ICT Predictions

[NOSTRADAMUSLOL]

Being seated by night in secret study,
alone resting on the bronze stool,
a slight flame emerging from solitude
makes utter what it is not vain to believe.

1) Maryland. Jonathan Magin's newfound knowledge of radio comes in handy when he powers a physics tossup on "AM" against Chicago on the last tossup of the first advantaged finals game. Unfortunately, Chris Ray sort of leans into Charles Meigs on his way to mistakenly accept Charlie Steinhice's #1 individual scorer prize, leading Meigs to spill his Cola Turka all over his t-shirt and expose several ceremonial daggers.

2) Chicago. After a stunning early loss to Drake when Seth Teitler decides to honor his pledge to read every fourth round, Chicago regroups and goes undefeated through the rest of the prelim bracket and the playoff bracket, but still holds a one-game disadvantage to Maryland in the finals. The finals match is close, with Susan powering a question on foie gras and Selene nailing a question on Manfred Schlosser, of modification fame. The only tragic consequence of their quest for glory is the spontaneous combustion of Kannan Mahadevan, during an attempt to pray to his personal god in a circular columned temple on the edge of an escarpment during the lunch break.

3) Brown. Brown loses what would have been a close playoff-bracket game to Chicago when Dennis Jang's infamous temper tantrums and mercurial play lead to one of his signature implosions; Dennis goes 3-4-7 while Jerry and Eric cower meekly in the corner, and Chicago wins by 250 points. They barely escape with a first-bracket win over home crowd favorite Wash U when Jerry's complaints about a soccer question lead him to miss four consecutive questions and bonuses. Eric's attention is strained by the constant buzzing of his cell phone, signaling new texts from New Haven.

4) Illinois. Mike Sorice reflexively curses Donald Taylor after every teammate neg. In an eerie repeat of 1992's Magic/Nets game in which Shaq brought down the hoop, the ceiling of a game room partially collapses when Sorice's voice hits its fundamental frequency after he negs a SCIENCE! tossup. Sorice's dreams are dashed when Matt Bruce cruelly starts the game clock and reads a 12-line tossup on the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect, only to reveal that he is parodying ACF's impossibility, and starts the real game with a four-line tossup on dextrose.

5) Stanford. They drop an unnecessary early game in the prelims when Eric Smith insists that their fourth team member should be a comely 17-year-old instead of Kevin Koai. Luckily, Smith confuses the Saturday date with the date of ACF Nationals, and departs after the Friday games for Minnesota in order to play Tartan Tussle VII, which R. Henzel has diabolically scheduled against ACF, and Stanford manages several impressive showings in its Saturday games. Though the team doesn't win its late close games, they do accomplish several key head-to-head victories that rocket Brian Lindquist and Christiaan de Graave up the individual rankings.

6) Vanderbilt. Their title dreams are dashed when Jack Hartz converts to Manichaeism during their match with Stanford and refuses to answer any tossups on Saturdays.

7) Harvard. Ted Gioia appears in the stands for a pivotal round between Harvard and Iowa to see who gets into the top bracket, and inspirationally leads the team to victory when he starts "the wave." He leaves in dismay when he discovers Meryl and Manny holding hands in the hall after Harvard B's emotional victory over North Dakota. Adam Hallowell is unexpectedly thrust into the limelight when Kyle suspends himself, Julia, and Bruce for the remained of the games for an egregious violation of the Eight Rules when they all inquire about the score but don't call a timeout; Adam responds by going 2-1 and guaranteeing Harvard a top-bracket spot, but his luck runs out in the playoffs, and his only victory in the top bracket comes against the emotionally depleted Dartmouth team.

8) Dartmouth. It's an exciting run to the top bracket for Dartmouth, until their beast frosh bites a girl from Illinois B who is watching the Dartmouth/Illinois A round on her bye round, and has to be tranquilized. It all goes downhill from there, as their three-man squad manages no wins in the top bracket. The only exception to the disappointment is their close match versus eventual champs Maryland, which quickly becomes more contested when Chris Ray powers a tossup on Jhumpa Lahiri, then reminds the entire Dartmouth team about how he powered that tossup on "The White Man's Burden" in the Division II ICT finals of a year previous.

9) Williams. Screwed by being placed into a bracket with Chicago A and Brown, Williams manages to win all of its other games and claim ninth. Luckily, since they're in the same state as Brandeis and one of the top teams in the country, they will be able to go head to head against the best teams again at ACF Nationals in just a few week--nevermind.

10) Florida State. Billy Beyer powers a question on Beef Wellington against Chicago A and noted food maven Susan Ferrari. Billy's knowledge of the geography of Monica Marks continues to get him no points.

11) UC-Irvine. Dwight Wynne is statistically the most valuable player in the tournament, but UCI confusingly manages only 11th place. They lose a close prelim game to Illinois B when Samer Ismail continually gets phone Rickrolled, causing him to get through just 14 tossups. Only Brendan Shapiro's sweet talking saves them from forfeit when Mike Decker barges into their third playoff game demanding that they withdraw from the tournament and pay College Bowl $500 for campus packets because Ray Anderson has reaffiliated the team. Mike Burger repeatedly calls Ray Anderson "Rom" after initially jumbling the letters of "UCI."

12) Drake. Brendan Byrne wins a crucial article-related protest against Illinois A to give Mike Sorice his only prelim-bracket defeat, but loses enough close games early to fall to the second bracket. In the first match, Brendan cruises along until a teammate powers a tossup, causing him to look wildly around and realize that he has three people sitting next to him. In a state of visible confusion and shock, he does not buzz for 10 consecutive tossups, leading to a triumphant Harding victory. Drake's powers plummet after round 9, when a coding error causes all italicized and quotation-marked titles to display as garbled nonsense.

13) Iowa. Paul Drube's attempts to entice Pat Hope to transfer go awry in Iowa's playoff round against North Dakota, when the two spend the entire game staring deeply into each other's eyes. Luckily, Iowa is saved by Brandt Skelling's inspired 11/15/0 performance.

14) Carleton. The Knights are cruising along to another undergraduate title until Dartmouth’s once-tranquilized beast frosh wakes up and breaks free of his cage, goring Ted Kuhn and mauling Trevor Burnham to within an inch of his life, in a fit of sedative-induced rage. The crazed beast breaks through a window and escapes into the greater St. Louis area, and is captured in a tree near Des Peres on late Tuesday. Carleton finishes in the middle of the second playoff bracket and loses to Drake in an all-Midwest undergrad final.

15) North Dakota. Like, North Dakota, as in the state that’s on top of South Dakota?

16) Rutgers. It’s an exciting “War of the Kellers” in the prelims, until the game starts and Vanderbilt powers the first three questions. Hilarity ensues during lunch when passersby mistake Jason Keller’s verbal cussing out of his teammates for a pre-concert psyche up, assume that the team is actually a ska band called “Bonifacio and the Buzzer Rocks,” and demand autographs. Keller’s day gets even worse when he is mocked by Chris Ray when both of them attempt to claim Charlie Steinhice’s top individual scorer award, leading to an awkward attempt to use the phrase “thanks for coming along for the ride” as an insult against an opponent.

17) Princeton. A disappointing prelim showing has Jordan, Mason, & Co. slide all the way to the third bracket, but they go undefeated in the playoffs, despite the loss of their lead scorer Jordan, who mysteriously emerges soaking wet from the hotel bathroom holding LaTeX-formatted documents in his two broken arms.

18) Florida. Mistaken for Dartmouth’s loose beast frosh in a characteristic fit of rage, Aaron Kashtan is sadly euthanized during round eight. In a not-so-subtle tribute to Pistons’ standout Rip Hamilton, Sarah Whitfield dons a gigantic cast and crutches especially for the tournament. Tom Michael arrives during the prize ceremony to once again crown Sarah the winner of College Bowl’s “Don’t you wish your alternate was hot like me” freeze frame (note: a real freeze frame from last year!), the prize for which is Tom Michael’s cell phone number.

19) Alabama. J.T. Thompson has an attack of crippling paranoia when he sees students everywhere he goes. Alabama’s proclivity for “hat[ing] it when books are given for prizes” winds up paying off, as they dominate NAQT’s 3/3 trophy distribution.

20) WUSTL. The title quest of the hometown favorites is derailed early when Gordon Arsenoff is dragged away to a local police station by a kind couple who suspect that he is a lost nine-year-old boy, and their demise is further exacerbated when Thomas Jefferson’s droid command satellite is destroyed, causing Neel Kotra to shut down. Meanwhile, Sean Phillips and the rest of the WUSTL staff confused the ACF and NAQT dates, and are at Macalester eagerly awaiting the start of College Bowl Nationals. Luckily, NAQT saves the day by assembling a crack team of scabs: Tony La Russa and Charlie Dees’s grandfather. By powering all tossups on baseball and Flomax, the two statewide celebs and hometown favorites muscle Wash U all the way to #20 in the land.

21) UCLA. Ray Luo’s lovable band is screwed over when Dwight Kidder refuses to read rounds in three of their prelim matchups, instead choosing to read his archaic “diagnostic test” from his Nine Minutes podcast; unfortunately they do not know which element’s name is Swedish for “tough earth.” Ray is embarrassingly forced to change jeans after three consecutive tossups on “Orlando,” “the amygdala,” and “Shah Jahan.” Cliff Galiher refuses to answer any tossup until recognized as “Jep.” Yogesh Raut and his former USC teammates conspire to write a mean-spirited Jay Turetzky-themed packet to avenge the “packet of abominations,” but the joke is on them as no one plays Ghetto Warz anyway.

22) Stanford B. Though statistically among the top third of the teams at the tournament, Stanford’s B team falls victim to the curse of Texas of a year before, arguing passionately on the clock about whether Vik Vaz or Eric Kwartler has a hotter significant other and plummeting all the way to #22.

23) Georgia. Confusion reigns when UGA shows up with five teams, all of them eager to get home before Sunday’s anticipated SEC women’s water polo matchup against Mississippi State.

24) Toronto. Eric Smith’s celebration of a buzzer-beating game winning 15 gets out of hand when he emulates Joe Carter’s over-the-top 1993 walkoff celebration, much to the chagrin of Jason Loy.

25) Illinois B. The lovable bunch from Urbana-Champaign manages to run the table in the bottom bracket, despite the fact that Donald Taylor occasionally vibrates with an inexplicable low-frequency wavelength.

26) VCU. After a lackluster opening salvo lands the boys from Richmond in the cellar bracket, they put their rings together and form a Megazord-like version of Leo Walmart (note, this may not be the actual name, but it was hard to read on the scoresheet). After losing to Illinois B anyway, they reform into a Megazord version of Matt Weiner, and despite losing all ability to maintain reason in internet debates or answer science tossups, go undefeated the rest of the way to manage a respectable #26.

27) Harding. A sour day turns sourer when Jason Loy’s teammates are maliciously listed for free on Craigslist and are carried away intermittently throughout the tournament.

28) Virginia Tech. Confusion abounds when Virginia Tech team is revealed to be Brian Rostron and his pet Macaw, Tutti Frutti. Rostron negs every fifth question with an invective-laced tirade against Mormonism, causing the trained bird to croak “RAWK! Racism from NAQT RAWK!”

29) Rochester. Rochester’s hopes of powering one fourth of the NAQT distribution by bringing an actual apiary to the tournament end in tragicomedy when the bees form a perfect arrow and repeatedly sting Eric Hillemann.

30) Oklahoma. Highlight: powering the round one common link tossup on “wide stances.” (NAQT writer: JEFF BAGWELL HAD ONE SO DOES SENATOR CRAIG AMIRITE LOL WOW TOSSUP TIEM)

31) UT-Chattanooga. The tournament MVP was Charlie Steinhice. Unfortunately, the stats disk was lost.

32) BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!

[setht]

You numbnut, you made ICT predictions for Chicago's ACF team.

[grapesmoker]

You numbnut, you made ICT predictions for Chicago's ACF team.

ALL BETS ARE OFF

[Brian Ulrich]

I actually had a dream last week that ICT was being held in a K-Mart while the store was still open, on the theory that it would help them attract customers. It was also cloudy out.

[Mr. Kwalter]

Perhaps ACF Nationals should be held at K-Mart in the hope that it will attract teams.

[AKKOLADE]

I'm pretty sure American Airlines is going to win.

Edit: Grammars

[vandyhawk]

I'm pretty sure American Airlines is going to win.

Edit: Grammars

Yeah, I wonder if any teams will have their flights canceled. St. Louis is a hub for AA after they bought out TWA, but I guess not a huge hub.

[Mike Bentley]

I'm pretty sure American Airlines is going to win.

Edit: Grammars

Yeah, I wonder if any teams will have their flights canceled. St. Louis is a hub for AA after they bought out TWA, but I guess not a huge hub.

Maryland is one such team at the moment.

[Maxwell Sniffingwell]

As is Lawrence.

EDIT: Not canceled. Thank you, Mukherjesus.

[theMoMA]

29) Rochester. Rochester’s hopes of powering one fourth of the NAQT distribution by bringing an actual apiary to the tournament end in tragicomedy when the bees form a perfect arrow and repeatedly sting Eric Hillemann.

One can only presume that these are L'Africainized killer bees.