The Quizbowl Resource Center

Hi all,

Taking after Jack Lewis' DII Preseason Poll (http://hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=21606), I've decided, with consultation from other quizbowlers, to have a DII Midseason Poll. You can check out Jack's post for the reasoning behind having DII polls in the first place, but I'll explain the motives behind this poll. First, the Preseason polls were based on speculative rosters. Now that we're less than 2 months out from Nationals, many DII teams have solidified their lineups to the point where we can make more informed guesses on a team's ICT/ACF Nats placement. Second, we now have results from a variety of tournaments that showcase how teams have been performing. For these reasons, a new poll is needed to accurately showcase these developments.

So anyway, please send me your ballots including your top 10 teams, as well as any additional commentary, at [email protected]. The poll will close at 8:00 PM EST on Wednesday, February 27th. Please feel free to plug your team/offer up a more accurate nats roster in the comments below; I'm currently limiting my forums involvement, so if you have any questions or concerns, please DM me. A podcast may or may not be done following this.

Wesleyan's ICT squad will most likely be the same as SCT. I know our placement at SCT was quite disappointing, but I can attribute this mostly to a lot of unforced errors ingame, which we will be working on eliminating in the coming months. I would urge voters to look at our prelim power rate, as well as our ppb, both of which were the strongest at our site, our ppb being 6th out of all sites.

It is worth noting that, as far as I know (I may be mistaken!), UCLA will not be fielding the roster that many assumed that they would at the season's outset, and Texas's D2 players will be playing D1, so voters should take these changes from the preseason into account.

My quick take is that Chicago was under-ranked in the preseason poll, Wesleyan and Purdue have shown immense improvement, UMD is still the frontrunner (although by less of a margin than before, partially due to Jakob Boeye's move to Carleton and partially due to the improvement of other D2 teams), and Harvard's split-team SCT performance was incredibly impressive and showcases their deep D2 bench.

Toronto's SCT performance was affected by the fact Sky Li showed up very late.

I know we had a generally disappoitnitng SCT performance, but I would mostly attribute that to Vishwa performing extremely poorly. We will be workng on Vishwa’s general coordination, balance, and teammwork skills to help him hopefully improve from his subpar SCT performance. I would urge voters to look at our acf fall and regionals performance where we were notably tied for first in power rate across all sites.

It has been requested by another player that I disallow voting for teams that will definitively not be sending teams to ICT. Like Wonyoung said this includes prominent finishers from the Preseason poll like UCLA and UT.

Also, I have a form to make the sending in of ballots more efficient: https://goo.gl/forms/VLPw6wWw6jds0htw1.

I believe Penn's performance can be attributed to our combined total of 6 hours of sleep. For ICT, we will certainly be working to improve that number to zero for a wild night in Rosemont, IL, so voters should take this into account. #GoQuakers

Attached is the reason why UCLA will not be attending ICT D2:

Here are the results; thank you to Jack Lewis, Vishwa Shanmugam, Wonyoung Jang, Jakob Myers, Jaskaran Singh, and Catherine Qian for voting along with myself.

1. Maryland Terrapins, 60, all #1 votes, included on all ballots
2. Chicago Maroons, 54, all #2 votes, included on all ballots
3. Harvard Crimson A, 47, highest 3rd, lowest 4th, included on all ballots
4. Columbia Lions, 37, highest 4th, lowest 7th, included on all ballots
5. William and Mary Tribe, 35, highest 3rd, lowest 7th, included on all ballots
6. Toronto Varsity Blues, 25, highest 5th, lowest 9th, included on all ballots
7. Carleton Knights, 24, highest 5th, lowest 10th, included on all ballots
8. Wesleyan Cardinals, 17, highest 6th, lowest 10th, included on all ballots
9. Illinois Fighting Illini, 11, highest 6th, lowest 10th, included on all ballots
10. NYU Violets, 5, highest 6th, included on 1 ballot (note: have not qualified for DII ICT as of the time of writing)
10. Berkeley Golden Bears, 5, highest 6th, included on 1 ballot

Other Teams Receiving Votes:

12. Purdue Boilermakers, 3, highest 9th, lowest 10th, included on 2 ballots
13. Harvard Crimson B, 2, highest 9th, included on 1 ballot
14. Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, 1, highest 10th, included on 1 ballot
15. Yale Bulldog, 1, highest 10th, included on 1 ballot

Here's the podcast with me, Wonyoung Jang (Chicago), Jakob Myers (MSU), Vishwa Shanmugam (UMD) and Jack Lewis (UMD) https://soundcloud.com/user-857381923/d ... on-podcast

Contrary to what was stated in the podcast, Georgia Tech's D2 ICT team will be composed of myself, Akaash and Varun (from Northview), and Jake. Good analysis on the podcast!

Thanks for putting this podcast together, Max and co. It brings a big smile to my face to see how enthusiastic all these younger players are for the game, and I'm glad that D2 is not being considered a sideshow compared to D1 anymore. Quizbowl is becoming a more diverse game, in terms of talent and so many other factors, and I'm super excited for the game's future

Thanks for the podcast! For future reference, William & Mary's team at ICT will be composed of Logan, Akshata, Christian, and myself (replacing Saurav.) I'm still fairly new to NAQT-style quizbowl, but I'm primarily a literature player with moderate knowledge of arts & current events and some social science.

I was handpicked by Saurav over the B team members with higher stats because in addition to being a good science player, Saurav is also an excellent lit player, and he and I have the most similar knowledge bases.

ramblinwreck wrote: ↑Mon Mar 18, 2019 11:31 am Contrary to what was stated in the podcast, Georgia Tech's D2 ICT team will be composed of myself, Akaash and Varun (from Northview), and Jake. Good analysis on the podcast!

This team is really good (and probably underrated in this poll--- their PPB at Regs is comparable to many of the teams in the top 10)! I meant to shill for them but forgot to before the poll deadline, sorry about that.

Additionally, UGA B was discussed on the pod and is pretty good too, as Brice Fincher is ridiculously good on categories emphasized more in NAQT. I've only seen most of Florida B play a few times, but they had some really good buzzes, especially in history, and Jacob Hujsa is really good at lit/FA.

/end southeast shilling

The podcast link has gone private while I make some requested edits