Well, here we go again people, after a weekend that felt weird due to there being no DoND (the weekend shows having been discontinued as of now), and also Friday's show being mysteriously replaced with a repeat, for reasons that sleuthing has since made clear. Things should be restored to normality on that front now. But enough of that; on with UC.
SOAS, or the School of Oriental and African Studies to give its full name, is part of the University of London, and it was founded in 1916. Alumni include Enoch Powell, Ang San Suu Kyi, and comedian Dom Joly. It last sent a team back in 2007-08, where they lost to Exeter in the second round after only narrowly winning their first match. This year's foursome were:
Mave Weber, from Knebworth in Hertforshire, studying Ancient Near East Studies
Luke Vivian-Neal, from Lusaka in Zambia, studying Chinese
Captain: Peter McKean, from Wallington in South London, studying African History
James Figueroa, from Surrey, studying African Studies and Development Studies
Southampton University began life in the 19th century, and became a full university in 1952. Alumni include Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Jeremy Hardy, and KP from Bother's Bar and the (DoND) forum. A team from the university last appeared three series ago, where they lost a low scoring first round match to Newnham College Cambridge. This year's team, which included LAM and JOW reader Cromarty(IV), were:
David Bishop, from Reading, studying Physics
Richard Evans, from Frimley in Surrey, studying Chemistry
Captain: Bob de Caux, from Haywards Heath, studying Complex Systems Simulation
Matt Loxham, from Preston, studying Respiratory Toxicology
Some very interesting sounding subjects tonight!
It started very even indeed, with the two teams sharing the first two starters, and getting all the bonuses that came with them. After the first picture round, on scout badges it was 45-all, due to both teams getting two starters (one of which was a good buzz from Mr Figueroa) and only missing one bonus each.
After this, though, the teams began to separate, with SOAS beginning to pull away, with better work on the buzzer. There didn't seem to be any one person getting all the starters they got; all were contributing, which, as is always a sign of a good team. It was also nice to see a mature student on the team in the form of Ms Weber; funny that we should get one now, as just this afternoon, I was reading an old discussion on this blog from earlier in the year discussing the appropriateness of teams with multiple mature students.
The music starter was a piece of Chopin that I got almost instantly, having heard it on this show before! Southampton got the starter eventually, and the bonuses helped them close the gap to 95-75. But SOAS were continuing to get starters, and were beginning to pull out a strong lead. On once occasion, Mr McKean was about to answer, but his teammates corrected him just in time, which Paxo did not let go without a remark!
By the second picture round, on works of art entitled 'The Kiss', SOAS's lead had reached 170-90, and they looked home and dry. Just to make us sure, Mr Vivian-Neal, who has been quiet for most of the match, began an impressive run of three starters, including one on Arabic, which Paxo remarked his team had to get really!
Mr Vivian-Neal's fourth consecutive buzz turned out to be a wrong one, which lost his team five, and allowed Southampton back into the game. Even though they had no chance of pulling it back, could they at least make it into the repechage list? Yes, they could! In fact, they more than could! Mr McKean managed one final starter before the gong, and we got one final laugh when Paxo stumbled over the bonus subject, and the gong went before he could correct himself! SOAS had won, 230-155.
Bad luck Cromarty(IV) and co, but a respectable effort that might just be enough for the repechage. We shall see, but, if this impressive high scoring form continues, it may be more borderline than you'd imagine. But well done SOAS for a very impressive performance, probably the second best this series so far behind Trinity. That final starter made Mr McKean the London side's best buzzer, with four starters, which was also Southampton's best tally, managed by Matt Loxham. Southampton managed a respectable 15 bonuses out of 24, while the Londoners ended with a very good 23 out of 33 (with one late penalty).
Next week's match: Brasenose College Oxford vs Manchester. I don't know which team I feel more sorry for: Brasenose for having to play Manchester, or Manchester for having to live up the high standards of their past two predecessors!
I’m very pleased to be a part of what is turning out to be a very high-scoring series!
ReplyDeleteI’ve given a fairly in-depth series of recollections from the match over on LAM, but one thing I didn’t mention was my reaction to my “flash point” buzz in the final minute of the game. I was only about 60% sure of the answer, because even though I’ve been performing serious practical chemistry experiments for at least 5 years, the term “flash point” has never really come up in my studies. It was in my head when Paxman was reading the question merely because of a one-line comment that I remember reading in Southampton’s chemistry safety briefing at the beginning of my first year – “Diethyl ether has an extremely low flash point”. I knew very well that diethyl ether is one of the most flammable liquids that I regularly encounter in the laboratory, so that was where I got my answer from. That buzz-in was the most nerve-wracking moment of the whole game for me, because I knew that if I kept quiet or buzzed in and lost 5, my UC career would definitely be over. I don’t think it quite came across on screen how terrified I was at that moment!
The good news for us was that, after this match, we’d scored more highly than the last three Southampton teams to have appeared on the show, and our opponents from SOAS were immeasurably stronger than any of Southampton’s opponents in those previous years. I feel the pain of this year’s Christ Church team! Furthermore, I am sure that SOAS, like Trinity College, will go far in the series.
That close-up on Susu the cat is my favourite UC moment of all time, simply because I didn’t see it coming!
As for next week’s match: I watched it live in the studios shortly after our match was filmed. To answer your dilemma, I certainly felt more sorry for Brasenose than for Manchester, because we really didn’t want to get drawn against Manchester in the opening round, given how strong their teams have recently been! (I won’t be able to post my reaction to the match until late next week, by the way. All I can say about it for now is something a bit cryptic, but which isn’t a spoiler: “There’s another one of them!”)
Opaltiger, if you're reading this, could you post the scores that SOAS and we got according to your formula? It would be really interesting to see. Thanks.
Right, sorry, I've been on holiday in rural Japan where watching University Challenge proved somewhat difficult. (Though I did manage to see Clare v Loughborough only a few days after it aired.)
ReplyDeleteSo, to get those out of the way: Clare (218), Loughborough (174). Those sound about right to me.
As for this week, SOAS got 250 and Southampton 197. That puts SOAS in second place so far after Trinity, a couple of points ahead of Christ Church (you might think that's quite high for a losing team, and maybe you'd be right, but my formula tries to take into account the skill of the other team).
Looking forward to next week (or, rather, tomorrow). I have a friend on the Brasenose team, looking forward to seeing how they did.
How are you calculating these scores? Apologies if you've explained elsewhere. And were you recording them before this series (not that I think it would be fair to compare between different series)?
DeleteAnyway, another good match with two good teams, this series is looking pretty promising.
I take the combined score for a match and multiply it by the average of a team's bonus conversion and proportion of starters they got, ignoring dead starters. I can explain the rationale behind it in more detail, if you like. I think it has its downsides but ultimately tends to work relatively well (especially once there's more than one datapoint!).
DeleteI've got stats for the last two series before this, which I compiled while procrastinating on exam revision as a way to test the statistic. :P The highest score last series was around 210; the series before that, if I remember correctly, around 250. I think broad comparisons are possible between series, but not until the series has ended, since we'd expect teams to do worse in the quarter finals and beyond.
Ah, I quite like that way of doing it, although incorporating negs in some way might improve it. Irritatingly it's impossible to use dead starters because they edit some of them out. My problem of comparing between years is that the difficulty varies, I don't think I was alone in thinking that last year's was harder than normal. That said, it would be good to try and find out which teams are the strongest of the last ten years(it's bound to be Corpus Christi 2008-09).
DeleteI've already worked out the average scores for the quarter-finalists form my series (I was on Sheffield 2010-11), so I might use the data from Weaver's Week to work out some earlier series if I'm sufficiently bored.