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QuAC III at UPenn in Phila., PA (11/20/10)

Posted: Fri Oct 01, 2010 4:26 pm
by Lapego1
Hey everyone. This is the announcement for the Quaker Academic Competition III at the University of Pennsylvania to be held on November 20, 2010. We've confirmed that we'll be using this year's incarnation of Delta Burke at the tournament. My thanks go to Chris Borglum for allowing us to use it once again. The current field cap is 32 teams, with a maximum of 3 teams allowed per school. We will expand as long as enough staff is available. Please get your registrations in soon to be guaranteed a spot in the field.

Registering: Thanks to an overhaul of Penn's club e-mail system, our normal account ([email protected]) no long works, and I have no way of checking it so please don't send registrations there! Instead, send the number of teams, number of buzzers, number of staffers, contact e-mail (doesn't have to be coach), and contact cell number to [email protected].

Registration fees/discounts per school:
$70 for first team
$50 each for subsequent teams
-$10 per functional buzzer system
-$10 per competent staffer (must have staffing experience)
-$10 for every 200 miles traveled
Minimum fee per school: $30

All checks should be made out to either "Mehdi Razvi" (preferable) or "Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania". If you need to send this after the tournament, I can provide you with the appropriate address to send it to via e-mail.

Location/Time: Registration will take place between 8:15am and 8:45am in the Chemistry Building Room 102 (located at 34th and Spruce Streets), with games taking place in Williams Hall (36th and Spruce Streets) where they usually take place. The tournament proper will begin as close to 9am as possible, and it will conclude by 6pm. A searchable map can be found here: http://www.facilities.upenn.edu/map.php. Directions/parking info etc. have been mailed out. Please send me an e-mail if you didn't receive this info.

Thanks and hope you can make it!

Field Update (as of 11/19/10):
Bergen (2 teams, 2 buzzers, 1 staffer)
Bloomfield (2 teams, 1 buzzer)
Caesar Rodney (1 team, 1 buzzer, 1 staffer)
East Brunswick (2 teams, 0 buzzers, 1 staffer)
Kellenberg (2 teams, 3 buzzers, 1 staffer)
Millburn (2 teams, 2 buzzers)
Mount Pleasant (1 team, 1 buzzer)
Octorara (2 teams, 1 buzzer)
Richard Montgomery (1 team, 1 buzzer)
St. Anselm's (1 team, 0 buzzers)
St. Joseph's (3 teams, 2 buzzers, 1 staffer)
Wilmington Charter (3 teams, 5 buzzers)
Total: 22 teams, 19 buzzers, 5 staffers

Re: QuAC III at UPenn in Phila., PA (11/20/10)

Posted: Fri Oct 01, 2010 7:39 pm
by Edward Powers
Just emailed our registration for 3 teams, 2 buzzers and 1 moderator. If this year's QuAC is comparable to last year's, it will be a great tournament indeed.

Re: QuAC III at UPenn in Phila., PA (11/20/10)

Posted: Sat Oct 02, 2010 9:52 am
by Down and out in Quintana Roo
This is awesome. Big ups to Chris for the permission for the CC set. I'm sure it'll be great, like the last few that we've read in practice over a couple years.

We'll be there, i'm actually hoping with two teams. I'll check back on that. Certainly though, you've got a buzzer set and myself as a moderator.

Re: QuAC III at UPenn in Phila., PA (11/20/10)

Posted: Sun Oct 17, 2010 10:39 am
by Edward Powers
Bumped for a field update.

Re: QuAC III at UPenn in Phila., PA (11/20/10)

Posted: Wed Oct 20, 2010 10:22 am
by Lapego1
Hey everyone, we've got about 14 teams registered with a month to go. I look forward to getting more registrations soon!

Re: QuAC III at UPenn in Phila., PA (11/20/10)

Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2010 9:12 am
by Black-throated Antshrike
Charter would like to register 2-3 teams. We can bring 5 buzzers

Re: QuAC III at UPenn in Phila., PA (11/20/10)

Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2010 1:24 pm
by Lapego1
Bump with a few weeks to go. We have 19-20 teams signed up, and I hope to see some more--we certainly have the space for it! Also I am lifting the cap on number of teams from the same school--schools can bring more than 3 teams now.

Re: QuAC III at UPenn in Phila., PA (11/20/10)

Posted: Thu Nov 04, 2010 12:59 pm
by BroNi
Kellenberg will only be bringing 2 teams, and they should be considered our B and C teams for bracketing purposes.

Re: QuAC III at UPenn in Phila., PA (11/20/10)

Posted: Thu Nov 04, 2010 6:25 pm
by jonpin
Bergen is a confirmed two teams. We may try for three; I'll let you know next week.

Re: QuAC III at UPenn in Phila., PA (11/20/10)

Posted: Mon Nov 08, 2010 5:31 pm
by Lapego1
Hey everyone,
There is a change in location of the opening meeting. Please note the change in the initial post. We could not get the usual Cohen Hall location this year, so it will be in the Chemistry Building. I know it's not ideal because this is a couple of blocks away from the tournament site, but we will likely only be using it for the morning meeting and not the post-preliminary one, so hopefully we can manage just for the morning. Thanks for bearing with us!

Re: QuAC III at UPenn in Phila., PA (11/20/10)

Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2010 8:23 am
by Down and out in Quintana Roo
I would say that there is only about a 50% chance that our second team will be going now. I will have the final word on this by Wednesday the 17th. Sorry for the semi-late notice.

Re: QuAC III at UPenn in Phila., PA (11/20/10)

Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2010 1:58 pm
by Lapego1
Carangoides ciliarius wrote:I would say that there is only about a 50% chance that our second team will be going now. I will have the final word on this by Wednesday the 17th. Sorry for the semi-late notice.
OK please keep me posted!

Re: QuAC III at UPenn in Phila., PA (11/20/10)

Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2010 12:17 pm
by Lapego1
We've had a few changes to the field in the last few days. Please take a moment and check the field, making sure your team's info is accurate. We'll continue accepting late additions until Wednesday.

Re: QuAC III at UPenn in Phila., PA (11/20/10)

Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 3:06 pm
by Lapego1
Just sent an e-mail out to those registered with final details for the weekend. Let me know if you haven't received this and I'll forward it to you!

Re: QuAC III at UPenn in Phila., PA (11/20/10)

Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 4:03 pm
by Down and out in Quintana Roo
I'm sorry if this ruins your numbers, but i will have to rescind our second team. So we'll only have one from CR this weekend. I apologize for the late notice on this but i gave them as much time as i could to do what they needed to do. Needless to say, the B Team didn't get it done.

Re: QuAC III at UPenn in Phila., PA (11/20/10)

Posted: Fri Nov 19, 2010 9:11 pm
by Edward Powers
With 22 teams will you create 4 preliminary brackets, 2 with 6 teams per bracket and 2 with 5, allowing the two bye teams in each of the 5 team brackets to play cross-bracket exhibition games, which could be both compettiive and enjoyable without impacting prelim records within each 5 team bracket?

Or might you create one 8 team bracket and two 7 team brackets, again with the bye teams in the two 7 team brackets to play each other in cross bracket "exhibition" matches?

I only ask because 22 is not usually an ideal number of teams for any tournament, but there are ways to be creative, allowing teams to play as many meaningful matches as possible. These might be two worthwhile designs for a field of 22, but there must be others as well. Good luck finding the pattern you consider ideal for this field.

Re: QuAC III at UPenn in Phila., PA (11/20/10)

Posted: Sat Nov 20, 2010 11:58 am
by Lapego1
Semi-live stats available here!

Re: QuAC III at UPenn in Phila., PA (11/20/10)

Posted: Sat Nov 20, 2010 7:11 pm
by Lapego1
Brief Results: St. Anselm's beats Richard Montgomery 355-260 in the final.

Re: QuAC III at UPenn in Phila., PA (11/20/10)

Posted: Sat Nov 20, 2010 10:31 pm
by Down and out in Quintana Roo
This was fun. The brackets might have been a little unbalanced (i.e of the top 9 ppb, 6 were in one bracket), but it happens. All things considered, this was run well. I'm glad i was able to help out.

These questions were pretty difficult. Some things were needlessly tossed-up that were just silly and too hard. I know this was a CC set, but i feel like it was a step up in difficulty from previous Delta Burke sets i've seen. I'll mention specifics if/when i can, i assume after some sort of discussion thread is put up.

Re: QuAC III at UPenn in Phila., PA (11/20/10)

Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2010 1:10 am
by Kouign Amann
This was a fun tournament; thanks to Penn for putting it on.

To add to what Chrz said, I think this set could have been vastly improved with relatively simple steps such as "making sure you give a pronoun in the first few words of the question" and "don't word questions to punish people with knowledge." Most of the answer selection today was fine; it was just extraordinarily frustrating to play on at times.

Re: QuAC III at UPenn in Phila., PA (11/20/10)

Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2010 1:35 am
by Black-throated Antshrike
I thought the tournament was run really well. only going 30 minutes over your estimated finishing time is really great.

I do think that question difficulty swung alot and there was excessive commentary on some questions that I felt made the whole tournament last longer.

Also, you have our C team with 13 negs when they played against our a team. Something seems to be wrong here......

Re: QuAC III at UPenn in Phila., PA (11/20/10)

Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2010 5:06 pm
by Down and out in Quintana Roo
Will we see full playoff stats (the other two games) as well soon?

Re: QuAC III at UPenn in Phila., PA (11/20/10)

Posted: Mon Nov 22, 2010 12:15 pm
by Lapego1
Carangoides ciliarius wrote:Will we see full playoff stats (the other two games) as well soon?
Yeah, I'll square that away and post final standings, etc. this afternoon.

Re: QuAC III at UPenn in Phila., PA (11/20/10)

Posted: Tue Nov 23, 2010 7:00 pm
by Lapego1
Sorry for the delay. Here's a wrap-up of the tournament:

The 22 teams were divided into two brackets of 11 each and played a full round robin (with one bye) for a total of 10 games in the preliminary rounds. After this, the top 2 from each bracket (based on win-loss record, then points per game) formed a group of 4 that played cross-over games such that the #1 in one bracket played the #2 in the other bracket. The remaining teams were also divided into groups of 4 where #3 played the #4, and so on in cross-over games all the way down to where the #9 played #10, and #11 played #11 in a single game for 21st place. The winners/losers of these cross-bracket games played the corresponding winners/losers (respectively) of the other cross-bracket game in each group of 4 to determine final rankings.

In the top 4, Metro Man #1 St. Anselm's bested Megamind #2 Wilmington Charter A 465-110, while Megamind #1 Richard Montgomery edged out Metro Man #2 St. Joseph's A 260-230. In the final, St. Anselm's defeated Richard Montgomery 355-260 to win the tournament, while St. Joseph's defeated Charter 300-155 for 3rd place. The full rankings top to bottom are as follows:

1. St. Anselm's
2. Richard Montgomery
3. St. Joseph's A
4. Wilmington Charter A
5. Bergen A
6. Millburn A
7. Wilmington Charter B
8. Mount Pleasant
9. Kellenberg B
10. Wilmington Charter C
11. Caesar Rodney
12. East Brunswick A
13. St. Joseph's B
14. Octorara A
15. East Brunswick B
16. Kellenberg C
17. Millburn B
18. St. Joseph's C
19. Bloomfield A
20. Bergen B
21. Octorara B
22. Bloomfield B

The playoff and combined stats have been tabulated and posted. Note that the standings indicated on the stats don't accurately reflect the final standings since there were some upsets in the playoff games (in the 9th-12th and 13th-16th brackets, specifically). The true final standings are above.

Thanks to all the teams that came out! We hope you had a great time on a challenging set of questions. I realize the day was kind of long but there were very few formats we could go with for 22 teams and 13 rounds, so we finally settled on the schedule we used. I realize this kind of wore people out and will let future QuAC directors know to avoid such a long schedule if possible! If you have any other feedback, please do not hesitate to let me know. Hope to see you all next year!

Re: QuAC III at UPenn in Phila., PA (11/20/10)

Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2010 11:52 pm
by Aaron Goldfein
I'm curious how this tournament managed to get platinum level certification for NSC considering that it uses single elimination and one of the criterion for platinum level certification is to not use single elimination. Admittedly, the single elimination didn't affect which teams qualified.

Re: QuAC III at UPenn in Phila., PA (11/20/10)

Posted: Wed Dec 15, 2010 12:16 am
by Down and out in Quintana Roo
This tournament definitely did not use single elimination. Everyone was rebracketed.

Like, did you read the actual results post (you know, just above yours) at all?

Re: QuAC III at UPenn in Phila., PA (11/20/10)

Posted: Wed Dec 15, 2010 12:29 am
by Aaron Goldfein
The last two rounds of the tournament were single elimination. That is, the top four teams were entered into a single elimination playoff to decide the top 4 spots, and so on.

Re: QuAC III at UPenn in Phila., PA (11/20/10)

Posted: Wed Dec 15, 2010 9:17 am
by Flutist Wren
If they were actually single elimination, Charter would not have played St. Joseph's after losing to St. Anselm's.

Re: QuAC III at UPenn in Phila., PA (11/20/10)

Posted: Wed Dec 15, 2010 9:28 am
by jonpin
That's not what single-elimination means, Sam. Single elimination means that two teams play and the loser is eliminated from championship contention, but it doesn't mean there can't be consolation games. For example, last year's Princeton tournament had a 16(?)-team single-elimination playoff. Teams that were eliminated in round one played off for 9th-16th place, with the winner getting the last HSNCT bid; teams that were eliminated in round two played off for 5th-8th place; and the semifinal losers played for 3rd. Even if all teams got 4 games, it was still single-elimination with respect to the championship.

The A1-B2, B1-A2 format is good in my opinion. It's what PACE used for many years, and it's what we used at our tournament in October (which also received platinum cert), but by the letter of the law, it is single-elimination.

Re: QuAC III at UPenn in Phila., PA (11/20/10)

Posted: Wed Dec 15, 2010 6:47 pm
by Flutist Wren
Ah, my bad, I was confusing it with double elimination.