On October 13, one week after their fall break, the team has assembled in a parking lot of the university, ready to start their road trip to Houston so they can compete in the ACF Fall at Rice. All right, they won't know who's on whose roster until we start playing! Then again, we won't either. Imélie thinks while reviewing the field for the ACF Fall tournament: Texas-Austin, Texas A&M, Rice, Mississippi, Oklahoma, New Mexico State, Baylor and, of course, Tulane.
"This is it! This tournament will decide the entire fate of this program; after years of mediocrity, if we perform poorly, there may not even be a quiz bowl team at Tulane anymore! The university has no patience left for the quiz bowl program. Tomorrow we are going to play ten games, no matter what happens" Imélie delivers the university's ultimatum to the team.
"You only told us that we would be on the hot seat if we underperform tomorrow. You never told us that the university issued an ultimatum to the team!" Alyssa complains about not being told about the ultimatum, nor about what constitutes poor performance.
"The only reason I could have for not telling you guys about the ultimatum is reducing the stress we have. Don't be nervous; after reviewing last year's performance I have every reason to believe you guys will be better, and I can confidently say that this is the most balanced Green Wave team since, well, the pandemic"
At the last ACF Fall, Tulane scored a total of 800 points, finishing 1-9, and, at ACF Winter, the team went winless and scored not even half as many points, albeit over 8 games as opposed to 10. Now the Green Wave has a chance, with all-new people on its roster, to perform better than last year!
"Remember, no powers, and opposing teams will probably underestimate us, still thinking that we are doormats against whom they can easily win against. But tomorrow, we shall prove to the administration that we have what it takes to win and therefore keep the program alive!" Derek reminds the other players.
"Then again it is a novice tournament" Xavier reasons, while the ultimatum hangs heavy over their heads.
"Roll on, Tulane! Let's show we aren't just dairy queenies and/or buzzer rocks! And do not be intimidated by our opponents' quiz bowl reputations! Also, if you want to win a buzzer race, it's good to have an answer primed in your mind, so that, "if you were to buzz in right now, what would you answer?" is always at the back of your mind when you listen to clues. I omitted it until the very last moment but that was because I believed there were more important skills to acquire first. However, in college, even more than in high school, buzzer races can make or break you, especially against an otherwise evenly matched player..." Imélie keeps lecturing her players.
"Now I understand better what I need to do when faced with a buzzer race!" Nolan exclaims.
"If it happens that we play a game in overtime, unlike in NAQT, every overtime tossup will be a sudden death one. While I trust you guys not to abuse timeouts, calling for one while a question is live constitutes illegal conferring under ACF rules" Imélie explains the final significant difference between ACF and NAQT rules.
As the team embarks in Imélie's electric car, she realizes that dinner must be eaten on the road, and they will need to stop on the road somewhere prior to getting into bed. While en route to Houston, they prepare yet more practice packets to ask one another on the road, so that they will be ready to take on the novice teams of the South at Rice on the next day. And, of course, Imélie has the university's fight song played on the car's radio system at times, but not at all times; sometimes it's best not to have music played while they keep asking questions to each other. But since she's driving, there is nothing she can actually do for the team without splitting her attention, which she knows is dangerous. Yet she couldn't help herself but listen to the questions, their clues and absorb all that to the extent she was able to do so while driving.
The next day, the team arrives at Rice's campus, with the buzzer system in tow, and the moderator's console having a label clearly marked "Property of Tulane University" on it. As she approaches the room for the teams' pre-tournament meeting, a ghost from her high school playing days approaches her... only that the two of them are now coaching collegiate quiz bowl teams.
"I remember you! You were the one who, at the HSNCT, blurted your shoe size because of your victory at the Vans Math Contest! And now you're... coaching Tulane? How is coaching them in multi-variable calculus going to help the Green Wave win in quiz bowl?" Bruce asks Imélie, sounding a little malicious towards her.
"That was years and years ago! Just let go of our high school-era grudges and focus on the here and now!" Imélie retorts to Bruce.
"Please tell me how this team is going to differ from last year's team!" Bruce then scoffs at the suggestion of letting go of old grudges.
"No one involved with last year's quiz bowl team is back this year, the last coach was fired, last year's team wrote off the rest of the season after being blown out at Winter"
"What makes you think the new quiz bowl team will do better than the previous one?" Bruce retorts, scoffing at the impact of the departure of the Green Wave's previous coach and roster.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
"Scouting and talent management has been much better this time around than under the previous coach!" Imélie tries to defend herself even though this iteration of Green Wave quiz bowl is still unproven.
"Good luck, you're going to need it! Especially since you're our first preliminary opponents! You're going to lose, and a lot!" Bruce taunts her.
"Just be on your best behavior during that game, and everything will be fine!"
Speaking of which, the morning rounds comprise seven preliminary games, and, after that, the top four teams will play each other in round-robin in the afternoon, and the same goes of the bottom-four teams, for three additional games. But right now, Imélie is in no position to talk back to Texas' coach, who seems to still be locked in a mode where he believes that well-placed immaturity can carry the day. Immaturity is a double-edged sword at best, knowing when and how to be childish can definitely be useful, but what makes it a double-edged sword is that it's very situational, Bruce reflects on his past interactions with Imélie, which were unfriendly even as far back as the HSNCT where they played against each other in the preliminary rounds.
Plus she needs to install the buzzer system in one of the four game rooms, and have the moderator assigned to the room in which the buzzer is installed help her test it to ensure it's actually functional, or else she will need to pay the penalty for providing a non-functional buzzer system immediately. As collegiate quiz bowl was not typically well-publicized on-campus, there was virtually no spectator in attendance other than the coaches; not even friends and/or family of the players would make the trip, except maybe for Rice players. At least not for ACF Fall.
"Toss-up number one..." the moderator starts reading the question afterward.
The game starts and both sides listen to the question intently, and upon hearing the words extraordinary differential equations, Xavier buzzes in, right before the "For ten points" cue.
"Fractional differential equations"
"Ten. Tulane, for ten points each..."
Extraordinary differential equations... or how something can be ordinary and extraordinary at the same time. In the world of differential equations, ordinary refers to the number of independent variables of the solution, while extraordinary refers to the order of the derivatives in the equation. So a differential equation can be ordinary and extraordinary at the same time provided that 1) the solution has only one independent variable and 2) the equation must include at least one fractional derivative, that is, a derivative of a non-integer order. Some people can be tempted to instead answer partial differential equations upon hearing the word extraordinary in the context of differential equations! Imélie thinks while trying to digest that first tossup that irritated Bruce, with Tulane players gaining confidence by being in the lead after one tossup.
Then Bruce gets even more surprised when he realizes that Alyssa has the potential to turn every literature tossup into a buzzer race, since she answers all 3 parts of the bonus, at which point everyone starts expecting buzzer races on both sides. Good Lord! That might be a fluke but stay alert! Bruce starts thinking upon seeing his team facing more challenges than they anticipated at first.
And not just on literature toss-ups, either. Everyone now expects more from the two teams, and the tensions run higher as more tossups are answered correctly, but the freshmen on both teams all realize that this competition is not harder than the HSNCT they took part in just a few months ago. But none of them played on the same teams there.
Now the Green Wave has played a much tighter game against Texas than anyone in the room believed it was possible, not even the Green Wave players. Last year, Texas A won this tournament, this year, Texas B is staffing it because they couldn't make it off the waitlist, and Rice is also making a bold statement by hosting the tournament, Bruce continues to think about what makes this tournament different from last year, held at Texas A&M. The overtime starts after the moderator obtained additional questions specifically for the purpose of overtime...
"As we have a tie, we are entering a sudden death situation, two hundred sixty points each. Tossups will be read until the score changes. Overtime tossup number one..."
The lead-in was something no player was willing to risk an answer on, nor were the following clues, but the question was clearly harder than the previous ones, probably closer to ACF Nationals than to the HSNCT. Why is it that they keep the hardest questions for overtime? Derek thinks, while unable to formulate an answer to the first overtime toss-up, and his teammates are equally unable to do so, as well as his opponents. Both teams had to wait for the "For ten points" cue to even attempt to buzz in for an answer. Even then... is this going to be like the EDE toss-up from earlier in the game or something else altogether?
"Name this..." Alyssa manages to hear from the moderator.
She then enters some trance-like state where she attempts to recall any facts in her head that held any relevance to any previous clues, or to this one, seemingly sorting through it in her mind much faster than she normally would. And, once the words Finnegan's Wake could be heard from the moderator, she somehow recalls a line about it in another book: "No one dreamed of being able to write a superb critical analysis of Joyce's Finnegan's Wake from the age of four on"
"James Joyce" Alyssa then answers after buzzing in.
"Ten. And that's the game; Tulane wins two hundred seventy to two hundred sixty!"
A-ha! Tulane has won its first game in the tournament, and Imélie would then simply watch out for signs of misconduct that could lead to a loss of impartiality, procedural protests, or factual protests. Also, she keeps an eye on the standings, as they are updated on the system within seconds of the games ending, as the Texas B players act as scorekeepers for this tournament because none of them earned a moderator certification from ACF; the tournament's statistician could simply copy-paste all the stat lines into SQBS.
If we win here, then and only then may I notify the University of any intention to host the ACF Regionals; I know I need administrative approval to even bid on that sort of tournament. In that case I may as well try to earn an ACF moderator certification, but LQBA, on the other hand, does not have that kind of system; it's hard to even fully staff things such as the LQBA Fall Invitational next week without it, such a system would make it even harder, Imélie thinks, during the following game where it's the opponent's turn to get blown out by Tulane for a change. New Mexico State lost 460-50 to Tulane, which is a vast improvement over last year's Green Wave.