Friday 13 January 2017

University Challenge 2017: Round 2 round up and quarter final preview


I was asked earlier in the week whether I intended reviewing the second round of UC and previewing the quarter finals. I didn’t answer because I didn’t know if I’d find the time or the oomph to do it, but hey, I found a tiny bit of oomph knocking around at the back of the kitchen cupboards, so here it is.

Let’s have a look at the table: -

Quarter finalists
1st round
for
against
2nd round
for
against
Aggregate
for
Aggregate
against
Corpus Christi, Oxford
Jesus, Cambridge
200
175
Peterhouse, Cambridge
175
150
375
325
Bristol
Sheffield
210
130
Oriel, Oxford
265
70
475
200
Balliol, Oxford
Imperial
220
55
Robinson, Cambridge
210
90
430
145
Wolfson, Cambridge
SOAS
185
175
Jesus, Cambridge
225
140
410
315
Emmanuel, Cambridge
Nottingham
175
135
SOAS
195
130
370
265
Warwick
Liverpool
235
95
East London
195
55
430
150
Birmingham
Queen’s Belfast
165
105
St. Andrews
195
115
360
220
Edinburgh
Durham
190
155
Open
185
185
375
340

As a general round up there are a couple of points we might make. 5 teams from Cambridge made it through to the second round proper, but only 2 go through to the quarters, compared with 2 from 3 for Oxford. All 8 of the teams in the quarter final round won their first round matches as well.

As with the first round, throughout the second round the scores have remained good, rather than stratospheric. The highest score of the series so far is the SOAS repechage score of 270 – of the teams remaining in the competition, Bristol’s 265 is the highest.

Looking at the aggregate for and against columns, I think we need to firstly acknowledge that the danger of relying on this kind of data is that it doesn’t necessarily take into account the strength of the opposition. If we acknowledge this, though, it’s not unreasonable to say that the table suggests that Bristol look to be a very strong team. The same might also be said about Warwick – the size of the difference between the total points for and total points against suggests that both teams comprehensively outbuzzed their opponents in both opening matches. Of course, you’d maybe ask the question as to whether Warwick’s opposition were quite of the calibre of Bristol’s – and this is where the weakness of just relying on this data becomes more apparent.

And the calibre of opposition is important. If you take the raw figures for last week’s winners Corpus Christi, you’d say that they were outsiders for the quarters. Yet look who they had to beat to get there. Jesus were good enough to win a repechage, and Peterhouse had beaten opposition good enough to get into a repechage in their own first round. With regards to Emmanuel too, their win over Nottingham in the first round was perfectly decent although a little workman-like, but for the second they had to beat a SOAS team who had set the highest total of the series so far in their previous match, which they did.

Predictions? No thanks, this is all rather too close to call. What it will come down to, though, is what it always comes down to – the teams who find their buzzer form on the night(s) will do better than the teams that don’t. Looking forward to it already.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Interesting that for the 3rd year in a row none of the HSLs have made it through to the QFs. Jeremy's saying of 'there's still everything to play for' and 'they go on to be series champions' sadly hasn't transpired over the past few years. A shame because both HSL's this year would have been worthy Q'finalists, they were just unlucky with the draw or had a bad day, perhaps they might want to put the two HSL's against each other in the 2nd round like the used to, to guarantee one of them getting through.

However it isn't as bad as in 2015 when the two HSLs were put against the two highest scorers and eventual winners in the 2nd round.