- Emmanuel College Cambridge (Tom Hill, Leah Ward, Bobby Seagull and Bruno Barton-Singer, 740 over four matches): Won two closely fought matches against Nottingham and SOAS to reach the group stage. Won two low scoring matches over Warwick and Corpus Christi comfortably to become the only side in the semi-final draw to win all their matches in normal time thus far.
- Edinburgh (Luke Dale, Euan Smith, Joe Boyle and Emily Goddard, 790 over four matches): Two of the matches of the season saw Edinburgh reach the group stage, with Durham and Open providing the opposition. Two surprisingly comfortable victories over Birmingham and Wolfson made them the first team from north of the border to reach the semi-finals since St Andrews in 2003.
- Wolfson College Cambridge (Justin Yang, Ben Chaudhri, Eric Monkman and Paul Cosgrove, 930 over five matches): A tie-break victory over SOAS and a comfortable Cambridge derby win over Jesus College took them to the group stage. A narrow win over Balliol, a middling defeat to Edinburgh and a more-comfortable-than-it-looks victory over Warwick put them into the semis.
- Balliol College Oxford (Freddie Potts, Jacob Lloyd, Joey Goldman and Ben Pope, 1070 points over five matches): Easy wins over Imperial of London and Robinson of Cambridge earned them a group stage berth. A narrow loss to Wolfson was avenged by a very easy win over Birmingham and a steady victory over Corpus Christi, as they reached the semis.
Like last year, and this year's group stage to some degree, it will likely depend on the semi-final draw, and who plays who when. It's been practically confirmed on Twitter and on The University Challenge Review blog that it is, as I suspected, Emmanuel vs Wolfson (the match everyone wants to see!) on Monday, then Edinburgh vs Balliol on the 3rd.
Two excellent matches in prospect here, and I hope, after the rather limp ending to last year's contest (no offense), the excellent standard we've come to expect this series doesn't fade in the final weeks, and we get the excellent end to the series that it deserves.
Moving on to the ever controversial subject of gender equality, the semi-final draw is, like last year, 50-50 between two all-male teams and two teams with one female on the team. Like last year then, the odds of an all male final and of a final with a female on both sides are the same.
On the subject of which, I'm afraid I must report that the stigma of objectification has reared its ugly head once again after last night's show. A Twitter search reveals a Daily Express article asking whether Miss Johnson of Corpus Christi is 'the hottest University Challenge contestant ever'. This sort of thing is hardly going to encourage female students to agree to do the show, is it? To be fair, Miss Johnson herself has given an interview to the Telegraph stating that he is surprised to have received so much attention.
On a similar subject, an article from the Huffington Post I found a few weeks back features an interview with Mr Monkman of Wolfson on the newfound 'celebrity' status his appearing on the show has brought him. In the article, he too states his surprise at his becoming a sensation, noting that he was not in any way trying to stand out in any way.
And this just highlights something I've been saying for ages: the majority of University Challenge contestants are students in their early 20s, what's more, some of them are very shy individuals who would clearly come under stress from any 'attention' their appearances join them.
Take, for example, Alex Guttenplan, the excellent captain of the Emmanuel team that won the show in 2009. A year later, he appeared on Only Connect in a special match against the Crossworders with three of his colleagues. As soon as he was introduced, Victoria started 'staring dreamily' at him in a way only she can. He was clearly uncomfortable, even though she was obviously joking around.
This just highlights the fact that some University Challenge contestants, not all but some, are not comfortable with being in the media spotlight, and should be left well alone unless they actually state they are fine with being the center of attention.
Re-reading LAM from 2010, Dave C. pointed out that Mr Guttenplan was a 19 year old student, albeit a very knowledgeable one, and expressed hope that, once the series was over, he would be left alone to carry on his studies in his own time.
The fact that most UC contestants are able to do this, with a few exceptions who go on to appear on other shows (including blog reader Jack Bennett, who recently appeared on, and won, Fifteen-to-One 2.0), shows that most people do understand this, and that is a good thing in my book.
Back on subject, this has been an excellent series of UC thus far, and hopefully the semi-finals and resultant final will keep the momentum going. Here's to a great end to the series; best of (retrospective) luck to all involved!
Very good post, Jack! Your points about how contestants must feel about/deal with the sudden limelight shone on them are well taken. I think this series, in particular, has been covered in quite a grotesque and garish manner, with the ridiculous level of publicity targeted and Seagull and Monkman. It's especially odd how much of that is built up by Seagull on twitter himself, something I'm not sure we've seen before on the programme!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, all that aside, it's looking like a very exciting close the programme ahead of us. I combed through the reviews you did for all the episodes featuring these teams to see if I could put together some useful predictive stats, and this is what I came up with:
Emmanuel
Bonuses - 67/129 = 51.9%
Starters - 43 = 10.75/game
“Star dependence” - 18/43 = 41.9%
Edinburgh
Bonuses - 75/126 = 59.5%
Starters - 42 = 10.5/game
“Star dependence” - 26/42 = 61.9%
Wolfson
Bonuses - 93/161 = 57.8%
Starters - 54 = 10.8/game
“Star dependence” - 35/54 = 64.8%
Balliol
Bonuses - 110/172 = 64.0%
Starters - 58 = 11.6/game
“Star dependence” - 31/58 = 53.4%%
The "star dependence" stat is just the proportion of a team's starters got by their top player so far (Barton-Singer, Smith, Monkman and Goldman, respectively). I don't know whether that's a useful statistic, but it's probably useful to note that Emmanuel are the only team whose top player gets less than half of their starters. Will the lack of a star mean trouble when they go up against one of the series' elite players, or will the balance mean they are able to handle the increase in difficulty better?
The other statistics are more useful, I think. Interestingly they make Emmanuel, one of the undefeated teams, look like the weakest of the lot! Balliol, on the other end, come out very strongly, with a significant lead in bonus conversion (the only team over 60%, and by a good margin) and starters per game (the only team over 11/game, and, again, by a good margin). And despite Goldman's storming performances against Birmingham, he only contributes about 50% of his team's starters, which shows he's got very strong teammates. I think on these grounds I'd tip Balliol to pip Edinburgh in that semi final, but the Emmanuel-Wolfson match is much harder to call. I think it will depend on whether Monkman is relatively neg free.
Balliol lost by a narrow margin in a game where they had 6 penalties, and they've negged only once since. Wolfson lost a narrow match against Edinburgh because they negged twice. If these teams keep it tight and stay neg free I'd imagine that's who we'll be seeing in the final.
Great article as usual Jack, and interesting points on the social media/'media' attention.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing with the media attention is how subjective it can be; the relative lack of attention the Edinburgh team are getting, despite not losing a single match (Emmanuel is not the only side in the semi finals to have not lost a match?), but they are impressive in that they beat Wolfson, who in turn beat Balliol, which makes it even harder to decide. As well as the first Scottish team to make it to the SFs since St A's 2003 , they are the 3rd Edinburgh team to make it to the SFs (1995/2002 being the others). Perhaps they don't have a key 'personality', instead are a fairly balanced team with a strong player, whom may not have an unusual name. Only thing I noticed is that a proportion of starters in their Wolfson match were after an incorrect answer from Wolfson, which is fine, but ideally could have been buzzed in first.
I'm surprised that Goldman despite his perceived dominance, isn't a higher percentage of his team's starters as I thought, compared to Wolfson, where of course Monkman stands out, but Chaudry is often notable (perhaps thanks to the the tie-break answer that got them here!). It is notable that there are some matches where a player on both of these teams doesn't get (m)any starters (of course they help with bonuses), and a part of their losses were down to penalties - so it depends if they're lucky with their interruptions or not.
Thanks for posting. You're right about Edinburgh not losing a match yet; I meant to say Emmanuel were the only team to win all their matches in normal time, as one of Edinburgh's wins was on a tie-breaker. I have since adjusted this to make it clearer.
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