1997/05/04 This Sunday afternoon, it was pointed out to me, with some astonishment, that Maryland has run 8 tournaments this year: - NAQT Sectionals - ACF Regionals - Terrapin Invitational - 2nd Annual Ad Hoc Bowl II: The Wrath of Khon - the fall High School Invitational in the It's Academic format - the spring High School Classic in the ACF format (results and some scant recruiting scoops to be posted soon. Hopkins and Duke are two very lucky teams.) - the Marion S. Barry Fraud Bowl, the trash brainchild of David Goodman. - and now the David Scott Hamilton Invitational for freshmen and sophomores. It is the last of these eight tournaments that took place on Friday and Saturday. It was attended by 12 teams, one of which was Shawn Pickrell and Chris St. Jean of Randolph-Macon, who were ineligible for the championship and were there for chest-beating purposes only. ;-) At the end of the round-robin, the standings were: tot tot tot avg opponents' Team W-L score toss int p/toss score --------------------------------------------------------------- Maryland A 10-0 3820 129 11 29.61 1395 Chicago 9-1 3400 122 10 27.87 1430 Swarthmore 7-3 2590 93 9 27.85 1940 Michigan 6-4 2850 99 20 28.79 2230 MIT 5-5 2130 87 15 24.48 2265 Furman 5-5 2090 87 25 25.49 2305 Johns Hopkins 4-6 2125 84 22 25.30 2270 Penn State 4-6 1900 79 14 24.05 2690 Georgetown 4-6 1850 81 19 22.84 2530 Maryland B 1-9 1415 73 20 19.38 2190 UMD-Eastern Shore 0-10 395 28 18 14.11 3320 After the prelims, I had 4 packets to play with, so we grouped the field into 3 brackets of 4 teams (Pickrell's exhibition team going automatically into the last bracket), and played mini-round-robin playoffs in the style of the Mid-Atlantic ACF Regionals. The championship was then determined by adding the records from the playoffs to the records from the prelims. I do not have the stats for those games on me; I'll find them later and post them then, but I can report now that the results from the top bracket were: Team W-L Maryland A 3-0 Chicago 1-2 Lost to Swarthmore and to Maryland A. Swarthmore 2-1 Lost to Maryland A Michigan 0-3 Lost to above MIT, after sweeping their playoff pool, finished with a better record than Michigan, but still end up 5th because of the way the system works. (please correct me if I'm wrong on that). The individual stats looked like this: Name Team tu int ppg ----------------------------------------------------- Ravin Michigan 81 13 74.5 Dom MIT 78 11 72.5 Julie Maryland A 69 1 68.5 Josh Maryland B 62 15 54.5 Atish Hopkins 61 15 53.5 Ed Swarthmore 52 3 50.5 Mike Chicago 43 5 40.5 Rob Chicago 42 3 40.5 Tom Georgetown 30 8 26.0 Daisy Furman 27 6 24.0 Beau Furman 27 6 24.0 Bill Maryland A 25 4 23.0 Sarah Chicago 21 1 20.5 Jessica Swarthmore 22 4 20.0 Brian Penn State 21 2 20.0 Cindy Penn State 21 4 19.0 Mark Maryland A 22 6 19.0 Rhiannon Penn State 20 3 18.5 Josh Swarthmore 19 2 18.0 Sparky Georgetown 18 2 17.0 Roscoe Furman 22 11 16.5 Phil Georgetown 18 5 15.5 Matt Chicago 16 1 15.5 Pissboy Maryland A 13 0 13.0 Boffo Georgetown 15 4 13.0 Vorlon Hopkins 11 3 9.5 Mike Maryland B 11 4 9.0 John Michigan 9 2 8.0 Matt UMES 9 2 8.0 Hawkes UMES 9 4 7.0 Duncan Michigan 8 3 6.5 Lakshmi Hopkins 6 1 5.5 Ross Furman 6 2 5.0 (all others under 5 ppg) Some thoughts: I felt a little embarrassed about giving a trophy to Maryland at an event we ran, but they sort of forced me to, finishing the tournament 3 games up on the field. Julie Singer played as well as anyone could have predicted; as a notorious negger, it is hard for me to fathom her 69-1 shooting. The other 3 players on Maryland A, captain Mark Tervakovski, Bill Schmeh, and Shawn Hayeslip ("Pissboy"), rounded out what I think is the best freshman class Maryland has ever had...though they did lose to Shawn Pickrell and Chris St. Jean in the exhibition match. For shame! Chicago was extremely impressive, with Mike and Rob doing 40.5 ppg each -- reminiscent of 3 years ago when Josh Boorstein and John Sheahan delivered a 1-2 punch at ACF Nationals. I can only envy Sarah for her 21 to 1 ratio. Chicago is in very good shape for the coming years. The Chicago team stayed afterwards for basketball and frisbee, which was a lot of fun, even though I couldn't get a $#@@!! shot to fall. It was at times difficult to tell which Mike was playing, Zarren or Jordan. The next three teams were all led by phenomenal players: Ravin from Michigan turned in a monster performance, and Dom from MIT was not far behind. Ed from Swarthmore was also great fun to read for. These are the stars of the circuit in a year or two. Thanks to MIT for bringing 4 (!) excellent buzzer systems. They made logistics a breeze...and knocked MIT's entry fee down to a mere $30. Running a juniorbird is a wonderful experience and I highly recommend it to anyone. It was a joy to watch these underclassmen play. They are full of enthusiasm, have fine sportsmanship, and just generally seem to have a better perspective than older, crabbier players. It is also fascinating to see what they do and do not know. More so than players who have been on the circuit for a while, freshmen and sophomores make buzzes based on knowledge gained outside of quizbowl, rather than on knowledge accumulated by hearing "quizbowl's greatest hits" repeatedly. I could ramble about the implications of this for the validity of the quiz bowl canon, but I won't. I wasn't entirely satisfied with the questions, but they weren't too bad. Packets were by Ohio State, Iowa State, Maryland, and UT-Dallas. The consortium system needs some work before it can produce a tournament that is consistent in difficulty from round to round. I should have put more time into editing, but didn't. It was sometimes difficult to know what was and was not reasonable to ask to freshmen and sophomores. But if more underclassmen tournaments were held, perhaps a more concrete standard would emerge. Iowa State's LET and Maryland's DSHIT constitute the second wave of such tournaments. As it was, I tried to approximate Emory's Juniorbird, as best I could remember it. I want to acknowledge our debt to Emory for the idea of such a tournament in the first place. Imitation is the highest flattery; it is appropriate that the whole genus of tournaments for freshmen and sophomores has come to be known as "juniorbird tournamnts." A note on the tournament's name: David Scott Hamilton is the best player on Maryland's ACF A team. I am the worst player on Maryland A at the moment. Despite this, when we sit down before a game, the scorekeeper usually knows only me, and has to ask Arthur, Dave G., and Dave H for their names. So we tried to give Dave his 15 minutes of fame. He also substituted for the departed UMES in the playoffs, where in a fit of biscuitry, he lost to Shawn Pickrell. There was an all-star game held on what would have been the finals packet, had there been a need for any. Ed, Mike, Dom, and Julie won rather handily over Ravin, Rob, Atish, and Josh. I hear that the moderators and staff had an interesting time scrimmaging on this packet as well. On the whole, I thought it went well, and I hope Maryland runs it again next year...though perhaps 8 tournaments a year is a bit much. Thanks to Michelle Cantave for baking a cake, decorated with the message "DSHIT is DBOMB." It was indeed. Matt Colvin apparently president-elect of Cornell AQO