season of quizbowl! I had a lot of fun running this poll and seeing everybody's thoughts. Looking forward to 2024-2025!