As things are wrapping up on Wednesday, I wanted to mention where we stand with respect to the Final Four. Right now, only five teams stand a chance to make it. Results through round 17 may be found on Grand Central.
First, there’s Bothell’s, “The A Team” at 15-2. They are guaranteed a spot. They play Swedesboro and Phoenix in the morning.
It’s hard to believe it’s been almost a year since we all gathered in Chicago, IL to watch 40 teams compete for the national championship, but the 52nd National Finals begin one week from today.
The purpose of this post is to let people know the possible outcomes on Wednesday morning and what it means for the Final Four. At this point, any team with more than 7 losses is mathematically eliminated from contention. Right now the only scenario in which a team with seven losses can make the top bracket would be if they win all the games, James River and Spring lose all four games tomorrow and the second Bothell loses at least two of their games. That creates a tie with seven losses.
This is just a quick wrap-up of nationals through Monday night. Results can be found here. Of particular note, is that the two teams I mentioned as “shoe-ins” for the Final Four each have one loss. Right now, James River and Bellevue remain the only undefeated teams.
I saw Bothell’s top team several times in the prelims and they looked quite good. James River had a very good game in my room against Central. Unfortunately, I will not see either Owasso or the top Bothell team in the regular rounds.
Abby leads the top scorer field again, but not by an insurmountable lead.
We tested out streaming for a few matches in my room and it worked just fine, so I can pretty confidently say that we will be streaming the final activities on Wednesday and Thursday. If at all possible, we will stream BOTH semi-final matches, the third and first place games, plus the finals of the individual tournament and the quoting bee as well as parts of the banquet.
Well, it appears that with Karl and James unable to make it, I am the main link to the world outside the Hyatt Regency this year. I, myself, am getting there at the last minute, flying out early Sunday morning the day after my brother’s wedding.
Nationals is over, and championships have been won. I wanted to mention a few special statistics that I compiled (with the help of Seth Sundell and Larry Mullins). Now that we use Larry’s program to do the stats, he can easily provide question-by-question breakdowns, so I know how many rooms each question was answered correctly in. Due to some problems with the program on the first day, challenger stats are not included here.
The first stat I wanted to look up was questions that only one person got correctly. This is to show off the extra work that each of these quizzers did, in order to be the only quizzer in the country to answer correctly. This was true of only 5 questions in the regular rounds:
