The Quizbowl Resource Center

Oh noes! Prospect is canceling their participation in tomorrow's MSL frosh/soph tournament due to a transportation 'scheduling error'! Dave Garb, your school is in their district, are you having the same issues??? This could really mess things up if half the conference is a no-show tomorrow!

EDIT: speeling eror and page 20

Nope, we're all good here, my guess is that they mishandled their mini-busses and there wasn't one for scho-bowl.

If more people no show, will there be byes? Or will they bracket and make us play a cross-over game? If we have to play Fremd not in the finals I will not be a happy person.

BGSO wrote:If we have to play Fremd not in the finals I will not be a happy person.

And this is, once and for all, why most Illinois-style tournaments are bad. Teams SHOULD be playing competitive matches with other teams at their level. It was a waste when I was at Wheaton North to essentially have five matches that were blowouts in the morning. It was a waste for our team and probably for the teams we beat. This is why the system has to change. I comment New Trier for designing a format to have better-matched teams since 2005.

Well, the problem is, the tourney is a five round round-robin with one championship match in the afternoon. Though I am really more worried about the prospect of playing any team on Avery ?'s then playing Fremd.

I don't understand how that changes what Greg is criticizing.

It doesn't just providing more information?

I'm with Greg, and this is why (along with quality of questions) we no longer play certain tournaments....however, in all fairness, from what I've seen so far this year, there are maybe 4-6 teams at or near the top, then maybe another 10-15 teams below that, then a big drop, so unless you do divisions or power matching you're always going to end up playing a team that doesn't match your team's preparation. I agree it needs to change, and power matching is a good way to go, but you need certain numbers iof teamns for it to work. And coaches have to buy into it, and most of them don't. AND it's very hard to get things changed in leagues where hidebound tradition is likely.

David, I think you're good, based on the rotation shown here.

Good luck.

I imagine if another team dumps, then you're looking at a cross-over matches. Mind you, I don't know if Prospect's frosh/soph withdrawal extends to the varsity, too. In the meantime, the frosh/soph tourney is looking at a chimera team or a bye for each round in pool II.

And this is, once and for all, why most Illinois-style tournaments are bad. Teams SHOULD be playing competitive matches with other teams at their level. It was a waste when I was at Wheaton North to essentially have five matches that were blowouts in the morning.

This is not unique to Illinois. At a lot of tournaments, we have at most one competitive match in the morning and 4-6 teams that present no real threat unless we are playing badly. I prefer card systems for this reason, but they require a certain number of teams to work well

I imagine if another team dumps, then you're looking at a cross-over matches. Mind you, I don't know if Prospect's frosh/soph withdrawal extends to the varsity, too. In the meantime, the frosh/soph tourney is looking at a chimera team or a bye for each round in pool II.

I would give people an actual match instead of a bye.

Woody Paige wrote:Oh noes! Prospect is canceling their participation in tomorrow's MSL frosh/soph tournament due to a transportation 'scheduling error'! Dave Garb, your school is in their district, are you having the same issues??? This could really mess things up if half the conference is a no-show tomorrow!

EDIT: speeling eror and page 20

This is unfortunate. Last year Prospect had 6 kids get perfect scores on the ACT, but they cannot seem to be able to field a team for a single Scholastic Bowl tournament.

rjaguar3 wrote:

BGSO wrote:If we have to play Fremd not in the finals I will not be a happy person.

And this is, once and for all, why most Illinois-style tournaments are bad. Teams SHOULD be playing competitive matches with other teams at their level. It was a waste when I was at Wheaton North to essentially have five matches that were blowouts in the morning. It was a waste for our team and probably for the teams we beat. This is why the system has to change. I comment New Trier for designing a format to have better-matched teams since 2005.

We want to play Fremd, but not in the morning. Since the tournament is pool play with one team advancing on, a morning game against Fremd means our day would end early with a loss. The question provider is Bryce Avery, and his questions get better as the day goes along. Therefore, we would like to play our important game against Fremd in the championship, rather than on the horrible morning questions.

Kind of a random question, but is Illinois big enough to get its own forum? Could that happen?

TheKingInYelliow wrote:Kind of a random question, but is Illinois big enough to get its own forum? Could that happen?

It could, but it won't happen this scholastic year.

FredMorlan wrote:

TheKingInYelliow wrote:Kind of a random question, but is Illinois big enough to get its own forum? Could that happen?

It could, but it won't happen this scholastic year.

There's been some preliminary talk about an Illinois-centric forum outside of HSQB, possibly on the Coaches' Association website, but the talk is still just preliminary. I'm willing to bet that if that forum gets going, it would wait until next scholastic year as well.

I don't actually think that would be a good thing, either. I don't see what the purpose of such an outside board would be, other than to ghettoize Illinois players and coaches.

MaS

Captain Scipio wrote:I don't actually think that would be a good thing, either. I don't see what the purpose of such an outside board would be, other than to ghettoize Illinois players and coaches.

I agree. If Illinois needs more room, we should get more threads here, not a new place to discuss things.

Captain Scipio wrote:I don't actually think that would be a good thing, either. I don't see what the purpose of such an outside board would be, other than to ghettoize Illinois players and coaches.

Yeah, like, I, personally, am not oppressed by the length of the Illinois thread. Impressed, perhaps.

David Riley wrote:I'm with Greg, and this is why (along with quality of questions) we no longer play certain tournaments....however, in all fairness, from what I've seen so far this year, there are maybe 4-6 teams at or near the top, then maybe another 10-15 teams below that, then a big drop, so unless you do divisions or power matching you're always going to end up playing a team that doesn't match your team's preparation. I agree it needs to change, and power matching is a good way to go, but you need certain numbers iof teamns for it to work. And coaches have to buy into it, and most of them don't. AND it's very hard to get things changed in leagues where hidebound tradition is likely.

Mr. Riley is correct. However, one reason that this has been a very good year for Illinois Scholastic Bowl is that a number of tournaments are breaking away from the old way of doing things. Thanks to Earlybird, Northwestern, Auburn's Harvard Mirror, Decemberist, and New Trier, the top four teams have played a lot of matches against each other, which is a very good thing, in addition to playing several other teams such as WWS, BG, AES, MS, and Springfield that are very worthy competitors.

As far as starting another board is concerned, I very much appreciate this one and do not think that IHSSBCA is a good organization to run an alternative. For one thing, it would fracture conversations. For another thing, an organization that takes in a fair amount of money from coaches' memberships and vendors' ads would constantly be walking the conflict-of-interest line in terms of moderating conversations. If our Steering Committee wanted one, we could and would do it, but I personally don't think it's a project that fits us.

If there's a concern about this thread becoming bloated, it would make more sense to split it into a "straightforward comparison thread" and an "improving Illinois quizbowl thread", not create a separate forum.

Haha, I didn't mean to suggest anything, I was just amazed at how long this thread is

So, MSL preseason tourney, we beat Fremd on the best round of the day but it wasn't without problems, will I get tempbanned for the "best questions" of the set? I'd love everybody to know some of the better ones, but I'm not sure what the board policy is regarding Mr. Avery's lovely questions.

Edit:fixed error

BGSO wrote:So, MSL quad is done, we beat Fremd on the best round of the day but it wasn't without problems, will I get tempbanned for the "best questions" of the set? I'd love everybody to know some of the better ones, but I'm not sure what the board policy is regarding Mr. Avery's lovely questions.

If they're going to be used again this year, you cannot post them.

If I don't know they are going to be used again?

I don't either! I'd suggest trying to find out before you post them, though.

BGSO wrote:So, MSL quad is done, we beat Fremd on the best round of the day but it wasn't without problems, will I get tempbanned for the "best questions" of the set? I'd love everybody to know some of the better ones, but I'm not sure what the board policy is regarding Mr. Avery's lovely questions.

It was the MSL Preseason tournament, not the MSL quad.

Post text removed because it had a bunch of probably not cleared to discuss questions - The Mgmt.

EDIT POST EVERYTHING BEING ERASED: Avery writes really terrible questions, no team should ever have to waste their time having to play them.

BGSO wrote:Alright Mr. Price posted JV questions, so I assume the varsity is ok to post here we go:

Ahh... but the JV questions were a different provider and written over a year ago. I expect no flack, particularly as I didn't post the q's verbatim.
Your results may vary.

Agreed, though I feel like they were probably bad tossups regardless. And just for extra fun times, here's an Avery tossup I heard four years ago in frosh/soph:

AVERY wrote:What part of a cow do you squeeze to get milk out?

Edited the references to the maybe not cleared stuff. Left comedy old Avery Question. - The Mgmt.

Umm... I'm fairly sure Avery is also using those tossups for the VHSL set, might not want to post them yet.

Yea, I am going to edit those right out to be safe.

Auburn Knight's Challenge results:

1. Stevenson
2. Auburn A
3. Loyola A
4. St. Viator A
Consolation Champion: Auburn B


Zach Blumenfeld was the top scorer.


Now to walk down the hall to watch a conference basketball game after some grub...

Any news from the turnabouts and Naperville Central?

BGSO wrote:Any news from the turnabouts and Naperville Central?

Uh yeah
1. WWS A
2. (cant remembr off hand sorry)
3. Naperville North A
4. IMSA A

Overall questions seemed to be geared towards freshman with math questions such as REDACTED. Overall it was an improvement from last year, but not by much.

Um, Mike, I think you probably want to edit that NAQT snippet out...

rjaguar3 wrote:Um, Mike, I think you probably want to edit that NAQT snippet out...

ok my bad.. but u get the jist of it. pretty easy math for a varsity level.

Sorry I'm late to the party...

1. If your team gets beaten by a team of two or even one, then it's your fault. You should be furious at yourself, not the other team.

2. I don't want anything different for the Illinois discussion--this long thread lets us talk about a lot of different things, and when you have separate threads it makes discussions less connected. Plus its more work to manage and use. If anything, we rename the Illinois thread so it's not misleading.

What teams are going to be at Fremd

mark vigil wrote:What teams are going to be at Fremd

See page 18.

Turnabout results from Fenton:

1. Carmel Catholic
2. Lisle
3. Glenbard North
4. Geneva

Naiomi of Lisle was the high scorer on the All-Tournament team with 28 toss-ups.

Congratulations to Carmel! Overall, I thought we had a more competitive field than last year. Lakes Community, Geneva B, Lake Zurich B, and St. Ignatius also made the playoffs. If anyone wants to see complete stats, just drop me an email.

Now that Turnabout is behind me, I should have an announcement on NAQT State posted within a week.

Full stats for the Auburn F/S tournament: http://results.scobo.net/SQBS.aspx?org= ... =standings

Thank you to everyone who came for your patience with the weather delays. Hopefully, we'll have more luck next year (and have a better contingency plan on deck).

If you're confused about all the TeamWorksheet stats, we had teams complete a traditional worksheet for points during halftime in the morning rounds, but we had to stop that to make things go a little faster. SQBS, as far as we could tell, didn't have a better way to keep track of worksheet points than to make the worksheet a player who got a certain number of 5-point tossups. Consequently, the worksheets scored more per game than many of the players.

If you notice any errors with the stats, feel free to post something, and I'll try to take care of it.

Siverus Snape wrote:Auburn F/S tournament

Was this house-written and, if so, will the set be posted?

It was indeed house-written, but I think we're selling the questions to Springfield so Coach Adkins can host a mirror, so the set, if posted, will be delayed. I'll try to keep you up-to-date.

One thing that I'm noticing about the stats is that most players have 0 TUH. Is there a reason behind this?

I'd like to mention a few decisions that I was glad Auburn made for their F/S tournament. (By the way, I pretty much had nothing to do with organizing this tournament, except some last minute help on editing).

1. ACF style bonuses. Though with bouncebacks, this is either the first tournament at F/S to try this or nearly so. As moderator, most teams I read for understood what was going on. I got zero complaints about it. One coach I talked to said he preferred them to IHSA.

2. Keeping stats. There are almost no tournaments in Illinois at F/S level to do online stats. The only one I can think of is Loyola. Even for varsity, there are very few. Mostly we get final standings, and maybe scores that are reported Bykowski's ratings. This is a trend I'd like to see continue. Yeah they're not perfect, but this is the first time trying it, so I think it's a good thing.

3. Essentially ignoring blurts. I know the 5 pt penalty is better than what we had before, but I'm glad they left out this silly rule as well.

4. 3/3 Math instead of 4/4. I think the amount of non-comp essentially stayed the same, roughly a 1/1 subdistro.

5. Power matched and rebracketed tournament format. Though only four teams had a chance at the championship in the afternoon, the morning wasn't pooled, so it's not as if you could go perfect in the morning and get shut out. Though some cutoffs had to be made by statistic (I they used bonus conversion, another new thing), I'm glad this is being introduced to coaches in our area and young players.

I'd just like to congratulate Auburn on a successful F/S Tourney. I thought the Toss-Up quality was superb (although frustratingly easy for a Varsity player coaching a F/S team..,). ACF bonuses and power-pairing were fantastic choices—they should be the norm for all Illinois Tournaments. One comment: I would stick to Varsity players/ex-players/coaches for moderators. Two of my morning matches as Viator's B coach were moderated by a Foreign Language teacher who clearly did not know what she was doing. Otherwise, job well done.

In perusing this thread, I noticed that the stats for my league (The Metro-North) were incomplete. So here they are:

Round Team 1 Team 1 Score Team 2 Team 2 Score
1 Latin 205 St. Ignatius 165
1 Viator 230 Patrick 80
1 Roycemore 235 Notre Dame 90
2 Latin 280 Whitney Young 55
2 Patrick 200 Driscoll 95
2 Carmel 240 Roycemore 150
3 St. Ignatius 145 Whitney Young 105
3 Viator 275 Driscoll 25
3 Carmel 315 Notre Dame 50
4 Carmel 170 St. Ignatius 100
4 St. Patrick 165 Whitney Young 140
4 St. Viator 230 Roycemore 85
4 Latin 245 Driscoll 65
5 St. Ignatius 135 St. Patrick 90
5 St. Viator 135 Carmel 115
5 Roycemore 105 Latin 80
5 Whitney Young 110 Notre Dame 95
6 Latin 190 St. Patrick 130
6 St. Viator 240 Notre Dame 25
6 St. Ignatius 155 Driscoll 40
6 Whitney Young 175 Roycemore 120
7 St. Viator 185 St. Ignatius 110
7 Latin 175 Notre Dame 125
7 Carmel 180 Whitney Young 135
7 Roycemore 130 Driscoll 20
8 Roycemore 160 St. Patrick 50
8 Latin 255 Carmel 45
8 Notre Dame 130 St. Ignatius 90
8 Whitney Young 180 Driscoll 20
9 St. Patrick 165 Notre Dame 80
9 Carmel 195 Driscoll 10
9 St. Viator 230 Latin 115
9 Roycemore 140 St. Ignatius 110
10 Notre Dame 115 Driscoll 35
10 Carmel 150 St. Patrick 70
10 St. Viator 100 Whitney Young 75

So the standings are:
Place|Team|Wins|Losses|%|Pts.|PPG
1 Viator 8 0 100% 1625 203.1
2 Latin 6 2 75% 1545 193.1
2 Carmel 6 2 75% 1410 176.3
4 Roycemore 5 3 62.5% 1125 140.6
5 Ignatius 3 5 37.5% 1010 126.3
5 Patrick 3 5 37.5% 950 118.8
8 Notre Dame 2 6 25% 710 88.8
9 Driscoll 0 8 0% 310 38.8

Thanks for the praise...

The moderator you're referring to would be an exception, since one of our moderators, a French teacher, reads for state and read for the finals at Auburn.

This whole no-good-tournaments-in-January thing blows!

edit: (varsity)

Terrible post has been replaced by random picture. --the mgmt