[ The Texas A&M SCT has only 2 Division I teams so there is no guaranteed invitation to the top team. ] > You might say, "Eric, how can that be? Sure there's no codified > guarantee, but they went undefeated!" We mustn't forget NAQT's "S- > value" system which, "combines statistical measures of tossup > performance and bonus performance and includes corrections for > opponent strength." > > The key words in there are the last two -- opponent strength. > History has shown that in the few past sectionals where D1&D2 > competed together, NAQT's rating system seriously de-values a D1 vs. > D2 game. Eric -- On average Division II teams will have lower tossup conversion and lower bonus conversion than Division I teams. Because of this, you are right to point out that defeating a Division II team is worth less in the eyes of the NAQT Invitation Committee than defeating an average Division I team. However, a Division I team playing Division II teams should be able to answer a higher fraction of tossups than a Division I team playing another Division I team and its bonus conversion should be unaffected by their opponent. The idea behind the S-value is to cancel these factors out so that it doesn't matter where a team plays: If they choose to play at a weak Sectional they will score more points but lose position because of the weakness of their opponents. If they play at a stronger sectional they will score fewer points but gain position because of the strength of their opponents. > Getting back to our example, let's further say that our winning > team's performance against the D2 teams in the field was fairly > consistent, though not overly dominating. We'll also say that the > D2 teams have a normal distribution of skill -- 1 good, 1 poor, and > 8 average. > > I think it would be fair to say that such a profile, before we take > into account the single D1 game this team has, would probably not > meet the S-value bid threshold. Everything, then, is dependent on > the one D1 game. If the other D1 team had a similar run through the This is not the complete story--what matters is how well the team plays against that weak schedule. Does the team answer 45% of the tossups? 65%? 85%? By no means does everything depend on the one Division I game. Everything depends on consistently answering tossups and converting bonuses in every game. > On the other hand, the other D1 team could be extremely > inexperienced, made D1 by the presence of a novice graduate player, > and it might have a mediocre record in the D2 field, like 5-5. Even > a strong victory over this team is unlikely to register much in the > S-value. Answering 75% of the tossups and converting 60% of the bonus points even over a weak team will definitely register. > Again, to restate, our hypothetical, undefeated team at this > weekend's sectionals, through no fault of its own, would not only > (A) not have an automatic invitation to the ICT, but it also (B) > would be left, at best, "on the bubble" for a bid. This team's > situation becomes even worse with a single loss, particularly if it > is to the other D1 team. > > If I'm dramatically overstating the ramifications of the S-value > system, I'd love for someone to correct me. But, as it is right > now, I see a situation where a good team which could easily qualify > in another, more populous region would get a raw deal. One of the goals of the S-value is to make the choice of Sectional to attend irrelevant to qualification. > I would encourage NAQT to rethink this policy. It's tantamount to > telling Gonzaga that the NCAA tournament's not going to take them, > since the rest of the West Coast Conference stinks. I don't know a lot about sports, but this doesn't seem right to me. I would argue that it is similar to the NCAA tournament telling Gonzaga that the WCC doesn't get an automatic bid but if they win their games against those weaker teams by an average of 15 points, they will get an invitation. -- R. Robert Hentzel President and Chief Technical Officer, National Academic Quiz Tournaments, LLC
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:46 AM EST EST