Poll: Midseason Edition

[Cheynem]

This is the official announcement for the collegiate poll, late midseason edition.

Here are the general guidelines:

1. Fill out a ballot, ranking the top 25 (1 to 25) collegiate teams. You must rank at least 25 teams. No incomplete ballots will be counted.

2. Send the ballots via e-mail to me (chey0004 AT umn DOT edu). I will not count any ballots that are just posted here and in fact I would strongly, strongly urge you not to publicly post your ballots in this thread. You can discuss rankings though.

3. You may vote for any collegiate team and any B/C/D team, what have you. Please take some time to be informed about actual B/C team composition (i.e., many teams throughout the year mix up their starting A rosters). You may not vote for high school teams. Anyone sending in a ballot that has voted for a high school team will be asked to submit a new ballot. You may vote for community colleges.

4. While I can't force you to adopt a particular voting philosophy, I think Matt Weiner's conception that you are "voting for how this team, at best possible strength, would do at ICT and Nationals." If you think a team would do better at one tournament than the other, than weigh that into your votes. What this means is that you are assuming these teams are playing on hard, Nationals/ICT-level questions, and that you cannot take considerations like "Oh, Team X isn't playing ICT, I'll move them down a spot." Assume everyone is playing and assume they are at full strength. By full strength, I interpret it to mean "the best team they actually played this year."

5. Any bizarre ballots will either be rejected or I will ask for some explanation/logic. What I mean by bizarre is just completely ignoring any results that have happened so far and would include: intentionally ignoring a team whose results have suggested they are a major contender (for example, not ranking or ranking very low teams like Penn, Michigan, Virginia), overranking teams based on "gut feelings," and overrranking B or C teams based on unsophisticated analysis of the data.

5. Ballots will never be released. I will list the names of the people who vote unless people have a problem with this.

6. Finally, I would encourage all voters to take a little time in drafting a ballot, and especially to look beyond your own geographical region. I would especially urge voters in the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, and East (where the majority of voters will probably come from) to review the performances of teams in the South, West Coast, Canada, and Southwest.

If anyone has any questions on voting, eligibility guidelines, etc., please post or e-mail. You might want to wait until all the Regionals mirrors are run, but I will accept ballots whenever. Voting will continue until at least the beginning of March.

[naan/steak-holding toll]

I wouldn't mind writing up a Sinan-style rundown of the top-ranked teams after the poll closes.

On a more selfish note, I would like to note that we haven't actually played a "full" A-Team at any events this year (the closest we came was SUBMIT), so hopefully people will keep that in mind.

[Rococo A Go Go]

You must rank at least 25 teams.

Oh good, I can send you my Top 136.

[Frater Taciturnus]

You must rank at least 25 teams.

Oh good, I can send you my Top 136.

collegeqbrank.com gogogogo

[AKKOLADE]

let me open my spreadsheet

[Rococo A Go Go]

let me open my spreadsheet

While I don't think Fred should go through all kinds of extra effort to do this, I don't think it would be terribly difficult to use his methods to rank collegiate teams. Not counting novice sets (where most teams have different players anyway) there are only 6 sets (MFT, Penn Bowl, DRAGOON, SUBMIT, SCT, Regionals) to look at.

[Adventure Temple Trail]

let me open my spreadsheet

While I don't think Fred should go through all kinds of extra effort to do this, I don't think it would be terribly difficult to use his methods to rank collegiate teams. Not counting novice sets (where most teams have different players anyway) there are only 6 sets (MFT, Penn Bowl, DRAGOON, SUBMIT, SCT, Regionals) to look at.

I think Jacob O'Rourke started a project like this for this year using a Google spreadsheet, and certainly did so in 2012-13 -- maybe you can ask him what he's got already written up. At minimum, it'd help people to have the Big Data on one page [noting where teams played shorthanded or skipped events and such; there probably isn't any team which played all of these events at full strength].

[Excelsior (smack)]

Indeed he did: link. It appears to be updated to include everything up to and including SCT.

[Mike Bentley]

Indeed he did: link. It appears to be updated to include everything up to and including SCT.

How does one get access to edit this?

[Charbroil]

Indeed he did: link. It appears to be updated to include everything up to and including SCT.

Regionals information seems to be there as well, just not on the summary page.

[Ringil]

Indeed he did: link. It appears to be updated to include everything up to and including SCT.

Regionals information seems to be there as well, just not on the summary page.

It's not complete though.

[1992 in spaceflight]

Indeed he did: link. It appears to be updated to include everything up to and including SCT.

How does one get access to edit this?

This should work now, Mike.

EDIT: Also, thanks to everyone who's fixed stuff on my spreadsheet about A team rosters and who's played where. I've been a bit busy lately, so the help is greatly appreciated.

[bradleykirksey]

In the very off chance anyone actually cares, full strength for UCF might actually be Cody Johansen over Michael Tichy.

On a more relevant note, I feel like Georgia Tech might be very underrepresented if you look at the set of stats given above. Georgia Tech did win on average 583-89 and only had 8.9 powers per game to 16.2 buzzes per game. But you have to keep in mind that the readers at that site were very slow. Georgia Tech got through only 19.1 TH/G compared to 17.9 for UCF. Which makes their nearly 9 powers per game and 16 buzzes per game so much more impressive. I realize that playing Stetson on DII questions is a lot different than playing Penn on DI questions, but they had a very strong performance and I feel like the per game stats might really work against them if everyone is just looking at those.

It feels a little arbitrary that the NAQT's Adjusted PPB multiplies bonuses by .7 for DI teams playing DII questions, right? Why that number? Just off of a gut feeling, I feel like their actual PPB on DI sets would be higher than 17.68. Of course, I can be wrong.

[Cheynem]

Twelve ballots are in already, I assume more will come in after the next round of Regionals and Cane Ridge.

Thirty-three different teams have received at least one vote so far.

[naan/steak-holding toll]

In the very off chance anyone actually cares, full strength for UCF might actually be Cody Johansen over Michael Tichy.

On a more relevant note, I feel like Georgia Tech might be very underrepresented if you look at the set of stats given above. Georgia Tech did win on average 583-89 and only had 8.9 powers per game to 16.2 buzzes per game. But you have to keep in mind that the readers at that site were very slow. Georgia Tech got through only 19.1 TH/G compared to 17.9 for UCF. Which makes their nearly 9 powers per game and 16 buzzes per game so much more impressive. I realize that playing Stetson on DII questions is a lot different than playing Penn on DI questions, but they had a very strong performance and I feel like the per game stats might really work against them if everyone is just looking at those.

It feels a little arbitrary that the NAQT's Adjusted PPB multiplies bonuses by .7 for DI teams playing DII questions, right? Why that number? Just off of a gut feeling, I feel like their actual PPB on DI sets would be higher than 17.68. Of course, I can be wrong.

Adam Silverman had more powers on HSNCT than 10s, and the DII SCT set is easier than HSNCT. This time, Adam had the benefit of not playing as basically a one-man team but with the assistance of several other strong high school players. Given that DII SCT is basically a high school set, it should be no wonder their stats on that set were so absurdly good.

I would be skeptical of Georgia Tech's strength until I see them play some comparable teams. How well would a full-strength Georgia Tech fare against, say, Columbia or MIT? Before I know this, I'd to tentatively put them just below teams with similar PPB that have consistently been able to deliver against other top competition. Until then, I don't really know what to think of Adam's very impressive numbers on tossups and how this would play out at ACF Nationals or ICT without another very good player like Will Butler playing next to him.

[Rococo A Go Go]

I would be skeptical of Georgia Tech's strength until I see them play some comparable teams. How well would a full-strength Georgia Tech fare against, say, Columbia or MIT? Before I know this, I'd to tentatively put them just below teams with similar PPB that have consistently been able to deliver against other top competition. Until then, I don't really know what to think of Adam's very impressive numbers on tossups and how this would play out at ACF Nationals or ICT without another very good player like Will Butler playing next to him.

He did well at DRAGOON. Adam also scored a whole bunch of points last year regardless of whether or not Will Butler was playing, so I think he's a fairly proven player.

[naan/steak-holding toll]

I was very impressed by his PPB at DRAGOON, and I know he's a very seasoned and capable player (he put up more than 40 PPG at Nationals next to Will Butler!). I'm more concerned by the fact that the quality of mid-tier teams seems to have beefed up a fair bit this year, and playing tossups against similar-caliber opponents is quite different than playing against lower-tier teams.

[Adventure Temple Trail]

Is there a fast deadline for turning these in?

I wouldn't mind writing up a Sinan-style rundown of the top-ranked teams after the poll closes.

This sounds like a good idea, provided that a similar big discussion happens beforehand to get more info on the table which you can work with.

[Cheynem]

Tentatively, I am announcing March 5 as the deadline.

[The Ununtiable Twine]

I was very impressed by his PPB at DRAGOON, and I know he's a very seasoned and capable player (he put up more than 40 PPG at Nationals next to Will Butler!). I'm more concerned by the fact that the quality of mid-tier teams seems to have beefed up a fair bit this year, and playing tossups against similar-caliber opponents is quite different than playing against lower-tier teams.

Depends on how you define a "similar caliber opponent" - I wouldn't be too concerned with Georgia Tech having trouble against any team outside of the top 20, to be brutally honest, with the exception of teams with specific natural strengths. While the quality of middle teams has beefed up it's not like GT played a full lineup anywhere so they can beef up too. This coming from the forum poster who has more losses against Adam than anyone does *cough.

[The Ununtiable Twine]

Is there any plan for anyone to calculate "D-values" from Regionals like last year? It would be a useful tool to help make sense of the numbers and interesting in its own right.

[evilmonkey]

Is there any plan for anyone to calculate "D-values" from Regionals like last year? It would be a useful tool to help make sense of the numbers and interesting in its own right.

I calculated the "ACF Regionals D-Values" last year. I have no intention to do so this year. Someone else can do so if they wish.

[Cheynem]

Here are the results (to be posted on the frontpage at some point).

24 ballots were received. For the top 25, I posted the highest and lowest rank each team received (if a team does not receive a lowest rank, at least one ballot did not rank them).

Voters: Will Alston, Matt Bollinger, Nick Conder, Siddhant Dogra, Bryce Durgin, Alex Gerten, Cory Haala, Itzhak Hirsch, Matt Jackson, Tanay Kothari, Jasper Lee, Saajid Moyen, The Esteemed Will Nediger, Benji Nguyen, Joe Nutter, Jacob O'Rourke, Victor Prieto, Dan Puma, Jacob Reed, Dr. Marshall Steinbaum, Jake Sundberg, Morgan Venkus, Richard Yu, and Libo Zeng.

1. Virginia (600, all 24 1st place votes), +1 from last poll
2. Penn (564, highest: #2, lowest: #5), +1
3. Yale A (558, highest: #2, lowest: #4), -2
4. Chicago A (515, highest: #2, lowest: #7), same
5. Maryland A (500, highest: #3, lowest: #7), same
6. Michigan (481, highest: #3, lowest: #8), same
7. Harvard A (457, highest: #4, lowest: #16), same
8. Illinois A (417, highest: #7, lowest: #13), +1
9. J. Sergeant Reynolds CC (359, highest: #6, lowest: #19), +5
10. Columbia (329, highest: #9, lowest: #18), +7
11. MCTC (325, highest: #8, lowest: #21), +2
12. Alberta (324, highest: #7), -1
13. Stanford (320, highest: #8, lowest: #19), -3
14. MIT (310, highest: #8), +1
15. Ohio State (273, highest: #7), -7
16. Georgia Tech (253, highest: #10), same
17. Michigan State (176, highest: #15), +1
18. Dartmouth (169, highest: #16), +1
19. Chicago B (157, highest: #12), -7
20. Maryland B (126, highest: #15), not ranked
21. Washington (117, highest: #13), not ranked
22. WUSTL (104, highest: #15), -1
23. Berkeley (97, highest: #16), -3
24. North Carolina (64, highest: #19), not ranked
25. Brown (58, highest: #15), -3

Falling out of top 25: Vanderbilt, Yale B, and Harvard B

Also receiving votes: Cornell (38), Northwestern (26), Harvard B (19), UCSD (16), Yale B (15), Rutgers (13), Louisville (8), Alabama (4), Minnesota (4), Illinois B (1), Ottawa (1), Oxford (1), and Rice (1).

Thanks for voting, everyone.

[naan/steak-holding toll]

I'll be contacting people individually about their teams for the purpose of compiling my report, but I'd like to schedule a time for a big discussion of this in the IRC. I'm busy with exams until the end of next week, but should have plenty of time for this starting Saturday, March 15th. What times would be convenient for people?

[Adventure Temple Trail]

I'll be contacting people individually about their teams for the purpose of compiling my report, but I'd like to schedule a time for a big discussion of this in the IRC. I'm busy with exams until the end of next week, but should have plenty of time for this starting Saturday, March 15th. What times would be convenient for people?

If I were you, I'd start a Doodle or solicit availability times privately from people you trust, so as not to clutter this thread.

[naan/steak-holding toll]

As per Matt Jackson's suggestion:

http://doodle.com/vacupmiexsww8ucp (apologies for the typo)

Fill out what days are convenient for you. I'd like to run this sometime in the evening, say 8:00 PM or so.

[naan/steak-holding toll]

I'm going to set Wednesday, March 19th as the date for doing this. For now I'll pick 8PM ET as the time to begin discussion, but if that's inconvenient for people, I can push it earlier or later as needed.

[naan/steak-holding toll]

This is happening tonight, unless the time is inconvenient for people.

[Cheynem]

There is some playtesting of a tournament going on tonight, for what it's worth.

[naan/steak-holding toll]

True. I'll start with the top teams, then, and move down, so the most important stuff gets covered before History Bowl playtesting happens. There's two and a half hours between the time this starts and when history bowl playtesting starts, so that should be enough time to get through most of the top teams.

[Cheynem]

I was referring to ACF Nationals playtesting, for what it's worth, which is earlier, I think. Not a big deal though.

[naan/steak-holding toll]

OK. In this case, I think I'll go from 25 to 1 then, so as to not be anticlimactic and have participants lose interest.

Relevant: would anybody be interested in doing a preview of Hostory Bowl, as well?

[Rufous-capped Thornbill]

Is there going to be a write up of the discussion or is there some log I could see?

[naan/steak-holding toll]

I did make the write-up, but I don't seem to have gotten front page posting privileges.

Here's a log of the discussion:

[I deleted this log because it has unclear question content from SCT and Cane Ridge Revival. If you would like the log and are not playing either tournament, please contact Will. Otherwise, Will can edit out the question-specific content and repost it as well.--Management]