First, I would like to congratulate Michigan I on winning Penn Bowl XII. Of our four defeats this weekend, all four were quarterfinalists, three were semifinalists, and both finalists, and Michigan's quarterfinal victory over us was the only game all weekend we were truly overpowered. Also, I would like to commend Matt Weiner for compiling a 12-2 record solo for the tournament. He beat my team by five points, and we were looking forward to a rematch :-) I would also like to commend Samer on this year's tournament format. Rather than play three or four great teams in a 15-team bracket, we got to play two great teams in our ten-team bracket and then five great teams in our playoff bracket before moving on to face an excellent team in the quarterfinals. Having the opportunity to play more upper echelon teams better allowed us to see how far we have come and how far we have to go to reach Michigan's level. For the most part, the packets were good. I only remember one repeated answer among the tossups (Schopenhauer), and a few repeated bonus answers. The difficulty was nicely ratcheted up from the prelims to the playoffs and then the single elimination rounds. One issue that should be addressed is the distribution within each packet. At least one packet had five literature tossups out of 20, another had five science, another had five trash, etc. With the vast number of 36/36 packets submitted, I would expect there be enough good tossups and boni among the 72/72 used to hammer out packets in some rounds to have a more balanced distribution from round to round. The move to un-timed rounds was a good move. Everyone got to hear 20 tossups each round, as opposed to the fast moderators firing off 27 in 18 minutes or slow moderators averaging less than a tossup per minute. It saved the tournament from being hurt by the moderator shortage and ensured a playing field unaffected by the moderators' skill. The disadvantage of this shortage was the lengthened time per round. Each round on Friday was about 40-45 minutes. Round 5 did not end until after 11 pm. The rounds were a little shorter Saturday, but the quarterfinals still did not end until 7:30 pm. In addition, at least one moderator was moderating his first tournament. One way to improve this situation is to improve the process of drafting moderators from the teams on bye by making moderating a round mandatory. Since there were four teams on bye each round (I think), there were 12-16 people each round that would have been put to good use moderating. With the number of excellent moderators playing at the tournament, the rounds would have run faster with those moderators in place, providing the efficiency essential at such a large tournament. I thank Samer and his staff for running an excellent tournament, despite the criticisms leveled above. I enjoyed myself, and I look forward to Penn Bowl XIII. Daniel Greenstein Maryland Academic Quiz Team
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