- Trinity College Cambridge: Matthew Ridley, Filip Drnovšek Zorko, Ralph Morley and Richard Freeland (1,105 points over four matches)
- Somerville College Oxford: Hasneen Karbalai, Sam Walker, Zac Vermeer, Michael Davies and Chris Beer (905 points over four matches)
- Manchester: Edward Woudhuysen, Joe Day, Elizabeth Mitchell and Jonathan Collings (1,140 points over five matches)
- SOAS: Maeve Weber, Luke Vivian-Neal, Peter McKean and James Figueroa (940 over five matches)
Trinity College Cambridge, among whom are JOW and LAM contributor Filip 'opaltiger' Drnovšek Zorko, have looked very impressive all the way through, beating four very strong teams, two of whom have also reached the semis. Their lowest score is 240, from their second round match, which was their only real shaky moment. They have, otherwise, been strong and efficient scorers, though they have occasionally been prone to occasional periods of inactivity.
Somerville College Oxford have also looked impressive throughout their campaign, defeating four teams who have been strong in their own right, including York and Southampton, both of whom won other matches by 200+ margins. A change of team members for the quarter-finals doesn't seem to have unsettled their performances. Their only shaky moment so far was falling 100-ish behind Clare College Cambridge in the preliminaries, before coming back to win strongly. So, like Trinity, vulnerable, but very impressive when at their best.
Manchester have reached the semis for the third year in a row, and the ninth time in ten years. This year's team started off slowly, before hitting their stride in the second round. Their loss to Trinity in the preliminaries seems to have knocked the wind out of their sails slightly, as they haven't looked as strong since, but have still managed to put up decent performances to reach the semis, including a comfortable win over Southampton. They can perform well at their best, but, like Trinity and Somerville, they can be vulnerable.
SOAS have also been strong performers throughout, consistently performing well on the buzzers and the bonuses. Having won their first three matches comfortably, including one over Southampton, they were comfortably defeated by Trinity in their qualification quarter-final; despite this, they were still impressive in their narrow victory over Queen's University Belfast in their play-off. Again, they can be vulnerable, but when they go for it, they really go for it.
So, those are the semi-finalists. All very similar overall performances overall; despite their impressive strength, they can be vulnerable. It's going to be a matter of the draw.
Trinity would probably start off as favourites, having defeated two of the others. However, as U.C.L. showed last year, this doesn't guarantee victory. Trinity, however, seem somewhat stronger than U.C.L., so should probably be favoured more. Somerville may be a little bit more vulnerable, but not that far off them.
Because Trinity have already played Manchester and SOAS, my first guess is that they will be kept away from both of them, and play Somerville next. This may be seen as a bit unfair in putting the two best teams against each other, but it would be consistent with what happened last year. I have no idea who'd win that match, nor the resultant other between Manchester and SOAS.
Whatever the case, we should be in for some fine matches to finish the series off. We shall have to wait and see what the semis and grand final hold for us. Best of luck to all involved!
For what it's worth, my ranking of the teams is as follows:
ReplyDeleteTrinity (276)
Somerville (225)
Manchester (221)
SOAS (202)
The difference between Somerville and Manchester is very hard to call. Manchester are ever so slightly better on the buzzer (12.8 vs 11.8 starters per match) but Somerville have a more consistently high conversion rate (64% to 59%). I think on the balance I agree with that ranking; Somerville have been more consistent and had Manchester played them instead of either Cardiff or Southampton I don't think they would have won.
We also assumed we'd be playing Somerville in the semis. I shan't say whether or not we were right.
When we left the Green Room at MediaCityUK for the final time last April, having just watched SOAS completing the semi-final line-up, I couldn’t help trying to predict what would happen next in the series. I had planned since the beginning of that weekend that if we didn’t make it through to the semis, I would stay around in Salford to watch them from the studio audience, just so I could say I’d been there at the very end of a series of UC! By then, it was physically impossible for us to get back to Southampton that day, so we did stay to watch the remaining matches. I’ve known all along how it ends… not that I’m going to reveal too much now!
ReplyDeleteAt that stage, apart from the fact that this final four line-up was incredibly strong, and undoubtedly the best possible final four, I was in no position to predict who would lift the trophy. We hadn’t seen Trinity playing, but we knew about their fearsome reputation, especially their 300-point debut. SOAS, who were so impressive against us in the first round, looked considerably less strong against Queen’s. We had heard how powerful Somerville had been in rounds 1 and 2, and found out the hard way how true the rumours had been. We hadn’t seen Manchester in action since round 1 when they sent us packing – and we weren’t terribly surprised to see them making the semis, given that they were from Manchester!
My gut instinct, however, was telling me that Trinity were going into the semis as the front runners, while SOAS were the underdogs. As soon as I knew that their match-up had ended with a Trinity victory, I figured that the Cambridge Four were looking incredibly hard to beat. Then, as we’ve just seen this week, SOAS only just took the win in a match that, on paper, could have been a landslide. Even so, I didn’t want to write them off at all, largely because of my memories of their storming form from round 1. If they could reproduce that in the semis, the sky would be the limit.
As for Somerville and Manchester, we knew that they were both excellent teams, but the quarter-final performances that we did see from them didn’t quite add up to the fearsome reputations that they had previously earned. Somerville spent about 20 minutes on the endangered species list against Clare, after all, and neither they nor Manchester were ever able to get as far away from our off-colour Southampton side as much as I feared they might. Manchester’s bonus conversion against us, in particular, was relatively low. That said, the breadth of general knowledge exhibited by these two teams was so impressive that it would take a fool to count either of them out of the running.
We, too, suspected that the semi-finals would be Trinity/Somerville and SOAS/Manchester, which, if we had to place bets, would give rise to a Trinity/Manchester final. I had my doubts, though, that this would be the order of play, largely because of what happened last year, with the widely expected UCL/New College final being torched by a UCL/New College semi-final. So I went away and deliberated the other two possibilities as well, because I like making predictions! I ended up predicting that a Trinity/Manchester and SOAS/Somerville line-up would result in the Trinity/Somerville final that I had been anticipating since round 2, and then I hit a brick wall when trying to predict how a Manchester/Somerville match would end. Looking at it now, this is still an impossibly difficult one to call.
Just to clarify, all of what I’ve said here is purely what was going through my mind before I entered the studio for the first time on semi-finals day – there are no cryptic hints as to what might be about to happen next. The overwhelming impression that I had, and still have, about these final four teams is that any one of them could still win the series; usually, I’ve been able to narrow it down to two or three by this stage. It’s been a terrific series, and I’m very proud to have been a part of it, and I am sure that the next three weeks will end the competition on a high.