Southern California 2022-23 Discussion

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Southern California 2022-23 Discussion

Post by Yaj »

The new season is about to start for Southern California with Rancho Bernardo’s Bronco Bowl IV next weekend, and since there was at least some interest in a discussion thread for this year, I decided now would be a good time for a preseason post. Anyone else from SoCal, please help me in this thread, because it’s my first time doing this and I don’t really know what I’m doing. 😄

Overall, I doubt anyone would currently consider SoCal to have any absolutely dominant teams like we have seen in the past. The departure of Arcadia’s Amogh Kulkarni and Ryan Sun, two of the greatest players in the country, means we likely do not have any national contenders in the circuit, and one could reasonably say that this might be the weakest SoCal has been in a few years. However, don’t come away from this thinking that this is going to be a very unimpressive season for the circuit, because we still have some extremely good players, as well as an abundance of teams who seem to be committed to improving. I think it is highly likely that we will have many HSNCT playoff-level teams who can make very good runs by the end of this year.

Team Analysis

I should probably note here that although these teams are intended to be listed roughly in order of how I expect them to perform this year, this is highly variable for some teams that I am not as familiar with or those with new players. Also, lineups and main subjects for players are speculative and I apologize if I’ve made any errors with either.

Westview A: Rahul Jogadhenu (11 - literature, history), Richard Lin (12 - history, generalism), Pramod Shastry (12 - history), and others

The lineup for this team changed at nearly every tournament last year, so I’m really not sure about the presence of anyone consistently besides probably Richard and Rahul. Still, this goes to show how much potential Westview has, having so many players in their program who have put up very good performances in the past. I am absolutely confident that they will also be able to field B lineups that will not trail far behind their A team at tournaments.

Westview’s HSNCT run from last year shows just how good this team can be. A duo consisting solely of Richard and Rahul was able to make playoffs, albeit unfortunately being eliminated in the first round. Specifically, Richard Lin is an extremely good player who had an insane improvement in the leadup to HSNCT. If he has improved over the summer as much as he did back then, then this is his year. He already placed 13th in prelims PPG at nats, and scored 250 points just in the two playoff rounds at SRIRACHA! II. Rahul also is impressive, with a power percentage at HSNCT of 41.7%.

Westview did not have many graduating seniors last year, so much of their arsenal of players remains. I don’t know too much about the others, but from what I can tell, some combination of Pramod Shastry, Vasu Kashipara (11), Adarsh Venkateswaran (11), Jonathan Ding (12), Maximilian Liu (11), and many more will be able to add to the team extremely well. The problem is that, looking at stats, it doesn’t seem like any of these players are able to consistently perform better than the others; they all have really good days at certain tournaments. A team with each of them at their best would be unstoppable, and Westview has historically also been able to scale well on higher-difficulty sets, giving me high hopes for them. We’ll see how this goes for them this year, but having registered two teams for Bronco Bowl’s Varsity division, maybe we can hope that Westview is going to try to more consistently perform this season. They have a lot of potential that, if unlocked, could make them one of the best teams in the country.

Del Norte A: Madhumita Narayan (12 - generalism), Conner Feng (11 - generalism), Kinish Sathish (12 - history), Rohan Gaikwad (11 - generalism), and Raunak Mondal (10), Brandon Chu (10), or Jean Kim (12)

I rank Del Norte below Westview only because their full lineup was unable to qualify for playoffs at last year’s HSNCT, unlike the two-person squad that Westview sent, but it should be noted that there is a good chance that this was due to some combination of the weird bracketing of that tournament, the absence of some good players from Del Norte, and Conner Feng’s unfortunate sushi food poisoning incident on Saturday. In Atlanta, Del Norte put up a higher power count, PPG, and PPB than Westview, so both teams are very good and will probably be battling it out to be the best in the circuit this season. This is one match that I’m definitely looking forward to see next weekend.

Conner Feng had a very good statline at HSNCT, notably with 17 powers over 10 games and a PPG of 60.51. He still has another two years in the game, and probably will be the best or second best player in the circuit, tied with Richard Lin. Conner is supported by Madhumita Narayan, a generalist who is very good at literature and science. She led the team to third place at the 2022 SoCal States, where they only placed lower than Amogh and Ryan’s respective solo teams. These two will likely be the core of Del Norte A this year, although they do have support from some good history and science players. That being said, Del Norte’s category stats from PPT V show a pretty decent coverage of all categories, which they seem to be more or less splitting up among all of their members. There is a lot of talent in their program, and I doubt they will be underperforming my expectations much this season, given the abundance of young players in their school’s program.

Canyon Crest A: Chris Jung (12 - literature, science), Claire Wang (10 - literature, fine arts), Yaj Jhajhria (11 - history, philosophy, visual fine arts), Andrew Tsui (11 - visual fine arts, history), and maybe Karthik Jandhyala (11 - India)

I would like to say that CCA is committed to improving this year, but there are some setbacks that we will have to overcome if we intend on doing so. Loathe as I am to admit it, Leo Gu had a very solid coverage of history which will be tough for Tsuidrew and me to fill in. He has proved himself to possess an incredibly deep knowledge that has gotten him some crazy firstlines. Still, I feel the need to mention that no longer having to deal with antics such as this will be nice.

Chris and Claire are extremely good players who will undoubtedly be our top scorers this year. Claire especially has the most potential, being a sophomore with a very solid and reliable coverage of literature and fine arts, so you should absolutely prepare to see her become one of the best players in the circuit in the future. She claims to be trying to increase her neg count, though, so our influence may be deteriorating her already. College apps might have an impact on Chris’s performance this season, but her knowledge is so vast that I still anticipate her doing very well and still getting many deep buzzes. I say this with a lot of hope, too, considering that she’s basically carrying all of science for us right now.

Andrew Tsui started out in quizbowl as a history player, but near the end of last season showed crazy improvement in visual fine arts before PACE. He has very good coverage of this subject, and I am probably justified in saying that may be the best VFA player in the circuit. On the other hand, it’s damn near impossible to wake him up for tournaments so we’ll have to figure out how to solve that problem. Finally, my analysis of myself is going to be flawed since I’m a weirdly swingy player and also biased, but I think that I’m a mid-tier player who can provide decent coverage in current events, geography, history, and philosophy, with some support in math, physics, visual fine arts, and any tossups cluing the first chapter of Norwegian Wood.

Rancho Bernardo: John Francis Dy (12), Adam Smith (12 - generalism?), Bolun Thompson (11), Anna Liu (12)

Rancho Bernardo had a very sudden appearance in the circuit last year, and despite having few high-finishing performances at varsity-level tournaments, they did prove themselves to be formidable opponents from my experience playing them at SRIRACHA! II. Adam Smith put up 78 points per game in the prelims there, and they came within 20 points of beating us in the first round. Unfortunately, they were unable to put up a very high PPB and went 2-3 in prelims, although it should be noted that each loss was by a close margin. We sadly did not get to see this team at HSNCT, but I can definitely anticipate this team coming up and surprising us all with a breakout season this year. They won’t be participating in their own tournament, so we will have to wait until PPT VI in November to see how they do. (And speaking of which, you should all definitely sign up for PPT this year! It will be lots of fun and the neg prize is a date with Tsuidrew)

Santa Monica: Delaney O’Dea (11), Dashiell Decker (12), Maxima de la Vega (12), Danny Chmaytelli (12) ???

I’m too unfamiliar with Santa Monica’s current players to be able to provide much analysis on them, but their program has historically been able to produce many good new players. As I understand, quizbowl is a school class at SaMo, so perhaps they can make a really good comeback. Their performance last season unfortunately went downhill from PPT at the beginning, but I’d be really happy to see a new batch of players emerge.

Arcadia: ???

I don’t think anyone would have disputed the claim that for the past two years, Arcadia was a candidate for the best quizbowl team, period. Nearly all of their players from then have graduated, though, so I’m unsure about their future. Just like Santa Monica, their program has historically produced good players after others’ departures, so perhaps there is a comeback in store for this team.

Other Teams

After this point, I have minimal knowledge about the rest of the teams. Francis Parker came out of nowhere to dominate the circuit, but all except Nina Mohanty (12) on their team have graduated. I do have a lot of hope for B teams this season, although their exact lineups may be uncertain at the moment. As mentioned previously, Westview B can definitely become a serious contender for third or fourth best SoCal team. (I should also note that Anvit Watwani (10) has done very well at JV and MS-level tournaments in the past, but hasn’t been to a varsity tournament yet. He could be an additional asset to the Westview roster.) Given the number of new freshmen we received who are very enthusiastic about quizbowl, I also think that Canyon Crest B might become quite good either this season or next.

Now is basically where I name less active programs that came to tournaments last year. Bishop’s had a good run for their first regular quizbowl tournament at PPT, but we unfortunately never saw them again. Olympian, St. Margaret’s, and Sage Hill did well at various tournaments last year, so hopefully we might see a resurgence from their programs. Word on the street is that High Bluff, with Cole Quanstrom leading them, might participate in the circuit. Viewpoint, San Dieguito, St. Augustine, Our Lady of Peace, Scripps Ranch, and Chaparral also were active in tournaments last year, and could return this year.

Final Thoughts

All in all, the circuit definitely has a lot of promising players and teams, so I’m really excited to see how this turns out this year! I do apologize if the quality of this post was not as good as those in the past or for any inaccuracies that may be in it — if you’d like me to change anything, please let me know and I’d be happy to edit it. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone at Bronco Bowl next weekend!
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Re: Southern California 2022-23 Discussion

Post by Yaj »

Bronco Bowl IV happened at Rancho Bernardo last weekend, so we got to see what most of the teams this year are looking like to start the season off. First of all, though, I’d like to thank everyone at RBHS for hosting the tournament and making it run very smoothly; my team and I had a lot of fun, and my novices for whom this was their first tournament seemed to enjoy it very much!

Del Norte A swept the field to win the tournament, led by generalist Conner Feng (11). His performance was insane — putting up 114 points per game throughout the day and having more powers than most other teams. I was unsure in my previous post whether Del Norte or Westview would be the strongest team coming into the season, but last Saturday seems to show that Conner Feng intends to keep this title for Del Norte. This is even more impressive considering that they played without their second scorer and literature main Madhumita Narayan (12), indicating that this might not even be them at their strongest. These two definitely have support from their teammates though, with all members averaging close to one power per game. In particular, I remember Kinish Sathish (12) having some very impressive powers on history. This team’s science coverage is also overall very strong, so if they had Madhumita on their team they would likely have all of the big three categories covered very well.

Westview A went 8-2, losing to Del Norte twice to place second overall. This team has good coverage in all categories and can pull off very good wins, as evidenced by their match against us in the sixth round. However, even with lead scorer Richard Lin (12) joining them in the playoff rounds, their power count lags behind Del Norte and Canyon Crest. Regardless, their PPB with Richard is remarkable and is how they are able to win by such large margins even without a huge lead in converted tossups. Jonathan Ding (12), Rahul Jogadhenu (11), and Adarsh Venkateswaran (11) were all very strong teammates as well, getting many very clutch buzzes. Westview A is clearly a serious team that has the capability to pull off very dominant wins.

Canyon Crest A placed third after losing to Westview and Del Norte in the playoff rounds. Statistically, we had the second-best performance today, but this is a little bit of a flawed observation as we were missing top scorer Claire Wang (10) in the playoffs and Westview did not have Richard in the prelims. In my opinion, we could have definitely performed better at this tournament and got unlucky in some games, which was likely exacerbated by the fact that we were unable to field a full team to any of the rounds. As mentioned, literature and AFA-based generalist Claire was not there in the afternoon, while our literature and science player Chris Jung (12) and VFA/history specialist Andrew Tsui (11) came for the playoffs only. Additionally, in a tragic turn of events, it appears that I have taken up Leo’s duty of having the most negs in SoCal. Despite this, we have definitely improved since last season and have rebuilt the loss of our seniors well, with Claire and I having the third and fourth-best PPG in the field, respectively. I think our problem is that, besides Claire, we are one of the most inconsistent teams right now. As stats show, I can score anywhere from 45 to 95 points in a given game, while our PPB has been anywhere between 12.86 and 23.33. This is probably attributable to our very deep but specific knowledge, and its a problem we are going to have to solve moving forward, especially for tournaments with elimination brackets such as HSNCT. We are working on a solution that involves locking Andrew Tsui in a box and making him memorize every clue in Protobowl, so look out for updates on that.

Francis Parker A appears to be rebounding quick from losing the majority of last year’s nationals team, placing fourth and having decent coverage of every category. From what I can tell, they are a team with very solid base knowledge that is branching out into more niche specializations. My observations of them may not be incredibly accurate, as the two games that we played them appear to be among their unluckiest games of the day from looking at their PPG and PPB. As such, my analysis on them is limited but it does look like they are a solid team that with more preparation can meet or even surpass the level that their team last year was able to reach.

Losing Henry Morales and the rest of last year’s lineup has not seemed to stop Olympian A demonstrating their capability as a competitive team in this circuit. In addition to being one of the friendliest teams we met last weekend, they were able to easily 30 some bonuses and had some seriously impressive firstlines. This team seems quite similar to Francis Parker in terms of their knowledge, but definitely with areas of very deep knowledge that they can utilize to score a lot of points against strong teams. This seems to be how they came very close to beating Westview A in round 8, losing by only 30 points. Compare that to the 255 points that CCA lost to Westview by and the 260 in Francis Parker’s game against them, and you can see how this team is absolutely capable of pulling off major upsets.

Solo and house team Rancho Bernardo A competed with just Adam Smith (12) on its roster, yet still managed to make playoffs. While I think that this says more about the strength of the field, Adam has still clearly demonstrated his strength as a science specialist with the ability to buzz in most other categories. Obviously, his prelim and playoff PPGs of 96 and 58 are insane but likely inflated by playing solo. More significant, I think, is his average of 2.5 powers per game. From what I remember, most of his powers were in science, and it shows his dominance in this category. If a full Rancho Bernardo lineup can cover the other big three categories decently, they can be a very consistent and strong team. Unfortunately, Adam says that he cannot make it to PPT in November, so we may have to wait a while before we are able to see Rancho Bernardo field a full team to a tournament.

I’ve only played three of the teams that did not make the champs bracket in the playoffs, so I can’t really analyze them that much. I still have some observations, though. Westview B swept the consolation bracket, and Anvit Watwani (10) averaged 66.25 points per game in the afternoon. All members on this lineup could do well as a B team and even potentially make it to HSNCT playoffs, although they will have to improve their PPB of 13.76. The same goes for Del Norte B, which had many strong players and put up slightly better numbers than Westview B, but lost to them in the afternoon while missing top scorer Raunak Mondal (10). Scripps Ranch also had a decent run, having the highest PPB in the consols and with top scorer Lawrence Lo scoring 55 PPG. Overall, though, these teams all likely need improvement before being able to make playoffs at a tournament this season.

Once again, thank you to everyone who helped coordinate and staff Bronco Bowl! It was great to get an early start to the season and to see some familiar faces again. And last but not least, be sure to sign up for PPT VI on November 12 for another awesome day of quizbowl!
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Re: Southern California 2022-23 Discussion

Post by Yaj »

It’s been nearly five months since my last update in this thread, but now that PPT, Triton Winter, and DNE happened and we got to see some more teams play at (more or less) full capacity, I feel like it would be a good time to revisit the circuit and see where things stand. Think of this as a two-months-late midseason post or something. Also, since I did not go to Triton Winter and spent most of PPT in the control room, much of my updated analysis will come from observations at DNE coupled with stats.

Del Norte A seems to be pretty solidly the strongest team in the circuit at the moment. Conner Feng (11) is an extremely strong generalist, putting up 4.3 powers per game at Bronco Bowl on a team that had some strong specialists as well. I don’t think theres much more for me to say about him, since we have only seen him play at two regular-difficulty tournaments this year. He averaged 1.7 P/G and 60.51 PPG at last year’s HSNCT, so he probably can scale well to nationals-difficulty. The question is how much support he can get from his teammates at that difficulty, seeing as unbalanced teams tend to have a couple bad games for their lead scorer that can cost them. Madhumita Narayan (11) provided some solid backup at HSNCT, although she has not played any tournaments this year. Kinish Sathish (12) put up a decent 7/2/0 statline on history at Bronco Bowl and was the second scorer at both Bronco Bowl and PPT, but we have yet to see him play anything harder than regs difficulty. The same goes for Jack Bruvold (11), who was the lead scorer on a shorthanded Del Norte team at Triton Winter and put up an impressive 15/40/2 overall statline. That being said, I'm not sure if any of these players can scale up to a level where they can provide Conner some insurance on an HSNCT-difficulty set. Regardless, a Conner Feng-led Del Norte will still likely outperform most other SoCal teams as things stand right now.

Canyon Crest A recently won DNE and put up the highest stats (P/G, PPG, and nearly PPB) there, so I would put us as being the second-best SoCal team currently. Our strength probably lies in the fact that we have three players who would very likely be top scorers on many other teams with their breadth of knowledge, yet who still have very deep knowledge in certain categories when playing together. Claire Wang (10) is very good at fine arts and Chris Jung (12) can get a ton of early science buzzes, and both can cover nearly all of literature very well. Their deep coverage of their respective subjects is demonstrated by their ability to convert some of the more obscure answerlines in DART III tossups that would have likely gone dead otherwise. Chris put up a 4/10/2 statline on science at DNE and had the most literature powers (6/7/1) while playing next to Claire, who is also an extremely good player. They both shadow each other very hard because of their overlap in specialties, but still put up absolutely bananas numbers. Meanwhile, I myself have increasingly more decent history and Religion/PSS coverage, with pockets of knowledge in science and fine arts as well. An interesting thing to note is that the three of us each have one Big Three category that we almost never buzz on — mine is literature, Claire’s is science, and Chris’s is history. Our overlaps do make us very strong at the regs level, although my primary concern is in our ability to scale, seeing as our deeper knowledge is highly specialized. For instance, our holes in higher-difficulty mythology and Ancient/American history could be highly detrimental to our success at nationals. I also think none of us are really studying right now, which certainly doesn’t help. We hopefully will be able to fix some of this come May.

Westview A is looking stronger than ever right now, with Richard Lin (12) having recently stated his intention to take advantage of “more chances to let Westview sweep unchallenged” shortly after their victory at Triton Winter. Though this did not happen at DNE (🙂), they remain a strong team under Richard and Pramod Shastry (12). Though he is pretty much a generalist at this point, Richard is very strong in science, especially biology and chemistry, while also having decent knowledge in history. Pramod backs him up very well in history, and Adarsh Venkateswaran (11) and Rahul Jogadhenu (11) are a decent literature duo. Also, Anvit Watwani (10) has finally been subject to the rule of law and is playing varsity tournaments, where he gives Westview good literature and fine arts coverage. Together, this team is more cohesive than you’d think and covers the canon very well. An interesting thing I’ve noticed with Westview at every tournament this year is that they somehow put up noticeably lower power counts than all other top teams, yet always make up for it in PPB. Even in category stats, there are some categories where they might not be buzzing on as much, but still have >20 PPB. I’m not really sure how this works, but it does win games for them. Westview does have a bit of a scaling issue though. When playing a regs set like IS-219, three of their members put up PPGs and power counts close to each other. On DART, however, Richard was the only member of their team putting up over one power per game. Some of this might be attributable to the lack of Pramod on their lineup at DNE or this team just being better on NAQT, but they may still need to work on their scaling if they want to make playoffs again at HSNCT.

Rancho Bernardo A, under the captainship of John Francis Dy (12), has proven that they intend to evolve into a very strong team. Their lead scorer is Adam Smith (12), who might be one of the best science specialists I’ve ever seen. He scales like crazy and I remember some ridiculously early buzzes from him on both IS-213 and DART. His 16/5/3 statline on science was miles better than anyone else at DNE, especially in chemistry and physics, where he powered about half the tossups in both categories. Outside of science, he seems to also have solid coverage of history, religion, mythology, and some literature. Overall, he’s a very valuable player for RBHS whose strength is demonstrated by him leading the power count at DNE. Supporting Adam are Bolun Thompson (11) and Jackson Rudolph (12). I’m honestly not familiar enough with them to know too much about what they do, but they are very strong players who I seem to recall getting early history buzzes. RB overall has some very deep knowledge as a team, which is shown by their 4.7 P/G at DNE (compare that to CCA’s 5 P/G) and 7.25 P/G at Triton Winter, the highest in the field for the latter.

Olympian A had one of the most impressive performances at PPT, finishing tied for third and missing the finals match in a heartbreakingly close three-way PPG tiebreak with Del Norte and Rancho Bernardo. Perhaps more remarkable were their two consecutive overtime wins, both being clutch powers from Dylan Rafael Yamzon (11). Dylan appears to have improved a lot since the beginning of the season at Bronco Bowl, and he has a lot to show for it. He is very good at science, leading the field overall and in physics and chemistry at PPT. Equally impressive is Martin Auriel Costa (12), who is probably the best fine arts player in the circuit and also provides good history support. Literature might be a weakness for this team, although they may have been improving on that since PPT, where category stats were last tracked. Olympian might be the fastest-improving team in SoCal from the way their stats look right now, and given that the team almost entirely consists of juniors and sophomores right now, I’m excited to see how they perform for the rest of this season and the next.

Francis Parker, like CCA, appears to have mostly an ensemble cast of strong players without any dedicated specialists. They are led by Nina Mohanty (12) and Jonas Brown (10), both of whom are strong players capable of buzzing in most major categories. Category stats show that Jonas is probably the stronger literature player and Nina is more history-oriented, although I’m not sure how accurately this represents their actual specialties since there is a somewhat significant variation in their numbers for Bronco Bowl and PPT. Besides Nina and Jonas, Grant Cardosa (11) provides solid backup and gets early buzzes in a variety of categories. From the times that I’ve played or modded for them, I’ve noticed that they are a very well-rounded team that are able to complement their team members’ weaknesses very nicely. This should serve them well in the elimination rounds of HSNCT, where swingy difficulty can lead to bad games for certain players and can devastate less balanced teams.

PPT VI saw La Jolla A come back to the SoCal circuit after a year-long hiatus following their T-49 HSNCT finish in 2021. They are now led in scoring by Sidarth Erat (10), who appears to be very strong in science, history, and geography. He also has support from Nicole Nunes (12), Zac Schmidt (10), and Elena Grilli (10), though I’m not sure if any of them have designated specialties. David Abell (10) also went 3/0/0 in current events at DNE, which is quite impressive. Despite their ability to cover most of the categories, there is definitely room for improvement when it comes to power count and especially PPB. DNE stats show that on higher-difficulty sets, they can convert as many tossups as a higher-ranked team like Francis Parker, but average 3 points per bonus lower. Overall, La Jolla’s breadth of knowledge makes them a promising team, but they will need to significantly improve their depth before they can consistently make playoffs at tournaments.

I should also probably mention Oak Valley A in here, seeing as they’ve pretty much become a varsity team as well at this point. I don’t know what these kids do to be this good in middle school, but they are ridiculously good at this quizbowl thing and I will definitely be rooting for them to win MSNCT this year. Jacob Wu (8) absolutely incredible at literature, history, and fine arts, and was also the seventh-highest individual scorer at DNE. Putting up 38 PPG with 6 powers as a middle schooler on a set as hard as DART is crazy, and in my opinion he's in the top ten or twenty middle school players this year. His teammates Kasra Kermani (8), Dylan Zhang (8), and Nikhil Maturi (8) are also very, very good and all of them will probably terrorize the high school circuit when they go to Del Norte.

Thank you to everyone at UCSD and Del Norte who helped us get two more tournaments in the books for SoCal! This season has been very fun and interesting so far, so I’m definitely looking forward to the last few tournaments and hopefully seeing everybody in Atlanta this May.
Last edited by Yaj on Tue Feb 21, 2023 2:05 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Southern California 2022-23 Discussion

Post by Lanzalot6 »

This is quite a bit overdue, so consider this a pre Socal States/nats post

Del Norte A: Without a doubt, Del Norte is the best team in Socal right now. Conner Feng(11) is easily the best player in Socal, finishing at an extremely impressive 13th place at IPNCT with 10th place in history and 11th in science. At SPRING II, he put up an impressive 3.8 powers per game, and placed 4th in history against an extremely strong field. Conner put up great stats at HSNCT last year, and has only improved since then. I can see Del Norte placing extremely high in playoffs this year. Like Yaj said, it remains to be seen how the other members of Del Norte will do. At ReKT, Madhumita Narayan(12) put up a solid 4/15/4 statline, Vinay Rajgopalan got 7/11/2, and Jack Bruvold(11) put up 4/16/8. Vinay put up 1 p/g, but out of the rest of the team nobody else put up over 1 power per game. It remains to be seen how well they'll be able to scale up to HSNCT, but nevertheless I expect them to put up a strong performance at nats.

Canyon Crest Academy A with CCA's placement of 5th at SPRING II with wins against numerous great schools, I'd put them at second place slightly above Westview. The team's main scorers, Yaj Jhajhria(11), Claire Wang(10), and Chris Jung(12) all put up great stats, with Yaj especially getting 81.11 ppg with 4.4 powers per game. Yaj also placed 25th at IPNCT this year, with 2 powers per game. Claire put up 2 p/g at SPRING with 40 ppg, going 9/2/0 on literature. The team is overall extremely well rounded, with over 23 ppb in all of the big three categories. Chris, Claire, and Yaj all compliment each other extremely well, and I expect the team to put up strong stats at HSNCT and make a strong run into the playoffs bracket. I believe the team will be able to scale up well to the difficulty of nats, and have some great upsets against high ranking teams.

Westview A: Westview continues to be one of the strongest teams in the region, and I believe we're only barely worse than CCA. Like Yaj said, our stats have been kind of strange this year; although we tend to be able to dominate and keep consistently strong ppbs/ win often, we also have considerably lower p/g than other top teams in the circuit. We don't have many holes in our coverage, and keep above 20 ppb at most categories. Richard Lin(12) is right behind Conner as one of the strongest players in the circuit, and continuously dominates with his knowledge in science and history (placing second in science, and third in history at DNE). Adarsh Venkateswaran is an extremely strong literature player, and has a great breadth in the subject as well as depth in quite a few works. Combined, Adarsh and I have an extremely solid coverage of lit that, paired with Richard's coverage of history and science, gives us a pretty strong coverage of the big three categories. I've worked on covering up our holes in fine arts and rmpss, providing a solid backup to Richard and Adarsh's more specialized coverage of their respective subjects. Pramod Shastry(12) is an insanely good geography/current events/history player with great depth. At Triton Winter, he put up a statline of 21/14/7 while being on a team with Richard who's also a history main. Overall we have a great team chemistry and coverage of nearly all categories (rip sports but Jonathan luckily has us covered for HSNCT). I believe that at Socal States, a full Westview A consisting of me, Richard, Pramod, and Adarsh could beat CCA A and potentially even beat Del Norte A.

Rancho Bernardo A: Rancho Bernardo has significantly improved over the past year, and I expect to see them do even better now that AP tests are over and they'll be preparing for nats. Adam Smith(12) is easily the best science player in Socal, putting up an insane 13/8/4 at ReKT on the regs+ set Scottie, and, as Yaj said, 16/5/3 on Dart. His ability to scale up is really impressive, and even on nats level sets I expect him to continue dominating the field in science. The rest of RB is also very strong; John Francis Dy(12) has captained the team throughout the past year, and has very solid knowledge in literature and fine arts. Bolun Thompson(11) has very strong history knowledge and went 4/10/4 on Scottie at ReKT. Finally, Jackson Rudolph(12) has a fairly strong base of knowledge in history that compliments Bolun well, and Andrew Nucci(11) is an extremely good science player from the little I've seen him play. The team is quite well rounded, and I expect to see them do great at Socal States as well as HSNCT. This will be RB's first HSNCT in ten years, and I'm really excited to see how they do!

Olympian A: Olympian has improved a lot over the past few years. Throughout the season we've had numerous close games against them, and next year I expect to see the team dominate. Led by Martin Auriel Costa(11) and Dylan Rafael Yamzon(11), the team has a great coverage of almost every subject. In particular, I'd like to highlight how great the team did at ReKT. Outside of tying for first, Martin and Dylan placed in the top two of nearly every category (Martin placing third in religion and myth, and Dantae Garcia(10) placing 4th in geography/current events/trash). Dylan even beat Adam Smith at science, going 14/9/2 on Scottie. This team is already amazing, and I only expect to see them improve further throughout next year.

Francis Parker A: Francis Parker is the top team that I know the least about. Jonas Brown(10) and Nina Mohanty(12) make a very strong pair. Although none of the members of this team seem to be specialists in any specific category, Jonas and Nina are very strong. Grant Cardosa(11) seems to have a focus in science and I remember him getting a couple great buzzes against Westview throughout our games, and Nina put up a great 6/3/0 on fine arts at DNE. Jonas put up a strong performance at IPNCT placing 44th, placing 17th in science out of the entire tournament.

Other teams:
La Jolla is a great team that I don't know a lot about. Sidarth Erat(10) has a very strong knowledge of history, and David Abel also has solid knowledge in both science and history.

Oak Valley has had a great performance at numerous high school tournaments throughout the year, even as a team comprised of middle schoolers. In particular, Jacob Wu(8) went 6/31/4 on DART, and Dylan Zhang(8) went 9/17/3. I expect to see them both do great in high school quizbowl.

Max Razmjoo from Sage Hill is a strong palyer, who we unfortunately haven't been able to see much of this year in the Socal circuit. I'm hoping we can see them at Socal states!

Thank you to everyone who's participated in the Socal Circuit throughout the year, and it's ben great competing against all of you! Good luck to everyone at Socal States, and to all teams competing at HSNCT. To all teams, if there's any local middle schools who participated in quizbowl before the pandemic but unfortunately stopped, it'd be great to help the start back up again next year. DM me and I can give you a few resources I've put together to help middle school teams prepare, and hopefully next year we can see the full revival of the Socal middle circuit that we've started seeing from last year!
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Re: Southern California 2022-23 Discussion

Post by Dylan Y. »

With the Southern California State Championships recently behind us, and HSNCT just around the corner, this post will serve as a final analysis of all the SoCal teams going to Atlanta this weekend, as well as a few others who, unfortunately, won’t be going (namely, us)! I will be ordering the teams based on how I predict they will place at HSNCT relative to each other, with the exception of Santa Monica since I don’t know much about them. Please note that I am quite new to both this circuit (I only started playing last year) and to forum posting as a whole, so forgive me if I miss anything!

Despite the overall growth and improvement of the SoCal circuit throughout the season, Del Norte A is still its best team, and Conner Feng (11) its best player. His ability to buzz in almost every category and be one of the best in each of them is insane, and he consistently puts up ridiculous numbers regardless of set difficulty. For instance, Conner led the competitive division of SoCal States with an extremely impressive 89.50 PPG and 2.8 P/G throughout the day while playing on DMA, a nats- difficulty set. That, in addition to his 13th place finish at this year’s IPNCT, solidifies him, along with Del Norte, as a solid contender at HSNCT. The difference-maker, however, will be how much help he gets from his teammates. A common issue with teams centered around one strong generalist is that, should that player have a bad game, their entire team falls apart. As of late, Conner has gotten good support from Jack Bruvold (11), who provides good coverage in each of the Big Three categories. At both SoCal States and the earlier online SCUBA tournament, he was a reliable second scorer, which may be instrumental for their performance at HSNCT considering that their literature player and usual second scorer, Madhumita Narayan (12) won’t be accompanying them to HSNCT this year. However, beyond Jack, support at the nationals level may be hard to come by. Kinish Sathish (12) and Vinay Rajagopalan (11) provide good coverage of history and geography at the regs and regs+ levels, and I remember Rohan Gaikwad (11) getting some great science buzzes at Bronco Bowl IV. However, they seem to struggle on anything harder than that, as seen at SoCal States. Overall though, Del Norte is still an incredibly strong team, and I expect them to make a very deep run at this year’s HSNCT; that is, as long as they stay away from sushi bars!

Canyon Crest A has continued to maintain their reputation as a powerhouse school, and has been getting dangerously close to overtaking Del Norte as the best school in SoCal. They are led by Yaj Jhajhria (11), who, like Conner, is a generalist with incredible coverage in certain subjects - namely in history and RMPSS. Though he was always a great player, this year in particular has shown his spectacular improvement (some of which may be attributed to the “25 hours a day” he spends on Anki). He played exceptionally well at SoCal States, putting up 20/31/12 on DMA, and also finished 25th at IPNCT, so I expect that he’ll be able to scale well at HSNCT. I would narrowly place him as the third-best player in the circuit right now, slightly behind Conner and Richard Lin (12). However, unlike Conner and Del Norte, Yaj has much stronger support from his teammates. Claire Wang (10) is an incredible literature player, with great coverage in fine arts as well. Her ability to consistently score high while maintaining little to no negs makes her an invaluable second scorer for Canyon Crest, which bodes well for them considering the recent retirement of Chris Jung (12), who herself was a very strong literature and science player. Taking up her mantle will be Alex Xu (11), a strong science player who, despite playing his high school Quizbowl debut on DMA, showed himself to be a great asset to the team. In particular, I remember him providing great depth in chemistry. According to Yaj, Alex first-lined somewhere around 6 of the available 10 chemistry tossups - an incredible statistic, to put it lightly. Rounding this team out is Andrew Tsui (11), a player who can provide great history and fine arts depth on a team already filled with amazing history and fine arts players. Overall, Canyon Crest is incredibly cohesive and is just a step behind Del Norte while not suffering as heavily from the potential risks of a generalist-dependent team. I expect them to make a deep HSNCT run this year as well!

Right alongside Del Norte and Canyon Crest A is Westview A, another team who I think is close to being the best school in the circuit. Westview is a peculiar team in the fact that, although their PPB indicates that they have deep knowledge in almost every subject, they have notably less powers than other teams in the circuit. Despite this anomaly, they are still incredibly strong. Richard Lin (12) is far and away their best player, as well as one of the best players in the circuit, as is demonstrated by his 21/37/8 statline at SoCal States, the second-highest in the field behind Conner. He has incredible science and history depth, with pockets of fine arts and RMPSS. In fact, when asked how Westview manages to keep such a high PPB, Rahul Jogadhenu (11) answered, “We have Richard Lin on our team.” Speaking of Rahul, he and Adarsh Venkateswaran (11) comprise a key part of their team, combining to form a solid literature duo, with Rahul filling the gaps in the minor categories as well. However, what worries me about these two is that they may not be able to scale as well at nationals-level difficulty. Though this problem applies more to Rahul than Adarsh, both put up far less powers and PPG than Richard at SoCal States. Regardless, they are still great players who I believe will contribute heavily to Westview’s success at HSNCT. Rounding this team out are Pramod Shastry (12) and Jonathan Ding (12). Pramod is quite a strong history player who puts up similar numbers to Richard at the regs-level (note Pramod’s 21/14/7 at Triton Winter X in comparison to Richard’s 13/19/1). However, we have yet to see him play anything harder than that, so it remains to be seen how well he’ll play at HSNCT. Jonathan Ding is also another solid player, who can buzz decently in most categories, with notable strengths in geography and trash. Though Jonathan hasn’t played since Bronco Bowl IV, his trash knowledge may elevate Westview come time for nationals! Overall, Westview is a great team that has the potential to become the best in the circuit, as evidenced by their impressive win over Del Norte A at SoCal States. Though what I mentioned previously about strong generalists having a bad game does somewhat apply here, Westview’s strength was the key factor in their amazing victory. Despite this, I still think they fall somewhat short of Del Norte and Canyon Crest at the moment, but I’m sure that great success is in store for them at HSNCT!

Rancho Bernardo A is looking better than ever and is continuing to become a stronger team. Adam Smith (12), their lead scorer, is the best science player in the circuit, and has incredible depth in every subcategory. In particular, math and physics are his strongest subcategories, where he powers over half of the tossups no matter how hard the set is. Thus, I expect that he can scale to nationals-level questions with little to no issue. However, his strengths aren’t just limited to science. He contributes heavily in fine arts and is decent in history and literature. Adam isn’t alone though, as each of his teammates provide critical support to the team. As much as Adam may not like to admit it, the majority of their literature coverage comes from their captain, John Francis Dy (12). He is a solid player who provides stability and discipline to this team, as seen by how he conducts Rancho Bernardo’s bonuses (“come on guys, focus up!”). Even if this doesn’t directly translate onto the statsheet, it is an important skill that allows them to remain focused on the game. In addition to this, Bolun Thompson (11) is a strong history player, and I remember him having great religion and current events knowledge. In particular, he put up a solid 4/1/0 on American history at Del Norte Edgehog VI and placed third in religion. Although it isn’t as apparent playing next to Adam, Bolun also has a good coverage of science, as evidenced by his 4/11/3 science statline at SCUBA. He will likely emerge to be Rancho Bernardo’s leading scorer next year. This team is rounded out not by Jackson Rudolph (12), but rather by Andrew Nucci (11). Though the absence of Jackson will greatly diminish their socialism knowledge, it seems that Andrew will be able to provide decent support at HSNCT. I’m not too familiar with what he does, but I recall John saying that he’s good at science and visual fine arts. Overall, Rancho Bernardo has good coverage of every subject, and I think it’s reasonable to assume that they’ll be one of the strongest science teams at HSNCT while making a deep run!

Francis Parker is a great team that I unfortunately don’t know too much about. I am unsure of their lineup for HSNCT so I’m just going to go over their top players. They are led by the duo of Jonas Brown (10) and Nina Mohanty (12), both of whom have the ability to buzz in most categories, though it is clear that they each have their own specialties. Nina seems to be a better history and fine arts player, and she put up a particularly impressive 6/3/0 statline on fine arts at DNE VI while only playing for 6.5 games. Nina has shown that she can provide good support at the nationals-level, and she will be very valuable to Francis Parker if she does go. Jonas, on the other hand, seems stronger at literature and science, as evidenced by his impressive 44th place finish at this year’s IPNCT, where he was 17th in science. These two are rounded out by players like Grant Cardosa (11) and Abhi Manda (10). Grant and Abhi are both competent science players, and Grant provides some extra insurance in history and mythology. I am unsure if they are able to scale to nationals-level questions, so we will have to wait and see how it pans out. Finally, Mark Blair (9) has quickly proven himself to be a valuable asset who will surely be a key player for Francis Parker in the years to come. Mark put up an impressive 19/40/17 at SRIRACHA! III, and at this year’s IPNCT he finished 122nd overall and placed 37th on both history and current events. Overall, Francis Parker has a strong ensemble of players, and I expect them to do well at HSNCT with whatever roster they send. Hopefully next year I can learn more about them, but I do remember Abhi offering to set up interviews, so I may have to take him up on that offer if I write another post!

Canyon Crest B showed out at SoCal States, and although they weren’t able to win any games, I am still incredibly impressed with their performance and am excited to see how they do at HSNCT! This team was composed entirely of freshmen and sophomores, and despite playing on a set as hard as DMA, they were still able to compete against the top teams in the region. In particular, Shail Bhatmuley (10) and Lorenzo Lesmes (10) both had incredible powers and games that day. According to the stats, both Shail and Lorenzo are generalists, though I do seem to remember them being particularly strong at history and geography. I don’t know much about their other teammates that will be accompanying them (besides Yaj’s comment of them being “two brothers”), but I am nonetheless going to be rooting for them come this weekend!

Santa Monica A is another team that I know very little about. They’ve only gone to one tournament this year - the Washington Winter Classic on IS-218A - so I’m unsure both about how their individual players perform and how they will perform at nationals. Looking at their statistics, the trio of Danny Chmyatelli (12), Naomi Gage (10), and Delaney O’Dea (11) seem to comprise the majority of their scoring, with Cyd Okum (10) and Govind Raman (9) rounding their team out. If Govind is related to alumnus Kethan Raman, then I think there’s a chance for the continued dominance of the Raman family, which I think would be poetic. Aside from this, I don’t really know the strengths or weaknesses of any of these players, so unfortunately I can’t speak that much about them. Nonetheless, I wish them all the best at HSNCT this weekend, and I hope to see them at more SoCal tournaments next year!

Other Teams:

This section is for other teams that aren’t going to HSNCT this year.

As a result of us being broke, Olympian A will unfortunately be missing HSNCT this year. Nonetheless, I feel like we’ve recuperated the loss of our seniors - particularly Henry Morales - quite well. Right now, we are led by both myself, Dylan Rafael Yamzon (11), and Martin Auriel Costa (11). I think I’m pretty justified in my assumption that Martin is one of, if not the best fine arts players in the circuit, and he also has very strong coverage of religion, mythology, and philosophy. This is evidenced by his 5/10/1 statline on fine arts at ReKT VI - miles better than anyone else in the field. On top of that, he has been working on improving his already solid coverage of history and geography. However, I will have to say that while his choice study method for religion - watching reels from Jewish and Muslim Instagram accounts - is quite unorthodox, it does lead to quite a few great buzzes. Meanwhile, I myself am likely the second or third best science player in the circuit, behind only Adam Smith and maybe Richard Lin. This year has been pretty good for me in terms of improvement, considering how I went from putting up 6/12/3 on regs at Bronco Bowl to putting up 16/22/10 on nats- at SoCal States. However, I definitely still have a lot of work to do in terms of science and consistency. On top of this, I’ve been working on my coverage of social science and literature especially, since both of our current literature players - Riley Ramos (12) and Avery Bautista (11) - will not be continuing Quizbowl next season. Between the two of us, we can cover the entirety of the high school canon fairly well, as evidenced by our performance at SoCal States, where it was just us two and one of our freshmen, Arjay Graslie (9). On top of that, Martin and I have consistently placed in the top 10 at tournaments we’ve gone to, and I only expect for us both to improve as we go on. We are rounded out by Dantae Garcia (10), our history and current events player who has a great foundation of knowledge. He already has strong coverage of both of those subjects without even studying, but I believe that if he studies more consistently, he could transform himself into one of the best history players in the circuit. I’m not sure who our other players would be if we went to HSNCT this year, but it would likely be one of our dedicated freshmen. This year we were lucky to have gotten quite a few freshmen who are dedicated to Quizbowl - almost to the point of addiction. I have faith that they will continue to keep our program alive after Martin and I are gone, though I will admit that having to stay up until 1 AM reading them packets is not something I’m going to miss. Overall, I’d say that we are a solid team with the potential to win against stronger teams, though there is still a lot of work needed to get there. One interesting problem that we’ve had this year is that even though we are typically able to power and answer tossups at a similar rate to the other top teams in the circuit, our PPB is much lower, even in our best subjects. It’s pretty much the opposite of Westview’s phenomenon, and I’m not really sure what’s causing it or how we’re going to fix it, but it is intriguing nonetheless. If all goes well, we’ll be able to go to HSNCT next year for the first time since 2018, which is definitely an exciting prospect!

Although La Jolla A won’t be making a trip to Atlanta this weekend, they still put up great performances all throughout the season. They are led by Sidarth Erat (10), an incredibly impressive generalist who is particularly strong in science and history. He is backed up by David Abell (10), who has proven himself to be a reliable history and science player, with an especially deep coverage of current events. Other players like Zac Schmidt (10) and Elena Grilli (10) also provided decent support for the team. Overall, La Jolla is a primarily young team that has a lot of potential, though, like us, they still have a lot of work to do in order to be a top team in the circuit and possibly place highly at future HSNCTs.

Thank you to everyone in the circuit for making this year a wonderful year of SoCal Quizbowl! I wish all teams heading to Atlanta this weekend the best of luck, and I thank all the seniors for your participation in the circuit this year! I wish you all the best in your future endeavors, and hope that you had as much fun as I did!
Dylan Rafael Yamzon (he/him)

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Re: Southern California 2022-23 Discussion

Post by Yaj »

A few days ago was the SoCal State Championships, the last tournament most teams will play before nationals, so it seems appropriate for a final pre-nats post to summarize the state of the circuit before the big weekend.

Earlier today, Groger Ranks released their pre-nats overall rankings. Ranked Southern California teams are listed below, with teams traveling to Atlanta for the HSNCT written in bold.
Groger Ranks wrote: 55. Del Norte
58. Canyon Crest A
91. Rancho Bernardo
93. Westview
149. Olympian
181. Francis Parker
272. La Jolla
[Unranked: Canyon Crest B, Santa Monica]
Since many others (including myself) have given overviews of the general strengths of abilities of teams in the past few posts of this thread and not a lot of that information has changed, expect this post to focus more on the issues that many of these teams face and must overcome going into nationals. I apologize if this comes across through writing as negative or depreciating towards your team; this is objective analysis and I will try to still emphasize strengths that each team has going for them.

I said at the beginning of the season that Del Norte, led by Conner Feng (11), should be expected to be a top team in the circuit and perhaps nationally as well. While Conner has established himself as one of the nation’s finest players and Del Norte remains the highest-ranked team in SoCal, there are many issues that this team has been unable to address since last September. Most notably, support for Conner is still extremely limited. Teammates Jack Bruvold (11) and Vinay Rajagopalan (11) both have noticeably improved during the season and were the second and third scorers, respectively, on Del Norte at States, but both were struggling to scale up to nationals difficulty. Additionally, both specialize in similar categories to Conner. While Conner is very strong in most of the canon, there is definitely a hole in literature coverage that is not being filled by anybody on their roster currently. Don’t get me wrong; Conner is still insane and very often has some of the best stats out of any player in the country. During round 3 of IPNCT, in a room with the highest-performing players at the tournament, he went 7/0/1 over 48 tossups on a very difficult question set. The last round of SoCal States saw him go 8/4/0 on Rancho Bernardo. There is no doubt that when he’s at his best, Conner can singlehandedly destroy any team. The problem is that every player has bad games as well. Del Norte’s loss to Westview at States was a round where Conner went 3/4/4 and could not convert tossups that Westview’s Richard Lin went 2/7/0 on. Westview had half as many powers and averaged 4 PPB less than Del Norte that game, but ran away with it nevertheless due to late tossup conversion. This ultimately was not an issue in the round robin format of States, and at a national tournament like PACE, which works with a series of round robin brackets, Conner would be feeling a lot more comfortable than at HSNCT, where a single bad packet at the wrong time can mean the difference between a T-8 finish or missing playoffs entirely. On the flip side, if he goes ham against one or two T-10 Groger teams, that kind of momentum can send them very far into the Sunday afternoon rounds. Overall, it’s a very up-in-the-air situation for Del Norte that could very much go in any direction for them.

This season was definitely going to be a rebuilding one for Canyon Crest A, and while we have come a long way from where we started, there is still a lot standing in our way to a high placement at nationals. We have more or less recovered from the loss of almost all of last year’s A team, with myself having made improvements in History, RMPSS, and generalism and Andrew Tsui (11)’s improvement in visual fine arts. Claire Wang (10) remains a strong literature and fine arts player with extremely wide coverage of the canons of both, as well as history too. Alex Xu (11) is a brand-new face to CCAQB’s presence at tournaments, with SoCal States being his first tournament since middle school. He has tremendous depth in chemistry and a lot of “other science,” which combined with a broad knowledge base in other categories, is a huge help for our team. On top of all that, we have finally purged our club of people who stream video games during rounds. There are still huge scaling issues we are struggling with, though, that have an impact on our performances. Claire and I are very good at regular difficulty, but on harder sets most of her buzzes become tens and I simply don’t know a lot of the things asked about. Chris Jung (12) provided strong literature support, with deep knowledge for many poems and novels, and not having her on our nationals team has proven problematic for our coverage. The good thing is that Alex and Andrew scale very well in their categories, providing us with some 15s and 30s, and everyone except for Andrew performs better on NAQT than mACF, which hopefully means that our performance at States can be exceeded at HSNCT. Despite this, I fear for unlucky bracketing or packet swing causing a premature end to our HSNCT run. It’s similar to what I said about Del Norte: We have the capability to place very highly, especially if we get lucky against one or two top teams, but a lack of consistency also is dangerous in a double-elimination playoff format.

Rancho Bernardo started off their season strong at PPT, and since then they have assembled a very strong lineup of specialists who have brought the team from a JV squad in 2022 to 91st on Groger Ranks today. Adam Smith (12) was their star player at the beginning of the season, with unparalleled science depth and good generalism, but each member has come to prove themselves as integral to their success. Bolun Thompson (11) and Jackson Rudolph (12) have a very strong grasp on history; they had a combined statline of 8/10/2 at DNE and the team had the highest PPB in that category at that tournament. Though Jackson will not be on their HSNCT roster, Bolun keeps on improving and I have a lot of confidence in his ability to do well on HSNCT’s high history and current events distribution. Adam Smith, as mentioned previously, is phenomenal in science. He had far and away the best science statline at DNE and was likely the reason they also had the highest science PPB there. Apparently he had a lot of early DMA buzzes in the category as well, as evidenced by him noting that many science tossups in the set were “not pyramidal.” His strength definitely lies in physics and math, and but this tends to only show at higher difficulties, as he is still a top biology and chemistry player up to regs+ difficulty. In what seems to be a common theme among teams in this circuit however, Rancho Bernardo’s weakest category might be literature. Captain John Francis Dy (12) has by this point become solid at the high school canon, and he has many tens and a handful of early buzzes at high difficulties. Yet compared to teams like Canyon Crest A (with both Claire and Chris) and Westview, there is a notable difference in literature scoring and PPB in the DNE category statistics. A broad knowledge base is still good for short questions at HSNCT, though, so I’m not sure if this will be a huge issue for them this weekend. RB will also be bringing Andrew Nucci (11) to Atlanta. I’m not too familiar with him, but PPT category stats seem to indicate that he can provide solid science support for Adam. This team is very well-rounded and I look forward to seeing their HSNCT performance, since they perform very consistently. If they can go 7-3 in prelims, they are looking very good for a strong playoffs run that ends with a trophy for finishing T-48.

Westview has a lineup of a generalist and supporting specialists to this year, which has had mixed results at tournaments. They did very well at Triton Winter, winning the tournament with strong team chemistry and cohesion that led to statlines almost as satisfyingly similar as those of DCC A’s members last season. They scaled up less well on DART at DNE, with Richard Lin (12) doing the bulk of their scoring, but his teammates’ support was still strong and they came extremely close to winning the tournament, losing to CCA twice over a single tossup. Richard is extremely good, and although he specializes in science and history, he branches out a lot and generalizes well at a wide range of difficulties. He is definitely the second or third-best player in the circuit, behind Conner and maybe me. However, scaling probably became a problem for Westview more than any other team at States. Barring Richard, no player was able to score >0.5 P/G and only one of those players was averaging over one conversion per round. Adarsh Venkateswaran (11) provided support in literature and was able to get many tossups late in other categories, but otherwise Westview’s performance was very dependent on how well Richard would do in a certain round. Their unexpected 1-4 record during the pre-lunch games was a very unfortunate and unlucky consequence of this. They did manage to flip this record in the afternoon in a run that saw them defeat Del Norte and finish in third place, but States essentially presented the worst-case scenario for a team whose scoring is primarily done by one player. If this had not been a round robin tournament and instead the prelims or playoffs of HSNCT, Westview would have either not made playoffs or been quickly eliminated. Westview is an extremely capable team; they regularly have a very high PPB and have top players in most big three categories at regs. Whether they can do this at nationals difficulty is tough to say, however. It’s possible that Westview just had a bad day at States or DMA was just not a great set for them. I say this because they are a really good team that has given us at CCA a run for our money each time we’ve played them… but their results last weekend didn’t reflect that. Ultimately, I can’t say what I expect from this team at HSNCT. They are one of the most interesting SoCal teams to watch, simply because of their really variable performances that run the gamut from easily sweeping the field to tragically losing multiple games by less than 50 points. All I can say is that these guys will definitely be a team to pay attention to in Atlanta.

Olympian has seen a dramatic rise from competing mostly in their local academic league circuit on IS-A questions to being a premier SoCal team that defeated Westview and nearly us at States this year while shorthanded. Their stats aren’t necessarily as strong in terms of powers as most other teams, which is why their Groger Rank is lower than teams performing similarly at tournaments. However, they have excellent game sense and broad coverage that makes them very good at winning games against teams that are statistically better than them. Not to mention, their top scorers Martin Auriel Costa (11) and Dylan Rafael Yamzon (11) are very good specialists that can consistently take tossups off players of similar speciality on all other teams. Martin’s fine arts knowledge is very strong, and Dylan is a rapidly-improving science player who outscored Adam in science at ReKT. My knowledge of this team is unfortunately limited due to having played them only three times: once all the way back in September at Bronco Bowl and twice against them shorthanded at States. However, this entire team’s roster will be returning next year. If they all improve over the summer, they could easily be a consistent winner at local tournaments and make a deep nats run.

Francis Parker has not played any tournament since DNE in February, but they presumably are once again bringing a well-rounded roster of players likely including Nina Mohanty (12), Jonas Brown (10), and Grant Cardosa (11). Each of these players is strong on their own and they shadow each other considerably, making it hard to evaluate each of them individually. From what I remember, though, Nina made some very early history buzzes and Grant was beating us to most science tossups on DART. Jonas played at IPNCT, finishing in 44th place and ranking highly in science and math. I haven’t seen him play all that much, but to me he seems more of a generalist, and during the game we played in the same room at IPNCT, he was beating many good players to tossups in a wide variety of categories. He is also very young and will probably become even stronger in his junior and senior years. If his team was not also composed of very good players, I would hazard a guess that he might be getting a sophomore Rising Star award at HSNCT. But his team is composed of very good players, so maybe not. Regardless, this team makes very few appearances but should not be underestimated. Many other teams on this list were defeated by them at PPT, where their team chemistry and coverage got them the victory. They probably will have to overcome scaling issues like most other teams in the circuit, but their lineup last year was able to perform well at HSNCT despite similar issues. I believe this team can match and probably even surpass their performance last year, which would be quite impressive, considering the loss of almost their entire 2022 HSNCT team.

La Jolla is still led by science and history specialist Sidarth Erat (10), who has shown excellent depth in his subjects and continually impresses me with his scaling ability. I’ve only seen him play at two local tournaments this year, but we met at IPNCT and played round 2 in the same room. He was making numerous early buzzes quicker than myself and Andrew Minagar and Soren Gjesfjeld, two players who would go on to the finals of the tournament. He ended up with a very impressive and well-deserved 54th-place finish. Despite this, La Jolla is still very dependent on Sidarth’s performance alone and has little coverage outside of his specialties, especially in literature, fine arts, and part of RMPSS. If Sidarth can grow to be a generalist or he gets strong support in these other categories, this team would quickly become a force to be reckoned with next season.

Canyon Crest B played their first non-JV tournament at States last weekend. The field was very strong and the questions were very hard. Suffice to say, their results were not flattering. Obviously these are players who have never played high school quizbowl before this year, but I do believe that they can make a strong run at nationals, where the field is less strong and the questions more up the players’ alleys. Lorenzo Lesmes (10) and Shail Bhatmuley (10) are history and geography-based players who are trying to branch out. Lorenzo has started to learn literature and fine arts, while Shail has been studying science. Ishank Kadadi (9) joins them as a dedicated and capable member studying literature who I am confident will get stronger with more experience and time. This team is very young and can become very good in the coming seasons, but I do believe that they have enough skill on their roster that they can, with a bit of luck, make HSNCT playoffs this year. I see many of them powering multiple HSNCT questions per packet in practice, so it is entirely possible. The high geography and current events distribution will definitely help them, too. But at the end of the day, I am just very happy to see that there is a dedicated and wonderful future generation of CCA quizbowl to keep the torch lit once our grade graduates.

Santa Monica is also coming to HSNCT, but I know close to nothing about them. They haven’t come to any local tournaments and qualified for HSNCT through an online tournament on introductory NAQT questions. They did pretty well there, but IS-A is hard to judge teams off of. Since quizbowl is a class there, I assume they’ve been studying and improving to some degree, and it’s probable that they could make playoffs. I really have no idea, though.

Overall, Southern California seems to be bringing a lot of talent to nationals this year, and hopefully we will be able to see some great things from teams this year. There are many fantastic players all around, and every single team has improved tremendously from the beginning of the year. This year’s competition will definitely be a spectacle and I look forward to following the team that makes it the farthest in the Sunday rounds.

I guess I should end with some sort of “thank you” to anyone crazy enough to read through this whole thing, but I suspect most will only read the section about their own team. This turned out to be really long, but I hope the analysis I chose to provide will be interesting to anyone reading. Finally, I really look forward to seeing everyone in Atlanta this weekend and wish the best of luck to everyone competing!
Yaj Jhajhria (he/him)

Carmel Valley '20
Canyon Crest '24
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Re: Southern California 2022-23 Discussion

Post by theripeplum »

With another season of SoCal QB effectively in the books, I figured I would finally bite the bullet and write a post-nats analysis of the SoCal teams! I ask that you go easy on me, since this is the first time I’ve ever written anything like this and a lot of the in-depth observations and analyses have already been made by people like Yaj and Dylan.

HSNCT was really interesting this year. Anay (among other things) tried to get us to buy $8 slushies that he said were “to die for,” and Rahul practically stripped in order to touch some shellfish at the aquarium. I ended up eating at Gus’s Fried Chicken three days in a row (twice with Del Norte, once with Westview) and I apparently caught a sickness that led to my voice slowly giving out (I still sound like a deflated rubber chicken). With that being said, I’ll be following Chris’s example and discussing the teams in reverse order of finish.


Canyon Crest B
Prelims Record: 3-7
Final Finish: 257th

Canyon Crest B seemed to be the team least prepared for HSNCT on this list, but I feel that they have a lot of potential. Shail Bhatmuley (10) put up a 7/28/13 statline across 210 tossups, with Lorenzo Lesmes (10) putting up a 6/16/17 statline on top of him. From the sounds of it, Shail and Lorenzo specialize in history and geography, meaning that both of their statlines likely suffered due to having played with each other. If they branch out into other categories, they could definitely become another team in top contention. Ishank Kadadi (9) is apparently studying literature on top of that, meaning that hopefully, by next year, they’ll have enough “big three” coverage in order to make a deeper run at nationals and provide support once Yaj inevitably graduates.


Francis Parker
Prelims Record: 5-5
Final Finish: 135th

My biggest concern for Francis Parker coming into HSNCT was their scaling. Jonas Brown (10) proved at IPNCT that he is a formidable player, but I was concerned that Francis Parker would rely too heavily on him and Nina Mohanty (12). However, almost every player seemed to have a >10 ppg and pulled their own weight. Jonas seems to be a great science-based generalist and had the best statline on the team. Nina is a great history player, making her a crucial part of the team, especially during NAQT tournaments. I don’t remember much about Abhi Manda (10) and Grant Cardosa (11) other than the fact that I played them at ReKT V on JV (a division which used CERES, making everything a buzzer race). Mark Blair (9) also proved earlier this year at SRIRACHA! III that he has some great generalism knowledge. I would attribute their unfortunate end to their highly volatile PPB, which went from 10 against Hunter B to 24 against Henderson County. That being said, this team still has plenty of time to evolve into a powerhouse, but will likely need to grind history in order to make up for the hole that Nina will be leaving.


Westview
Prelims Record: 5-5
Final Finish: 117th

I’m going to be blunt here, I think that Westview’s finish is emulating SaMo’s finish last year in that it’s a flop that surprised us all. This team was poised to make a deep run in playoffs, with Richard Lin (12) having proven that he has insane generalist knowledge time and time again. Adarsh Venkateswaran (11) and Rahul Jogadhenu (11) both provided decent literature coverage and Rahul had some great VFA knowledge. Jonathan Ding (12) also apparently had a specialization in trash, which unironically could be the difference between success and failure in tournaments like this. From everything they’ve told me, I would attribute their finish this HSNCT to their hesitancy on buzzing. Gone are the days when Westview (i.e. Nicholas Dai) would neg with gay abandon. According to Rahul, there were a bunch of tossups in the later games that Richard said he could have converted but he didn’t want to risk frauding/negging (although this could have easily been intentional, since it allowed Richard more time to binge Avatar). Their two final losses were heartbreaking, both with margins of <30 points. Westview just needs to find the balance between negging furiously and buzzing cautiously in order to regain their position of power.


Santa Monica
Prelims Record: 6-4
Final Finish: T-65

I don’t really know much about Santa Monica. Apparently they’ve unluckily had every SoCal tournament scheduled on a day when Delaney O'Dea (11) was busy, meaning that they couldn’t go (they could also just have wanted to avoid the drive from Santa Monica to San Diego, which I wouldn’t blame them for in the slightest). I think the biggest question was how well they would scale, considering that they qualified for HSNCT in a tournament that used IS-A questions, However, they’ve shown they can scale well. While I don’t know much about what Delaney specializes in, it’s clear that she has always been a consistently good varsity player (I would also assume she specializes in lit, since she managed to take an early buzz off of Del Norte during a nighttime scrimmage we had in the Hilton). Naomi Gage (10) is also a formidable player, having done the majority of the scoring on their JV team at ReKT V last year. Unfortunately, I’ve never had any experiences against the other two players. Govind Raman (9) put up an impressive statline of 5/18/2, and could easily come to be the next big player in SoCal, especially if he’s related to Santa Monica alumnus Kethan Raman. Eames Weeks (10) rounded out their roster, and considering that this seems to have been Eames’ first ever tournament, they did very very well. I hope Santa Monica can come to more SoCal tournaments in the future since they have a solid foundation off of which to build and become a very strong team.


Rancho Bernardo
Prelims Record: 7-3
Final Finish: T-49

I’m going to be honest, I don’t know how the hell we did that. What’s disappointing is that we easily could have gone farther, with our loss against Wilton boiling down to us being slow on the buzzer (and me forgetting who wrote "Master Harold"…and the Boys). With that being said, I’m really happy with our first HSNCT back since 2014! It feels like I'm beating a dead horse saying this, but Adam Smith (12) is probably the best science main in the circuit (and maybe even in the nation, although I’m definitely biased) and RB is definitely going to feel his loss next year. Bolun Thompson (11) carried hard, accounting for the majority of our history, geography, and current events buzzes (a formidable feat, since those three categories make up a high volume of the NAQT distribution). However, I wanted to take this moment to shout out Andrew Nucci (11). At first, I questioned whether we would do as well at HSNCT without our favorite socialist Jackson Rudolph (12) to provide additional history and geography coverage, but Andrew more than made up for it with his AFA knowledge. For a guy who carded AFA out of necessity (with his preferred subject of science being made moot with the presence of Adam Smith), his knowledge really came in clutch in a lot of our games, and I'm sure that he's going to be a great captain next year (although he's made it clear that his time as a fine arts player is over). I’m very proud of our performance, and I’m glad that we were able to end this quiz bowl season on a high note.


Canyon Crest A
Prelims Record: 6-4
Final Finish: T-49.

I think that CCA A, much like RB, had an incredible performance but could have easily gone farther. I would attribute their prelims record to having been put up against some top-tier teams like Solon A, LASA A, and Detroit Catholic Central A (twice!). That being said, they put up some fights against some formidable opponents, with their second round against DCC A having a winnable margin. Yaj Jhajhria (11) has made massive improvements throughout the course of this season, having become a solid history player with some generalism knowledge to cover any gaps that may arise. Claire Wang (10) has always been an insane lit and FA player, with Andrew Tsui (11) helping out on VFA. Alex Xu (11) and his in-depth chem knowledge especially impressed me, considering that this was his second ever tournament at the high school level (with his first being a mirror of DMA). Their loss against Fremd A was unfortunate, especially considering that it was another unlucky game that they could have easily won. Still, I have faith that CCA A will continue to grow and make an even deeper run next year.


Del Norte
Prelims Record: 7-3
Final Finish: T-13

I believe Del Norte has solidly proven that they are the best team in SoCal (they even tied with Kinkaid!). We were finally able to see how Conner Feng (11) can perform when not under the influence of cheap sushi. His generalism is second to none in SoCal, going 29/81/18 across 15 games and 315 tossups. However, every other member of Del Norte helped, providing backup knowledge during bonuses and snatching the occasional buzz. Kinish Sathish’s (12) history knowledge added depth to what Conner already had. Jack Bruvold (11), from what I observed, had some lit knowledge that helped cover Conner and had some clutch trash knowledge. While I’m not too familiar with Vinay Rajagapolan (11) and Alex Tan (11), their statlines show that they can steal buzzes off of Conner that could mean the difference between winning and losing. And while I don't know much about how well Anay Sabhnani (10) plays, I do know that he was insane throughout the course of the tournament during the moments when Del Norte wasn't playing quiz bowl (and I refuse to give any further context). While their finish is “disappointing” in the sense that their final loss against St. Mark’s School of Texas was easily winnable and boiled down to a first line power by St. Mark’s and an extra long third bonus part that ate away at the clock, they should be proud of themselves for having come this far. I believe that they can easily go farther next year, and I’m excited to see what the 2023-2024 season has in store for them.


I also wanted to take time to shoutout Olympian A. They unfortunately lacked the funds to make it out to Georgia this year, but I know that they would have done really well, with Dylan Rafael Yamzon (11) looking to become the next fierce science main of SoCal and Martin Auriel Costa (11) having become a fine arts monster. Both of them have become decent generalists and are also two of the friendliest quiz bowl players I have ever met. I have faith that they'll be able to come next year and stand tall among the other SoCal teams.


I'll take this time to apologize if this post contains more fluff than actual analysis, but as I said earlier, Yaj and Dylan have already analyzed SoCal QB better than I ever could. I wanted to end this post with some much-owed thank you's. A massive thank you to NAQT for hosting such a successful tournament! It was a blast getting to play against teams from around the country and getting to meet a bunch of new people. Finally, I wanted to thank everyone involved in SoCal QB for being such a supportive and friendly circuit. You guys helped to make my last ever quiz bowl tournament an unforgettable memory (even if my cholesterol levels are at an all time high) and I can’t thank you guys enough.
Last edited by theripeplum on Mon May 29, 2023 10:36 pm, edited 3 times in total.
John Francis Dy
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Re: Southern California 2022-23 Discussion

Post by Yaj »

The 2023 HSNCT has come to a close, and since very few people in this circuit are attending PACE or NASAT, it seems appropriate to provide one final post to close out this season for SoCal quizbowl. Since much of the in-depth analysis has been done ad nauseum by this point, I’ll keep this somewhat brief and just include a few thoughts on teams’ HSNCT performances and their futures.

Del Norte couldn’t have asked for a better HSNCT run. Their T-13 finish was fantastic and they were one tossup away from going even further. Conner Feng’s speed and knowledge were on full display last weekend, and he very capably led his team to success. He returns with much of his supporting lineup next year and will definitely continue to dominate the circuit.

I wouldn’t call Canyon Crest A’s run bad, but we were absolutely capable of a higher finish and had very close losses in our final prelim and playoff games. Some of this bad luck may be attributable to a tough schedule caused by the very weird seeding for this tournament. Personally, I did not feel my performance at this tournament to be representative of my full performance, but the rest of the team played phenomenally. Claire’s consistency and accuracy in literature and fine arts, Alex’s deep science knowledge, and Tsuidrew’s VFA and biology coverage all contributed immensely to our capability to remain strong against very good teams. Our best rounds demonstrated team chemistry that I hope will take us far next year, when all of us have improved more.

Rancho Bernardo has had one of the best success stories in SoCal quizbowl. They have managed to completely revive a struggling program and bring it to success on the national stage, finishing T-49 at this year’s HSNCT. Their comparatively low PPB did hurt them, but they have an ability to win games by beating teams to more tossups that served them well. Unfortunately, most of this team is graduating, but they retain strong history player Bolun Thompson, Andrew Nucci, and the rest of a good-sized program. With the same work that they put in this year, I can see them easily repeating this finish next year.

I still know close to nothing about Santa Monica as a quizbowl team, although they were definitely some of the most interesting people I met last weekend. From looking at stats, they appear to be a well-rounded team whose players put up solid PPGs together, which is probably how they got decently far in the tournament. Unfortunately, a first-round loss to Stanford Online ended their playoffs run very quickly and they finished T-65. None of this team is graduating, though, so I do hope to see them at more SoCal tournaments next year and at nats again!

Westview had a very unfortunate team finish — 117th place, the highest-ranked team to not make playoffs. Two incredibly close losses at the end of Sunday prelims spelled the end of their nats run, with margins of 25 and 20 points, respectively. As I predicted earlier, Westview’s performance was pretty much dependent on Richard Lin’s performance in a given game. Every game in which he couldn’t score 60 PPG was one which they lost, and Richard’s bad luck turned into the entire team’s bad luck. His departure will definitely be a huge blow to Westview’s strength, but other members have indicated a strong will to improve and hopefully this and their large program will make next year’s rebuilding season successful.

Francis Parker unfortunately also missed playoffs and finished 135th following a 25-point loss to Hunter B in round 20. I watched this team play, and they had solid coverage but definitely were struggling to scale. However, Jonas Brown is only a sophomore and is becoming very good very quickly, having become his team’s top scorer now. Over the next two years, he can definitely lead his team to a higher finish with deeper knowledge. Nina Mohanty graduates this year, leaving them in a tough spot for history, but otherwise the rest of the team stays and should have an even better season next year.

Canyon Crest B did not have a great record, finishing 3-7 and in 256th place, but I think this is more due to a lack of team chemistry and high neg rate. CCA B had a slightly higher PPB but way fewer powers than this year’s team, but finished 5-5. Tougher opponents in this year’s morning session may also have played a role, but I’m not sure if this had a huge effect in the lower cards. CCA B suffered mostly from a lack of coverage outside of history and science, but all of their members have been highly motivated by HSNCT and intend on improving next year. They are all underclassmen and have a lot of time to become very, very good.

Olympian did not attend HSNCT, but they are also a very good team that graduates no one. There’s nothing new to talk about here (you can see my previous post for that), but they are really strong already and have a great season in store for them next year.

Thank you so much to everyone in the Southern California quizbowl circuit who helped organize tournaments and who made this community so great. Additionally, thank you so much to NAQT and the hundreds of staffers who made this year’s HSNCT, as usual, the highest-quality tournament of the year. I am super excited to have one last year playing with everyone at home in SoCal and in Atlanta!
Yaj Jhajhria (he/him)

Carmel Valley '20
Canyon Crest '24
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