TRASH Midwest Regionals at Wash U of St. Louis, 11/20/05

Results: License to IL
(Charlie, Colby, Flax, Alma)

    In four years of college, the teams on which I played won just two tournaments, and in both of those we were not the best teams there in the preliminaries (at least as far as wins and losses went), but won thanks in part to single-elimination playoff structures in which we delivered at the right times.  (In particular, the previous TRASH Regionals win, with Northwestern a full four years ago - for anyone who doesn't remember, we won the semis in sudden death and trailed by 70 with two tossups left in the finals and proceeded to 10-30 both of them for as amazing a finish as I've ever been a part of.)
    It didn't take too long to rack up the first post-college win, however, and the first tournament win I've been a part of since the Rutgers tournament in 2000 - i.e., senior year of high school, the NAQT state tournament - where my team really dominated the field.  We didn't go undefeated, but it was close - we lost the last game on the final question despite the fact that, relative to the rest of the day, it was a pretty terrible round for us.  Colby and I finished one and two in scoring, only a few tossups apart and both over 40 points per game; Alma and Charlie combined for another 24 tossups, and all of us were instrumental in an excellent bonus conversion that saw us average nearly 20 ppb.  All in all, an excellent day.  Yes, it was a small field and didn't feature any major standout teams (we didn't have to deal with Shelby Foote Soldiers or anyone from Michigan, for example), but what counts is we won, and had fun doing it.  Oh, and the automatic bid to TRASHionals.  That's another good one.
    Favorite Tossup: It seems that whenever I research just one thing before a tournament, that thing comes up.  In this case, I thought Paula Creamer (LPGA golfer, for anyone who doesn't know) might be an answer, so I did a little bit of research beforehand.  Round 8, tossup 8: "Her nickname is the Pink Panther-" *buzz*  Ka-boom!  Other good buzzes: Logo, Sharpie, the Whizzinator, Wes Craven, Rafael Nadal, and Logan's Run.
    Favorite Bonus: The one I wrote down was a movie bonus in round 9, where the common factor was screenwriter Ernest Lehman.  The answers: Sabrina, Portnoy's Complaint (which I managed to pull), and North by Northwest.
    Worst Neg: I only had two, but both were pretty annoying - I rang in with "DeLorean" after hearing something about a Y-shaped set of lights.  The actual answer was the more specific "flux capacitor."  I'm annoyed because I blew one on a movie I love, but when you get right down to it it's my fault, since I didn't really hear much of the opening, which undoubtedly suggested a more specific answer than the car itself would be required.  The other one was stupid because the buzzers had gotten unplugged, and both Alma and I were trying to buzz at once, and in the midst of a big clusterfuck I went with the director of the movie that had just been mentioned.  The question turned out to be looking for the producer.  Bah.
    One-two, one-two, check check: Though I don't have all the official stats, I think this might be the first time since Regionals 2002 (a span of 12 Trash tournaments, exclusive of that one and this one) that I wasn't the top scorer on my team.  On the other hand, I finished second, I still had over 40 ppg (which I've always been pretty much fine with), and I have no problem at all with Colby finishing first.  In fact, it's nice to see him develop a little more consistency; he's always had the knowledge base but in previous years had more of a tendency to get scared off by a couple negs (his negs were minimal here, which also helps).  If we can maintain two players with a 40+ average and two solid supporting players (and Alma level-headedly handling the captain duties), this team could really go places.
    One-defeated: I thought we might have a chance at an undefeated record, but we coughed it up in the last round.  Playing Rolla A a second time, having defeated them 275-50 the first time out (as they picked up just two tossups that round), we stumbled out of the gate for the third time all day.  The previous two times had seen us go down 80-0 to Illinois after three tossups in Round 1, then outscore them 395-35 over the final 17 questions, and down 100-(-5) to Wash U after four tossups in Round 3, then mount a 355-10 charge over the last 16.  The latest we had trailed in any game was going into the eighth tossup in the Wash U game (90-85 at the time).
    The second Rolla A game was, as such, bad on many levels.  First, they went up 75-0 after two tossups and 130-30 after seven.  At the half, we had just three tossups (and one was a pickup on an embarrassing neg by them, where the guy wearing the Tottenham jersey negged on the Spurs question with Liverpool) and trailed 155-90, by 50 points our worst halftime total of the day.  We picked up five tossups in the second half while they had just two, but we had awful bonus conversion.  Trailing 170-155 after 15, I picked up tossup 16 after they negged, but we managed just ten on the bonus to get a slim 175-165 lead.  17 dropped and I got 18, but we got the dreaded bagel.  Naturally, no one got 19 and they got 20, needing 10 to tie and 20 to win.  Of course, they got 20.
    It was our only round with fewer than 11 tossups (we had just eight, six of which were mine), fewer than 275 points (that game was also against Rolla A; excluding them, we hit at least 330 in our other eight matches), fewer than 165 bonus points (again, also the other Rolla A match; again excluding those two games, we hit at least 18.82 ppb in every game and went over 20 six times), and not a single 30-point bonus conversion.  Just overall a really bad round for us.  Due credit to Rolla for the win - we tried pretty hard to lose, but then again, they negged four times (and I picked up three of them).  Ultimately, the difference was the bonus conversion.  While we put up just 13.12 on eight tossups, they put up 21.43 on seven (naturally, the only time all day they went over 20) - and that was that.
    Of course, we did win the tournament despite this, thanks to the fact that Rolla had managed to lose to Illinois the previous round, giving them three losses for the day and ensuring there wouldn't be any finals.  (I think we could have won one of two, but it's just as well we didn't have to.)  So I guess I have no point.

Round Robin

Round One: License to IL 395, Illinois 115
Round Two: License to IL 485, Rolla B 40
Round Three: License to IL 350, Wash U 110
Round Four: License to IL 380, DePauw 10
Round Five: License to IL 275, Rolla A 50
Round Six: License to IL 390, Illinois 60
Round Seven: License to IL 360, Rolla B 45
Round Eight: License to IL 330, Wash U 160
Round Nine: License to IL 355, DePauw 100
Round Ten: Rolla A 195, License to IL 185

Overall: 9-1 (first place out of six teams)

Personal Stats: Questions Answered

   No one's asking you to care about it.  Plain text means ten points; negs are italicized.

Round One
Robert Ludlum
Law and Order
Busch Stadium
Super Bowl 16
Spellbound (the Hitchcock one)

Round Two
Tyra Banks/Banxxx
"The Contest"
Bode Miller
Frank Oz
Logo

Round Three
Kim Clijsters
Cicely Tyson
Head Cases
Key Lime Pie

Round Four
DeLorean (really Flux capacitor)
Mint julep
Springfield
Stoops
Mike Wallace

Round Five
Felicity Huffman
Outdoor Life Network
Bob Denver

Round Six
Sharpie
Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding
Nintendogs
Spellbound (the spelling documentary one)

Round Seven
Hockey Night in Canada
Scene It!

Round Eight
The Whizzinator
Best Sound Oscar
Paula Creamer
Don Adams
Wes Craven

Round Nine
George Steinbrenner
Mr. Green
Rouge
Adrian Lyne (really Jerry Bruckheimer)
Rafael Nadal
Logan's Run

Round Ten
Tottenham Hotspur
Leon
Hallmark Channel
Robin Williams
Austin Carr
The Closer

Overall PPG: 42.00