Teams marked with asterisks received votes on all nine ballots.

1.  Stanford*  (4 first place votes) 220 points

2. Minnesota A* (4 first place votes) 217 points

3.  Chicago A* 204 points

4.  Brown A* 190 points

5.  Harvard* (1 first place vote) 184 points

6. Pennsylvania* 183 points

7. Illinois A * 180 points

8. Maryland * 160 points

9. California-San Diego * 140 points

10. Virginia Commonwealth * 139 points

11. Toronto* 138 points

12. Yale* 133 points

13. Michigan* 108 points

14.  State College High School* 105 points

15. California-Irvine* 91 points

16. South Carolina* 87 points

17. Florida 76 points

18. Carnegie Mellon* 75 points

19.  Carleton College 47 points

20. Columbia 37 points

21.  Chicago B 30 points

22. Missouri 27 points

23. Clemson 22 points

24. Rice 21 points

25.  Florida State 20 points

Also receiving votes: Maggie Walker Governor’s School (16), Brown B, Virginia (15), Minnesota B (9), Liberal Arts and Sciences Academy, California-Los Angeles (8), Southside High School (7), Saint Anselm’s Abbey School (5), Swarthmore (4), McMaster (2), Michigan State, Dartmouth (1)

Of course, this wouldn’t be possible without the voters. Thanks go out to Graham Moyer, Gautam Kandlikar, Eric Mukherjee, Nalin Lalwani, Cody Voight, Adam Fine, Chris Chiego,  and Matt Weiner  for all submitting ballots. A ballot was cast by the poll coordinator, George Berry, before voter ballots were received and read.

Teams marked with asterisks received votes on all thirteen ballots.

1.  Minnesota A*  (6 first place votes) 318 points

2. Chicago A* (3 first place votes) 305 points

3.  Brown A* (2 first place votes) 301 points

4.  Illinois A* (2 first place votes) 289 points

5.  Stanford * 259 points

6. Pennsylvania* 253 points

7. Harvard * 244 points

8. Maryland * 240 points

9. California-San Diego * 211 points

10. Yale * 196 points

11. Virginia Commonwealth 180 points

12. Toronto* 179 points

13. California-Irvine 162 points

14.  Carnegie Mellon* 132 points

15. State College High School 117 points

16. South Carolina 97 points

17. Michigan 95 points

18. Florida State 76 points

19.  Missouri 73 points

20. Florida 65 points

21.  Chicago B 56 points

22. Carleton College 49 points

23. California- Los Angeles 47 points

24. Rice 43 points

25.  Brown B 37 points

Also receiving votes: Maggie Walker Governor’s School, Columbia (36), Clemson (23), Virginia (20), Liberal Arts and Science Academy High School (17), Rensselaer Polytechic Institute (14), Swarthmore (13), Saint Anselm’s Abbey School (12), Washington University-St. Louis (10), Arizona State, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (5), Duke (4), Vanderbilt (3), Princeton (2), Minnesota B (1)

Of course, this wouldn’t be possible without the voters. Thanks go out to Evan Adams, Steve Bahnaman,  Carleton College, Trevor Davis, Andrew Hart, Joey Montoya, Fred Morlan, Eric Mukherjee, Dan Passner, Sinan Ulusoy, Matt Weiner, and Libo Zeng for all submitting ballots. A ballot was cast by the poll coordinator, George Berry, before voter ballots were received and read.

* “Collegiate” refers to the level of play and difficulty of tournaments to consider, not that the poll is exclusive to teams from colleges. If you believe a high school team is good enough to be ranked here, rank them.

Send to me your top 25 in order, 1 to 25. Teams will get 25 points for a 1st place vote, 24 for 2nd, and so on.

Email them to me at georgeberry292@hotmail.com, and please include “hsquizbowl Top 25″ in the subject line of your email. I have started to accept ballots and will accept ballots until the end of next Tuesday, March 9th.

Ballots that are bad will be reviewed and possibly rejected; if I have enough time, I’ll prompt you for reasoning and what not.

Remember that the poll is intended for a general ranking of how good teams are. You should consider the team’s best possible performance, as if all players who have shown up this year were available for play. B teams and the like are eligible to be ranked.

1. State College Area High School, 449.5 points, 17.5 first place votes

2. Maggie Walker Governor’s School , 431.5 points, 0.5 first place votes

3. Southside High School, 397 points

4. Dorman High School, 372 points

5. Georgetown Day School , 364 points

6. Hunter College High School (New York , NY), 343 points

7. St. Anselm’s Abbey School, (Washington, DC) 336 points

8. Liberal Arts and Science Academy (Austin, Texas) 316 points

9.Paul Laurence Dunbar High School (Lexington, Kentucky), 277 points

10. Detroit Country Day School (Beverly Hills, Michigan) 274 points

11. Charter School of Wilmington (Wilmington, Delaware), 240 points

12. Hoover High School (Hoover, Alabama), 235 points

13. Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (Alexandria, Virginia), 228 points

14.Mission San Jose High School (Fremont, California),  192 points

15. Raleigh Charter High School (Raleigh, North Carolina),182 points

16. Eden Prairie High School (Eden Prairie, Minnesota), 172 points

17. Torrey Pines High School (San Diego, California), 139 points

18. Detroit Catholic Central High School (Novi, Michigan), 123 points

19. Kellenberg High School (Uniondale, New York),  99 points

20. Alpharetta High School (Alpharetta, Georgia),  88 points

21. Solon High School (Cleveland, Ohio), 74 points

22. DuPont Manual High School (Louisville, Kentucky), 69 points

23. Hume-Fogg High School (Nashville, Tennessee), 68 points

24. Auburn High School (Rockford, Illinois), 55 points

25. Walter Johnson High School (Bethesda, Maryland), 40 points

Also receiving votes: Bergen (38), Walt Whitman (37),  La Jolla (35), MLK Magnet and St Joseph (26),  Centennial (22),  Santa Monica (16), Richard Montgomery (15), Dorman B (14),  Southside B (12),  Walton (7), Caesar Rodney (6),  Walnut Hills, St Ignatius, Stevenson (4), Georgetown Day B (3),  Ezell-Harding, Bellarmine (2), Douglas Freeman, Northmont, Pensacola, Blake (1)

Thank you to the voters, in no particular order: Issac Hirsch, Evan Adams, Matt Bollinger, Jasper Lee, Stephen Liu, Ed Powers, Graham Moyer, William Horton, Watson Ladd, Andrew Chrzanowski, Jarret Greene, Matt Jackson, George Berry, Aidan Mehigan, Benji Nguyen, Trey Taraila, Jacob Ingram, and Kevin Noriega.

Individual ballots may be found at http://tinyurl.com/2010hsqbpoll

The Benjamin Cooper Awards:

The Benjamin Cooper Academic Ambassador Award and the Young Ambassador Award recognize those who have made substantial contributions to the “spirit and honor of quizbowl competition.” Benjamin Cooper, for whom the award is named, was a model student at the Georgetown Day School in Washington, DC, who was well-liked among his colleagues and the faculty. He participated in many activities in school and in service to the community. Because of his enthusiasm and encouragement to promote academic competition among his team members, he was selected as the captain of the varsity team for the 1997-1998 school year. On August 12, 1997, Ben was tragically killed in an automobile accident while returning from his summer job.

The first Cooper Award was presented by PACE to Georgetown Day School team advisor Sue Ikenberry in honor of Ben at the 1998 NSC. Subsequent awards have been presented every year, and a complete list of winners will soon be available on the PACE website. The Young Ambassador Award was first presented at the 2004 NSC.

How to Nominate:

Any member of the quizbowl community is eligible for the Cooper Award. Eligibility for the Young Ambassador Award is restricted to those currently affiliated with high school or college programs. Because there are always many deserving candidates, PACE welcomes re-nomination of those nominated last year who have continued to contribute to the quizbowl community.

To submit a nomination, please compose a statement of no more than 1,000 words detailing your nominee’s contributions to the quizbowl community. This statement should include a summary of positions held by the nominee as well as a specific explanation of why, in your opinion, he or she has contributed to the “spirit and honor of quizbowl competition.”

Please email your nomination statement to this year’s Cooper Award coordinator, Kyle Haddad-Fonda, at kyle.haddad-fonda@magd.ox.ac.uk no later than March 1, 2010. Kyle will confirm receipt of your nomination within 48 hours of the time you submit it. In your email, please include your contact information in case the PACE Cooper Award Committee wishes to contact you for additional information about the nominee. All nomination statements are strictly confidential and will be seen only by the PACE members involved in the selection process.

Announcement of Winners:

Members of the PACE Cooper Award Committee will deliberate throughout the month of March, with a final vote on the winners scheduled for the last week of March. The winners will be announced on the hsquizbowl.org message board and on the PACE website during the first week of April. The awards will be formally presented to the winners on the first day of the 2010 NSC.

If you have any questions about this year’s Cooper Award or to submit a nomination, please contact Kyle Haddad-Fonda at kyle.haddad-fonda@magd.ox.ac.uk.

Teams marked with asterisks received votes on all twenty ballots.

1.  Chicago A*  (9 first place votes) 481 points

2. Minnesota A* (4 first place votes) 479 points

3.  Brown A* (7 first place votes) 475 points

4.  Harvard A* 434 points

5.  Illinois A* 430 points

6. Pennsylvania* 396 points

7. Maryland * 336 points

8. California-San Diego A* 314 points

9. Virginia Commonwealth * 313 points

10. Carnegie Mellon* 287 points

11. California-Irvine 248 points

12. State College High School 195 points

13.  Yale 187 points

14.  Michigan* 175 points

15. Toronto 173 points

16. Maggie L Walker Governor’s School 162 points

17. Stanford 156 points

18. Chicago B 148 points

19. (tied) Missouri and South Carolina 146 points

21.  MIT 106 points

22. Clemson 95 points

23. Carleton 69 points

24. Brown B 64 points

25.  Rice 58 points

Also receiving votes: Swarthmore (41), Columbia (41), Florida State (40), Iowa (39), UCLA (38), Princeton (36),  Vanderbilt (25), RPI (20), Georgia (18), Florida (16), Virginia (16), Berkeley (16),  Cornell (12), Washington University of St Louis (12), Harvard B (10), South Florida (7), Minnesota B (6), Lawrence (4),  Western Ontario (3), Ottawa (2), Illinois B (2), Southside High School (2), Dartmouth (2), North Carolina (1), Caltech (1)

Of course, this wouldn’t be possible without the voters. Thanks go out to Zach Foster, Mike Bentley, Matt Weiner, Evan Adams, Matt Bollinger, Graham Moyer, Andrew Hart, Joey Montoya, Andy Watkins, Mike Cheyne, Auroni Gupta, Trygve Meade, Dallin Kelson, Charles Hang, Gautam Kandlikar, Chris Lionel, Chris Greenwood, Mehdi Razvi, and Eric Douglass for all submitting ballots.

Polls will be open until 10 PM EST on Tuesday, December 1st.
Polls should be in my email at georgeberry292@hotmail.com by 10 PM EST on the 1st. If your ballot isn’t there then, it will not be included.

I reserve the right to throw out any ridiculous or gimmick ballots determined as such by my discretion. You will be notified of said rejection and offered the opportunity to resubmit a ballot before the deadline.

State College Area High School (State College, Pennsylvania) finished second and received the other first place vote. Paul M. Dorman High School’s A team (Roebuck, South Carolina), Hunter College High School (New York City, New York) and Southside High School (Greenville, South Carolina) round out the top five.

Congratulations to these teams and to all 41 teams that received votes.

Complete results are after the jump.

1. Maggie Walker A, 374 points, 14 first place votes, 15 of 15 ballots, highest vote: 1st, lowest vote: 2nd
2. State College, 360 points, 1 first place vote, 15 of 15 ballots, highest vote: 1st, lowest vote: 3rd
3. Dorman A, 320 points, 15 of 15 ballots, highest vote: 2nd, lowest vote: 11th
4. Hunter, 315 points, 15 of 15 ballots, highest vote: 3rd, lowest vote: 12th
5. Southside, 310 points, 15 of 15 ballots, highest vote: 3rd, lowest vote: 10th

6. Georgetown Day School (Washington, DC), 291 points, 15 of 15 ballots, highest vote: 3rd, lowest vote: 12th
7. Liberal Arts and Science Academy (Austin, Texas), 279 points, 15 of 15 ballots, highest vote: 3rd, lowest vote: 18th
8. Hoover High School (Hoover, Alabama), 263 points, 15 of 15 ballots, highest vote: 3rd, lowest vote: 14th
9. Mission San Jose High School (Fremont, California), 234 points, 14 of 15 ballots, highest vote: 6th, lowest vote: 13th
10. Detroit Country Day School (Beverly Hills, Michigan), 228 points, 15 of 15 ballots, highest vote: 4th, lowest vote: 19th

11. Paul Laurence Dunbar High School (Lexington, Kentucky), 204 points, 15 of 15 ballots, highest vote: 6th, lowest vote: 20th
12. Eden Prairie High School (Eden Prairie, Minnesota), 187 points, 15 of 15 ballots, highest vote: 10th, lowest vote: 17th
13. Charter School of Wilmington (Wilmington, Delaware), 186 points, 15 of 15 ballots, highest vote: 8th, lowest vote: 24th
14. Raleigh Charter High School (Raleigh, North Carolina), 162 points, 15 of 15 ballots, highest vote: 9th, lowest vote: 23rd
15. Detroit Catholic Central High School (Novi, Michigan), 156 points, 14 of 15 ballots, highest vote: 10th, lowest vote: 22nd

16. DuPont Manual High School (Louisville, Kentucky), 151 points, 15 of 15 ballots, highest vote: 8th, lowest vote: 21st
17. Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (Alexandria, Virginia), 150 points, 15 of 15 ballots, highest vote: 11th, lowest vote: 21st
18. Torrey Pines High School (San Diego, California), 132 points, 13 of 15 ballots, highest vote: 9th, lowest vote: 23rd
19. St. Anselm’s Abbey School (Washington, DC), 87 points, 15 of 15 ballots, highest vote: 10th, lowest vote: 25th
20. Hume-Fogg High School (Nashville, Tennessee), 59 points, 9 of 15 ballots, highest vote: 15th, lowest vote: 25th

21. La Jolla High School (La Jolla, California), 56 points, 11 of 15 ballots, highest vote: 16th, lowest vote: 24th
22. Kellenberg Memorial High School (Uniondale, New York), 44 points, 8 of 15 ballots, highest vote: 7th, lowest vote: 24th
23. Walt Whitman High School (Bethesda, Maryland), 43 points, 7 of 15 ballots, highest vote: 11th, lowest vote: 25th
24. Martin Luther King Jr. Magnet School (Nashville, Tennessee), 32 points, 8 of 15 ballots, highest vote: 18th, lowest vote: 25th
25. Santa Monica High School (Santa Monica, California), 31 points, 8 of 15 ballots, highest vote: 18th, lowest vote: 25th

Also receiving votes: Alpharetta, 28 points; Pensacola, 24 points; Walton, 22 points; Walnut Hills, 22 points; Northmont, 20 points; Chattahoochee, 14 points; Livingston, 14 points; Walter Johnson, 12 points; State College B, 11 points; Plymouth, 10 points; Dorman B, 9 points; Maggie Walker B, 9 points; Bergen County, 9 points; Brookwood, 7 points; Solon, 6 points; Rockford Auburn, 4 points

Thank you to the voters, in no particular order: Matt Jackson, William Horton, Matt Weiner, Trey Taralia, Andrew Chrzanowski, Jasper Lee, Matt Bollinger, Benji Nguyen, David Garb and Nick Bergeon (joint ballot), Stephen Liu, Aidan Mehigan, Wes Austin, Mehdi Razvi, Graham Moyer and Jarret Greene.

For more information and discussion of the poll, click here.

Last year’s theme in the predictions was upsets and the lack of a great history player in quizbowl. Both of those things will continue this year, but I suggest that the new theme is a very solid freshman class. Shantanu Jha and Dallas Simons made huge impacts at high levels last time around, and Kurtis Droge and Charlie Dees also proved their bona fides. This time, you’re going to see a group that may not be as immediately relevant at the highest levels, but is deeper and will be responsible for racking up a greater quantity of wins throughout the year.

Your major contenders remain Brown and Chicago, with Harvard, Minnesota, Illinois, MIT, Stanford, and Irvine capable of pulling upsets. Dartmouth drops into rebuilding mode for the time being. Programs like Maryland, Penn, VCU, and UCSD make up a solid third tier, not quite ready to knock off a title contender but still clearly ahead of the masses.

Region-by-region, here’s how things go:

MID-ATLANTIC: Things get way more interesting in the greater DC area as Eric Mukherjee moves to Penn, trailing a U-Haul full of Balz-Schiemann Reaction knowledge behind him, and last year’s respectable Penn team also comes back to form a very solid starting four. Maryland loses solid contributor Jeff Amoros but returns everyone else. VCU will see reduced playing time from Andrew Alexander as he moves to med school, but picks up NAQT CCCT champion George Berry and a gaggle of newly eligible high schoolers taking dual-credit classes. These three teams will contend for all of the titles as the year starts, but as the weeks go on they may be joined by others, such as a reinvigorated UVa, which recruits 140 PPG PACE NSC player Chuhern Hwang to join Will Butler and continues to pine for the return of Leo Wolpert. Swarthmore returns all of their scoring and adds high school nationals standout Ben Geselowitz. Columbia did very well last year at all of the events they played, and will hopefully play more this time. UNC seems to be fading from contention, but they still have the raw talent to get good quickly if they start focusing again. What’s going on at Duke? No one knows. UMBC and George Mason will hopefully show up to things, and Virginia Tech gets both enthusiastic freshman and TJ veteran Harry White, and experienced player and organizer Dan Goff, as motivation to start playing more tournaments. I don’t know if Chris Horng is coming back to Rutgers or not, but he almost had a breakout year last spring and could turn some heads if his improvement continues, especially if he can convince Jeremy Hixson to show up to some tournaments rather than just writing solid packets for every event Rutgers participates in. Princeton seems like it could do well with Kunle and Dan still participating; hopefully last year’s scanty tournament attendance schedule for this team was a fluke. I heard a rumor that the GWU club discovered a heretofore forgotten cache of money, which I hope they will use to attend more events. Also, I see that Dan Puma is going to Loyola-MD so let’s hope he gets a team started there. Does William & Mary still have a team?

MIDWEST: The cold truth is that Chicago and Minnesota are better than Illinois right now. However, both of those teams tend to have less than perfect attendance by their best possible foursome at regular-season events, so who knows where the early winners will come from. As Illinois integrates Ike Jose into the equation and sees what Will Turner can add to a Mike Sorice who knows his championship eligibility window is closing, we very well may see a changing of the pecking order here. Iowa is legit, Carleton is a team of the future, and a bunch of other people in the upper Midwest like playing high school questions and therefore will continue to suck. Michigan, Missouri, and Ohio State are on the same page as Carleton with enough talent to win more games than they lose even in a stacked event, but not enough to challenge the national contenders for at least another year. Michigan State seems likely to attend some more real tournaments this year, so good for them. I don’t know what to expect out of Lawrence, WUSTL, or Truman right now. Carnegie Mellon will do solidly in both Midwestern and Mid-Atlantic events. Chicago B and C are big wild cards; Chicago B pulled off some impressive performances last year (including beating both the 2nd and 3rd place teams at ACF Nationals) and Chicago “C” won DII ICT. The sky’s the limit for the Chicago bench.

NORTHEAST: There’s going to be some changes from last year. Harvard graduates a lot of people and probably can no longer expect its B and C teams to soften up opponents, but its A team will only get better. Dartmouth is temporarily off the radar with the loss of its entire starting four. The big story is the crazy influx of good players to Brown, which may actually get better despite losing Top 10 national player Eric. Not only did grad student Dan Klein prove his mettle while playing on the big stage at ACF Nationals this past year, Brown will also benefit from sophomore Michael Wright’s increased participation and the arrival of blue-chip recruits Ian Eppler, Guy Tabachnick, and Ben Cohen. Jerry will have some tough decisions to make about who plays on the A team at the major tournaments, and hopefully will amuse us all by making them in “Glen Jerry Glen Ross” fashion. Whoever ends up on Brown B will find themselves on a team that can contend for high finishes in the second bracket of nationals or possibly for the second spot behind Minnesota in the undergraduate race. Anyway, Harvard and Brown will win all the tournaments held during the year, with MIT usually finishing third, though Brown B could surprise if the full Brown roster is able to show up to the same event that they aren’t editing. Also, Cornell will still be good and Brandeis will be decent, and Doug Yetman will show up to things for CUNY and do fairly well. Yale is poised for a renaissance, as the iron-fisted dictators who were holding the program back have moved on and newly enlightened people have emerged over the summer as both interested in good quizbowl and obviously talented at several major categories. Paired with grad student pickup Kevin Koai, this team will be nearly unstoppable on music and have a great all-around knowledge base to compete for high finishes.

WEST: Stanford loses Kevin, it’s unknown which tournaments Andrew will play, and this team has perhaps suffered the worst among the contenders from West Coast apathy about actually showing up to tournaments with your full team. Nonetheless, they are a threat to win any tournament they go to when the real A-team lineup comes together. I’m pretty sure everyone comes back to Irvine and this is the year they make their push for an NAQT medal spot, and hopefully get the bad taste of 08 ACF Nationals out of their mouths and return to that event as well. UCSD is really a team to watch, as they pulled some huge upsets and laid down great stats last year and are now adding new grad student Chris Chiego. Caltech seems more enthusiastic about attending tournaments than in the recent past, so hopefully along with UCLA and Pomona they will provide a solid field for events in the southern part of the region. Note, events held in SoCal may be jeopardized by an army of high school players occupying the building to re-enact their favorite Dragonball Z episodes; do not be surprised if the stats from NAQT Sectionals California are just a picture of a shirtless guy vibrating for thirty minutes.

NORTHWEST: Mike Bentley reports that Washington, Gonzaga, and Boise State will continue to send teams to most events. The Renaissance of this region as a quizbowl hotspot continues.

SOUTHEAST: South Carolina won everything in this region last year, returns all of its players, and actually cares about good quizbowl, so I predict for them to win 10 events this time. Vanderbilt adds blue-chip recruit Daichi Ueda. Georgia Tech continues to get serious. Clemson has a huge pool of talent to draw from if they can get organized. Florida always seems to do very well when they show up to things, which is not often. Does Georgia return enough good players to do OK? Maybe. I’m not sure who else in this region has a chance at not sucking, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised before.

SOUTHWEST: I think TAMU has already blinked out and the Texas program is seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. The future may belong to Rice, whose reborn program includes not only Henry Gorman, the lead scorer of the double national HS champions, but a bunch of other apparently dedicated people coming out of the Texas circuit. With Angelo having moved on to rainier pastures at Portland State, I’m not sure if Tulsa will continue to glue this region together by hosting eighty-five tournaments a year. Hopefully Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and the Chris Romero cabal can keep things going.

CANADA: Canada is a land of both syrup and contrasts. It’s never been more clear that certain people at Western Ontario and Guelph are ready to make the leap into real quizbowl and are prepared to be competitive right off the bat. At the same time, the older generation has openly declared war on all that is good and made clear that they will fight this ambition until red in tooth and claw. Assuming Peter McCorquodale and Eric Smith don’t build towers on the border and try to machine-gun dissidents as they flee southward to ACF Regionals, expect some Canadian teams to contend for titles here and there over the course of the year, and perhaps for the first Canadian participation in ACF Nationals to materialize.

What will happen at ACF Nationals: I fear for what might happen to the physical location of the tournament if Brown finishes second to Chicago for a fourth straight year, so I’ll play Pangloss and say that, while Seth remains Seth (albeit a Seth whose motivation might be dented by having nothing left to prove), and Shantanu will continue to improve, Jerry and friends will pull it off this time, if for no other reason than that they have to get a favorable finals packet eventually. Minnesota, Illinois and Harvard will fight for third place; whether Minnesota has a chance at upsetting one of the top 2 depends more on how seriously Gautam tries to lock down science and the team as a whole takes advantage of the history gap, than on Brendan’s inevitable continued all-around improvement. Minnesota is a lock for a third straight UG title, with Brown B, VCU, and Carnegie Mellon the likely contenders for the other medal spots there.

Over in the ICT department, Brown takes their usual hit on the NAQT format. Chicago is obviously the huge favorite to be in the final here, with Illinois and Minnesota the likely matchup to determine their opponent. I don’t see Harvard finishing third again; Kyle was a real NAQT beast, which Bruce isn’t, and it’s not like anyone else on this team really cares about NAQT either. It’s Minnesota finally winning the UG gold here, with the same teams as above shooting for the lesser UG trophies. Invoking the principle that Chicago always wins and that Illinois has good NAQT abilities on top of their impressive normal standing, I will predict that ICT ends with Chicago defeating Illinois in the final for the third year out of four.

What’s going on in Division II? Not a lot, since it seems that a great deal of this year’s impressive recruiting class is going to be pressed into service on the A team right off the bat. Let’s say that Rice and Vanderbilt will be the teams led by former high school greats who inevitably lose to the unexpected balanced foursome of recruits from the next tier of HS programs at NAQT DII; last year I said that’s what always happens and indeed it happened again. A Brown B team that is also playing for UG placement would be eligible for ACF DII as well, so I’ll predict they win that. I am assuming such a team would play DI at ICT; if they opt for DII they have a nearly sure shot of winning it. I’m not sure what level Anurag will play at for MIT, but he’s quite good and will either help their A team or make their DII team a contender.

Who will win the CCCT? Northeast Alabama brings back its top scorer, so probably them.

Who will win TRASHionals? Probably some old people who like Maxim a lot. Who will win Mike Bentley’s new trash national? I predict the Chicago team that finished third at TRASHionals last year will capitalize on the better questions and better air quality and pull this one off.

Preseason Top 25:

1. Chicago A
2. Brown A
3. Minnesota
4. Illinois
5. Harvard
6. Irvine
7. MIT
8. Stanford
9. Penn
10. Maryland
11. VCU
12. UCSD
13. Chicago B
14. Iowa
15. Brown B
16. South Carolina
17. Florida
18. Carnegie Mellon
19. Missouri
20. Michigan
21. Columbia
22. Cornell
23. Yale
24. Virginia
25. Chicago C

Last teams out: Swarthmore, Ohio State, Western Ontario, Carleton, Princeton, Toronto
Watch out in six months for: Vanderbilt, Rice, Clemson