Statistics from the Northern California State Championship can be found here.

This write-up contains only the top eight teams.

1^st place – Saratoga

With the failure to appear of Bellarmine’s entire usual A-team, Saratoga easily went 13-0 to become the Northern California state champions. With a PPG among the highest ever seen in NAQT history (achieving 13^th all-time high PP20TH in NAQT’s records), senior Bruce Lou sweeps the field at 150 (down from 166 after prelims), nearly doubling 2^nd overall scorer, “Haarlem” A’s Eric Chen (81.92). Interestingly, three of their five closest games of the day all came at the hands of “Escobar” A, with margins of 50, 90, and 145 points. Averaging a strong 24.74 PPB, they managed to convert 27.92 PPB in their last game of the day against “Haarlem” A (465-210) and 27.65 in their victory over Leland (670-75). Two of Saratoga’s three games against “Escobar” A could likely be blamed on instances of the team scoring fewer powers than tens, a feat they usually managed to accomplish (most impressively so in their 435-305 win over Davis A, which saw them finish with a stat line of 9/2/0, all scored by Bruce). In yet another round, tied for Bruce’s best of the day, the team went 10/6/1 (Bruce with all but one ten) to beat Evergreen Valley C 595-10; in that other game, the team went 8/9/2 (Bruce going 8/8/1) to beat Milpitas 590-25. Unsurprisingly, great things are expected of Bruce at nationals and NASAT as he closes out his high school quiz bowl career.

2^nd place – “Haarlem” A

“Haarlem” A drops just two games to Saratoga by similarly large margins over the course of the day to take 2^nd place under lead scorer senior Eric Chen (2^nd overall at 81.92 PPG) and main support senior Cody Zeng (37.69). Notably, Eric managed to keep his negs lower than Bruce’s (9 to his 13), but as a team they finished with 21 to Saratoga’s 18. It’s important to also keep in mind that, while Bruce himself went 81/80/13, his team scored less powers than tens (83/87) while “Haarlem” A’s final count was 77/77, the most balanced powers-gets of any team in the field. They were, however, out-converted by Davis A, finishing with only the third-highest PPB (22.86) which peaked at 25.71 in a 525-115 win over Amador Valley B. As predicted after Cal Cup #4, the parity between “Haarlem” A and Davis A was incredible, the two games between the teams being decided by 40 and 45 points, helped tremendously by “Haarlem”’s 7 powers per game over Davis’s 4 and 3. Junior Bibhav Poudel, “Haarlem” A’s only continuing player in the next season, shows some promise if he really focuses on studying this summer, but will definitely need to work on his negs (statline of 8/11/8) and would benefit from acquiring decent teammates to flesh out the new “Haarlem” A, perhaps with the ascension of C team’s top scorer junior Yashasvi Sharma (third overall at 74 PPG).

3^rd place – Davis A

Incredibly balanced Davis A doesn’t disappoint, losing two incredibly close games to “Haarlem” A in addition to two larger losses to Saratoga to finish at third place under lead scorer junior Anthony DiCarlo (40 PPG), who was closely supported by senior Jayanth Sundaresan and sophomore Eliot Williams (both at 34.23 PPG). At 23.05 PPB, they were second in the field for conversion, topping 26 in games against “Haarlem” B and Bellarmine. Junior Teddy Knox’s absence may have translated to a clear drop in powers between the team and “Haarlem” A, but this could also have been due to a set with higher difficulty. They did, however, go 7/8/3 in the previously mentioned game against Bellarmine, as well as in a game against their own C team (520-80), their best of the day. Their closest game of the day came in their last round, a 325-320 victory over “Escobar” A, much closer than their earlier 265-230 victory. While no individual player had an exorbitant amount of negs, the team nearly led the field with (nearly three a game) 27, following “Haarlem” B’s 36 and Albany’s 30. Luckily for Davis A, the retention of three-quarters of the team for the next season sets the team in a good position to easily fill next season’s power vacuum accompanying the graduation of the best players on Saratoga, Bellarmine, and “Haarlem.”

4^th place – “Escobar” A

Without “Guilder” A or Palo Alto A to keep a lid on “Escobar” A’s performance, they were able to break into the top four finishers, albeit clearly lagging behind their competitors. Junior Dhruv Muley led the team with 50.38 PPG, closely supported by senior Kelvin Lu (42.69). As expected, they dropped games by predictably large margins to “Haarlem” A and Saratoga, but to their credit did give Saratoga their closest game of the day (345-390) and only lost by 90 in another game. “Escobar” A’s closest game of the day was also Davis A’s, a nailbiting 320-325 loss even in spite of a 3 PPB-higher bonus conversion. Typically around 22.71, “Escobar” A’s PPB was up more than 4 points from Cal Cup #4 (18), just .15 below next-highest “Haarlem” A, and a solid 3.5 points higher than 5^th place Bellarmine (19.29). This might be encouraging for “Escobar”, which faces the graduation of one of their top scorers from both A and B teams and a relative dearth of well-known remaining exceptional talent, aside from Dhruv, sophomore Anup Hiremath (26.11 PPG varsity at Cal Cup #4), and perhaps sophomore Trevor Wu (69.38 PPG JV at Cal Cup #4) and freshman Prasana Gutti (who played just one game for the B team at Cal Cup #4, but got 70 points).

5^th place – Bellarmine

The complete absence of Bellarmine’s normal A team as well as their usual stand-ins seniors Gavin Pereira and Namit Mishra essentially doomed the team to a sub-top 4 finish, but the tournament was not a complete loss, as it saw sophomore Bryant Cong’s just second appearance of the season, leading his team and placing 7^th individually at 54 PPG. They put up a good fight against “Escobar” A, losing by just 20 points (305-325). Their first game against Valley Christian saw them win easily 415-195, but the second time around saw Valley Christian come a little closer, losing this time 290-150. The main problem in both of these games for both teams was an unsustainable number of negs, Bellarmine being the worst offender of the two with 3 and 4, respectively. Bellarmine continued to neg too much in later games against Evergreen Valley B (4) and Davis B (5), although they were lucky to win those by margins of 200 and 100 points. Ultimately, it was their bonus conversion of 19.29 that clearly placed them below their higher-placing competition, which peaked at 22.22 in heir second-closest game of the day, a 300-270 win over “Haarlem” C. Overall, this tournament was a likely preview of how Bellarmine’s new A team will fare following the graduation of their current seniors, a prediction that has the potential to be mitigated by Bryant (who, as an 8^th grader, beat then-sophomore Bruce Lou to a JV A-set History Bee Title), but it looks as though he may not have any inclination towards becoming a serious competitor, if this season has been any indicator.

6^th place – Valley Christian

Valley Christian finishes in 6^th place as the only team in the top 10 to have an overall negative record (4-6), but makes up for it by also being the remaining team in the top play-off bracket. Sophomore Omeed Askary once more leads the team with 45 PPG, more than doubling second scorer sophomore Andrew Rao’s 22 PPG, an unsurprising shift from Cal Cup #4 given the reversion to an NAQT set. They also experienced an increase in PPB since their last NAQT event, up to 19.29 from 15.75 at Wildcat Classic. Their closest game of the day came in a 230-200 win over “Haarlem” C, in which both teams managed to score the same amount of points in tossups, and Valley Christian managed to save their skins with a 3.75-point higher bonus conversion. Again, they need to be a bit more careful when it comes to their negs, but at least most of their high-negging games came against much better teams (5 in a round against Saratoga), which, granted, does decrease their point total but demonstrates an understanding for increased aggression against high-scoring teams. Refinement of this crucial strategy and constant further expansion of their knowledge base could see Valley Christian become a formidable varsity power yet.

7^th place – Albany

Sophomore Andrew Liu once more leads his team (47.5 PPG), supported by senior Sean Lin (21 PPG) and fellow sophomore John Friedman (17.37 PPG). Albany nearly led the field in negs (30 to “Haarlem” B’s 36), but most of them came from Sean and shouldn’t be too much of an issue next season. They started off the day with two close games, a 30-point loss to “Haarlem” A and a 45-point win over Evergreen Valley A, which was definitely the result of too many negs, of which they had five. In yet another game they were lucky to win 250 – 105 over “Haarlem” D, despite having six negs. Yet again they narrowly avoided losing a game, this time to Amador Valley B 175 – 160 when they finished with four negs to Amador Valley B’s one. Their PPB of 18.71 saw a roughly 2-point decrease from their last NAQT event, which was a 20.67 at Cal Cup #2, although that can be explained by the increase in difficulty between the two sets. Ideally, improvement on the parts of junior Madeline Zhang and John over the course of the summer may give Andrew the back-up he needs for Albany to do reasonably well in the next season.

8^th place – Leland

Allegedly brought on because he “knew music”, junior Sathvik Nair proves that’s not all he can do as he leads his team with 61 PPG, placing 6^th individually. Their PPB was vastly increased from their last tournament, up to 18.04 from 13.55 at Cal Cup #2, even given the increase in set difficulty between the two tournaments. They should probably put some work in on their negs, however, and were lucky to win nearly every game they had four negs in, except for their first play-off round against Albany, in which their 3/3/4 stat line wasn’t enough to offset Albany’s 3/8/2 and they lost 155-335. As for the future, regular JV top scorers sophomore Hari Krishna (73.75 PPG at Cal Cup #4) and junior Kyle Cui (71.25 PPG at Cal Cup #2) were both relegated to approximately 12 PPG this time around, but show plenty of potential to flesh out a nice team for the next season.

On behalf of the Northern California Quiz Bowl Alliance, congratulations to Saratoga on their state championship title and thank you to all players and staffers for attending and making the tournament possible!