ACF Nationals-Comments
Douglas Alan Wheeler
Don W. for a well-run and well-edited Nationals tournament. The
questions were answerable and there were few repeats. As a team, I know
Emory had fun. It was also nice to finish where we did, as this was
Christine Moritz and Chris Rodger's last tournament. Christine did very
well, and Emory finished in ninth place overall, exceeding the
expectations of many. I enjoyed playing schools from all over the
country as well, facing the likes of Eric Bell, David Frazsee(?), Robert
Trent, and whom I believe to be one of the friendliest people in the
buzzer competition arena, Jeff Johnson. Congratulations to Maryland and
Georgia Tech for doing so well at the tournament this year. Was it me or
was Georgia Tech the strongest academic team seen all year?
Thanks again to Jim, Don, and Carol, and look forward to seeing you all
next year.
Doug Wheeler
Emory Academic Team
P.S.>Our returning squad will look something like this. I'd also like to
hear what other teams expect to have returning for them next year.
Joe Barkley-Rising Junior
Jack Ko-Rising Junior
Doug Wheeler-Rising Junior
Michael Francis-Rising Sophmore
Brian Oubre-Rising Sophmore
Matt Colvin
Douglas Alan Wheeler <dwh...@curly.cc.emory.edu> wrote:
>First of all, I would like to congratulate Jim Dendy, Carol Guthrie, and
>Don W. for a well-run and well-edited Nationals tournament. The
>questions were answerable and there were few repeats. As a team, I know
Seconded. Carol proved once again that she is eminently competent, and
the editing was excellent. The difficulty was down from last year, but
since that was a stated goal of the directors from the outset (viz. Jim
Dendy's "Plea for Moderation" post several weeks ago), no one should have
been surprised. I found it a welcome change.
>Emory had fun. It was also nice to finish where we did, as this was
>Christine Moritz and Chris Rodger's last tournament. Christine did very
>well, and Emory finished in ninth place overall, exceeding the
>expectations of many. I enjoyed playing schools from all over the
>country as well, facing the likes of Eric Bell, David Frazsee(?), Robert
That is one of the great things about ACF Nationals -- you get to
associate faces with all the names you've heard about. Eric Bell was
most impressive, as he and his teammates beat us in the prelims
with a number of very early buzzes. We weren't interrupting too much;
Oklahoma just TOOK the game from us. Luckily for us, Gourab's Duke
team beat them in the last round, and Emory entered playoffs instead.
If Oklahoma had made the cut, they would have saddled Maryland with a
carried-over defeat from the prelims.
>Trent, and whom I believe to be one of the friendliest people in the
>buzzer competition arena, Jeff Johnson. Congratulations to Maryland and
>Georgia Tech for doing so well at the tournament this year. Was it me or
>was Georgia Tech the strongest academic team seen all year?
Georgia Tech's year had not been as spectacular as the previous one
until this weekend. They made up for it in grand fashion. Mike and
Jason were astonishing, and I did not hear of anyone within 100 of Tech
in any game until the finals. And even then, they won by 65, overcoming
5 interrupts like nothing at all. Not to toot our own horn, but there
can't be many teams in the country who can spot Maryland A five negs and
still win.
Tech seemed like an entirely different team from the one at Wesselmania and
MLK. As one of the other playoff teams said, "They're not only not
losing, they're not even being approached." Even as recently as Wahoo
War, Tech was vulnerable. This weekend, they were not.
I suspect that they smashed every team scoring record for ACF Nationals,
as they averaged 16 tossups per game in the prelims. Jason and Mike were
sitting atop their bracket's scoring list in 1st and 2nd place. (Note
from ACF Nostradamus: "I told you so!")
>P.S.>Our returning squad will look something like this. I'd also like to
>hear what other teams expect to have returning for them next year.
Maryland will have everyone returning next April, though it is quite
possible that Jesse Molesworth may supplant one of us (read: me) on the team
upon his return from England.
Here are my general remarks on the tournament. Let me get the bad out of
the way first:
1. The heat. Ugh. The building was a sauna.
2. The fact that at least one buzzer had to be removed in the middle of a
game. To the tournament's directors' credit, Jim Dendy did strictly warn
against this before playoffs, so I suppose the fact that it did occur is
a good sign that it couldn't be helped.
3. The absence of some of our friends from other schools -- Matt Baker
and Jeff Newman from Berkeley and Bobby Shepard and the rest of the NC
State crew come to mind.
4. A solitary reader in our bracket. All the others we heard were
excellent.
Some of my favorite things from Nationals:
1. Albert Whited -- The Man is the best reader on the planet. Clear,
well-paced, and endowed with a wicked sense of humor, he's always a joy
to have as a moderator. His jovial demeanor added welcome jollity to the
playoffs (i.e. -- the Mother of all High Pressure Situations) and kept us
awake despite the beastly heat of the building and the fatigue of
playing so many tough games in succession in the playoffs. He does have
this one quirk of saying "Time" when most readers say "captain?" or
"answer please?", but once you know that this is only his method of
prompting, you'll want him to read every game you play.
2. That one packet of bonuses with the "O Ye who..." leadins. One of
the best: "O ye who won the speed check, answer these questions about..."
It also featured a joke that might have been missed by those who haven't
seen Maryland's web page (http://www.glue.umd.edu/~maqt): "Through the
hallowed halls of academic competition / Comes the spirit of the
Joyceman." Nice meter, and hilarious leadin. Sadly, the Joyceman (Corey
Edwards of Ga Tech) was not there in body.
3. The tossup that began -- "Donkeys were sacrificed to this god..."
Oklahoma will know what I mean.
4. Touching base with Gaius Stern, Ken LaSala, and Mike Starsinic. Always
great to see Maryland alums doing well at their current schools. (It
occurs to me that although we're always referring to Berkeley as "having
many Maryland grads," they might well refer to Maryland as "Berkeley's
farm team.")
5. Seeing Tech win the tournament -- As Carol Guthrie said, it couldn't
have happened to a more deserving team. Maryland of all schools knows what
Tech has gone through for all these years. I can only express my very
envious congratulations.
6. Beating Virginia -- the monkey is off our backs! (until the next
tournament -- why, O Lord, hast thou placed our nemesis in such close
geographic proximity?). As expected, Virginia proved to be a terror once in
the playoffs.
7. Seeing Cornell do well. They were definitely the sleeper team of the
tournament. I don't think anyone expected them to come into the playoffs
undefeated (like Maryland, they sloughed a loss to a prelim team that
didn't make the cut, in this case, UT-Dallas), but they did, with a win
over Harvard. Once in, they did quite well.
8. Scott Gillispie -- May be second only to Al Whited in the weird humor
department. Not as dramatic a reader, but a fun one to listen to
nonetheless.
9. Having games read by Don Windham, Carol Guthrie, and Tom Waters, even
though it is somewhat disconcerting to know that the reader could trounce
your team if he were playing.
10. The playoff system. Ramesh Kannappan's invention, it may well be
the best around.
Ambivalent things about the tournament:
1. Finishing second. This is Maryland's third second-place finish in 5
ACF Nationals, along with one third place. Throw in 2nd place finishes
at Wahoo War, Swarthmore, Hopkins, Penn Bowl, and the Tennessee
Invitational (to five different teams, no less). Can you say "the Buffalo
Bills of Academic Competition"?
Overall, I came away with the same impression as last year: ACF
Nationals was once again the best-edited, best-run tournament we attended
this year (and we go to many). Anything less would have been quite a
surprise, given the expertise of those running the tournament.
As for the ACF Nostradamus picks I made, I was very wrong about Emory,
Oklahoma, Iowa State, and Illinois, among others. Sorry, guys! It won't
happen again. I did correctly pick Tech to win, but that's about all
I got right, vastly underestimating teams I hadn't seen, and basing some
picks on too many "vapor-players".
Oh, and Gourab, if you're reading this, we owe you big-time.
Matt Colvin
Christine Moritz
: In article <4ldt22$l...@curly.cc.emory.edu>,
: Douglas Alan Wheeler <dwh...@curly.cc.emory.edu> wrote:
: >First of all, I would like to congratulate Jim Dendy, Carol Guthrie, and
: >Don W. for a well-run and well-edited Nationals tournament. The
: >questions were answerable and there were few repeats. As a team, I know
:
: Seconded. Carol proved once again that she is eminently competent, and
: the editing was excellent. The difficulty was down from last year, but
: since that was a stated goal of the directors from the outset (viz. Jim
: Dendy's "Plea for Moderation" post several weeks ago), no one should have
: been surprised. I found it a welcome change.
Me too; last year's tournament was kind of plodding and laborious at
times, whereas this one was fun.
: >Emory had fun. It was also nice to finish where we did, as this was
: >Christine Moritz and Chris Rodger's last tournament. Christine did very
: >well, and Emory finished in ninth place overall, exceeding the
: >expectations of many. I enjoyed playing schools from all over the
: >country as well, facing the likes of Eric Bell, David Frazsee(?), Robert
:
: That is one of the great things about ACF Nationals -- you get to
: associate faces with all the names you've heard about. Eric Bell was
: most impressive, as he and his teammates beat us in the prelims
: with a number of very early buzzes. We weren't interrupting too much;
: Oklahoma just TOOK the game from us. Luckily for us, Gourab's Duke
: team beat them in the last round, and Emory entered playoffs instead.
: If Oklahoma had made the cut, they would have saddled Maryland with a
: carried-over defeat from the prelims.
The transferring of records from prelims to playoffs is something that
strikes me as a bug in the system that still needs to be worked out. I'm
not exactly sure what I would recommend for this -- we were there until
almost 9 p.m. as it was and a 12-team round-robin playoff would have been
hell -- but I don't like a system where losses don't count so long as you
lose only to teams that don't make it to the playoffs.
While I don't think this affected Emory as badly as last year, when our
prelims victory over Maryland I did us no good in our next-to-the-top
bracket playoffs, and our loss to Princeton hurt us because they too
ended up in our bracket, I still think something needs to change. This
year Emory made the #4 spot in the top (and only) round-robin playoff
group, taking with us three losses (to Maryland I, Virginia I, and
Illinois I). In the playoffs, we beat the #1 and #3 teams (Cornell and Iowa)
in the Selma bracket and the #2 and #3 teams (Berkeley and Princeton) in the
Marge bracket.
I think most of the playoff rounds were about the same level as the
prelim rounds -- which should be necessary if prelim records are going to
be transferred. Otherwise a loss to Team X on an easier packet counts
just the same as a loss to Team Y on a more difficult packet.
[snip]
: Here are my general remarks on the tournament. Let me get the bad out of
: the way first:
:
[snip]
:
: 4. A solitary reader in our bracket. All the others we heard were
: excellent.
One thing that does need major re-working for next year is the schedule.
Teams ought to move from room to room so that everyone gets a relatively
equal shot at both the good and not-so-good readers.
[snip]
: Ambivalent things about the tournament:
[snip]
: As for the ACF Nostradamus picks I made, I was very wrong about Emory,
: Oklahoma, Iowa State, and Illinois, among others. Sorry, guys! It won't
: happen again.
[snip]
Heh heh heh. I was disappointed that so few people picked us to make it
to the top tier, but I was pleased that we did so well once we managed to
get there.
I don't think I'd ever seen Illinois play before, but I was very
impressed with them. They were very fast, and they knew a lot of stuff.
After watching them play Oklahoma on Emory's packet, I could only hope
that Emory would get to play them on an all-jazz packet (as they bageled
the Emory packet's jazz bonus). Unfortunately, that did not happen.
Congrats to Tech and also to Maryland --
Christine
The Supernatural Anaesthetist
Hate to be nosy, or jump the gun, but who won ACF Nationals?
-Tim Young '96, Dartmouth College
sig currently on 15-day DL
Shawn Pickrell
cyber-tablets of alt.college.college-bowl:
: 6. Beating Virginia -- the monkey is off our backs! (until the next
: tournament -- why, O Lord, hast thou placed our nemesis in such close
: geographic proximity?). As expected, Virginia proved to be a terror
: once in the playoffs.
Um, why, O Lord, hast Thou placed so many good schools such close
geographic proximity? Maryland, UVa, UNC, Johns Hopkins, GWU, G'town,
Duke, I could go on ...
Look for the Univeristy of Oregon -- Ashland, VA campus -- to be
competing in Region 14 in 1997. :)
************************************************************************
Sir Shawn, Knight of the Internet - "I kick ass for the Lord!"
AKA: Shawn Pickrell, Randolph-Macon College '97 (Romans 10:9-13)
(or is that U of Oregon -- Ashland, VA campus?)
E-mail: spic...@bacardi.rmc.edu / Web: http://bacardi.rmc.edu/~spickrel
Check out the Bacardi home page: http://bacardi.rmc.edu
Samer Ismail
On 25 Apr 1996, Shawn Pickrell wrote:
> Um, why, O Lord, hast Thou placed so many good schools such close
> geographic proximity? Maryland, UVa, UNC, Johns Hopkins, GWU, G'town,
> Duke, I could go on ...
These schools aren't *THAT* close together. It's what, 7-8 hours from GWU
to Duke?
And why, O Lord, hast Thou placed so many good schools in close proximity
in New England? Yale, MIT, BU, Dartmouth, Williams, that other school from
Cambridge (what's its name? :) ) Region 1, for its size, has some of the
biggest competition this side of a Penn Bowl Bracket-o'-Death (= Sydney
bracket @ PB6).
--STI
Samer T Ismail (Yale U, TC 98)
**** Co-President, Yale College Bowl Team
**** PO Box 204873, New Haven, CT 06520-4873 // 203-436-1171
**** "I feel foolish--and a little cheated." --J.J. Todor to my twin brother
on finding out that he and I aren't the same person
Christine Moritz
Samer Ismail (sis...@minerva.cis.yale.edu) wrote:
: On 25 Apr 1996, Shawn Pickrell wrote:
:
: > Um, why, O Lord, hast Thou placed so many good schools such close
: > geographic proximity? Maryland, UVa, UNC, Johns Hopkins, GWU, G'town,
: > Duke, I could go on ...
:
: These schools aren't *THAT* close together. It's what, 7-8 hours from GWU
: to Duke?
[snip]
Um, no. More like five hours.
Mitchell S. Szczepanczyk
Samer Ismail (sis...@minerva.cis.yale.edu) wrote:
: And why, O Lord, hast Thou placed so many good schools in close proximity
: in New England? Yale, MIT, BU, Dartmouth, Williams, that other school from
: Cambridge (what's its name? :) ) Region 1, for its size, has some of the
: biggest competition this side of a Penn Bowl Bracket-o'-Death (= Sydney
: bracket @ PB6).
Same deal here in Region 7: Michigan State, Bowling Green, Ohio
State, Case Western, us, and Western Michigan have all travelled on the
intercollegiate AC circuit. Plus, at CBI regionals, the first 4 schools
were in THE SAME PLAYING POOL; that was truly a bracket of doom.
------- | "Three passions, simple but over-
MITCHELL SZCZEPANCZYK (shch-pine-chick) | whelmingly strong, have governed
sz...@umich.edu; http://www.umich.edu/~szcz| my life: the longing for love,
3335 Goddard--Oxford, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 | the search for knowledge, and the
Room: (313) 764-7922/Board: (313) 930-2684| unbearable pity for the suffering
FUTURE U-CHICAGO LINGUISTICS!!!!! | of mankind." --Bertrand Russell
Michael F. Haynes
sz...@umich.edu (Mitchell S. Szczepanczyk) writes:
>Same deal here in Region 7: Michigan State, Bowling Green, Ohio
>State, Case Western, us, and Western Michigan have all travelled on the
>intercollegiate AC circuit. Plus, at CBI regionals, the first 4 schools
>were in THE SAME PLAYING POOL; that was truly a bracket of doom.
Actually, in the sense of accuracy (and since I doubt I'll forget WMU
absolutely tearing us apart in the last round of the RR) if you swap the
order of OSU and WMU then you'd have the correct bracketing.
We also had Akron in our bracket who, while they technically haven't
travelled yet, have been trying to for quite some time now and would have
done so if a blizzard hadn't kept them from going to GWU.
That accounts for 5 of the 9 teams in our bracket. Yeecks!
--
Team Captain, BGSU Academic Competition Organization
Michael F. Haynes - mha...@bgsuvax.bgsu.edu - http://pizza.bgsu.edu/~mhaynes
ResAccess Lab Consultant - Computer Science Major
ObQuote : "Fear is the mindkiller."
brick.ba...@his.com
-=> Quoting Pto...@wam.umd.edu to All - Reply <=-
Pt> 1. Finishing second. This is Maryland's third second-place finish in
Pt> 5 ACF Nationals, along with one third place. Throw in 2nd place
Pt> finishes at Wahoo War, Swarthmore, Hopkins, Penn Bowl, and the
Pt> Tennessee Invitational (to five different teams, no less). Can you say
Pt> "the Buffalo Bills of Academic Competition"?
In ancient history, Maryland won CBI in 1981. How about "the Boston Red Sox
of Academic Competition"?
Brick Barrientos
Captain of the 1981 Maryland Team
"The Harry Hooper of Academic Competition"