So, the final first round match! It's been a long round, hasn't it? An all-Welsh affair, with both sides aiming to score 155 or more to make it into the repechage, whatever happened. Pleasingly, no accidental spoilers have leaked out in the past week, so none of us knew what to expect tonight.
Aberystwyth University was part of the University of Wales until 2007, having been around in various forms for well over a century beforehand. It hasn't been seen on UC for some years, its last appearance being in 2006-07, where the team reached the QFs before losing to eventual winners Warwick. Playing for them tonight:
Simon Thomas, from Warminster in Wiltshire, studying Strategic Studies
Matthew Campbell, from Inverurie, studying Strategy
Captain: Ned Bishop-Harper, from Canterbury, studying Managing the Environment
Daniel Guy, from Epping, studying Biology
Nice to see someone from my neck of the woods on the show.
Bangor University has a similar history to its opponents, having been founded in 1884, and also becoming its own uni in 2007. Lest we forget, their team reached the semi-finals last year, before bowing out to Manchester. One of last year's team, Adam Pearce, remarked yesterday that this year's captain was his team's reserve, and he knows two more of them. They were:
Owain Jones, from Swansea, studying History
Daisy Le Helloco, from Dorchester, studying English Literature
Captain: Catriona Coutts, from Angelsey, studying English Literature with Creative Writing
Anna Johnson, from Chippenham, studying Marine Biology
So, both teams knew what they had to do, and off we set. Bangor struck first, with Daisy Le Helloco providing correct answers to the first two starters. Aberystwyth got off the mark, but went backwards to -5 before getting their first starter of the night. The first picture round was on jerseys used in the Tour de France; Bangor took this, increasing their lead to 75-15.
And almost immediately, everyone of the Bangor side had a starter to their name. A good set of bonuses on pairs of celebs, the first of whom's surname is the second's first name, gave them a full set of bonuses. Step in James Guy, who managed two consecutive starters for Aberystwyth, and a fair amount of bonuses went with them. The music round was on genres whose names are also dances; Bangor got the starter, and seemed to take their time answering the bonuses, not for the first or last time.
Bangor's lead was now 115-55, and another good buzz from Daisy Le Helloco increased it. Again, the side took their time with the bonuses. An early buzz from Bangor allowed Aberystwyth to get back into the match, and a full set of bonuses followed. A second starter and bonuses for Aberystwyth reduced the Bangor advantage to just 25 points. The second picture round, on depictions of female authors, gave Bangor more room to manoeuvre, and increased the lead to 140-100.
Into the final minutes, with the gap still closeable. Catriona Coutts became the latest in a long list of quiz show contestants to mistake Cardinal Wolsey for Thomas Cromwell, and to think he was executed (which he wasn't). Another starter went to Aberystwyth, but no bonuses followed. And this, alas, was as far as Aberystwyth could make it, and the remaining non-dropped starters went to Bangor. Again, the side took their time with the bonuses.
At the gong, Bangor won by 230-110. A good first victory for the side, despite their taking their times with their bonuses, and, like so many others, a favourable draw could see them do well in the later stages. Bad luck Aberystwyth, but a respectable effort.
The stats: a late surge saw Catriona Coutts emerge as Bangor's best buzzer with five starters, while Daniel Guy's three was Aberystwyth's best tally. On the bonuses, Abersywyth managed a decent 11 out of 18 (with one penalty), while Bangor's final tally was 22 out of 37 (with two penalties), which is also a good tally.
So, the repechage teams are: Durham (170), Loughborogh and Southampton (155 each) and Christ Church Oxford (150). Four good teams, so we should be in for some good matches, we hope.
Next week: the first repechage match. No word on the draw yet, but my best guess is Durham vs Christ Church.
Tune back in tomorrow for a short summary for the first round, and what we can expect next.
Some good friends of mine on the Bangor team this year. Jones & Le Helloco (sounds like a pair of PI's) are fellow humanities postgrads and Coutts was our team's reserve (perhaps she should have been on our team as she got more starters this match than any of us except Simon Tomlinson managed in any one of our matches). I was really pleased to see them get on, even more so to see them win and doubly so to see them beat our old rivals!
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I put a long reply to your post on Oxbridge teams in UC... let me know what you think!
DeleteThanks as ever for that insight Adam. Do pass my congrats on if you can. I take it you've left the uni now?
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DeleteNo and yes - I'm still technically enrolled there but I'm doing a PGCE so I'm not really a student in a conventional sense, and I'm no longer working in Bangor, but I live just outside the city and my social life is still very much rooted there.
DeleteI was very impressed with the way that every Bangor team member was chipping in on the starters in this game. A team that manages to involve everyone is always one to watch, and even more so in this case, given that your team made it all the way to the semi-finals last year. I'm eagerly awaiting the new Bangor quartet's next appearance.
DeleteBangor got 217, suffering from their bonus conversion which, while respectable, lagged behind some other teams we've seen this series; Aberystwyth got 158, buoyed by their own quite good conversion (which was in fact higher than Bangor's).
ReplyDeleteSince we've seen all the teams play, it seems like a good idea to give the ranking of those still in the contest. Teams in the play-offs are marked with an asterisk.
1. Trinity Cambridge (314)
=2. SOAS (250)
=2. Somerville Oxford (250)
4. *Christ Church Oxford (243)
=5. York (237)
=5. Downing Cambridge (237)
7. Peterhouse Cambridge (228)
8. Liverpool (223)
9. Clare Cambridge (218)
10. Bangor (217)
11. Queens' Cambridge (209)
12. *Southampton (197)
13. Manchester (196)
14. *Durham (192)
15. *Loughborough (174)
16. Reading (155)
17. Cardiff (137)
18. Queen's Belfast (109)
First I should say - as a contestant this series, obviously I know some things about the results of matches yet to come. Any comments I make, however, are based purely on my statistics and shouldn't be taken as hinting at actual results. A few things stand out. First, defending champions Manchester are relatively low. Second, lots of teams have done very well - 11 have scores above 200, and several more just missed out. Round two could be very interesting. Of course, round one is notoriously a bad guide for the later rounds (think of Emmanuel in 2010 or Bangor last year), so these standings might be up-ended entirely once each team has played two matches. For now, though, I would predict Christ Church and Southampton to make it through (assuming Christ Church play Durham; Durham v. Southampton would be a hard match to call). Beyond that, it's difficult to say. We'll see how well my numbers deal with the reality of round two!
Out of interest, which of the first round dropouts had the highest score?
DeletePembroke, with 186 (if I remember correctly).
DeleteOh, also - it was excellent seeing a majority female team for once!
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ReplyDeleteWhat an intriguing match on which to end this cracking first round! In a series which has been dominated by Cambridge and seen only three non-English universities grace the screens until now, we now get two Welsh institutions in one night. Plus – correct me if I’m wrong – I make this the first Jeremy Paxman series in which not a single team is making its debut appearance. All of this rather goes against what the producers told us back when we were applying for the show. They may have been looking for “a good geographic spread of teams” and “at least a few debutant teams”, but these things haven’t really shone through!
ReplyDeleteWhat matters, though, is that Bangor can now take their rightful places in a second-round line-up that’s quite possibly the strongest I’ve ever seen. I’ve picked up on the low bonus conversion rates of some winning teams so far, and Bangor’s bonus work could probably do with some polishing off, but their buzzer work was terrific, especially from Daisy Le Helloco. That’s what counts in the end when it comes to grabbing points and keeping your opponents away from the bonuses. I have a feeling that plenty of games in the rest of the series could pivot around some infinitesimally small buzzer race victories.
My housemate’s younger brother apparently got “5 chemistry questions right” in this episode when he watched it. I’m not surprised – the bonus set on basic chemical bonding terminology was straight out of GCSE chemistry! Perhaps this just stands out to me because I am a chemist, but it does irk me slightly that University Challenge should be asking questions about GCSE material. I cannot think of many chemistry related questions that I wouldn’t have known the answers to were it not for my university education – and that’s exactly what a university education is for, right?
I was also pleasantly surprised in this game at the number of very lucky educated guesses that I was able to make to starters – I knew very few starter answers for certain, but I somehow managed to find some responses that felt good and turned out to be correct. It’s such a shame that I didn’t have any of those moments in my own first-round match (I don’t think my “flash point” answer counts in that respect).
So, at the end of this first stage of the series, I’ll say it again: it’s been terrific to watch it all, some of it for the second time. I cannot wait for what comes next.
Nice to see Bangor’s dragon making a return appearance as well!
Regarding your comment about the lack of débutante teams - I think that suggests that, as much as they might like to have a diverse selection of teams, in most cases decisions are made on a meritocratic basis. Which, in my opinion, is as it should be.
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