The Quizbowl Resource Center

This is the announcement for the preseason poll for collegiate teams.

Please do not post ballots in the thread. Do not vote for high school teams. You can vote for B teams. Ballots must contain 25 teams. E-mail them to me at [email protected] by August 17.

Last year's postseason top 25:

1. Yale Bulldogs: (3rd at ACF Nationals, 1st at ICT)
2. Chicago Maroons: (1st at ACF Nationals, 3rd at ICT)
3. Pennsylvania Quakers: (2nd at ACF Nationals, 4th at ICT)
4. California Golden Bears: (5th at ACF Nationals, 2nd at ICT)
5. Columbia Lions: (4th at ACF Nationals, 4th at ICT)
6. Ohio State Buckeyes: (5th at ACF Nationals, 7th at ICT)
7. Cambridge Light Blues: (5th at ACF Nationals)
8. California Golden Bears B: (9th at ACF Nationals, 8th at ICT)
9. Minnesota Golden Gophers: (8th at ACF Nationals, 15th at ICT)
10. Michigan Wolverines: (14th at ACF Nationals, 4th at ICT)
11. Chicago Maroons B: (9th at ACF Nationals, 21st at ICT)
12. Maryland Terrapins: (12th at ACF Nationals, 8th at ICT)
13. Northwestern Wildcats: (11th at ACF Nationals, 25th at ICT)
14. Oxford Dark Blues: (13th at ACF Nationals)
15. Missouri Tigers: (14th at ACF Nationals, 19th at ICT)
16. McGill Redmen: (18th at ACF Nationals, 11th at ICT)
17. Oklahoma Sooners: (19th at ACF Nationals, 13th at ICT)
18. Florida Gators: (14th at ACF Nationals, 19th at ICT)
19. Johns Hopkins Blue Jays: (14th at ACF Nationals)
20. Washington (Mo.) Bears: (25th at ACF Nationals, 8th at ICT)
21. Stanford Cardinal: (16th at ICT)
22. Michigan State Spartans: (28th at ACF Nationals, 14th at ICT)
23. Virginia Cavaliers: (25th at ACF Nationals, 16th at ICT)
24. Duke Blue Devils: (21st at ACF Nationals, 26th at ICT)
25. Toronto Varsity Blues: (29th at ACF Nationals, 18th at ICT)

I haven't compiled a comprehensive list of who's gone to what school since the end of last year, but I encourage people to point out notable arrivals and departures in this thread.

Stanford updates. Nathan Weiser, Nikhil Desai, and Kyle Sutherlin all graduated / completed their respective programs this past year. byebye Natan Holtzman, formerly from UNC Chapel Hill, and Marianna Zhang from UChicago will be joining us in the coming year for grad programs / PhDs. I don't know about that many of the freshman arrivals, but I know that Wilder Seitz from Barrington is coming, as well as a few other promising arrivals whose names I'm blanking on right now. The core B team from last year of Ashwin Ramaswami, Ali Saeed, myself, and Keoni Rodriguez will all be returning, as with the A team's fourth scorer from this past year, Eric Kilgore, all with varying levels of commitment that are TBD.

For what its worth, next year UT Austin's team will be gaining myself, Jaskaran Singh from Plano West, Ashwath Seetharaman from Taylor, and Graham Stockton from LASA, among other freshmen. As it stands now, I believe all of those listed intend to keep playing. Its obviously hard to say if that team's worth ranking since we've never played together before, but we may be worth consideration.

As for Duke's team next year, Gabe, Lucian, and Annabelle will all be back with a fourth still to be determined, and in my opinion they should still be ranked.

Just off the top of my head going off last years list:

Yale: Returns all but IKD, Moses possibly moved to the A team? I don't know of any additions
Chicago: Loses Jason, probably Matthew to the A team?
Penn: Loses all off last years A team except Jamie. Look for big improvements out of Nitin, probably worth consideration towards the bottom of your poll.
Cal: Not sure, Aseem graduates I believe, but they might just replace one Keyal.
Columbia: Loses Ben, should return the rest of the team.
Ohio State: Returns everyone, which should be a valued commodity this season, especially with that young core around Chris getting more experience.
Cambridge: I know Jason and Elysia are moving on, but they still have lots of other talent. Hard to say though.
Cal B: No clue
Minnesota: No clue
Michigan: loses Kenji, maybe more
Chicago B: No clue
Maryland: I have a lot to say here. Gains Caleb Kendrick from Oklahoma, as well as Maia but we don't think Maia will play. We return everyone else on the A team (Sam is going to Arizona but he didn't play much last year). Also to consider, Maryland B (or whatever our freshman team is called gets Jack Lewis from Battle Ground who won the naqt individual tournament, Vishwa from Downington Stem, Adam from RM (whose naqt numbers were impressive), and Jakob from Centenial. All say they will play. We also get Naveen from RM, and Eliot from Blair, but they were less committal.
Northwestern: no Clue
Oxford: No clue
Missouri: Loses Itamar
McGill: No clue
Oklahoma: Loses Caleb and Maia
Florida: Should stay the same. Watch out, one of the most improved and under the radar teams from last year.
JHU: Returns everyone, stop under ranking them. They are good!
WUSTL: One last go around for Charles I believe
Stanford: They have been spoken for in an above post
Michigan State: Yeah watch out. They have a bad man, and he's only going to get better
UVA: Loses Vasa, gets Jack Mehr back, returns everyone else, gets a grad transfer from Kentucky, John was voted best new comer last season. Some depth and experience, last year for Eric
Duke: Has been spoken for in an above post
Toronto: No clue

I could see also UCSD being good this year. Working on a tournament, and sort of knocking on the door last year. Obviously some of the above teams are going to fall out because of loses. Sorry for what I'm sure are a lot of grammar and spelling errors.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing
I made a spreadsheet to track people who are leaving/arriving from last year's top 25 and what in my opinion are teams that maybe should be in this year's. Feel free to add to it!

McGill is:

Akhil Garg, Daniel Lovsted, Joe Su, Derek So

Toronto is:

Paul Kasinski, Chris Sims, Zhenglin Liu, and Rein

thebluehawk1 wrote: Minnesota: No clue

Loses Jason Asher.

thebluehawk1 wrote:Northwestern: no Clue

Loses Greg Peterson.

thebluehawk1 wrote:Just off the top of my head going off last years list:

JHU: Returns everyone, stop under ranking them. They are good!

JHU loses Noah Stanco, our third scorer.

thebluehawk1 wrote:
I could see also UCSD being good this year. Working on a tournament, and sort of knocking on the door last year.

UCSD loses Parikshit Chauhan and myself from our ICT/Nats roster this year, but they do gain in youthful vibrancy and exuberance as a result and also they're getting Alistair from Homestead, Boopala from CCA, and Roger Lin from Arcadia among others

Charles is back for one more year at WUSTL. Vishal will be back at school this year, and Patrick is the only one who graduated.

After our surprisingly decent finish at ACF Nats last year, we bring back everyone and also gain some solid new folk. We are getting Mitch from Williamsville (our likely fourth player on the A team, we'll see how good he is this weekend, no pressure), Deepak from Stevenson, Sarod from Okemos, Jaden from Carbondale, Alex from Fremd, and Nathan from Maryland B. Dylan and Tim from Uni Lab also are dual enrolling this year at U of I but with IHSA regulations we'll see how much they actually get to play.

So take all that for whatever its worth. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

EDIT: why did this post twice?

thebluehawk1 wrote:Penn: Loses all off last years A team except Jamie. Look for big improvements out of Nitin, probably worth consideration towards the bottom of your poll.

Yeah, as I found out at CO, Jaime is really good. She can buzz on almost any humanities category and knows a fair amount of science too. Penn should really be in your top 25.

This is a reminder that you have five days to vote. Please send in your ballots (and also keep talking about roster changes as you see fit).

Voting has concluded. The 13 voters were Will Alston, Alston Boyd, Harris Bunker, Ryan Humphrey, Wonyoung Jang, Jack Lewis, Jack Mehr, Jakob Myers, Tejas Raje, Jacob Reed, Graham Reid, Ryan Rosenberg, Richard Yu. Thanks to each of them for taking the time to contribute.

1. Chicago Maroons (10), 322, highest #1, lowest #2
2. Yale Bulldogs (3), 315, highest #1, lowest #2
3. Ohio State Buckeyes, 297, highest #3, lowest #5
4. Maryland Terrapins, 277, highest #3, lowest #7
5. Minnesota Golden Gophers, 264, highest #4, lowest #8
6. California Golden Bears, 263, highest #4, lowest #7
7. Columbia Lions, 254, highest #4, lowest #12
8. Michigan State Spartans, 208, highest #6, lowest #15
9. Johns Hopkins Blue Jays, 191, highest #9, lowest #14
10. McGill Redmen, 189, highest #8, ranked by 12 voters
11. Florida Gators, 181, highest #8, lowest #18
12. California Golden Bears B, 177, highest #7, ranked by 12 voters
13. Pennsylvania Quakers, 150, highest #9, lowest #20
14. Virginia Cavaliers, 141, highest #9, lowest #21
15. Washington (Mo.) Bears, 131, highest #9, ranked by 11 voters
16. Oxford Dark Blues, 120, highest #8, lowest #23
17. Chicago Maroons B, 116, highest #10, ranked by 12 voters
18. Northwestern Wildcats, 114, highest #11, ranked by 11 voters
19. Stanford Cardinal, 111, highest #11, ranked by 12 voters
20. Toronto Varsity Blues, 89, highest #13, lowest #25
21. Texas Longhorns, 60, highest #11, ranked by 12 voters
22. Maryland Terrapins B, 54, highest #19, ranked by 11 voters
23. Duke Blue Devils, 42, highest #20, ranked by 10 voters
24. Harvard Crimson, 33, highest #18, ranked by 9 voters
25. Michigan Wolverines, 28, highest #17, ranked by 7 voters

Also receiving votes:

26. Illinois Fighting Illini, 25, highest #18, ranked by 7 voters
26. New York Violets, 25, highest #15, ranked by 3 voters
28. Cambridge Light Blues, 19, highest #19, ranked by 4 voters
29. UCLA Bruins, 10, highest #19, ranked by 2 voters
30. Minnesota Golden Gophers B, 8, highest #22, ranked by 2 voters
31. Amherst Mammoths, 4, highest #22, ranked by 1 voter
31. Rutgers Scarlet Knights, 4, highest #24, ranked by 3 voters
33. Chicago Maroons C, 2, highest #24, ranked by 1 voter
34. UC San Diego Tritons, 1, highest #25, ranked by 1 voter

I'd like to do a preview for the year, one that provides more information and comments from the teams involved as opposed to just wild mass guessing, but I don't know how much time I will have. I hope to contact a number of the ranked teams. If people want to do the usual format (roundtable and summary), please do so.

Cheynem wrote: ↑Mon Aug 20, 2018 8:09 pm I'd like to do a preview for the year, one that provides more information and comments from the teams involved as opposed to just wild mass guessing, but I don't know how much time I will have. I hope to contact a number of the ranked teams. If people want to do the usual format (roundtable and summary), please do so.

Given that no one else seems to be doing this, I made a discord server for writeup purposes. I'll set a time and date for said writeup once a critical mass of people joins it. Link: https://discord.gg/X5rHAbg

Unfortunately, I've taken on some quizbowl work that will prevent me from doing the season preview, so I'm glad Jakob is at least doing this.

In case you haven't seen it on the discord, here's an availability poll. Please fill it out; given the responses now I'm leaning toward 5:30-8 PM EST this coming Saturday, but it would be nice to get more people's feedback https://www.when2meet.com/?7076994-37KEV

Thanks to everyone who participated in the writeup! With the assistance of Naveed, I'll have a preview out within the next few days.

An Economic Ignoramus wrote: ↑Sat Sep 15, 2018 11:54 pm Thanks to everyone who participated in the writeup! With the assistance of Naveed, I'll have a preview out within the next few days.

Naveed and I have finished writing this; it will be posted on the blog as soon as I have permission to do so.

I haven't gotten blog posting permission yet, so here's the writeup if anyone wants to preview it (also y'all can stop bugging me about this now).

Benin Rebirth Party wrote: ↑Sat Aug 04, 2018 7:05 pm McGill is:

Akhil Garg, Daniel Lovsted, Joe Su, Derek So

http://hsquizbowl.org/blog/collegiate-q ... n-preview/
Thanks to all the kind souls who pointed out errata; a more correct version of the writeup is published at the above link.

I don't really wanna be that guy after your second writeup, but I don't think anyone at McGill would describe Daniel as a history player. In fact, Derek probably gets more history than Daniel does.

The McGill quiz bowl team has unanimously decided that we will no longer go by the name "Redmen." "Redmen" is the current name of the McGill men's sports teams -- the women's teams are called "Martlets" -- but there is a campaign presently in progress to drop this name. The reasoning behind this campaign is that (1) it is a slur (see https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/redman), (2) its purportedly innocuous origins are debated, (3) it is opposed by Indigenous groups on campus, and (4) the name has been appropriated to racist ends in the recent past. McGill quiz bowl fully endorses this campaign.

Please call us either the "McGill Martlets" or "Les Chevaliers de McGill" for all future purposes. The only time this comes up (as far as I know) is in polls like this one, so I thought I'd post this notice here.