The short of it? Providence College is the 2002 CBI Region 1 Champions, defeating Boston University in the finals two games to one. Williams College placed third, Dartmouth fourth. But really, there's much more to it. We had them, and we gave it away. But since you probably don't want to listen to me say how I blew it for paragraph after paragraph, I'll leave that part out. * * * * * * * * * * The day starts with twelve teams - supposed to be 13, but Connecticut College fails to show. We draw numbers out of a hat to determine our place in the schedule, and I pull six - just what Ellen wanted. Our first four games are against teams we should beat, with round five being against Rain Man * & Providence. Most of our big tests (MIT, Dartmouth, Williams) come after lunch. * - For those who inexplicably haven't heard, Providence is a one-man team to the utmost proportions. James sits there while questions are read with this blank look on his face, then buzzes and is almost always right. He's led PC to second place two years running, both years losing to Williams in the final. He, in my mind, is our biggest threat. But we'll worry about him later. ROUND 1 vs. Northeastern - Last year, we opened against NU as well, beating them by 275. They got warned for playing with their buzzers, and would be ejected before the tournament's end. This year they wouldn't finish either, but I sense they left early on their own terms due to being the worst in the field by far. On the tournament's first question, Erik negs because he fails to be recognized, something we'd be hit with three times. Northeastern then tried to capitalize, but was then also failed to be recognized. Other than that, there were only two other times they attempted to buzz. Thus BU's second CBI shutout in the past three years. HALF: BU 160, NU 0 FINAL: BU 335, NU 0 STATS: Erik - 6 tossups / 2 negs, Elmer - 4/0, Cooch - 3/0, Ellen - 0/0 ROUND 2 vs. Roger Williams - Speaking of shutouts, they were the first one. Mark Coen read for us here, the only time we'd see him all day. Any accusations of bias were ended when we both proclaimed we hated the other. For the second straight year, RWU won the team spirit award, with their red shirts and College Bowl buttons. Good for them. HALF: BU 175, Roger Williams 20 FINAL: BU 300, Roger Williams 40 STATS: Erik - 7/1, Cooch - 3/1, Ken - 3/1, Elmer - 1/1 ROUND 3 vs. Babson - We really like Babson, and they really like us. They had just played Rain Man for the first time, and were sufficiently in awe. I was glad when they finally scored some points, after Erik had reeled off a half-dozen tossups straight. HALF: BU 140, Babson 0 FINAL: BU 275, Babson 30 STATS: Erik - 9/3, Elmer - 2/0, Ken - 1/0, Ellen - 0/0 ROUND 4 vs. WPI - The one fear you have at a CBI event is played an engineering school on a science-heavy pack. For the first time today, we're challenged, and it's a legitimate one. With four minutes to go, we're trailing 165-120. We pick up a pair of tossups and 50 points, then with that 5-point lead, we hit a cake of a 30-20-10 bonus on Lake Placid. Ballgame. This is also the last game of the day where I make any sort of contribution. Goodbye 30 ppg. HALF: BU 120, WPI 115 FINAL: BU 270, WPI 160 STATS: Erik - 4/0, Cooch - 4/1, Ken - 1/0, Elmer (1/2 game) - 1/1, Ellen (1/2 game) - 0/0 ROUND 5 vs. Providence - The key to beating PC and James is to jump on them early - he's not used to playing from behind, and starts to crack if he has to. In front of what seems his entire family, that's just what we do, leading 100-70 at half. For whatever reason, we freeze after halftime. The entire game shifts on one tossup: "This team is the only one to be in all sixteen World Cup finals, and has won more than any other nation..." At least three of us know it's Brazil from the first word, but sit on it. We lose the buzzer race, and an easy 20-point bonus on the 1972 Miami Dolphins. Later, we sit on "Solidarity" after hearing "Polish political party." So despite James being a guy we could slaughter in any other format, he beats us again. HALF: BU 100, Providence 70 FINAL: Providence 265, BU 145 STATS: Elmer - 4/0, Erik - 3/0, Ken - 0/0, Cooch - 0/0 ROUND 6 - Bye. It's lunch. We're 4-1, and in trouble. Looking at the numbers, and knowing only the top two teams advance to the playoffs (despite every other region going 4-team, double elim), we have to sweep our six afternoon rounds to even think about the finals. Not going to be easy, with MIT's having Monsieur Chris this year, with Williams sitting in Round 13, with Dartmouth... well, we really weren't as worried about Dartmouth as we should have been. Even 10-1 might not be enough, because Williams beating Providence would put the three of us at 10-1. A circle of death knocked us out of the finals before, and looking at the numbers, it probably would have done it to us again. ROUND 7 vs. Middlebury - A three-man team that ends up finishing in the top six this year... doesn't sound like much of a feat, but not everyone is perennially top three each year. They're not in costume this year, which is sad, because their duct tape costumes are usually so uplifting. The first half we sleepwalk, making me real glad we weren't playing any huge threat. It always seems like the tryptophan kicks in round now... we snapped out of it when we needed to. HALF: 90-90 FINAL: BU 270, Middlebury 110 STATS: Erik - 7/0, Ken - 3/0, Cooch - 0/0, Ellen - 0/0 ROUND 8 vs. MIT - A classic first-half, with the two of us trading tossups. I'm sitting out, and only have an aneurysm on the "Afghanistan" tossup referring to their status with the IOC. The second half our overall balance as a team takes over - Ken, Elmer and Erik all hit tossups and we pull away. HALF: BU 110, MIT 90 FINAL: BU 270, MIT 120 STATS: Erik - 6/1, Elmer - 2/0, Ken - 2/1, Ellen - 0/0 ROUND 9 vs. Dartmouth - Philpy had apparently been negging his team out of matches all day. This match, he puts Dartmouth at -10 after two tossups, and we're up 120 before anyone knows what happened. HALF: BU 160, Dartmouth 50 FINAL: BU 290, Dartmouth 90 STATS: Erik - 7/0, Elmer - 2/0, Ellen - 1/0, Jon - 1/2 ROUND 10 - Bye for what would have been Connecticut College. ROUND 11 vs. UMass-Lowell - I hit my personal low, missing a question on the Red Sox essentially because I was asleep and hungover. Yeah, I'd like to believe I was hungover. I will never understand how we lost to Lowell two year ago. Ever. HALF: BU 180, UM-Lowell -5 FINAL: BU 275, UM-Lowell 45 STATS: Erik - 8/0, Ellen - 1/0, Cooch - 1/0, Ken - 0/1 ROUND 12 vs. Bentley - Somehow, we won the "Most Improved Team" award at this year's Regionals. We moved up one spot in the standings, but we're much less dominant this year. Bentley would be the prime example. Our 490-point decimation of them last year was legend, this year they put up a much stronger fight. Our lowest winning point total of the day is enough because on eight bonuses, Bentley gets ten points. I suspect Ellen dubbing us "Fruit Flavored BU" also had something to do with it, but that I can't prove. HALF: BU 90, Bentley 35 FINAL: BU 145, Bentley 75 STATS: Erik - 3/0, Cooch - 3/0, Elmer - 1/1, Ken - 0/1 Everything has fallen into place for us - in Round 12, Providence beat Williams by 90, albeit with some controversy over recognition. That puts Providence (10-0) in the finals, regardless of what they do in Rd. 13. Williams is tied with us at 9-1, losses to PC. The winner of this game, as I've suspected all day, will go to the finals. This is exactly what happened last year, only we played PC in the last round. Williams won 335-170, but that was with Joel Iams, who's graduated. Dartmouth thinks we can take them... course, they thought we'd take Providence last year too. ROUND 13 vs. Williams - Best game all day, well, up to the finals anyway. Erik is keyed up - of the eight tossups we hit in the game, he has seven of them. Williams leads in the first half, but we take it back by half. Late in the second half, Williams hits three straight tossups with first-sentence buzzes to take the lead 170-165 with four minutes left, just as we were poised to put them away. With 2:15 left, it's tied at 195. Erik negs on the next question early, but Williams can't convert. With 1:30 left, Williams negs, and it's 190-190. Erik hits the next to last tossup at the 1:00 mark... 220-190. Williams hits the last tossup to put them within 20... 20-point bonus... 10 seconds left. TIME RUNS OUT. HALF: BU 120, Williams 95 FINAL: BU 220, Williams 200 STATS: Erik - 7/1, Elmer - 1/0, Cooch - 0/0, Ken - 0/1 After the game, it gets scary. As we're shaking hands and congratulating each other, Lydia of Williams blacks out, falls over a chair and hits her head on the floor. She ended up being fine, but it was still the strangest ending to a match I've seen. Their two-year run as region champions is now over, and I guess it was too much for her. Just as we did last year, Williams implored us to kick Providence's ass in the final. For the first time in twelve years, we're in the Regional finals. FINALS, Round 1 - The best game of the day, even if we did lose it. Three ties, coming down to the final tossup. We had them, but not as much as us giving it away, they took it back. With it 100-100 in the first half, PC builds a 35-point lead to put us down at the half for the first time. Four straight to start the second half puts us back up 15. They neg twice, we build the lead to 215-160, and it looks good. We trade tossups before a question comes up starting "In 1991, they had the least jobs of any economy in the EU..." - it was something like that. I think, "That might be Ireland." I don't buzz. You know what the answer was. 225-225, 45 seconds left. Question comes up with the giveaway, "FTP, name this word, the opposite of appellate." One of James' teammates gets "appella," and they run out the clock. HALF: Providence 150, BU 115 FINAL: Providence 255, BU 225 STATS: Erik - 6/1, Elmer - 2/0, Ken - 2/0, Cooch - 1/0 FINALS, Round 2 - I sit, wanting to let Ellen play after sitting for three rounds straight. I'll be honest, I thought we were done after dropping the first game. When PC led 65 at the half, I really thought we were. But I was extremely wrong, as BU played the best half of College Bowl since the 2001 Bentley game. After traded tossups make it 170-95, the good guys go on a 165-(-5) run to decimate the Friars. Finally, after four losing tries over three years, we beat Rain Man and set up a winner-take-all championship battle. HALF: Providence 140, BU 75 FINAL: BU 260, Providence 165 STATS: Erik - 7/2, Elmer - 4/0, Ken - 2/0, Ellen - 0/0 FINALS, Round 3 - Between finals game, Lydia reminds us that last year, Williams lost the first, then won two to beat James. It becomes clear how much they want us to win... the circuit teams desperately don't want to lose to any once-a-years. Sadly, we fail them. It's never close. Erik negged on the first question, and it's like James put it into a higher gear. He starts hitting questions from everywhere... if it was NAQT, he'd have been wrong more than half the time, but CBI is predictable enough that he mops up. We win a protest on "Saint Expery" being taken on "Saint Exupery," but it's not enough to spark us in the second half. They beat us clean. But that first game... ouch. HALF: Providence 175, BU 55 FINAL: Providence 370, BU 120 STATS: Erik - 3/2, Elmer - 3/2, Ken - 0/0, Cooch - 0/0 I said before the final I was happy just because we'd broken our string of three-straight 3rd place finishes, and I am. There's still the chance we could pick up the wild card spot to Nationals - CBI puts the 15 Regional runner-ups in a hat, and draws one for the 16th spot in Kansas. But knowing how close we were to getting the automatic bid, it stings. Still, it's been a hell of a season. Bring on TRASHionals! FINAL INDY STATS: Erik - 83 tossups / 13 negs / 14 games - 54.64 ppg - ALL STAR Elmer - 27 tossups / 5 negs / 11.5 games - 21.30 ppg Cooch - 16 tossups / 4 negs / 11 games - 12.72 ppg Ken - 14 tossups / 5 negs / 12 games - 9.58 ppg Ellen - 2 tossups / 0 negs / 7.5 games - 2.67 ppg