Thursday 9 January 2014

University Challenge 2013-14: Second Round review and Quarter-Final preview

So, we've reached the Quarter-Finals of this year's University Challenge. It's been a good series so far, and, with the teams that have made the QFs, I suspect the drama is far from over.

The eight teams through to the Quarter-Finals are, in order of qualification:
  • Somerville College Oxford (495 over two matches)
  • Queen's University Belfast (350 over two matches)
  • Clare Cambridge Clare (360 over two matches [discounting the 10 from the tie-breaker])
  • Southampton University (675 over three matches)
  • Trinity College Cambridge (540 over two matches)
  • Manchester University (540 over two matches)
  • Cardiff University (375 over two matches)
  • SOAS London (470 over two matches)
As with last year, we have blog readers in amongst these teams, namely Filip 'opaltiger' Drnovsek Zorko from the Trinity team, and Richard 'Cromarty(IV)' Evans and Bob de Caux of Southampton.

Well, for a change, I am beaten; I have absolutely no idea who is going to make it through the QFs. All eight teams have good points, and negatives. So lets have a quick flick-through.

Well, the three Oxbridge sides first: Trinity comfortably won both their matches, beating two good teams along the way; so have Somerville, but their scores haven't been as high, but still consistent. Clare have narrowly beaten two good teams en route, so I suspect they may struggle a little, but shouldn't be totally ruled out.

There were doubts over Manchester's performance quality after their average first round result, but a win by over 200 points over a good team in Round 2 has put pay to that.

Cardiff and Queen's were both narrow winners of low scoring affairs in Round 1. But, like with Bangor last year, have proven their worth with wins over two very good teams in the second round. And comfortable wins too, rather than Bangor's narrow squeaker over Durham last year.

And finally, SOAS and Southampton: they met in the first round, with SOAS winning. Since then, the Londoners defeated a good Reading team, while Southampton came through the repechage and defeated two good teams, scoring over 300 on one occasion.

Another point worthy of mention is that none of the teams have a single standout player a la Guttenplan or Trimble. All teams have players who have been contributing their fair share of the work, which goes to show that teamwork is good this series.

The highest overall starter tally is twelve, managed over two games by Trinity captain Ralph Morley and Jonathan Collings of Manchester, and over three by Southampton's Matt Loxham.

It's gonna be fascinating seeing the rest of the series play out. I cannot pick semi-finalists out for sure, as most of them seem to have had the same path to this stage; apart from Clare, both of whose victories have been close calls, all the teams have won at least one match over a team who were decent in their own right.

I just cannot call it at all; I will just wait and see how it pans out.

So, if they drew the preliminaries like the past two years, it will be Trinity vs Manchester on Monday, followed by Cardiff and SOAS, and then a random draw amongst the other four. Should be good whatever the draw!

5 comments:

  1. Right, here's my attempt at some predictions. The scores by my method are:

    1. Trinity (265)
    2. Manchester (247)
    3. Somerville (246)
    4. SOAS (236)
    5. Southampton (214)
    6. Clare (182)
    7. Cardiff (178)
    8. Queen's Belfast (149)

    So I guess my prediction is that the first four will go through. :P But obviously luck of the draw can change all that. If you're not convinced by my method, let's break it down and look at the three things that go into it: bonus conversion, proportion of starters correctly answered, and aggregate score (in this case average aggregate score in order to account for Southampton's three matches). Numbers are given in that order.

    Trinity (0.67, 0.55, 400)
    Manchester (0.62, 0.58, 377.5)
    Somerville (0.65, 0.52, 387.5)
    SOAS (0.66, 0.56, 357.5)
    Southampton (0.57, 0.51, 338)
    Clare (0.51, 0.42, 345)
    Cardiff (0.59, 0.40, 307.5)
    Queen's Belfast (0.42, 0.47, 285)

    All of which goes to show not very much. Like I said before, there seems to be a bit of a separation between the top four and bottom three teams, with Southampton in the middle. I guess that supports my prediction that the top four will go through. But really, the differences are quite small, and I'm not nearly confident enough to make any firm predictions.

    One last observation. If we use my metric to observe how teams did in their second performance versus their first, we might be able to come to an interesting conclusion or two. For Southampton I am counting their two victories.

    Trinity -98
    Manchester +103
    Somerville -8
    SOAS -28
    Southampton +138
    Clare -73
    Cardiff +84
    Queen's Belfast +81

    So, we have four teams getting quite a lot better, two teams getting quite a lot worse, and two teams staying roughly where they were. In that the second round is probably a slightly better measure (teams don't have to contend with first-time nerves, are used to the experience, etc.), that bodes well for those that improved and less well for those that didn't. But I think Somerville and SOAS come out of this looking best: clearly they're capable of consistently strong performances. And that's all a team needs to do, really - all other numbers are irrelevant so long as they can keep putting on such strong performances.

    ReplyDelete
  2. What a terrific second round this has been! We’ve had a couple of surprise results, a number of very high scores and a number of other very convincing victories, and even a tiebreaker… you don’t get all of that every day!

    This is how I read the statistics as they stand. As with the first round review, anything that I say below is based purely on evidence that has already been broadcast – I am not intending to hint at anything that’s coming up.

    I’d say that the teams to really watch out for in the quarters are Manchester and Southampton. The fact that I’m on one of these teams has nothing to do with it (!) – what’s intriguing about them is that they’ve both had a solid, if relatively unspectacular, victory prior to round 2, and a landslide victory in round 2. It could well be that the sky’s the limit for them on this basis.

    SOAS and Somerville have both had two solid victories over two good teams; none of their victories has been a landslide, although SOAS’ second round performance almost qualifies as one. Then there’s Trinity, who’ve had a landslide victory against Christ Church (who have also shown themselves to be a quality side) and a solid win over Peterhouse, who had them on the defensive for a fair portion of that match. Together, these three quarter-finalists were probably at the top of most statisticians’ watch-list for round 2. They’ve all shown remarkable consistency over their two games each, but whether they’re a clear-cut top three is not easy to call. Southampton and Manchester may have delivered blitzkrieg performances recently, but I’d say SOAS, Somerville and Trinity are comparable to the Viet Cong in these quarter-finals – their round 2 performances were not landslide victories, but they were very convincing nonetheless, and they could be difficult to get rid of!

    Cardiff and Queen’s Belfast have done a Bangor in round 2, by coming back from low-scoring round 1 performances and scoring solid victories. Their victims, Liverpool and Downing, were responsible for devastating landslides in round 1. This definitely means that Cardiff and Queen’s cannot be written off. Perhaps we have two dark horses here?

    That leaves us with Clare. On many occasions in their two games, particularly in round 2, they’ve shown us some world-class buzzing, which could be enough to give them a fighting chance in the quarters if they keep up that buzzing rate consistently. However, they haven’t been able to shake either of their opponents off their tails, resulting in a close victory and a tiebreak! Given that Loughborough and Christ Church, both having lost to Clare, were beaten by much wider margins in other appearances, Clare may have a hard time ahead of them. Their bonus conversion rates have varied quite a bit between their matches, it has to be said – which, ultimately, means only one thing. They do have all the necessary tools of the trade to make progress.

    I couldn’t possibly predict the semi-finalists from this analysis. At home, I’m infamous for trying to predict the results of just about everything going (Strictly Come Dancing, for example), and getting it outrageously (or narrowly) wrong. For years, I would tip the wrong team to win any University Challenge game. So I’m not going to put the curse of Evans on any of the last eight teams this year! All I can do is hope for lots more fierce intellectual battles in the weeks ahead.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's the first time I've been compared to the Viet Cong... :P

      Regarding the teams that have had one really good match and one average match (by the standards of the QFs; and I'm including our match against Peterhouse here, because the final scoreline definitely makes it look better than it was for us), it comes down to whether the average match or the good match was the outlier, I think.

      Delete
  3. I think it might depend on the draw. In an ideal world we'll have the opportunity to see the top teams play each other rather a lot, but if that happens in the quarter-finals then teams like SOAS, Manchester or Southampton could end up leaving the competition early by playing each other once too often before the semis. Today for example we saw Manchester lose; if (as is conceivable) Somerville play Southhampton, then the loser of that could just as conceivably play Manchester to stay in later in the draw. This opens it up for teams such as Queens' and Cardiff that are certainly not quite as strong.

    Last year, for all that they were deserving of a place in the quarter-finals, it could be argued that Bangor got a bit lucky with the draw (but only a bit) -- if, instead, at the last stage of the QFs it were King's v. Manchester and St. George's v. Bangor, then I personally would have expected St George's to grab the final spot in the Semis over Bangor (I can't remember what the question set was in the St G's v Manchester match, but it would probably only have meant King's bowing out in a less tame fashion than actually happened rather than surviving).

    So anyway, it depends on the draw. My expectation is that at least three of Trinity, Southampton, Somerville, SOAS and Manchester will qualify for the semis. My hope is that four of them will.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'd like to see "Done a Bangor" enter the UC Lexicon.

    ReplyDelete