Imperial College London comfortably defeated Jesus College Cambridge and Bristol early on, but lost an OK match to Manchester in the preliminaries. They remained:
Pietro Aronica, from Brescia in Italy, studying Biochemistry
Dominic Cottrell, from London, studying Medicine
Captain: Martin Evans, from Oxfordshire, studying Pharmacology
Henry Guille, from Cranbrook in Kent, studying Material Science
Bangor narrowly defeated St Andrews and tournament favourites Durham in the early stages, before losing to U.C.L. in the preliminaries, despite holding the lead early on. They continued to be represented by:
Adam Pearce, from Barry in the Vale of
Glamorgan, studying Translation Studies
Mark Stevens, from Widnes in Cheshire,
studying Environmental ScienceCaptain: Nina Grant, from Enfield in London, studying French and Linguistics
Simon Tomlinson, from Manchester, studying Neuropsychology
Naturally, Bangor had the mutual support from me tonight, due to Adam 'Welshguy' Pearce and Nina 'pocketmouse' Grant being kind enough to post on here before. But, there wasn't much between these teams on paper, so it should have been a close match.
The two sides started off evenly splitting the starters, with Bangor's better showing on the bonuses edging them ahead slightly. After the first picture round, it was 45-all. Tellingly, though, it had only taken Bangor two starters to reach that total, while Imperial had taken three.
This impressive form continued when Adam P. took the next starter, and the side swept the board on all the bonuses. A great starter followed about a chief executive's weight in gold, which neither side got, much to Paxo's amusement! The music round was on types of jazz, including acid jazz; the mention of this amused me, as this frequently comes up as a category in the Pointless final, but is never chosen! Bangor now had a narrow lead of 80-75.
At this stage, neither side really had much in terms of momentum. Imperial briefly snuck into the lead, but Bangor swiftly reclaimed it. If I recall correctly, Adam remarked of an earlier match that his team's tactics on maths starters were to answer 0 or 1; unfortunately, his side didn't do that on a starter when that would've worked! The second picture round was on French queen consorts; surely, I wasn't the only one expecting Marie Antoinette to be the final bonus before the first one had been asked!
At this stage, Bangor led by 130-90. Imperial could still take it with a few good buzzes; Henry Guille tried a quick one on the next starter, but quickly realised he was wrong, and shouted 'NO!', prompting groans all round, before promptly collapsing onto the desk, where he remained for much of the rest of the match. Poor lad.
Even when his side got back into the match, poor Mr Guille just sat quietly during the bonuses, saying nothing. The final minutes saw Bangor stretch out their lead into a pretty impressive scoreline. And, for the first time, the Welsh side broke the 200 barrier. At the gong, Bangor won by 210-120.
A very impressive performance there from Bangor, who certainly have plenty of potential left in them. But poor Imperial; they did maybe get slightly lucky in their first and second round draws, and clearly couldn't handle being against a stronger team on the buzzer. It's a shame to see them go. Martin Evans got four for Imperial, as did our man Adam and the ever impressive Simon Tomlinson for Bangor. Imperial managed 10 bonuses out of 22, while Bangor got a very good (for this stage) 22 bonuses out 33. There were two penalties each. Well done Adam and co, and best of luck for next time!
Next week's match: St George's vs New College, with the winners going through to the semis. Should be a good match, that one.
Only Connect briefly returned tonight for a Comic Relief special. Some good play from the celebs involved, and some light hearted banter from Victoria Coren, whose husband Mr David Mitchell was on one of the teams! He took the jokes she made of him in his usual well way.
UCL scored 230 last week but scores have been low in the quarters so far so 210 is very good going. Well played Adam for a fine individual display - in the bonuses too! - and Tomlinson again proving important on the buzzer.
ReplyDeletePoor old Guille - Machiavelli's first name is Niccolo so he definitely had the right answer and just got the surname out wrong.
Yes, James, I realised my mistake not long after writing this. I'm going to amend it slightly.
DeleteI do hope it doesn't look like I'm picking up on mistakes. I just notice things and really enjoy reading the blog.
DeleteNot at all James. It's good that you like reading this, and that you point out any mistakes I may have made.
DeleteWe felt so great after this! Not only was it the first time we topped 200 points, it was also the first match in which all four of us managed at least one starter (in fact we all got at least 2), so doubly our best performance.
ReplyDeleteAt the time I was too pumped to pay it too much attention, but I'm now pretty pissed about the jazz question and retrospectively really think I should have stopped the filming to complain about it (although perhaps it's as well that I didn't as we might have lost the adrenalin/momentum). The question very specifically asked about "form", which has a very specific meaning in music. The piece in question was a 12-bar Blues in terms of form. Concepts like "Swing" and "Bebop" (or "Rock" or "Baroque") are better described as "styles" or "genres", not "forms" ("Form" in music being things like "sonata", "rondo" etc.). Had he asked for style I'd have immediately have said Swing... I wouldn't be so resentful about it except that I love jazz and was really hoping for a set of questions about it.
(ironically I'd only have gotten one of the bonuses, even though I have two of them on CD...)
I felt horribly sorry for Henry Guille. I guess he should take (some tiny bit of) comfort from the fact that even if he'd got it they'd still have lost... but he really did look crestfallen!
Having watched their previous QF, I now realise that Guille made a similar early-buzzing error at a crucial moment in that match too. Harsh.
Delete