2021-22 MS Postseason Poll

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2021-22 MS Postseason Poll

Post by CPiGuy »

As is tradition at this point, I am running an MS postseason ranking poll. The poll is intended to be a ranking for the 2021-2022 season.

To vote, please send your ballots to me by email at [email protected] by 11:59pm on Wednesday, June 8th. You may vote for players, teams, or both.

General guidelines (mostly borrowed from last year's iteration)

Anyone (coaches, players, parents, interested observers) is welcome to submit a ballot, and ballots will not be weighted.

Vote for exactly twenty-five (25) teams or players in each ballot, ranked from 1st through 25th. (The team you rank first will get 25 points, the team in second will get 24, etc.) If you send me a ballot with more than 25 entries, I will count only the first 25. If you send me a ballot with fewer than 25 entries, I will ask you to re-submit it with enough entries.

Please put "MS Quizbowl Poll" in the subject line in some fashion so I can easily search for your ballot. If you don't do this, you risk me missing your ballot.

I will name all the voters but will not specify who voted for whom -- if you want to submit your ballot anonymously please tell me.

Please be reasonable with your ballots -- if you do something like rank your own team first despite the fact that you put up 10 PPB on an MS set, I will probably ask you to re-submit your ballot.

There is no need to specify "A" or "B" unless you vote for a school's B team. If you put a school twice and do not specify A or B, I will assume this is an error and ask you to correct it.

For the team poll, please specify what state each of the teams you are voting for is from (both for my ease in cross-checking with stats, and in case there are two Smith Middle Schools that receive votes).

There is no need to conform to a standard name as long as it is unambiguous who you're voting for. Please do not use abbreviations like "BJHS" or "OMS" -- there are many schools with those abbreviations, and if it's not clear who any of your votes are for I'll ask you to clarify before I accept your ballot.

For the player poll, please specify the affiliation and state for each of the players you are voting for. Also please use their first and last name.

If you want to revise your ballot, just email me your new ballot. (Don't do something like "I want to switch my 3rd and 4th picks". Just rewrite the whole thing, please.)

Eligibility to be voted for in the poll:

Schools that fielded at least one team in a middle school all-subject quizbowl tournament this school year are eligible, even if they did not play MSNCT. Schools that played exclusively (for example) NHBB events, or schools that did not attend any tournaments as a team but one of their players attended IPNCT, are not eligible. Homeschool collectives and other non-traditional schools are eligible as long as they fit the other requirements.

Players who were in 8th grade or below for this school year and played at least one all-subject quizbowl tournament are eligible, even if they did not play MSNCT or IPNCT, or even any tournaments at the middle school level. Players who exclusively played (for example) NHBB events are not eligible.

2022-23 prediction poll
Like last year, there will be a third poll this year, in which you may vote for who you think will be the top five (5) teams in the 2022-23 season. (There is not a parallel prediction poll for players.)

I encourage people to use this thread to discuss which teams and players they feel are deserving of votes. I will be making such a post at some point soon.
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Re: 2021-22 MS Postseason Poll

Post by CPiGuy »

Here are some teams and people you should consider voting for.

Obviously all the teams who finished in the top few places at MSNCT are very good and deserving of votes. Middlesex underperformed at MSNCT but should probably be in your top 10; you should probably rank their very strong B team also.

Westminster A did poorly in MSNCT playoffs because their top scorer left on Saturday evening to compete in Mathcounts nationals (an impressively accomplished student!). Their quick exit is not representative of their skill; they should be ranked among the top teams.

T. H. Rogers did not get a ton of love in the pre-MSNCT predictions thread but did extremely well, including handing eventual champions Longfellow their only playoff loss. I would put them in at least your top 15, and probably higher.

You should probably vote Pranavkrishna Bharanidharan as your No. 1 player. He won IPNCT soundly and finished in the top 20 teams solo. He's really good at quizbowl.

A trend this year is that many of the best players may not have the flashiest individual stats because of the top teams being very balanced. Anthony Zhao of Longfellow in particular will not show up at the top of the individual scorers list, but put up an absurd 69% power rate, including 20/10/8 over 9 games in playoffs. That is an extremely impressive amount of depth for a middle schooler on HS-level questions. Rank him highly. Also consider ranking his teammates.

Similarly, you should probably rank at least the top two scorers from Greenhill, Harvest Park, Strawberry Park, Burleigh Manor A, and Burleigh Manor B.

I will be ranking Neev Sahgal of Middlesex very highly. He put up "player hard carrying their team" numbers on a team where he was extremely not hard carrying, which is a testament to his skill.

Alex Ewart of Annunciation Orthodox B (!!) really impressed me at MSNCT, leading his team to a top-20 finish, including 4/4/2 and 2/6/0 performances in playoff games. I will be ranking him.

Personally one of the statistics that is the best indicator of player skill for me is power rate, so I want to point out some players who had very high power rates. Both of Harvest Park's top two scorers, Shounak Bhindwale and Karthik Anbazhagan, had over a 50 percent power rate (in fact, counting the playoffs, the second- and third- best power rates of all of the top 100 scoring players!). They are very strong players and should be ranked accordingly. Suhurrith Adhikari of T. H. Rogers also had an excellent power rate, as did Brad Cao of Burleigh Manor and Andrew Gao of Chenery. Brad's power rate actually went up in playoffs!

There are also some people who did not play MSNCT but you should still consider ranking. In particular, Bumpus won the Alabama state championship over eventual MSNCT t-13 team Discovery; their top scorer Krish Nathan put up almost 100ppg in a format with no powers. Cooper in Virginia also had strong performances throughout the year and were probably one of the top 10 teams statistically.
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Re: 2021-22 MS Postseason Poll

Post by Raghav »

Here are some teams and players you should vote for:

Pranavkrishna Bharanidharan should be No.1 on your list. His performance at IPNCT and his t-20 finish at MSNCT solo shows how strong he is.

Andrew Gao is also a very good player. Leading his team of 7th graders to 2nd place this year is very impressive. He still has another year of middle school so the best is yet to come. Vote for him very highly.

Evans Senvalds is a very good player in his own right. His 2nd place finish at IPNCT and his first place in History and Current Events at IPNCT shows he is a very strong specialist. On the same team, Kate Ponnambalam is also a very strong literature player and she is decent at science as well.

St Johns A took their turn as the 4-4 team with better stats than the other 4-4 teams. They are much better than their ranking at MSNCT.

Westminster C is probably the highest ranking C team ever. They beat some very strong teams such as Beckendorff A and Churchill A.

Middlesex A is a very strong team as well. They are certainly better than their placement at MSNCT.

I'm sure a team that surprised many was Chenery. 2nd place at MSNCT with a team of 3 7th graders is very impressive. I suggest ranking them first in the 2022-23 poll.

Burliegh Manor A went 8-0 in prelims and beat Beckendorff A to claim the one card. Vote for both these teams very highly.

Longfellow A , the winning team, has 4 very strong specialists and probably should be in the top 3( if not first).

Harvest Park A put up an amazing performance but were knocked out by the national champions. Shounak and Karthik are both amazing players.
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Re: 2021-22 MS Postseason Poll

Post by CCMMSQB_2089 »

Looking into next year's rankings, there are teams that still will remain incredibly formidable next year if you look solely at stats from MSNCT this year. My favorite way of determining this is looking at the top-30ish teams at MSNCT, and scouring for players with high PPG below 8th grade that might compete next year. This being said, there are some very favorable candidates for MSNCT champions next year, solely looking at these criteria!
At their first MSNCT, Chenery was clearly an unstoppable their 7th place finish proving them a force to be reckoned with. Andrew Gao is a simply incredible player with PPG to blow out your mind, and extremely talented. To be on a team with a terminator and still score good PPG is really amazing for Daniel Sheffield and Zym Zeldovich, as they are extremely talented as well. There's only three of them right now, who knows if there'll be a fourth next year...? [insert eye emoji here].
Challenger-Strawberry Park, with their phenomenal t-5 finish at MSNCT, proved themselves once again that they are incredible. Neha Pandya and Sudhanva Belur both finished top 10 at IPNCT, and neither are graduating off next year. This poises them to continue to finish highly next year. I don't really have anything else to say besides that they are really, really good.
Burleigh Manor changed their roster for MSNCT this year, which caught me off guard, but also shows the strength of the 6th and 7th graders well. Their B team which finished 4th at MSNCT, quite impressively, consists of three sixth-graders. In fact-- there is an incredible amount of 6th and 7th graders on their A, B, and C team combined, each putting up good PPG. That seems to show that Burleigh Manor will continue to do well next year.
It was rather unfortunate that Westminster did not have their top player Samanyu Ganesh in the playoffs, but you should definitely vote for them on the team ballot. Aside from my digression, I think many of us were a bit shocked after seeing Westminster C up there in the playoffs at MSNCT with t-8. If they continue to perform this well, they might be a scary team next year.
So... my own school. To be honest, I don't think next year will be the year we win. I'd love to be proven wrong... actually please do. The top scorer from Middlesex B, Aiden Younessian, is definitely a scary force and you shouldn't count him out as he was an All-Star at MSNCT. Although there were only 3 non-8th graders from Middlesex at MSNCT this year, I should hope that together they make a great team to blow the competition away next year.
My experience in middle school Quiz Bowl have been truly amazing and I am grateful for all those who have made it so wonderful. Looking forward the future for continually more incredible competition.
Last edited by CCMMSQB_2089 on Wed May 25, 2022 7:52 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2021-22 MS Postseason Poll

Post by Nabgabber »

Some teams and players I will be voting for:

Chenery: Second place at MSNCT, as all seventh graders. Chenery was not only a surprisingly good team who many underestimated going into MSNCT, but they showed their deep knowledge throughout their run in playoffs. They have a bright future next year. I will also be voting for Chenery lead scorer Andrew Gao.

Longfellow A: First place at MSNCT. They have dominated at tournaments throughout the season and were also really balanced. All of their players deserve a vote in the player poll.

Greenhill A: They have had a really good season as well. They are also balanced like Longfellow and had an amazing run in playoffs, making it to the first stage of finals. Kate Ponnambalam and Evans Senvalds in particular are deserving of top 10 votes as players.

A lot of teams in the top 20 deserve votes. With that said, here are some more of those teams I personally noticed and will be voting for.

Middlesex A: Although Middlesex A underperformed in terms of their final ranking as a result of 10-point losses against 2 extremely good teams in playoffs, they nevertheless played very well. Neev Sahgal and Maya Pujara will be receiving votes from me.

Beckendorff A: Shilling time! We ended up t-13 and notched wins against California Montessori-Orangevale, Greenhill A, and Longfellow A. In addition to voting for myself, I will also be voting for my teammate Andy Truong, a hist player who in particular went 3/0/0 against the best history specialist in the country, Pranav Bharanidharan of California Montessori-Orangevale, and went 6/1/0 in the prelims against Winburn. In addition, I will be voting for my teammate Raghav Ahuja, who was undoubtedly shadowed playing alongside me and Andy but is nevertheless a very good player, as his stats from other tournaments show, in particular Matador Invitational https://www.naqt.com/stats/tournament/s ... t_id=13245 and TQBA HoHoHo https://www.naqt.com/stats/tournament/s ... t_id=12732 .

T. H. Rogers: Rogers played really well at MSNCT, notching a t-8 finish and beating Longfellow A in the playoffs, sending them into the loser's bracket. I will be voting for their lead scorer, Suhurrith Adhikari, who, in addition to leading his team to a top 10 finish, had a 57.5% power percentage.

Winburn: Winburn is really good. They gave us a really good fight in our two games against them, both times keeping the game close until the very end. I will be ranking them in the high 20s.

Westminster C: Westminster C made it very far in the playoffs, ending up t-8 and pulling off upset wins against Churchill A and Beckendorff A in the process. Despite their status as a C team, they are really good.

Middlesex B: Middlesex is one of those programs where both their A and B teams are a lot better than A teams from a lot of other schools. This year, Middlesex B ended up t-13 and was led by Aiden Younessian, who I will certainly be voting for.

Challenger-Strawberry Park A: Challenger-Strawberry is led by Sudhanva Belur and Neha Pandya, both seventh graders and both deserving of votes. They placed t-5 and their highlights included wins against Middlesex A and Burleigh Manor A in the playoffs. They have a bright future for the 2022-23 season.

California Montessori-Orangevale: Pranavkrishna Bharanidharan is the only player on his team, which placed t-13. He is really good and one of the best in the country. Vote for him very highly.

Prognostication:

My top 3 next year is, in no particular order:

Chenery
Challenger-Strawberry Park A
Burleigh Manor A (They split this year but have a lot of promising non-8th graders on both of their high-placing teams)

I also think Middlesex A and Churchill A will do well next year.

These are, of course, not all the teams and players I think you should consider.
Last edited by Nabgabber on Tue May 24, 2022 2:45 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: 2021-22 MS Postseason Poll

Post by QuizBro »

I'd like to further emphasize how good Krish Nathan (7th grade, Bumpus MS & Hoover HS) is. He has not played in any middle school tournament's other than ASCA district and state this year, which do not have powers or negs. As that is one of, if not the biggest factor when looking at how good an individual really is, he has not received much recognition. He was the MVP of ASCA Middle School State this year, and led his team to beat Discovery Middle twice in the finals. Yes, the same Discovery Middle that got 8th at MSNCT. Krish was also the highest scorer for Hoover's JV team at district and state (MVP in his division at district, the fourth highest scoring JV player at state), and he led Hoover B in scoring at HSNCT, a team that made it to the playoffs. This kid is in 7th grade. I would almost certainly have him on your ballot, possibly in the top 10.

https://www.naqt.com/stats/player/?contact_id=508278
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Re: 2021-22 MS Postseason Poll

Post by komododragon655 »

This year's season was certainly full of amazing teams and players. I will try my best to rank teams/players from all parts of the country based on skill in my ballots, but I will certainly miss some. Here are teams you should definitely vote for, teams you should consider, and just plain amazing teams who deserve a shoutout!

MSNCT top-4
- Longfellow. Longfellow is a very good team, and is far more balanced than most teams at MSNCT. A team where every player is above 20 PPG, and most are above 35 PPG is very impressive and usually means very good coverage of all the categories. I felt like many teams this year had the knowledge to get 1st at MSNCT, but few had the calm of Longfellow. From what I saw across the table, even during the close final, Longfellow stayed calm, took (read: powered) tossups one at a time and 30'd bonuses. Aarushi Kanigicherla is their science player, Anthony Zhao and Edward Burros are both very good at history, and Sarah Trainer seems to be a random knowledge player. They should all deserve consideration for their MSNCT win! Congrats! Coach Eugene Huang has, quite evidently, fostered a great program at Longfellow, and playing them in the finals was one of the highlights of my so far short quizbowl career!

- Chenery. We made the finals. Somehow. I'm certain part of our success can be attributed to having strong and awesome teammates. Zym Zeldovich and Daniel Sheffield are both very good players, who combined for 73 tossups (including 29 powers!). Harder questions in the playoffs definitely benefited us (I've gotten used to harder sets this year like DUOS, Scottie, COAST, and Prison Bowl, so the bump in playoff difficulty was advantageous for me, and for my teammates, who do very well off their "real knowledge!"). Additionally, a duo team of me and Zym won MINT (basically MS NASAT).

- Greenhill. Greenhill is yet another team that falls into the category of "extremely balanced, extremely good." Greenhill's neg control and consistency through playoffs definitely helped to propel them into the Winners' Bracket final, and later wins to place 3rd! Seeing Kate Ponnambalam and Evans Senvalds play and place highly at IPNCT scared me in the runup to nationals.

- Burleigh Manor B. Burleigh Manor B, composed of Brad Cao and former members of the top-16th-place-finishing Centennial Lane team at the 2021 MSNCT is a recipe for success. I watched a game of theirs, and can confirm they are indeed good at quizbowl. The team certainly wasn't lacking in history, and had very good coverage in other categories.

Traditional Powerhouses
Powerhouses this year include: Smith (NC), Meyzeek, Middlesex (A & B), Longfellow B, T. H. Rogers, Beckendorff, and Churchill.

I wanted to talk about a few teams in particular. Meyzeek is a perennially good team from Kentucky. I played them at nationals, and they're a really fun team with good chemistry and a great coach! This is another fairly balanced team, but Vallabh Ramesh stands out as quite good.

Some very good B teams are featured in the next three paragraphs. I think this season more than any other reinforced the (sometimes unclear and counterintuitive) idea that B teams are sometimes just as good as (or better than) A teams.

Middlesex A and B are also consistently good teams! They're both at the top of teams tied for 13th place at nats this season, and their stats are particularly impressive—7 powers/game for MMS A and 21.57 PPB. On Saturday, Middlesex B, led by Aiden Younessian, pulled some really great (albeit terrifying) upsets, including wins against Harvest Park (eventually 5th) and Burleigh B (eventually 4th). Playing against Middlesex is absolutely terrifying in the best way possible. Middlesex A has fantastic coverage—Neev Sahgal, Maya Pujara, Roman Gagliardi, and Matthew DelVecchio all deserve a big shoutout. I've played Middlesex B at Matador, and I remember Aidan being a very solid player with good baseline coverage in many categories. Part of Middlesex's success should definitely be attributed to their coaches, Ken Romeo and Andrew Turriago, who I've met in person and are fantastic. At this point, Charter Oak (the tournament they run) is just there so their teams can get absolutely absurd power numbers. I've noticed generally that Middlesex is very dominant on MS questions.

Longfellow B. Longfellow B is a very good and fun team that I've been able to talk with online. Sophia Guo is very good at AFA, and Alan Tang is quite good at history, from what I've observed.

Churchill B is also a very good B team! They have strong coverage in many areas—I think Nicholas Munkhbaataar is very good at literature and Meghna Rao is very good at science.

Often Overlooked Teams
I haven't played them, but stats seem to show Discovery, Emerson, Sycamore School, and White Station are quite good and have flown under most people's radar. With the exception of Emerson, MSNCT were these school's first MSQBRank-eligible tournament. They certainly made a splashy entrance, beating teams like Barrington Middle-Station, Howard, Hunter, Middlesex B, Annunciation Orthodox A, Smith A (NC), and not-full Westminster A.

Heritage is a very strong team up in the northeast! Arav Kaushik and Jack Liu are both quite good and extremely scary when put on the same team. Heritage is quite good at history if I recall correctly, and I remember Arav being quite good at math and literature. Heritage finished t-21 at MSNCT, defeating teams like Sycamore School, St. John's A, and Chapin by solid margins.

Honorable Mentions
- Annunciation Orthodox A & B. Annunciation Orthodox B specifically had an amazing team of 7th graders I played on Saturday prelims! I would not be surprised if Alex Ewart were a big name next year since he is very good, and very! nice.
- Hunter. Hunter, led this year by Dune Jeorg did very well, and had very good neg control for most of their games. I remember our game against them was very close at the half, and they should probably deserve votes. All of Hunter’s players are graduating this year, but I expect to see another great team next season!
- Barrington Middle-Station. Barrington finished tied at 13th, notching a close win against St. Benedict. Kaitlyn Leonard is very good, and her support, Matias Handley, Luke Keller, and William Yao did about equally as good. Kaitlyn did quite well at the IPNCT too, buzzing out second ahead of Kate Ponnambolam and Padraig Finan.

Teams that don't fit into any of the above categories, but you should definitely vote for are:
Westminster, led by Samanyu Ganesh (who is very, very, good at science, especially math), who won Matador Invitational in March. Just to represent the depth of Westminster’s program, their C team finished t-8! California Montessori-Orangevale, which literally just geo/hist/science/basically everything player Pranavkrishna Bharanidharan should definitely get votes. I'll talk about Pranavkrishna more in the 'Top Players' section, but getting t-13 solo at MSNCT is obviously no easy feat. Some other very good California teams include Bret Harte and Harker.

Harvest Park, led by Karthik Anbazhagan and Shounak Bhindwale absolutely decimated the H-M limit in one of the best MS quizbowl performances in history. Harvest Park was 2nd and 3rd in prelims/playoff PPB, respectively, and had the highest powers/game of the whole tournament!

Challenger-Strawberry Park is also a very good team that I, unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately for my PPG) did not play this season. I've met Neha Pandya and Sudhanva Belur at IPNCT, where they both made finals and finished impressively. Neha is a very good humanities player with impressive neg control, 22/23/0 at MSNCT. Sudhanva seems to cover a lot of the same categories (plus science), predictably leading to overlap and an intense shadow effect. Raaghav Chakravarthy from Challenger-Strawberry Park should also not be missed.

Teams that I haven't played but you should consider are: River Trail, Anderson, White Station, Howard—basically any MSNCT t-33 team. Teams that didn't go to MSNCT that you should hear about are Cooper, Cistercian, Richmond A & B, and Clarke.

Cooper (ranked eighth in MSQBRank) had an absolutely stellar performance at Burleigh Manor's Middle School Invitational. They beat a very good Burleigh team handily—they are quite dominant at the MS level.

Cistercian is a very good and balanced team from Texas who finished 6th at SPRING, a national SCOP mirror I ran. Their A team had a very, very, solid PPB of 23.5 that tournament.

Richmond A and B have been historically quite good, and a team I will continue to fear as I enter my last year of playing middle school quizbowl in the northeast. I recall playing their A team at the Matador Invitational, where we won by 5-points after we guessed the last part of a comp math bonus. I faced their (equally good!) B team, led by Chris Chor and Ray Menkov twice at the MEQBA Middle School Madness tournament. Richmond never seems to have a shortage of very good middle schoolers, so they will be a force to reckon with northeast tournaments!

Clarke is a middle school in Lexington, Massachusetts. Seventh graders Melody Zou and Amal Balachundhar are running the fun and very good program there. Andrew Wu is also very good in history/geography. It'll certainly be interesting playing them next year (hopefully at nats too!).

Top Players
Everyone in the ~top 30 scorers at MSNCT plus other great specialists on balanced teams should definitely be on your player ballot! These talented middle schoolers include:

- Pranavkrishna Bharanidharan. Pranavkrishna is the obvious #1 best middle schooler for this season. He finished 1st in the MS IPNCT, and it wasn’t even close (despite Evans Senvalds being a very good player). Pranavkrishna soloed his way to t-13 at MSNCT, defeating very good teams like Hunter and Heritage along the way (with a 5-point loss to Beckendorff A).

- Eleanor Heydt. I played Eleanor at MINT and saw her play at ROAR this weekend. I can confirm she is very, very, good at fine arts and also literature (combined six powers at DART and nine at RAFT- best in FA).

- Sanjay Rajagopal is also very good at fine arts. He was a part of the Smith A team that finished t-21 at this year’s MSNCT.

- Andrew Gao. My categories are literature, modern history, geography, current events, and apparently FA/PSS. I am quite a swingy player, so a bad packet (or very good team *cough* middlesex *cough*) could make my stats take a nosedive. At MSNCT, I went from 10/2/0 in round 7 of prelims to 0/1/0 in round 9 of prelims.

- Neev Sahgal from Middlesex Middle School is a very good (and very underrated) generalist. I think Sivaneyan Vivekanandhan put it best on the Middle School Quizbowl Discussion server, “neev is [cracked] at [whatever] he puts his mind to.”

- Speaking of Siv, you should vote for him! Sivaneyan Vivekanandhan is a good history specialist and I think overall generalist. Siv was the only member of last season’s three Churchill teams to not graduate, and definitely helped to carry Churchill to a t-21 finish!

- Samanyu Ganesh. I mentioned Samanyu earlier but he is definitely someone you should rank high. Samanyu is probably the best science player by a mile, and especially good at math.

- Both Shounak Bhindwale and Karthik Anbazhagan from Harvest Park should get votes.

- Suhurrith Adhikari and Aditya Khambekar are Texas people who I think deserve votes. Aditya is a myth + religion player, and Suhurrith is very good at history!

- Dune Joerg led Hunter to another great year of MSNCT this year, finishing t-21! I will be voting for Dune in the low 10s!

Next Year!
- Challenger Strawberry Park A will continue to be good, only losing Raaghav but retaining Sudhanva Belur and Neha Pandya.
- Chenery. We’ll, unfortunately, be losing some good 8th graders like Luca Hu, and Daniel Sheffield will not be going to Chenery next year. We will still have the rest of our MSNCT team, though, so I expect some good results next year!

- Burleigh Manor. I didn’t really appreciate how good Burleigh’s B team was until they averaged 2 powers a game against us at MINT. To have sixth-graders Satvik Jain, Sahil Prasad, and Henry Berger be powering that much on a regs-plus set (one not easy to power!) is absolutely insane. Brad Cao was also on that Burleigh, or I guess Maryland “B” team, and he deserves votes too.

- Cooper is obviously very good as I’ve mentioned earlier. It seems like the trend with good middle school teams is having good elementary school feeders.

Apologies if I misspelled any team/player names. This post turned out wayyy longer than I anticipated, but I hope it did a fine job of shilling teams who have probably flown under people's radar. This season was awesome and I think all the teams I have encountered deserve recognition. With that being said, I highly await next season with its new up-and-coming teams, MSNCT, rankings, and polls (which I will hopefully write a 38-paragraph shill essay to one-up myself).
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Re: 2021-22 MS Postseason Poll

Post by CPiGuy »

The deadline for ballot submission is extended by a week on the grounds of "I don't want to compile results while staffing PACE so might as well give everyone more time".
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Re: 2021-22 MS Postseason Poll

Post by CPiGuy »

Thanks to all the voters. Here are the poll results for this year.

In the player poll there were seven voters: myself, Andrew Gao, Aditya Khambekar, Neev Sahgal, and three others.
All these voters also voted in the team poll, as did Anthony Zhao, Todd Gunther, and the MSQBRank team, for a total of nine.

Players
1. Pranavkrishna Bharanidharan, California Montessori Orangevale (175 points, unanimous #1)
2. Andrew Gao, Chenery (162 points, high 2, low 5)
3. Shounak Bhindwale, Harvest Park (148 points, high 3, low 7)
4. Samanyu Ganesh, Westminster (143 points, high 2, low 12)
T5. Kate Ponnambalam, Greenhill (139 points, high 2, low 14)
T5. Neev Sahgal, Middlesex (139 points, high 2, low 15)
7. Evans Sendvalds, Greenhill (127 points, high 4, low 12)
8. Karthik Anbazhagan, Harvest Park (120 points, high 6, low 13)
9. Sudhanva Belur, Challenger Strawberry Park (107 points, high 6, ranked on 6 ballots)
10. Anthony Zhao, Longfellow (97 points, high 8, low 16)
11. Brad Cao, Burleigh Manor (77 points, high 4, ranked on 6 ballots)
T12. Timothy Deng, Harker (66 points, high 5, low 23)
T12. Suhurrith Adhikari, T. H. Rogers (66 points, high 11, ranked on 5 ballots)
14. Sivaneyan Vivekanandhan, Churchill (65 points, high 9, ranked on 6 ballots)
15. Neha Pandya, Challenger Strawberry Park (64 points, high 6, ranked on 5 ballots)
16. Dhruv Veda, Burleigh Manor (60 points, high 7, ranked on 4 ballots)
17. Edward Burros, Longfellow (57 points, high 9, ranked on 6 ballots)
18. Aditya Khambekar, Beckendorff (53 points, high 11, ranked on 6 ballots)
19. Aarushi Kanigicherla, Longfellow (52 points, high 11, ranked on 5 ballots)
20. Michael Jayoung Im, Bret Harte (51 points, high 8, ranked on 5 ballots)
21. Eleanor Heydt, Howard (44 points, high 12, ranked on 6 ballots)
22. Matthew Yang, Burleigh Manor (37 points, high 10, ranked on 3 ballots)
T23. Aiden Younessian, Middlesex (35 points, high 12, ranked on 5 ballots)
T23. Dune Joerg, Hunter (35 points, high 18, ranked on 6 ballots)
T25. Satvik Jain, Burleigh Manor (18 points, high 17, ranked on 2 ballots)
T25. Alex Ewart, Annunciation Orthodox (18 points, high 15, ranked on 3 ballots)

Also receiving votes:
Sarah Trainer, Longfellow (11)
Maya Pujara, Middlesex (11)
Madhav Thakur, Anderson (10)
Krish Nathan, Bumpus (10)
George Birdsong, Cistercian (9)
Aaron Kuang, Greenhill (9)
An Truong, Beckendorff (9)
Sahil Prasad, Burleigh Manor (8)
Atul Ganesh, Boulan Park (8)
Kunal Pikle, Village (7)
Nathan Oreskovic, Washington (6)
Arav Kaushik, Heritage (5)
Jeremy Kantsiper, Burleigh Manor (4)
Alen Marhic, Westminster (3)
Sanjay Rajagopal, Smith [NC] (3)
Meghna Rao, Churchill (2)
Maya Jagsi, Greenhill (2)
Raghav Ahuja, Beckendorff (1)
Kaitlyn Leonard, Barrington Station (1)

As the poll shows (there were 45 players receiving votes this year!), there are far more excellent players than can fit on any top 25 poll. Congratulations to all the players listed above and to everyone else who played MS quizbowl this year on an excellent season.

On to the team poll. In a first this year, one of the nine ballots was contributed by MSQBRank, a ranking algorithm that recognizes each team's best performance from throughout the year.

Teams
1. Longfellow A, Falls Church, VA (245 points, 7 first place votes, low 4)
2. Greenhill, Addison, TX (232 points, 2 first place votes, low 5)
3. Harvest Park, Pleasanton, CA (230 points, high 2, low 6)
4. Chenery, Belmont, MA (216 points, high 3, low 13)
5. Challenger - Strawberry Park, San Jose, CA (197 points, high 4, low 11)
6. Middlesex A, Darien, CT (193 points, high 3, low 8)
7. Burleigh Manor A, Ellicott City, MD (191 points, 1 first place vote, low 12)
8. Westminster A, Atlanta, GA (186 points, high 5, low 10)
9. Burleigh Manor B, Ellicott City, MD (169 points, high 4, low 15)
10. Beckendorff, Katy, TX (146 points, high 7, low 16)
11. California Montessori - Orangevale, Orangevale, CA (136 points, high 10, low 15)
12. T. H. Rogers, Houston, TX (131 points, high 7, low 20)
13. Longfellow B, Falls Church, VA (126 points, high 10, low 23)
14. Churchill A, Carmichael, CA (114 points, high 9, low 20)
15. Middlesex B, Darien, CT (112 points, high 8, low 20)
16. Harker, San Jose, CA (101 points, high 11, low 22)
17. Meyzeek, Louisville, KY (73 points, high 10, ranked on 8 ballots)
18. Cooper, McLean, VA (67 points, high 8, ranked on 8 ballots)
19. Discovery, Madison, AL (42 points, high 14, ranked on 6 ballots)
20. Westminster C, Atlanta, GA (37 points, high 14, ranked on 5 ballots)
21. Hunter, New York, NY (34 points, high 17, ranked on 7 ballots)
T22. Smith, Chapel Hill, NC (32 points, high 19, ranked on 7 ballots)
T22. Emerson, Ann Arbor, MI (32 points, high 17, ranked on 5 ballots)
24. Barrington Station, Barrington, IL (29 points, high 18, ranked on 5 ballots)
25. Howard, Atlanta, GA (27 points, high 19, ranked on 5 ballots)

Also receiving votes:
Bumpus, Hoover, AL (22)
Heritage, Livingston, NJ (21)
St. John's, Houston, TX (18)
Cistercian, Irving, TX (16)
Seoul Foreign, Seoul, SK (16)
Churchill B, Carmichael, CA (11)
Anderson, New York, NY (10)
Bret Harte, San Jose, CA (10)
Annunciation Orthodox B, Houston, TX (8)
Winburn, Lexington, KY (6)
White Station, Memphis, TN (4)
Burleigh Manor C, Ellicott City, MD (3)
Brentwood, Brentwood, TN (2)
Boulan Park, Troy, MI (2)
Sycamore, Indianapolis, IN (2)
Richmond B, Hanover, NH (1)

Unfortunately there were only three votes for the predictions poll (from me, Andrew Gao, and Anthony Zhao). The results follow:

Predictions for 2023
1. Burleigh Manor (14 points, 2 first place votes, low 2)
2. Chenery (13 points, 1 first place vote, low 2)
3. Challenger - Strawberry Park (8 points, high 3, low 4)
T4. Westminster (3 points, high 4, ranked on 2 ballots)
T4. Middlesex (3 points, high 3, ranked on 1 ballot)

Also receiving votes:
Cooper (2)
Annunciation Orthodox (1)
Churchill (1)

Thanks once again to everyone who voted in this poll, and congratulations once again to the many incredible players and teams we've seen on the buzzer this past season.
Conor Thompson (he/it)
Bangor High School '16
University of Michigan '20
Iowa State University '25
Tournament Format Database
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