University Challenge 2016-17: First Round Review

OK, day later than previous years, but nonetheless, time to look back at this year's UC first round. It's been the best first round for a couple of years IMO, with some really good close matches between very evenly matched teams. And at the end of it, here are the fourteen teams safely through to the second round, together with their score and margin of victory:

• Bristol (210, 80)
• Corpus Christi College Oxford (200, 25)
• Warwick (235, 140)
• Peterhouse Cambridge (160, 10)
• Oriel College Oxford (150, 55)
• Emmanuel College Cambridge (175, 40)
• Balliol College Oxford (220, 165)
• Robinson College Cambridge (155, 60)
• Open (210, 95)
• Edinburgh (190, 35)
• Wolfson College Cambridge (175, won on tie-breaker)
• Birmingham (165, 60)
• St Andrews (175, 30)
• East London (150, 15)

So, those are the raw figures. Normally there's more in it than that, but is that the case this year? I'm not so sure.

Well, Warwick have the highest score of the round, 235; Balliol have the second highest, 220, and the biggest victory of the round. In fact, only five teams broke 200 in the entire first round. So does that signify a low standard of team?

No, that's why I include the winning margins as well. Note how half the teams won by margins of less than 50, not to mention a tie-breaker! That signifies strong opposition that they emerged on top against which is the sign of a good team if they can do so well against good opponents.

This seems to be backed up by the fact that only one team, Imperial, who lost to Balliol, score around 50 or less, with 95 the next highest losing score. This probably suggests that almost every team this series has been of some sort of high quality, and just happened to run into well matched, slightly better opposition.

Also, the gap between the highest score, Warwick's 235, and the lowest winning score, Oriel's and East London's 150, shows that almost all the winning teams from the first round are pretty evenly matched. And thus, for once, I am completely stumped as to who to tip to progress.

At a push, I would say Warwick and Balliol would be lukewarm favourites to progress, given their scores stand out amongst the very closely matched scores of the other twelve teams. Then immediately below them, you have a whole clump of teams who scored between 175 and 210, but did so against decent opposition who reached, or just missed out on, the repechage (four of whom would've reached the play-offs last year), or could easily have won/reached play-offs against another team. Any of those teams could go through, as could the lower scorers, who I'm sure will be ready to up their game in the second round.

For once, it really will be just a question of who draws who, and who emerges on top. In my mind, any of the fourteen first round winners would deserve a coveted place in the group stage.

As would any of the four teams in the repechage, who are, in order of score and margin of defeat:

• SOAS (175, lost on tie-break)
• Jesus College Cambridge (175, 25)
• Durham (155, 35)
• Queens' College Cambridge (150, 10)

All four only just lost to strong opposition, and all demonstrated they'd have been more than capable of victory against lesser opposition.

My guess is that the draw will place SOAS against Queens', and Jesus against Durham. If that is the case, I would probably tip the two 175 teams to progress, but I wouldn't rule the other two out either. We know from experience how a team's first performance can be so different from their later ones, both ways. And whichever two progress, they'd not look out of place in the QFs either.

This really promises to be a cracking second round. It's a shame that some of these teams didn't enter the last series, as some of them would certainly have put up a great fight in it. But whatever happens in the second round, lets just hope the drama that we have seen this series continues!

I'll be back on Monday with my usual UC write-up; see yous then.