Joon wrote: "You may not have noticed, but Harvard's 3 teams consisted of 5 members of the club, of whom 3 are capable game moderators. (Vik Vaz is a freshman, and David Farris is completely unintelligible.)" The other three players were Willy Jay, Joon, and Jeff Johnson, the latter of whom has been in semi-retirement the past year and a half (but is still a graduate student). It can reasonably be considered that, under normal circumstances, Joon, Willy, and David Farris, along with Gautam Makunda, would form the A team for Harvard. "I also think that the B team and the div 2 team at ICT will play well enough to at least justify their presence there." I'm not too certain about this statement with regard to the B team, as I have heard reports that Jeff played for the sole purpose of guaranteeing a second D1 team for Harvard, and thus might not play at the ICT. This brings to mind a question that arose around the time before the second NAQT sectionals - do schools qualify individuals or teams for the ICT? This was in reference to whether individual players from the sectional team which received a bid may be replaced by other players. The answer was that teams, not individuals qualified, and thus roster substitutions between sectionals and nationals were allowed. However, NAQT reserved the right to deny participation in the ICT to a bid-accepting team whose roster had been altered such that it included "obviously inferior players", i.e. a team composition which would not have qualified by itself in comparision to the rest of the field. A correlated question specific to this situation now arises - what happens if Jeff Johnson does not play at ICT? At sectionals, Jeff played as the A team, while 3/4 of the "expected under normal circumstances" A team played as the B team. If Jeff does play at ICT, all is well and fine. However, if he does not, and Joon, Willy, and David all play on the A team, the composition of the Harvard B team will have changed completely. With no offense to the Harvard team or to the individuals who are the logical choices to take spots on the Harvard B team, and with the knowledge that Vik is playing D2, it would seem that this B team would be significantly weaker than the one fielded at sectionals, hence it might not have earned a bid and therefore would meet the criterion of an "obviously inferior" team. This would appear to be unfair to the teams on the top of the waitlist that ultimately do not receive a bid. Could someone at NAQT please clarify what would happen in this possible scenario? Thank you, Dom PS Please keep in mind that my intention is not to accuse Harvard of plotting to pull a switcharoo and that I do not consider the members of the Harvard team other than their A team to be "inferior players". It just seems that any B team they could field that did not include their probable A team members would not be in the same class as the Joon/Farris/Willy B team at sectionals, and thus might not have qualified in such a strong, competitive, and good-looking field as the Northeast sectional.
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