TWHSParent

Go back to page 23 on this thread, or check out the post in the HornRank forum from someone who has some inside connections. They have been right every time they posted schedules. Of course, changes can and do happen (apparently someone has dropped recently, and Forney is now in).

So from my list yesterday, 23 bands are in panel 1: Panel 1 Block 1 Katy Tompkins New Braunfels Cedar Ridge Block 3 Keller Central John B Alexander Keller Hendrickson James Bowie Ronald Reagan Clear Brook Claudia Taylor Johnson Block 5 Round Rock Coppell Flower Mound Rouse Vista Murrieta Lake Travis Block 7 The Woodlands Roma Cy-Fair Oak Ridge Wakeland And 17 are on panel 2: Panel 2 Block 2 Westwood Westlake Block 4 Vandegrift Leander Vista Ridge Cedar Park Cypress Falls Block 6 Marcus Hebron Timber Creek Pearland Block 8 College Park Dawson Prosper North Shore LD Bell Aledo My top 5 predictions for panel 1: Cedar Ridge Ronald Reagan Claudia Taylor Johnson Flower Mound The Woodlands Top 5 for panel 2: Vandegrift Leander Vista Ridge Hebron LD Bell The next 4: Keller (panel 1) James Bowie (panel 1) Marcus (panel 2) Westwood (panel 2) Just out: Cedar Park (panel 2) Westlake (panel 2) Rouse (panel 1) Coppell (panel 1) I expect to miss this and be surprised, of course. Everyone still has to go out and actually perform on the field. But still fun to consider.... Oh, and Vista Murrieta is still a complete unknown at this point.

I also missed that for some reason....

Personally I am all for deeper discussions about what might be at issue. There are reasons shows score the way they do, and trying to understand those reasons is perfectly fine. These types of comments are not attacks against programs or performers, but are thoughtful and sometimes insightful comments about results and where we think those results came from. While most of us don't have access to the judges comments (I'm sure some of us do, at least for some programs), we then have to use our own eyes and ears, and general knowledge of the activity to try to make sense of the results, What drives GE? That one is hard for people to define and understand. It is probably the most subjective of the captions. Another thing to understand about BOA, is that the scores are a general indication of mastery, on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the best. Whenever you see a score of 18+ in a caption, that means the judge thought the program was at the highest level of achievement (aka "Box 5") in that caption, but perhaps others still did it better. Those are the general guidelines that the BOA judges have, which have been asked about on this site. Within those generalizations the judge will assign rankings and scores based upon their opinion of the show vs the other shows. So while the scores may not be directly comparable between contests, the general achievement level can be. So once programs start hitting 16+ in captions, they are putting on a pretty strong show. 18+ will be a strong end of season finalist contender, 19+ is a champion contender.

I understand the point you are making, and don't disagree. Couple quibbles - Union was not 4 point ahead of all the bottom half. They were only 4 points up on Bentonville. Close enough to 4 points perhaps for Rosemount, Lake Travis, and Jenks. But still not the whole bottom half. Maybe the bottom half of the bottom half? SFA was 2 points up on Carroll and Camdenton, not 3. Again a quibble and not a disagreement with your point about the 2 panel system and how it rolls into the top/bottom half at super regionals. Perhaps St. Louis is tougher to get a good split among previous finalists than San Antonio or Indianapolis due to higher turnover of finalist quality bands? I'm also not a fan of the 2 panel system without the buffer of semi-finals. I think the day that the 15th place band makes finals and the 14th place band doesn't due to the top 5 in panel rule will be the end of that rule, at least without further modification. In that case, I can see them expanding to add the 15th finalist as they would do in the case of a tie for the last spot. In fact, I think they should maybe proactively make that part of the rulebook for super regionals if they plan to keep this panel system.

Another consideration is that SFA was the first to perform and set the standard. The panel felt that SFA should be about an 85-86, and didn't see Lake Travis in that light during finals. SFA was less than a point from Union for breaking into the top half, even while going off first. I think that is huge for SFA - bottom half Houston finalist and oh so close to breaking into top half here.

So, my take this morning. Feel free to pick it apart and let me know how dumb I am (hint: I already know I'm dumb ) : There is a top 7, with 2 other bands that can disrupt (no real order yet, but my general opinions of shows that I've seen, which isn't much in some cases): Ronald Reagan Flower Mound The Woodlands Vandegrift Hebron Claudia Taylor Johnson Leander The 2 that I think can play spoiler: Vista Ridge LD Bell Then something like 31 bands that will really be vying for the last 5 spots. Strongest of these, in my opinion, which could also make surprise entries into the top half: James Bowie Coppell Marcus Rouse Cedar Park Westwood Keller Westlake Cedar Ridge Next Group would include Vista Murrieta Lake Travis Pearland Oak Ridge John B Alexander Clear Brook Round Rock Wakeland Timber Creek Tompkins Then some that could surprise: Cy-Fair Cypress Falls Dawson Aledo Keller Central College Park Hendrickson New Braunfels North Shore Prosper Roma Katy So, very deep contest as we all know and expect, so I am certain I forgot someone. So I guess that is my top 40 for this week? As an aside, I think we have at least 6 class A bands, and 3 of our out of state attendees (not sure about Westlake, UT): Alter, OH Ann Richards, TX Collinsville, OK Hollister, MO Johnson, TX Robinson, TX From scores for each of these, it could be a tight finishing order. The only one I can't find anything at all about this year is Alter. They have a history of being a solid class A band in BOA. Edited to drop Seven Lakes (per comment they aren't attending), and added Katy as my 40th band.

I will see what I can do...

Not all regions are on Saturday. Region 9, for example, is on Tuesday.

If you keep them unlisted, and carefully give out links the videos will likely stay up.

So the announcer really got into YEEE!!! HAW!!! Thought it was funny.... Edited to fix typo

Speaking as a semi-informed layperson, it is missing a "moment". It is well performed, but doesn't stand out. There are so many things they could do visually from the era they are pulling music from, and they don't really do much with it. I'm thinking selling the show like CTJ's Flashdance - go for the things that make people think :"1970's". Spelling out numbers that most people attending won't be able to see isn't enough. They need more visual cues, more disco moves, more brown and leisure suits. Bellbottoms are only a small part and not enough on their own.

It is one of the largest. Camping World and University of Louisville stadiums are about the same size from previous regionals this year.

Yeah, I thought about that too, and came up with a statistical weighting idea based on prelim order. It starts to get more complex than people probably want, but it avoids even the likely 2nd place finisher from going too early. So I don't know if there is a better/simpler solution than the top/bottom half. I do agree about the judges being better about viewing what is in front of them rather than viewing things through the lens of the previous panel.

I tend to think that it is enough to ensure a top half finalist never goes first, and a bottom half finalist never goes last. Everything else is open to the draw order.

I didn't see too many shows yesterday, but did catch Union and Blue Springs. They were both good shows, but I agree - Blue Springs is not as good as last year, but still quite good. Union has a good show with some potential to get better, and they've moved up my opinion ladder for Grand National Finals.

That would be for the expensive tickets. No, I have not received mine yet. I do have all my tickets from Ticketmaster for Grand Nationals.

And we know the judges, just not the captions or panels: Music adjudicators will include Tim Allshouse,George Boulden,Nola Jones,David Starnes, Ken Turner, Jay Webb, Kyle Weirich, and Daniel Wood.•Visual adjudicators will include Lee Carlson, MichaelGray, John Howell, Greg Llacer, Chris Moss, and Tim Ochran. Oops. This is for SA, not GN.

Oh, their show is outstanding this year, just not ready to coronate them yet.

FM was almost 4 points up on the competition that year early season - Reagan is only 2-3. That full point+ closer makes a difference. FM got 5 of 6 possible captions and won by ~2 points at SA. I don't think Reagan will do that this year. Could be wrong of course, but I don't see Reagan's show in that light, at least not yet.

Having seen them at LSP, I think Porter has a shot at 5A finals. If they don't make it, it won't be by much.

I think handing all the hardware to Reagan is a bit premature.... Could it happen? Sure. I still stand by my comment that there will be at least 4 shows that compete with/beat them at SA, and that at least 2 of those shows are going to GN. So that means I think Reagan finishes anywhere from 1st to 5th at SA. No lower. CTJ had essentially an identical start in 2017, but by SA they were third in prelims, but came back to win finals. So they were caught, but persevered. I expect similar things this year. But it all starts to play out in 2 weeks. Should be fun.

Growing up near Cincinnati, I've been a Reds fan since the Big Red Machine (just old enough to have watched them), but Houston was always my 2nd favorite out of the old NL West division. I'm probably one of the few that really didn't mind the old, brightly colored uniforms the Astros wore.

Up 3 games to 1 now.

For the performance scores, the TMC scores are out of 30. So you divide the score given by 30 to get the ratio vs the max score. You then multiply that ratio by 20 to get the BOA version of the score. GE music is out of 40 for both contests, so no change necessary. GE visual is a straight divide the TMC score by 2. TMC takes the averages of the captions and adds them for the final total. BOA averages the performance captions, but straight up adds the GE scores for the final total.