Preseason Poll 2016-2017

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Preseason Poll 2016-2017

Post by Cheynem »

This is the announcement for the postseason poll for collegiate teams.

Please do not post ballots in the thread. Do not vote for high school teams. You can vote for B teams. Ballots must contain 25 teams. E-mail them to me at chey0004 AT umn DOT edu by September 12.

Here is what the last Top 25 was.

#1 Michigan (won Big Ten)
#2 Chicago A (won UAA)
#3 Stanford A (won Pac-12)
#4 Maryland (runner-up, Big Ten)
#5 Yale (won Ivy League)
#6 Columbia A (runner-up, Ivy League)
#7 MIT A (no conference)
#8 TIE Berkeley (runner-up, Pac-12) and Penn (3rd and 4th in the Ivy League)
#10 Minnesota (3rd, Big Ten)
#11 Louisville (won ACC)
#12 WUSTL (runner-up, UAA)
#13 Oxford (won MOE)
#14 Illinois (4th, Big Ten)
#15 Stanford B (3rd, Pac-12)
#16 Harvard (5th, Ivy League)
#17 Oklahoma (won Big 12)
#18 TIE Chicago B (3rd, UAA) and Virginia (runner-up, ACC)
#20 Northwestern (5th, Big Ten)
#21 Columbia B (6th, Ivy League)
#22 Georgia Tech (3rd, ACC)
#23 Dartmouth (7th, Ivy League)
#24 Brown (8th, Ivy League)
#25 MIT B (9th, Ivy League)
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Re: Preseason Poll 2016-2017

Post by Adventure Temple Trail »

It'd be useful to hear from various teams about who they're losing and returning (and perhaps have it in the top post?), so that voters don't base their ballots on mistaken information.
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Re: Preseason Poll 2016-2017

Post by gyre and gimble »

Stanford A will be myself, Benji Nguyen, Nathan Weiser, and Kyle Sutherlin. Stanford B is TBD, but they do lose Nathan, Kyle, and James Bradbury from last year's team.
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Re: Preseason Poll 2016-2017

Post by Charbroil »

Our A team is almost certainly going to be me, Patrick Butenhoff, Seth Ebner, and Will Mason.
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Re: Preseason Poll 2016-2017

Post by vinteuil »

We keep everyone except Basil Smitham and Grace Liu.
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Re: Preseason Poll 2016-2017

Post by Red Panda Cub »

Oxford keeps last year's A-team though I'll be in a slightly reduced capacity. We also gained Aidan Mehigan.
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Re: Preseason Poll 2016-2017

Post by Mnemosyne »

We'll ride last year's solid athletics momentum and proclaim LA Tech to be the Conference USA favorite
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Re: Preseason Poll 2016-2017

Post by Urech hydantoin synthesis »

Columbia retains myself, Rafael Krichevsky, Charlie Dees, Jon Xu, and Wilton Rao, and pick up Kevin Koai, whose commitment to playing isn't certain yet. We lose Aidan Mehigan to Oxford.
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Re: Preseason Poll 2016-2017

Post by Cheynem »

Columbia might actually get music questions!
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Re: Preseason Poll 2016-2017

Post by Bensonfan23 »

Duke's entire team is back yet again this year (John, Gabe, and I). We also add some talented freshmen, one of whom will end up being our fourth scorer (undecided for now).

Also to speak for UNC's team, since they lost several players, as far as I know they lose their entire A team, except for Zihan, and also lose Vanessa from their B team.
Last edited by Bensonfan23 on Tue Aug 30, 2016 8:35 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Preseason Poll 2016-2017

Post by Fado Alexandrino »

McGill's A team will consist of Derek So, newly acquired Gentleman and Scholar Akhil Garg, and two undecided spots which will probably change between NAQT/ACF.
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Re: Preseason Poll 2016-2017

Post by Peter13 »

I am hearing rumours that the University of Toronto's quizbowl team will take in Aayush Rajasekaran from Waterloo and Jay Misuk from McMaster in addition to Patrick Liao having confirmed he would be going there to study earlier in the year.
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Re: Preseason Poll 2016-2017

Post by Harpie's Feather Duster »

Mike McCauley has graduated, but from the conversations I've had with Adam Silverman, it looks like he's going to play things as long as school permits.

So Northwestern A for next year will be myself, Greg, Adam, and Max Rong.
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Re: Preseason Poll 2016-2017

Post by Beevor Feevor »

Virginia returns me, Jack Mehr, Vasa Clarke, and Lawrence Simon, and we'll all be around for another year after that!
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Re: Preseason Poll 2016-2017

Post by Rococo A Go Go »

Louisville returns Kurtis Droge, Ramapriya Rangaraju, and myself. Megan Seldon has graduated so our 4th spot is up in the air for now.
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Re: Preseason Poll 2016-2017

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

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Re: Preseason Poll 2016-2017

Post by gyre and gimble »

Why does Penn occupy two spots, and MIT B one spot, in the Ivy League?
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Re: Preseason Poll 2016-2017

Post by Cheynem »

Ivy League is weird.
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Re: Preseason Poll 2016-2017

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

Here's my current Top 10, plus a list of teams I think you should definitely keep in mind:

Teams to look out for:

Princeton University (Jason Golfinos, Jared Lockwood, unknown third and fourth)

Jason's developed into a very strong player - he's got a lot of random deep pockets of knowledge and has enough canon familiarity to get the good middle-late buzzes that are needed in close, competitive games. What he needs is a strong team - Jared is a great foundation with science and arts knowledge, and if Ryan Golant from TJ joins this squad, he could really round that part of the distribution out. Whoever else joins this team will hopefully be able to make similar contributions.

University of Missouri (Itamar Naveh-Benjamin, Alex Harmata, Jared McNett, James Dolezal)

Itamar's a very good player - his perpetual problem seems to be, like Jason, teammates. This year he's assembled a squad, and while their abilities to get tons of points are questionable. Rumor has it that one of Itamar's teammates is a really good chemistry player, so adding that to strong myth, lit, and arts knowledge is a good foundation which they can build on to compete against stronger opponents.

University of Oklahoma (Caleb Kendrick, Maia Karpovich, Finn Bender, unknown fourth)

Oklahoma brings back its full team, which made the second bracket of ACF Nationals last year despite missing their fine arts player, Finn. They'll be getting additional teammates, too, which can't hurt. The entire team has exhibited dramatic improvement over the past year, which is a good sign going forward, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Oklahoma sneaking into the lower parts of the top bracket at ACF Nationals this year.

--- THE TOP TEN ---

10. University of Minnesota (Shan Kothari, Sam Bailey, Jason Asher, Sam Levin)

This team is the first of several teams on this list that are worth watching closely, since they're going to be together through both this year and the next (and Shan and Sam will be around for even longer). There's an incredible amount of specialism and ability to just "go off" and get random buzzes on this team; what it needs is the ability to consistently get more middle and late buzzes, which is either going to take branching out (on the part of Shan or Sam) or more deep studying (for Jason, who's more of a generalist).

9. Northwestern University (Dylan Minarik, Adam Silverman, Greg Peterson, Max Rong)

This is obviously wading into completely unknown territory, but Northwestern gets a huge boost from Adam Silverman, who adds yet more generalism and a bunch of really deep, valuable science knowledge. I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see this team take games off Chicago this year, particularly as Chicago's gotten weaker and most of this team's players have a strong potential to make middle-late buzzes on dangling tossups. This team's got a pretty high ceiling for performance, too, since all of its players have plenty of potential to develop stronger high-level specialties.

8. University of Pennsylvania (Eric Mukherjee, Jaimie Carlson, JinAh Kim, Max Smiley)

Eric has atrophied, but he's still probably the second-best player in the game, the best science player in the game, arguably the second-best history player, and a strong generalist on most other areas outside literature and the arts (where he can still get buzzes as well). The question here lies with Eric's teammates - is Jaimie going to build on her strong CO performance and become a high level literature player? Is JinAh going to become a well-rounded, high-level myth and philosophy player? Can they cover the arts?

7. Columbia University (Rafael Krichevsky, Ben Zhang, Kevin Koai, Charlie Dees)

It's unclear whether Kevin Koai will play or not, but even if he doesn't I would still be inclined to place Columbia here. Kevin's addition is a big deal in covering the hole Aidan Mehigan leaves in literature (particularly on poetry), plus a lot of areas of thought in general. Kevin's biggest strength, however, is what this team was already the best at - auditory fine arts.

This team will still have the same fundamental weakness as last year - outside of top specialty areas (music, physics, myth, near East, bio) there's a lot of generalist ability, but not a lot of ability to consistently make early buzzes. Rafael shows the most promise of improving, particularly after his magnificent CO performance, but he's still got a lot of ground to cover.

6. Stanford University (Stephen Liu, Benji Nguyen, Nathan Weiser, Kyle Sutherlin)

Stanford takes a bit hit, but not a crippling one, since Nathan Weiser is quite strong at scattered pockets of higher level questions (particularly in American history), Benji is strong well-rounded player, and Stephen actually has a reasonable amount of physics knowledge (he edited for Regionals 2015, for example). Losing Austin, however, is a big deal - it leaves holes in religion areas of US and world history and definitely also weakens the team on physics and mythology (the former more so than the latter). It's also worth noting that this team won't get to play together for the first half of the year.

I personally think there's a very strong chance I put this team too low, and there's a ton of room for improvement here. This team's got a ton of great specialties and a strong amount of generalism to cover the rest of the distribution - it's to be seen what they can do with it. They'll be editing Regionals this year, which might give them a good opportunities to cover these weaknesses.

5. Yale University (Jacob Reed, Isaac Kirk-Davidoff, Adam Fine, Stephen Eltinge)

It's worth noting that this Yale team, like Berkeley, Penn and Columbia, is going to be together for two years. Losing Grace hurts them substantially, but Adam is a fine replacement (if you'll pardon the pun) and adds backup generalist ability to Jacob Reed's, which is a valuable supplement to Jacob, Isaac, and Stephen's in-depth specialist knowledge. The Northeast is going to be a very intense rivalry this year, and one that I believe Yale will usually come out on top of again.

4. University of California, Berkeley (Aseem Keyal, Bruce Lou, Justin Nghiem, Eric Chen/Michael Coates)

Fourth place is an ambitious prediction, but one I'm willing to make. This team loses its lowest-scoring member (at least by power count) and brings up Eric Chen, who put up a good show at ACF Nationals; Michael Coates providing a super alternate for ICT. Aseem, Bruce, and Justin have demonstrated extremely strong work ethic in trying to put together a high-level competitive team. Their main challenge seems to be getting the early buzzes they need on high-level questions, which is somewhat strange considering that this is a team that largely relies on the specialism of Bruce on history and Justin on literature. In any case, they managed to beat Stanford at many regular tournaments last year; their issue was at harder things.

For the time being, we're only going to see regular-season tournaments, and I predict that Berkeley is going to put up really good numbers on those and generally come out ahead of Stanford (especially since they won't have Nathan in the early parts of the year). I'm still a little skeptical of their ability to beat Stanford on harder questions, but I think they'll be able to do it by the time the latter part of the season rolls around and Stanford has a full team.

3. University of Chicago (John Lawrence, Max Schindler, Jason Zhou, undecided fourth)

Chicago loses Chris Ray, which is a huge deal. Without Chris Ray, Chicago becomes much more a team of specialists than a team of specialists with a well-rounded high-level generalist. Max and John are both capable generalists at the regular difficulty level, but their strengths are much more concentrated. Losing Chris Ray is particularly damaging on history, since Jason Zhou has a lot of deep and concentrated history knowledge in classics, U.S. history, and pockets of Europe, but has gaps to fill across the wider canon - Jason probably has the most new ground to cover of all the returning A-team members.

This team's choice of a fourth is going to be incredibly important - they need to cover serious weaknesses in biology, chemistry, religion, and some areas of social science and the arts, not to mention NAQT categories in general. The reasonable options seem to be Athena Kern (who brings a lot of literature and arts knowledge in areas John isn't as strong at), James Lasker (with substantial religion and science knowledge), or perhaps Alston Boyd if he is able to specialize enough in areas Chicago is weak at. My bet is on Athena Kern, given that she seems to be working on religion.

If this team goes far this year, it's probably going to be at ACF Nationals, where John Lawrence is one of the game's best players on 40% of the distribution.

2. University of Michigan (Auroni Gupta, Will Nediger, Brian McPeak, Sid Dogra/Kenji Golimlim)

I don't think there's much to say about Michigan, except in the context of my #1 prediction. Last year's Michigan was an absolutely fantastic team - well-rounded and conservative/fairly strategic in playstyle. What's holding me back from putting Michigan at #1 are the following:

1) They're very, very beatable - as demonstrated by several teams last year.
2) I'm not sure if they're going to improve, atrophy, or remain about the same.

1. University of Maryland (Jordan Brownstein, Sam Rombro, Weijia Cheng, Ophir Lifshitz)

This might be a bit of a controversial prediction, considering that Michigan returns a full team and Michigan consistent put up better statistics than Maryland did last year. However, I'm resting this prediction on a few pillars:

1) Jordan is the best player in the game by a large margin. I don't think this really needs emphasizing, but Jordan is a high level player in most (but not all) areas of the humanities distribution and the unquestioned best at the largest individual components of the humanities (literature and history). He can beat absolutely anybody even if they don't make mistakes just by rattling off ridiculous early buzzes.

2) Jordan's teammates are better this year than last. Weijia doesn't bring as much NAQT power as Naveed did, but he is strong at NAQT categories, has a good work ethic and has taken substantial strides already towards improving as a college level player both by writing and studying (particularly in religion, which is a relative weakness for Jordan). Sam and Ophir aren't getting any worse and will likely only get better at their areas. Everybody in this team is involved in writing, and after last year's regrouping, I think the team's finally starting to sort out the roles of non-Jordan people.

3) Most of the other top teams are probably not getting better than last year. Michigan is still a great team, but I anticipate them being good more "ala UVA 2015" - they're last year's best, but they're far from invincible. I could, of course, be proven wrong.
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Re: Preseason Poll 2016-2017

Post by vinteuil »

Will, are you assuming that Chris Ray won't play either nationals?
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Re: Preseason Poll 2016-2017

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

vinteuil wrote:Will, are you assuming that Chris Ray won't play either nationals?
I'm not assuming that. People should always look out for Chris Ray, but I think people know that. I don't know how good Chris's team will be, and I think having a strong full team is valuable, so I'm not inclined to place OSU in the top 10.
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Re: Preseason Poll 2016-2017

Post by Mewto55555 »

Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote: 3. University of Chicago

they need to cover serious weaknesses in biology, chemistry,
:(
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Re: Preseason Poll 2016-2017

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

Mewto55555 wrote:
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote: 3. University of Chicago

they need to cover serious weaknesses in biology, chemistry,
:(
At the very least, the job of deciding who is going to buzz on the biology tossup after the other team negs is probably going to get easier, so that's a plus for Chicago.
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Re: Preseason Poll 2016-2017

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:
Mewto55555 wrote:
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote: 3. University of Chicago

they need to cover serious weaknesses in biology, chemistry,
:(
At the very least, the job of deciding who is going to buzz on the biology tossup after the other team negs is probably going to get easier, so that's a plus for Chicago.
The loss of Chris Ray is a hard pill to swallow, but I'm sure Chicago will be able to stomach it eventually.
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Re: Preseason Poll 2016-2017

Post by Cheynem »

These will be posted soon, probably by Wednesday.
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Re: Preseason Poll 2016-2017

Post by Cheynem »

Here are the results.

Voters; Alexander Harmata, Jason Zhou, Richard Yu, Itamar Naveh-Benjamin, Dylan Minarik, Ryan Humphrey, Jason Golfinos, Will Alston, Bruce Lou, and the Notorious J-Bro

TOP 25

1. Michigan A (248, 8 1st place votes, highest #1, lowest #2)
2. Maryland (242, 2 1st place votes, highest #1, lowest #2)
3. Chicago A (227, highest #3, lowest #4)
4. Yale (217, highest #3, lowest #6)
5. Stanford A (203, highest #4, lowest #8)
6. Columbia A (198, highest #4, lowest #9) AND Berkeley A (198, highest #3, lowest #8)
8. Penn (176, highest #6, lowest #14)
9. Northwestern (170, highest #7, lowest #11)
10. Minnesota (159, highest #8, lowest #13)
11. Oxford (144, highest #9, lowest #14)
12. Louisville (142, highest #9, lowest #14)
13. Oklahoma (135, highest #11, lowest #14)
14. Ohio State (105, highest #10)
15. Virginia (95, highest #15, lowest #19)
16. Chicago B (89, highest #14, lowest #22)
17. MIT A (82, highest #12)
18. Brown (71, highest #15)
19. Harvard (62, highest #17, lowest #24)
20. WUSTL (49, highest #14) AND Princeton (49, highest #16)
22. Missouri (35, highest #19) AND Toronto (35, highest #16)
24. Columbia B (24, highest #20)
25. Illinois (21, highest #15)

ALSO RECEIVING VOTES: Duke (18), McGill (16), Georgia (7), Amherst (6), Rutgers (6), Stanford B (6), Berkeley B (5), MIT B (4), Rochester (2), Cal Tech (1), Chicago C (1), Michigan B (1), Texas (1).
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Re: Preseason Poll 2016-2017

Post by AKKOLADE »

Poll got less votes than Harambe will.
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Re: Preseason Poll 2016-2017

Post by Cheynem »

Forgot a ballot and added that in.
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