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Preseason Poll

Posted: Sat Jul 27, 2013 11:32 am
by Cheynem
This is a preliminary announcement for the preseason poll for the 2013-2014 season. I will not accept ballots until after VCU Open, traditionally considered the end of the "summer season," but I wanted to get this up to give people time to think and to ask any questions about voting.

Please do not post ballots in the thread, but feel free to ask questions about player eligibility, team formation, etc.

Because the preseason is pretty fluid, I recognize that the voting for this particular poll might prove rather eccentric at times (since we cannot completely predict performance), but please don't go crazy. Past success is generally a decent predictor, but also be aware of who's graduated, where new teams are formed, etc. As always, since we cannot predict if people will stick with quizbowl until the season goes on, I'll give voters some slack in say optimistically expecting high schoolers to stick with the game (within reason, don't predict that long dormant grad students will return to playing unless they've said they would).

Remember you are voting based on how the best possible (but still realistic) team would do at a hypothetical nationals-like tournament.

Here are some notes I have regarding changes in the teams ranked last season. Feel free to correct or add on.

1. Yale A--lose no starter, gain various high schoolers including Jacob Reed, Jonathan Marx, and Nicholas Wawrykow
2. Illinois--lose Ike Jose, gain Tristan Willey
3. Virginia A--lose David Seal
4. Penn--lose no starter
5. Michigan--lose Libo Zeng (to Washington), Bryan Berend, and Saul Hankin, gain Siddhant Dogra
6. Maryland--I THINK lose no starter?
7. Minnesota--lose Andrew Hart, Gaurav Kandlikar, and Eliza Grames, effectively lose Mike Cheyne
8. Chicago A--lose Sam Bailey, Matt Menard, and Daichi Ueda, gain John Lawrence, Max Schindler, and Morgan Venkus
9. Georgia Tech--lose Will Butler, gain some high schoolers, including William Ha
10. Harvard A--I don't know
11. Ohio State--lose no starter I think, gain Brittany Trang
12. Chicago B--see Chicago A
13. Alberta--lose no starter
14. Stanford--lose no starter, gain Roger Cain
15. MCTC--lose no starter
16. NYU--I believe lose Yogesh Raut
17. Alabama--lose Harrison Brown and Dargan Ware
18. Rice--lose Henry Gorman (to Vanderbilt)
19. MIT--no idea
20. King's College London--lose John Lawrence (to Chicago)--not really a team
21. Brown A--no idea
22. Berkeley--lose Sam Braunfeld (to Rutgers)
23. Columbia--lose Michael Arnold, gain Alex Gerten and I think Rafael Krichvesky (sp?)
24. Michigan State--lose no starter
25. WUSTL--I think lose no starter

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Sat Jul 27, 2013 11:42 am
by mhayes
Cheynem wrote:17. Alabama--not sure, I think lose no starter?
They lost Harrison and Dargan.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Sat Jul 27, 2013 12:56 pm
by t-bar
Cheynem wrote: 10. Harvard A--I don't know
They lose no one from their regular A team or from their 4th-place DII team. They gain Raynor Kuang and probably other people.
Cheynem wrote: 19. MIT--no idea
We lose no one. We gain Allan Sadun and Kevin Zhou. EDIT: and Saumil Bandyopadhyay.
Cheynem wrote: 21. Brown A--no idea
They lose Guy Tabachnick, but keep everyone from their typical B teams, including Daniel Brach-Neufeld, Lloyd Sy, and Abid Haseeb. I don't know about Dan Klein or Justin Byrd, or who they gain.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Sat Jul 27, 2013 1:13 pm
by merv1618
Cheynem wrote:11. Ohio State--lose no starter I think, gain Brittany Trang
I think Bryce Russ will be eligible again, despite living in Illinois. He could possibly show up again for some tournaments, including ICT which is in Chicago.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Sat Jul 27, 2013 4:23 pm
by Ondes Martenot
NYU loses Yogesh, Mike and Jason (the three people on the A team who were not me). We also gain Alec Vulffson, a freshmen formerly of Irvington High School. It remains to be seen how active I will be as the season progresses....

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Sat Jul 27, 2013 5:46 pm
by MorganV
Cheynem wrote: 14. Stanford--lose no starter, gain Roger Cain
+Ian Torres

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Sat Jul 27, 2013 6:12 pm
by Auroni
Cheynem wrote:23. Columbia--lose Michael Arnold, gain Alex Gerten and I think Rafael Krichvesky (sp?)
Columbia also acquires one Wilton "rajesh" Rao, who may surprise you with his unexpected Berry Phase knowledge and classical music expertise.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Sat Jul 27, 2013 6:56 pm
by naan/steak-holding toll
In case anyone feels like voting for us (26th place in the last poll, 25th in the midseason poll), we don't lose anybody next year. Also, from what I know from speaking to Will Holub-Moorman, Harvard A's not losing any of their starters and their club picks up Raynor Kuang and Vimal Konduri next year.

It may be wise to wait for VCU Open results to vote, as Chicago A makes its debut as a full team there. For what it's worth, our A-Team from Regionals will be playing there as well.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Sat Jul 27, 2013 8:16 pm
by Rufous-capped Thornbill
We potentially lose no one and also gain Team Ohio members David Kramer (Solon) and Marty Mendenhall (Olmsted Falls).

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Sat Jul 27, 2013 8:30 pm
by merv1618
Also, Northwestern picks up Dylan Minarik. It's unsure how active I'll be throughout the year; by 2014 at the absolute earliest if at all.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2013 7:37 pm
by 1992 in spaceflight
Cheynem wrote: 25. WUSTL--I think lose no starter
WUSTL hasn't lost any of their starters on A.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2013 9:22 pm
by Muriel Axon
I heard that Matt Weiner was going back to school next year, so don't forget about that place.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2013 10:00 pm
by Mike Bentley
What are all of the people on Chicago A doing next year?

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2013 1:05 am
by at your pleasure
I will be in school, Marshall will be in school, Matt and Sam will be moving on to other adventures.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Sun Aug 04, 2013 6:31 am
by Tanay
With the two biggest sites of VCU Open complete, is this now open?

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Sun Aug 04, 2013 11:00 am
by Cheynem
Yeah, you can start sending in ballots. E-mail address is in profile: chey0004 AT umn DOT edu. Please only send in complete ballots. Don't rank high school teams. You can rank B teams. Please don't post full ballots here although feel free to talk about rankings. Voting will close in about two weeks.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Sun Aug 04, 2013 11:33 am
by AKKOLADE
Dwight Kidder's list of entering freshmen will be publicly posted in the next few days.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Sun Aug 04, 2013 3:33 pm
by Cheynem
What school will Matt Weiner be at next year?

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Wed Aug 07, 2013 7:54 pm
by AKKOLADE

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Wed Aug 07, 2013 8:04 pm
by Windows ME
I'm filling this out at the moment and finding that once you reach 21-25 it becomes very difficult to make any sort of educated guess. Anyone want to suggest some teams that weren't on this year's list?

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Wed Aug 07, 2013 8:57 pm
by Rococo A Go Go
fourplustwo wrote:I'm filling this out at the moment and finding that once you reach 21-25 it becomes very difficult to make any sort of educated guess. Anyone want to suggest some teams that weren't on this year's list?
Just going off last year's list, I'm assuming that something like 19 of those teams (everyone except NYU, Alabama, Rice, Brown, King's, and Columbia) bring back enough to deserve strong consideration from everybody. NYU, Brown, and Columbia may have enough to be ranked anyway, you've also got to look at Dartmouth and Vanderbilt, plus obviously Weiner's school if it isn't on this list already, and then you have to start looking around a bit. Experience does actually mean something in the college game, so I wouldn't get too hooked on which freshmen are going where, but that's certainly important information to consider. Once you get down to lower tiers at ICT last year, it's hard to really determine if 29th in D1 is really any better than 6th in D2 or whatever, so there are probably a handful of good teams that will be moving to D1 this year. In addition to Stanford, I'd say that North Carolina and Williams have an argument for consideration if they still have the same players they did last year.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Wed Aug 07, 2013 9:01 pm
by Cheynem
Minnesota loses 3/4 of its starters from last year, although I'm still technically eligible I guess (I certainly don't plan on playing anything).

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Wed Aug 07, 2013 10:20 pm
by Muriel Axon
The grapevine says Weiner's school is something like J. Sargeant Reynolds.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Wed Aug 07, 2013 11:20 pm
by Tanay
fourplustwo wrote:I'm filling this out at the moment and finding that once you reach 21-25 it becomes very difficult to make any sort of educated guess. Anyone want to suggest some teams that weren't on this year's list?
Though I don't know who is returning on these teams and whether they'd be playing nationals next year (let alone how they'd scale to difficulty and some of the other factors), a couple of the British teams (Oxford and Sheffield) put up some statlines this year that are very competitive with those of other teams you'd find in the top 25. They might merit consideration, especially as Oxford did beat John Lawrence a couple of times (and almost again), which is more than most of the ACF Nationals field can say.

Edited for syntax

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2013 2:10 am
by ryanrosenberg
Sulawesi Myzomela wrote:
fourplustwo wrote:I'm filling this out at the moment and finding that once you reach 21-25 it becomes very difficult to make any sort of educated guess. Anyone want to suggest some teams that weren't on this year's list?
In addition to Stanford, I'd say that North Carolina and Williams have an argument for consideration if they still have the same players they did last year.
North Carolina brings back everyone on our team who played a tournament last year. We also have a very good incoming freshman in Zihan Zheng.

I know Williams graduates Jeff at the very least. Not sure about Tarun or Laura.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2013 10:00 am
by Nine-Tenths Ideas
Crud, I forgot UNC.

Anyway, here's your obligatory plug for Maryland B, which will totally be a top 25 team next year.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2013 10:26 am
by naan/steak-holding toll
Emily Krok wrote:Crud, I forgot UNC.

Anyway, here's your obligatory plug for Maryland B, which will totally be a top 25 team next year.
Watch out for as-of-now quizbowl dark horses Jordan Brownstein and Adam Hussain.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2013 2:02 pm
by gyre and gimble
gamegeek2 wrote:In case anyone feels like voting for us (26th place in the last poll, 25th in the midseason poll), we don't lose anybody next year. Also, from what I know from speaking to Will Holub-Moorman, Harvard A's not losing any of their starters and their club picks up Raynor Kuang and Vimal Konduri next year.
I didn't know about this, but according to the incoming freshman list this is accurate, and that's great. Even without any shuffling players around between our teams, Harvard B will feature at least Will, Mark "35 Points Against Yale at ACF Nats" Arildsen, Raynor, and Vimal, which seems like a team worthy of top 25 consideration.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2013 3:53 pm
by Cheynem
Ten ballots are in.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2013 9:47 pm
by Adventure Temple Trail
I'm thinking about my ballot for this, and it's tough. It seems like the skill level of teams from ranks, I dunno, 9 through 20 nationally has risen sharply, and it's often hard to tell how to rank teams in that range since many good teams skip one national or the other or both.

Here are some thoughts I have while putting this together:
-This tournament implies to me that an Ikeless Illinois team will still be quite good at regular difficulty; Aaron's no slouch and Billy is probably the second-best science player in the game right now. I'm less clear on how far that takes them into a national top bracket.
-A big part of top-bracket ordering will be determined by how Chicago and Michigan rebuild after they each lose half their A-team rosters (and how their rebuilt forms look in comparison to Maryland and Penn, which largely stay the same). They both get very prominent, skilled high schoolers to help fill the gap...
-Another thing to be sure to remember is skilled B-teams; Chicago B usually makes this list handily, but I can see Harvard B, Yale B, and UVA B (depending on who gets bumped up to replace David Seal) all figuring in this conversation as well.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2013 9:57 pm
by women, fire and dangerous things
It's also a possibility that Kurtis is going to be taking a year off from school, meaning that I'll be the only returning starter from Michigan.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Fri Aug 09, 2013 1:30 pm
by Frauny Von Smiley
I know it's late/not going to make a huge difference but I will be attending William and Mary for law and Venu Katta is an incoming Freshman not listed on the list.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Fri Aug 09, 2013 3:26 pm
by Cheynem
Deadline for this is the 16th of August.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2013 2:55 am
by gerbilownage
Grams's Go-Go Boots wrote:Entering freshman list is up.
Glad to see so many Yale players! How was the list formed by the way?

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2013 9:32 am
by Cheynem
Tomorrow at 7 PM is the deadline for this. Please get in a ballot, I think we have around 12 or so right now.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2013 9:59 am
by vinteuil
gerbilownage wrote:
Grams's Go-Go Boots wrote:Entering freshman list is up.
Glad to see so many Yale players! How was the list formed by the way?
I would assume at least in part from players who filled out the little forms that were passed out at HSNCT.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2013 11:55 am
by Important Bird Area
gerbilownage wrote:
Grams's Go-Go Boots wrote:Entering freshman list is up.
Glad to see so many Yale players! How was the list formed by the way?
The primary source is indeed the "what college is the player attending next year?" section of the HSNCT registration form.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Fri Aug 16, 2013 5:41 pm
by Cheynem
The results.

There were 19 ballots. If a "lowest" is not listed, it means at least one ballot did not include that team.

Voters: Will Alston, Matt Bollinger, Siddhant Dogra, Isaac Hirsch, Will Holub-Moorman, Matt Jackson, Nick Jensen, Shan Kothari, Tanay Kothari, Jasper Lee, Stephen Liu, Joe Nutter, Jacob O'Rourke, Jacob Reed, Ryan Rosenberg, Marshall Steinbaum, Sinan Ulusoy, Richard Yu, and Libo Zeng.

1. Yale A (469, 13 1st place votes, highest: #1, lowest: #2)
2. Virginia A (460, 6 1st place votes, highest: #1, lowest: #3)
3. Penn (432, highest: #2, lowest: #5)
4. Chicago A (419, highest: #2, lowest: #5)
5. Maryland A (390, highest: #3, lowest: #8)
6. Michigan (371, highest: #4, lowest: #12)
7. Harvard A (346, highest: #6, lowest: #12)
8. Ohio State (306, highest: #6, lowest: #14)
9. Illinois (305, highest: #4, lowest: #17)
10. Stanford (301, highest: #6, lowest: #14)
11. Alberta (277, highest: #7, lowest: #18)
12. Chicago B (255, highest: #7, lowest: #18)
13. MCTC (238, highest: #8)
14. J. Sargeant Reynolds (212, highest: #7)
15. MIT (207, highest: #12, lowest: #23)
16. Georgia Tech (144, highest: #12)
17. Columbia (137, highest: #14)
18. Michigan State (121, highest: #14)
19. Dartmouth (114, highest: #15)
20. Berkeley (111, highest: #16)
21. WUSTL (104, highest: #14)
22. Brown (99, highest: #9)
23. Vanderbilt (98, highest: #12)
24. Yale B (85, highest: #10)
25. Harvard B (53, highest: #16)

Also Receiving Votes: Northwestern (21), Washington (19), North Carolina (16), NYU (13), Virginia B (9), Alabama (8), Oxford (8), Rice (5), Rutgers (5), Maryland B (2), Minnesota (2), and VCU (2).

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Fri Aug 16, 2013 6:01 pm
by Muriel Axon
Looking back on my ballot, I think I may have unfairly ignored B teams that didn't exist last year (or rather, didn't exist at DI ICT/ACF Nats). I wonder if, even in the overall poll results, Yale B (to take an example) might be underranked.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Fri Aug 16, 2013 6:58 pm
by vinteuil
Muriel Axon wrote:Yale B (to take an example) might be underranked.
Well, this problem will be fixed in the midseason poll.

In all seriousness, I'm not sure anybody thinks this is the most absolutely accurate thing ever, so it's not such a big deal.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Sat Aug 17, 2013 2:24 am
by naan/steak-holding toll
Muriel Axon wrote:Looking back on my ballot, I think I may have unfairly ignored B teams that didn't exist last year (or rather, didn't exist at DI ICT/ACF Nats). I wonder if, even in the overall poll results, Yale B (to take an example) might be underranked.
I'd certainly say so. Our A-team's games against Yale at Regionals and VCU Closed against Yale B were reasonably competitive and their bonus conversion was better than ours at both of those tournaments (though I will note that we lost Aaron Pellowski in the middle of both of those tournaments as well as at VCU Open, which definitely drove down our bonus conversion). The same with Harvard B, with whom we had some pretty close games at WIT, though again we were missing Aaron/Kirk to round out our normal A-team. Both of these teams could see their ranks bolstered by excellent high school players, so I feel they are underranked here.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Sat Aug 17, 2013 2:23 pm
by MorganV
I'm somewhat curious who people think is playing on Chicago B.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Sat Aug 17, 2013 7:47 pm
by Windows ME
I've been given the go ahead to write up a comprehensive season preview (based on these rankings) for the front page. However, I need the collective knowledge of the quizbowl community to do so.

Tomorrow (Sunday, August 18th, 8pm EST) in the IRC, we will have a discussion where we will shortly analyze each team one by one regarding their prognosis for the coming year. Please feel free to join - I would like to have as much information (and opinions) as possible to write this.

If you can't make it, the important things will be in the season preview anyway - along with a few interesting facts and statlines for each team that you may not have remembered (after I do my research, of course). Hope to see many people there!

(If you can't make it but want to send your input to me regarding any team you are welcome to private message me)

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2013 11:29 pm
by Windows ME
The summary of the chat has been posted to the frontpage. I'm happy to listen to any feedback if you want. I hope the preview was entertaining.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2013 11:48 pm
by 1992 in spaceflight
fourplustwo wrote:The summary of the chat has been posted to the frontpage. I'm happy to listen to any feedback if you want. I hope the preview was entertaining.
Jake Sundberg is still at Alabama. They graduated Harrison and Dargan.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Mon Aug 19, 2013 9:17 am
by naan/steak-holding toll
fourplustwo wrote:The summary of the chat has been posted to the frontpage. I'm happy to listen to any feedback if you want. I hope the preview was entertaining.
Does someone have a log of the full chat up until it went off-topic after the history bowl discussion? I kind of want to see the full discussion.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Mon Aug 19, 2013 4:23 pm
by The Ununtiable Twine
The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi wrote:
fourplustwo wrote:The summary of the chat has been posted to the frontpage. I'm happy to listen to any feedback if you want. I hope the preview was entertaining.
Jake Sundberg is still at Alabama. They graduated Harrison and Dargan.
I find it rather entertaining that the quizbowl community believes I am done in some way, shape, or form for the umpteenth consecutive year. I would like to thank the ladies and gentlemen that voted for Alabama in the poll. You have earned this tireless quizbowl veteran's admiration. I dedicate any future improvements I make in quizbowl to you, and appreciate your undying fandom.

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2013 3:15 am
by 1992 in spaceflight
So I don't really feel like making a separate thread for this, but I'm continuing with the quizbowl stats collection project that I did last year as well. If anyone would be interested in helping me out or making sure I don't fuck something up, the link is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... VWXc#gid=1

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Fri Oct 04, 2013 12:50 am
by FraDolcino
The Predictable Consequences wrote:
Sulawesi Myzomela wrote:
fourplustwo wrote:I'm filling this out at the moment and finding that once you reach 21-25 it becomes very difficult to make any sort of educated guess. Anyone want to suggest some teams that weren't on this year's list?
In addition to Stanford, I'd say that North Carolina and Williams have an argument for consideration if they still have the same players they did last year.
North Carolina brings back everyone on our team who played a tournament last year. We also have a very good incoming freshman in Zihan Zheng.

I know Williams graduates Jeff at the very least. Not sure about Tarun or Laura.
Thanks for your vote of confidence Ryan. I really appreciate it. /s

Re: Preseason Poll

Posted: Mon Oct 14, 2013 10:11 am
by Charbroil
I've decided to take a year off from school, so I'm not going to be playing for WUSTL this year. I'm still finishing my degree at St. Charles CC, so I might play a couple of tournaments for them.

Sorry if this throws off the poll and/or anyone's Fantasy lineup.