The Ohio Quizbowl Forum

We always make these polls and ask, who will win OAC States? I think obviously Northmont is the large favorite, not that St. Charles or Fisher or Copley couldn't pull the upset, but it'll be tough. (although the question set could go a long way in determining the winner as well). I figure I'd just ask who people think will place top 4 instead. If the draw places lets say St. Charles, Copley and Northmont in the same bracket though, then that gets really interesting. Let's see your thoughts here.

NOTE: Of the rest, I could also see Solon being in the top 4 as well... they have been solid all year long and own some victories over some great teams.

Yeah I went with Solon as the 4th instead of Copley. Copley's beaten them earlier in the year on TU/B but Rohin is the best OAC player I've seen this year (granted, I've maybe seen Northmont, FC, St. Charles, and Sidney once or at most twice this year). But I think NC was the deepest region (although the region was mostly several very good teams and no other team I would call "great" outside of Solon). Still, Solon cleared everyone easily, never having a round scoring below 60.

Northmont is going to win. There isn't much of a debate about that, but I think that Sydney could easily be a second or third. They are the most balanced Ohio team (in my opinion) and that will help them in OAC. Furthermore, Sydney doesn't have to play Northmont in the prelims, which is also really beneficial to them.

I'll be the antagonist here; while Northmont is the favorite to win it all, I don't think this immediately become a "playing for second place" deal. If the state set was written as haphazardly as the regional set was, then I think it boils down to whoever owns the category rounds (with amazing depth in those subjects!), as they will have enough points to overcome such lightning round gems, like leadins to the affect of "[a very famous massacre] happened in this country".

But really, I think Northmont and their depth of humanities/social studies/lit makes them the favorite, regardless of how the set was written. I think, depending on whether the Bolts are Team A or Team B, they'll be the team that can clean up the best at category rounds.

I think it final four will be Northmont, SC/FC, Sidney. Copley and Solon I think could also break the fold into the final four.

Northmont for obvious reasons. SC because Zel has very good anticipation coupled with deep knowledge of stuff, Tyler is becoming a force in science, and Stephen can pick up RMP/other stuff. Us, namely because I like to think Brandon and I work very well when we can communicate, and Sidney because there's a lot of balance (although the production needs to be uniformly consistent, it's hard to win if you only are getting consistent buzzes on only a few subjects).

I agree that it is anyone's game among the top four. We have lost matches to St. Charles and Dublin Scioto over the last month, so anything can happen. It is definitely not a scenario where folks are playing for second.

With that said, poorly written questions are the great equalizer. It is clear that writing this set was not a priority to HSAPQ given the multitude of mistakes that were present in the regionals set, and the fact that it was receive days before regionals when it was due well before that. That, coupled with their unwillingness to edit the set based upon feedback about its poor quality, really causes me a great deal of concern for the state set. Given horrible balance issues between team A and B questions, anything can happen. Coupled with the fact that most alphabet rounds are easy 19s or 20s for good teams, it further magnifies the weight of the category rounds, which given balance issues is not a good thing.

Obviously, Fisher and St. Charles have proven that they are elite teams, and Sidney has improved dramatically this year, so those teams are clearly in the mix. I haven't seen Copley and Solon much this year, but clearly both teams are playing very well right now,so they have a good chance as well.

So I'm really wondering given the comments here - just how bad was the regionals set, and aspects of the questions made it bad? As an HSAPQ member, I'm curious as to what made things look unsatisfactory, even though I wasn't an editor for it.

This might be stuff for a different thread, but I'm wondering by how much an OAC packet is supposed to distinguish between teams. Certainly there's less chance for it here than in TU/B because of team-oriented questions. I'm not sure if easy 19s and 20s for the best teams in the state is necessarily a bad thing for something that's "regular difficulty" or easier, unless bad teams are also getting that many points as well (was this the case here?). How much is it supposed to separate two teams of similar strength, anyway? Balancing Team A and Team B questions is something I still really struggle to do for plenty of reasons - to me, it's like writing to make sure two middle parts of two different bonuses (of the TU/B variety) are exactly equal in difficulty. That, combined with the additional factor of tying those to a somewhat loose theme, makes that task difficult enough that, even though I remember OAC Regionals 2011 was praised for doing this well, I'm still not entirely convinced I did a particularly great job at balancing category rounds, especially without empirical data to see how the questions actually played out.

Just as a reference, I can confirm that the teams we played throughout the day aside from cloverleaf did not get 18, 19, or 20 on the alphabet rounds. I remember one team got 8 and unless if my memory sucks (this is possible) i recall most of the other teams performing at about that level within a range of about 8-12 points on the alphabet rounds.

For future cases, I think that HSAPQ should include two or three alphabet round questions that are really hard to get. Also, I agree that there were uneven team questions, especially in lit. Furthermore, some of the clues used in tossups were really transparent or stock. I dont think that the set was inherently bad, but compared to the HSAPQ set that I played at OSU it was not that great. I am not trying to take jabs at HSAPQ. I'm just simply offering some constructive criticism. Finally, are these questions cleared, or are we not allowed to refer to specific questions.

demere wrote:For future cases, I think that HSAPQ should include two or three alphabet round questions that are really hard to get. Also, I agree that there were uneven team questions, especially in lit. Furthermore, some of the clues used in tossups were really transparent or stock. I dont think that the set was inherently bad, but compared to the HSAPQ set that I played at OSU it was not that great. I am not trying to take jabs at HSAPQ. I'm just simply offering some constructive criticism. Finally, are these questions cleared, or are we not allowed to refer to specific questions.

The questions are not yet cleared because HSAPQ uses them for other tournaments as well.

What else would a question set like this be used for?

I think the tossups get recycled in their VHSL and quasi state championship sets they made this year.

Tom's right - some of the questions in the set were used for VHSL and the state championship series that HSAPQ started this year. So while the questions aren't clear, I'm happy to discuss question content in private, so feel free to message me about specific problems. Mistakes (especially wrong information) in the questions aren't excussable, but problems such as "this was transparent and/or stock" probably need specific examples for me to tell what's going on in a question.

I thought the set was OK. Perhaps a little easier than previous HSAPQ-written OAC states/regionals sets, but that wasn't too bad. The differential between teams in the Alphabet round was I felt a little less than usual OAC packets. My only pressing concern is how the bonus questions and the tossup in the Category rounds sometimes were related and sometimes were not. It threw me and my teammates a little off guard when we either realized that all 3 questions were in fact related or when we realized that they were in fact not. At times it would seem like two of the questions were related while having an unrelated tossup. I'm fine with having unrelated bonus and tossup questions, but it was a little odd as I feel like older OAC sets tried harder to make these questions more related (of course sometimes one would be able to infer easily what the tossup was based on the two bonus questions which was kind of bad).

When the set gets cleared, I think more fruitful discussion on here can take place because I think a lot of this set's shortcomings came in the team questions, but also there were some factual inaccuracies it appeared (but since I don't have the set on me, I don't want to have to point out questions all from memory from two weeks ago).