Illinois 04-05

[Trevkeeper]

And New Trier folks, which match was it that you lost to Deerfield?

You mean like, what round number? It was Round 2. We beat Von Steuben, then lost to Deerfield, then beat Loyola.

[potato0328]

Apparently, my earlier comment needs to be explained. Trevkeeper is basically correct on his analysis; I was in no way insulting Stevenson, or implying that we were some sort of "lock" to win another state title (obviously that's not true). I was just hoping that after beating roughly the same teams to win Masonic State we would be given a little more consideration, that's all. But that's all in the past now, it doesn't matter anymore.

Also, Trevkeeper, interestingly enough we lost in round 2 also (which I think is why HAHAHA was asking you). It was the only match we weren't around 400 points, and unfortunately it was against our best opponent.

[biggreen]

As the token Rockfordian on the board (as coach Egan pointed out), it is my duty to report that Auburn easily won the Guilford sectional today... or yesterday I guess. Auburn beat Crystal Lake Prairie Ridge 455-158, Crystal Lake South 360-164 and Rockton Hononegah 466-115.

Have fun with them at state. They're good. Especially Tyler Kerr. I was sure that my senior year (02-03) would be the year we would beat Auburn and finally make it to state. Our season record against them was tied, I think, and Tyler hadn't had too much of an impact in the matches I'd played against them. But when we played them in the second round of the sectional, he had 6 or 7 tossups. Incidentally, that was one of the best matches I've ever been in -- too bad we lost. It was up and down the entire match. We were trailing 10 points going into the last tossup, which I pulled out. Then both teams zeroed the bonus somehow and our match went to the fourth overtime tossup, which Auburn got. That really sucked. But they're an excellent team, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if they took the crown this year. I don't know how much credit she gets in the suburban circles, but Coach Greene is one of the best out there.

Back to studying for finals...

[Tegan]

Any word from Carbondale? Galesburg (that also should have been a pretty good sectional).....Wheaton North? Marist?

Any other Class A sectionals (I saw Marian Central Catholic advanced over Byron and Winnebago)?

[Irreligion in Bangladesh]

It appears to me that the second half of the second match was an absolute wasteland for good teams....

NT scores no points after question 16...
Winnebago loses a 40 point lead when Woodstock Marian hits all of 3 tossups after the half, Bago hitting none...
Auburn scoring a full 100 points less than each of their other two matches...

Anyone else find results like that?

[mlaird]

Well, I don't remember specifics, but the questions definately went downhill at that point.

[AV8R]

Any word from Carbondale?

I am sorry to announce that Dec Mac also lost in the second round of the sectionals to Carbondale by 3 points. It was very close and walking out of the room DMac thought they had won the game. However, there was an error in the board score and after a meeting to go over the score Carbondale did indeed win by a very small margin. So we ended up going 2-1 for the day loosing to Carbondale.

[Tegan]

Congratulations to any team that won....top to bottom this had to be a record for close sectionals that could have gone either way.......a lot of matchups were: if the teams played 10 times, they would go 5-5. A lot of truly deserving and great teams (a non exhaustive list being Hoffman Estates, New Trier, MacArthur, Winnebago, and Fremd) are not advacning to the State Tournament. For the teams that won, awesome....an amazing accomplishment.

I think the important thing to realize is that while other teams are advancing, these teams (and others) not advancing, are by no means "not worthy" because of a single loss. Yes, it stinks that we have to deal with a lack of perfection in things (questions, officials, system for advancing to state, etc), but what each of these teams accomplished is in no way tainted or tarnished by a single loss. Is Fremd any less of a team today because they lost a single match to an outstanding team by 13 points. NO! Is MacArthur somehow less of a team after losing to Carbondale by 3 points on a single set of questions. NO! Should anyone think that New Trier is not one of the 8 best teams in the state because of a loss to Deerfield. NO! (Again, I am excluding teams not to slight them...I still don't know the outcomes of many sectionals from yesterday)

I know this sounds syrupy, and it isn't meant to be, but anyone of those teams, and several more that I haven't, have every reason to be proud of their records, their accomplishment, and all that they have accomlpished as a team and individually.

I've been coaching and officiating a while, and I can honestly say that I have not lost one iota of respect for any of those great teams or the players or the coaches because they failed to win a single match. Everyone in the know, knows how great they are.

[Tegan]

Wheaton North can be added to the list of advancing teams.....as can Bradley-Bourbonnais and Fenwick (advanced on total points).....Fenwick's only loss was round 2 to Hinsdale South....and then beat Marist in the final round to force a three way tie.

[Sebastian]

Not to add fuel to the fire, but I was disappointed to watch Stevenson advance over Fremd to Peoria. I started for the BG team (which is just my way of validating my credibility) and I felt that Fremd was a superior team--more well-rounded and more knowledgeable. Congratulations to Stevenson and more specifically, to Jordan Silver. He played extremely well.

[dtaylor4]

in our loss to carbondale, it was frustrating because several times we were up by 70-80 points in the second half and then carbondale got some strange questions to catch up and going into the final tossup (answer paul baumer) i went in and blew it to try to kill it, thinking we were in the lead. if i had known we were behind, i would have answered it correctly

[Tegan]

From what I am seeing, and I don't know how to explain it, Round 5 (sectional round 2) seemed to be the Twilight Round (not that every loss was a "major upset"...it wasn't):

Fenwick manages to win the sectional, but has to come back and defeat undefeated Marist in Round 6 (3) to win the tournament (after losing to Hinsdale South in Round 2)...Marist even noted that they had opened with a comfortable win against Hinsdale South while Fenwick clobbered Lyons. Marist had a closer, lower scoring match agasint Lyons in round 2. Had the order been reversed, it seems more likely that Marist might have won on points (assuming they could have gotten past Hinsdale South...a big assumption mind you)

MacArthur loses after a moderate lead, including a board scoring error that seems to have come into play.

New Treir had over a 100 point lead on Deerfield after toss-up and sweep at question 16, and then Deerfield brings the thunder.

Fremd loses to Stevenson by 13 (as I heard it) after Stevenson scores something like 11 toss-ups to Fremd's 6, but Fremd stays in the game converting rebounded bonuses. (the 6 toss-ups by Fremd and a total of only 17 answered by both these teams tells you that something weird was afoot).

I spent last night trying to recall the questions.....there were some questions that I would consider "non-standard" fare at tournaments throughout the season, but I don't recall seeing more than one or two questions that I would consider "obscure" (my opinion). I would have to sit down and review the questions, but this could be one big cosmic coincidence..........

[dtaylor4]

I'm sorry, but the PLEASE MAKE FUN OF ME BECAUSE I SPEAK NEITHER LATIN NOR ENGLISH that should never come up ever again are the Louis XIV-XVI sweep, the Simpsons, and the KISS bonus. That's the kind of stuff that writes.

[Tegan]

As for KISS.....yeah....not really a state series (and certainly, in my opinion not a sectional question).

I was surprised on the Louis bonus that the team that had control got Louis XIV and Louis XVI but not Louis XV.....I'm thinking that they must have either been very sure it was someone else, or that there was no way someone would write a trio of answers so simple.

My Maine South team got burned on that a bit this year....several times we would out toss-up a team, but then get some very tough bonus questions. The other team would get (not exaggerating) "Name, in order, the three books in JRR Tolkein's 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy"

I guess they had to put them in order....there was some challenege to answering it.

I will only say this: I am not a question writer, and I do not know most of the question writers. However, I know that the question writing is done without regard to TU-Bonus placement (that is, there is no intent to place particular toss-ups with partcular bonuses.....only that there be a some distribution of categories (ie: a math toss-up does not lead to a math bonus). All teams get bitten by this sooner or later.

[Trevkeeper]

To clarify, we were thinking that there actually wasn't a 15th. And wondering if that was a real bonus. :)

[David Riley]

I think what you were thinking of was that there was no Louis XVII. But I agree that bonus was way too simple.

[dtaylor4]

That's how good teams fall. The good teams out-tossup their opponents, but when you can barely convert more than two parts on a bonus, the other team can get lucky and get easy bonuses like that and stay in the game. We had that problem against Carbondale in that controversial match.

[potato0328]

I have to say that the most backbreaking bonus for our team was the algebra II logarithm bonus. We had just started to crawl our way back into the game after a first half with almost no tossups, and handing Stevenson 20 points like that was hard to recover from.
As a suggestion to save time for next year, if the question writers want to write another question like that, maybe they can just ask the team if they know what a logarithm is. If the answer "Yes,", they get 20 points.

[HAHAHA]

I think our biggest problem, aside from several mistakes on my part, was our inability to gain any sort of rhythm. Each time we would answer a question, there would be some gap before the next one started. We were able to win all year by establishing an early lead, getting into a groove, and never look back. We weren't able to do that on Saturday.

[Irreligion in Bangladesh]

To clarify, we were thinking that there actually wasn't a 15th. And wondering if that was a real bonus. :)

Verbatim of what Winnebago said when confronted with this bonus. And we missed XV.

The music questions need to be taken out back and shot. KISS? Buzzerrace after 5 words on Joplin? (Going back to Regionals now) Brian Wilson? Nashville Star? You'd think they'd never heard of Mozart before.

[Phishphan]

And that CSI music question didn't belong. Same with the art questions. I've never been asked about any african american artists and I got caught buzzing in after, He created the Kiss... (I chose the painting, not the sculpture).

[HAHAHA]

Weren't several of those considered a part of the pop culture category?

[pblessman]

I haven't seen any postings on this, so I'd like to congratulate the Latin School of Chicago for advancing for gazillionth straight time to State! (Is it 14 straight? Somebody with more knowledge in the Illinois State Series fill in the blank, please).

[Admiral]

The questions were pretty rough......I feel bad for the teams that lost the close matches.[/list][/code]

[Admiral]

Looks like upset city this year.....in at least a couple of sectionals.

[dtaylor4]

Stevenson, Carbondale, Deerfield, Fenwick all busting through top seeds (and that's just AA)

[Phishphan]

Not to add even more fuel to the proverbial fire, but the stevenson sectional (i don't know about the others) played in an order that was different from the IHSSBCA order for sectionals. I we had, Fremd would have played Hoffman during the "critical" round 2 (Fremd crushed Hoffman in the previous round). It makes you think how different things could have been, even in some of the other sectionals......

[dtaylor4]

on any of the other sets of questions, we would have thrashed carbondale, but that one time out of ten came up

[Stained Diviner]

I actually think that most of the questions were pretty decent. There were a few awful ones that have already been mentioned above (don't forget the also known as Siddhartha Guatama tossup, the positive cosine in the third quadrant, and the large number of Illinois law questions), but overall I think the questions were better than last year's and better than what you hear on an average Saturday.

The bonuses were uneven in difficulty, and that did work against us, but I can't pretend that they are worse than what I am used to. They were actually better. Some of us old coaches can remember a time when every math bonus was pretty much a given 20 points, though we used to have to argue for the points because the packets had wrong answers. (Given the quadratic equations find the discriminants or given the sine equation find the amplitude, period, and phase shift or convert the following degrees between 0 and 360 to radians all used to be very common math bonuses.) The bad questions are more frustrating in this tournament because the stakes are higher and because the competition at Sectionals is strong enough to take advantage of a few breaks to pull an upset, not because they are worse questions.

In our loss, Deerfield played great. That was the main reason we lost.

One of the problems with our current distribution is that there are too many miscellaneous questions. Let me know if you have any suggestions on improving the distribution.

[dtaylor4]

yeah: lose the pop culture, vocational ed, industrial arts, and ag!

[Irreligion in Bangladesh]

I agree entirely with DaGeneral's statement. The Industrial Ed, Agriculture, Pop Culture, Vocational Ed, Consumer Ed, and Illinois law need to go.

I honestly feel the turning point in our day was when a bonus asked us, as part one, what color was considered "the new black."

The math was fine, except for one bonus, asking to find the roots of 4 cubic/4th power equations. That one was impossible to get more than 2, let alone all 4.

My opinion? Change the distribution to this:

6 Lit, 6 SS, 6 Sci, 6 Math, 4 Arts, 1 Misc, 1 random (between any of Lit, SS, Sci)

Variations, anyone?

[dtaylor4]

why not just make six fine arts

[Captain Sinico]

...The math was fine, except for one bonus, asking to find the roots of 4 cubic/4th power equations. That one was impossible to get more than 2, let alone all 4.

The only this is, if you have two roots, you can easily divide the equation to obtain a quadratic equation for the remaining two. It's tricky like that. Also, your proposed distribution looks good to me.

MaS

[Irreligion in Bangladesh]

why not just make six fine arts

That opens up a large gaping hole with they can plug up with dance, obscure modern theater, and the always present chance that they could go really screwed up, and consider Industrial arts a fine art and reintroduce it. Changing it this way makes the art category larger, which is good, without overstepping its bounds.

[Tegan]

Not to add even more fuel to the proverbial fire, but the stevenson sectional (i don't know about the others) played in an order that was different from the IHSSBCA order for sectionals.

Just to clarify, the Coaches Association (IHSSBCA) has nothing to do with setting the order in the tournament...that is the Illinois High School Association's (IHSA's) job.
Originally, there was a different order posted on thir website, and it was wrong. A couple of coaches pointed that out, and the IHSA corrected that.

As for the whole miscellaneous thing, if I had complete power to do anything, I would go 4-2 (art/miscellaneous). I would seriously think about dumping pop culture and sports, but I would keep in a minimum of the other miscellaneous.

I would also put in a stricter definition of what "Music" pertains to. Questions about current country-western are NOT art, as our questions about rap, hair metal (sorry Coach Laird), or other such. THAT is pop culture.

MUSIC is classical, baroque, pre-twentieth century music, opera, avant garde, jazz, Broadway (though even this needs to be closely monitored). theory, origins, etc. I think it needs to be more sharply defined.

In 2003-04, I wrote the Octangular questions, and included a questionairre for every coach to fill out. One coach comlpained that the questions weren't academic enough, and needed more questions about things kids studied in school, like industrial arts.

NO.....I'm not kidding, that is what the coach wrote. I considered it for about one-tenth of a second, and moved on. The fact is, there are plenty of coaches out there who actually think those miscellaneous categories are as much a part of education as literature and math. I don't agree with them, and I am guessing most of you don't either.

[David Riley]

I second the suggestion to ditch miscellaneous and have 6 arts in the regular IHSA distribution.

[Tegan]

I think 6 Arts gets you a fight.....besides, you can actually write some questions related to industrial technology, home economics, that in my opinion constitute "educational" and not "trivial" questions. "The new black", not being an example of this, considering not three days earlier there was a news articale about white being the new black

I say ease into it with 4 Arts and 2 miscellaneous, with a tighter definition of what constitutes art.

You might also need to tighten up a definition of "history", because one can easily write "Bonus: Answer the following about the history of the Chicago Cubs"

That's not history.....that's not even sports!

[dtaylor4]

You could break down the history to american, european, world, ancient, etc. and for the arts, you could go with two art (one visual and one architecture), two classical music (bach, mozart, etc.) and two somewhat modern music (joplin, handy, gershwin), but no more on instruments!

[Stained Diviner]

If it weren't for Cubs fans, we'd have nobody to look down at.

It may seem like an oxymoron, but name these Cubs greats:
A. As a pitcher, he won the Cubs first game and first home game, both in 1876. He proposed using sock colors to denote different teams and became famous for starting a sporting goods company that bore his name.
B. This third basemen was the team’s star from 1876 through 1898. His refusal to play with or against Blacks was a major reason for the segregation of Major League Baseball.
C. The best Cubs pitcher when they won back-to-back World Series in 1907 and 1908, his nickname was due to a farm accident he had at the age of seven.
D. In 1930, he set the Major League record by driving in 190 runs. In 1999, after a review of newspaper reports, his record was changed to 191 RBIs.
E. His first contract, with the Philadelphia Phillies, was voided because he was only fifteen when he signed it. When he started his Major League career with the Texas Rangers, he weighed only 150 pounds. He grew up in San Pedro de Macoris.
http://nths.newtrier.k12.il.us/activiti ... ty2004.htm

[dtaylor4]

A: Spalding
B: Capp
C: "Three Fingered" Brown
D: Wilson
E: Sosa

I am proud to say that I am a Cubs fan til the day that my home is a grave.

[Trevkeeper]

Isn't the second one Anson? First name was Cap.

[Krause]

Here is what's left of this post after removing all the stuff against board rules. --admin

I go to stevenson high school and it was painfully obvious to me that Buffalo Grove was the primeir team in said sectional. Their starting lineup is godlike. What other team has Billy Ouska, Ryan Krause, Jason Mongillo...

[Phishphan]

that's what I'm talkin' 'bout!

[Matt Weiner]

blah blah blah

You will make future posts entirely in the English language, without reference to whores, the KKK, or chest size, if you wish to make any future posts here at all.

[jagluski]

[quote="ReinsteinD"]I actually think that most of the questions were pretty decent. There were a few awful ones that have already been mentioned above (don't forget the also known as Siddhartha Guatama tossup, the positive cosine in the third quadrant, and the large number of Illinois law questions), but overall I think the questions were better than last year's and better than what you hear on an average Saturday.

Some of us old coaches can remember a time when every math bonus was pretty much a given 20 points, though we used to have to argue for the points because the packets had wrong answers. (Given the quadratic equations find the discriminants or given the sine equation find the amplitude, period, and phase shift or convert the following degrees between 0 and 360 to radians all used to be very common math bonuses.)




5 years ago, when I was a Senior in High School at Stevenson High School, you were definitely right. I don't know what you use now, but Answers Plus questions were horrendous(and I know they're gone). I remember a time that we proved a math answer was wrong due to a textbook that we had with us, and they still refused to take our answer!

I moved on to play at Washington University in St. Louis and we wrote our own questions for our high school tournament, including math. Personally, I feel that this is the best way to do these types of math question because as a college student, you remember what kind of math you did in high school and what can be done in 15 seconds or however long, without making it way too early and repetitive. You can almost predict the math questions that are going to appear.

The Illinois law questions still haunt me to this day!

Also, for our distribution, we would have 4/4 History, but it would be broken up into 2/2 American, 1/1 British, 1/1 Other. Illinois should also do something like that, if it isn't done already.

[mlaird]

I go to stevenson high school and it was painfully obvious to me that Buffalo Grove was the primeir team in said sectional. Their starting lineup is godlike. What other team has Billy Ouska, Ryan Krause, Jason Mongillo...

Brilliant. An excellent piece of writing. <applause> Anyways.

I think that 6 Arts is a little excessive. I do believe that a break from the mundane is acceptable every once in a while, and that's why we need Misc. questions to stay. The problem is, the content of these Misc. questions is not the kind of content we want to see.

Perhaps movies would be a good thing to see more often in the Misc. category. I think that a lot of what we got in Sectionals as "Math/Computer Science" really belongs in the Misc. catagories as well. A question about C++ or BASIC, and then it can go under Math, but "Safe Mode"? That's Misc. The fact that Misc/Driver's Ed shows up more than once in the state series, is a bunch of bunk. I could see maybe one question in the whole of the state series, but no more. The Misc. questions are just about evenly divided between Pop Cult., Sports, Driver's Ed, Ind. Arts, and Agriculture, no? Lose these divisions, and just make Misc. Misc.

If it weren't for Cubs fans, we'd have nobody to look down at.

I'm a card carrying member of NFTWS (Northsiders for the White Sox)!

[David Riley]

Mlaird said: I'm a card carrying member of NFTWS (Northsiders for the White Sox)!


I thought we banned yous guys years ago


To get back on track, I wouldn't mind the misc category if, as MLaird suggested that we have a wider variety of and more appropriate categories (e.g. his computer science example). The same thing would be nice within the core categories. For example, in social studies, you could have one American history, one European history, etc., and then not repeat subcategories (one quesitno on the Civil War, one on Presidents, etc.). I once heard a round where all of the English questions were about etymology of prefixes!

[dtaylor4]

I agree about computers as long as converting to different bases is made a separate math category. As for the White Sox, I have to say I am a Sox fan and a Cubs fan (yes it's possible). Driver's Ed for crying out loud should only be in jv. This year I couldn't complain since our team had no fewer than three sophomores at a time playing.

[biggreen]

To return to the more relevant topic here (and since I just finished my last final and don't want to think about anything academic...), it is not possible to be a Sox and Cubs fan. Especially in Illinois. That's tantamount to saying you're both Catholic and Protestant in Northern Ireland -- besides being contradictory, it's more or less suicidal.

[Admiral]

I think...dump the miscellaneous.....put arts up as a big category