chris ncsu

Congratulations, Santa Clara! It’s about time!

Allentown may have been a sweet spot, but last night seemed like their best run of the year. So happy for the members, they’ve worked their ##### off and been very consistent all year. I’d have to check, but finals may have been the first major show this year where cadets didn’t have any 8th or below rankings across the score sheet. Last night they beat Crown in guard, Cavies in visual analysis and brass. They also beat their 2017 finals score, and came within a half point of 2016.

The Clothmen?

The Cadets this year, since April, every day:

That seems impossible re: guard.

Yep, and Cadets won guard with 6th place overall, 1991.

EDT?

IMO the ballad has a wonderful build up. We aren’t hearing the same thing.

If they win most captions, like they did last night, upper 98s seems reasonable, but only if the raw numbers get up towards 19.6-19.8 I would think.

Black Knights were there??

Look forward to seeing it on Flo the next two nights (didn't go to theater last night). I've seen a LOT of gushing here and on various Cadets-related FB, Twitter, IG. Sounds like it was a great performance! Haven't seen this much love for Cadets since 2011.

Can we get our pretend priest back from last year? LET US PRAY!

LOS was rocking by the end of the slow build diagonal company front.

A bit of a henny-penny thread title, IMO. The boys are fine.

I like seeing more subcaptions above their overall placement (the 1s, 2s, 3s across the recap) than below (the 5s and 6s). 5 versus 3. I think this is their latest entrance into the 90s maybe going back to the 1980s, maybe because of the illnesses. But man, watching on Flo, that was SOME entrance! If I can presume that Vanguard would have been around 96 on Friday, that puts Cadets 6 pts out of 1st, which is right where a 6th place corps tends to be. Hmmm

Allentown-watching at home and I had to fight an ugly cry. That was so good it was cathartic.

Any word on recovery?

New, new, new-new era! ^My first finals.

BD hasn't always been the trendsetter or leader of the pack. See, for example, 1983-1993, and 2000-2007. Yes, this feels like an extended period where it's mostly BD's game and everyone else is just playing along, but it won't always be this way. And, who knows, we may already be in a new era. Also, take note that we are in pretty diverse times, in terms of who has managed to beat BD on Saturday night -- each time that's happened since 2007, it's been a different corps! And I think that's wonderful. PR, Cadets, Crown, Bluecoats, and probably now SCV!

YES! THANK YOU! God bless the NWS :)

They might be talking about the closer, which is in English. And based on what I heard only at practice, I agree that some words can't be deciphered over the corps. Can't believe we're complaining about not being able to hear words over the players LOL Brave new world...

He left plenty of room to put Cadets in the 17.xx range where they have been. But gave them 18.2 instead. *shrug*

True, but stuff happens and the current Top 6 won't be there every year! Well, except BD.

Yeah, there IS a lot going on here, to be remembered. New director and some new staff suddenly in April, mostly new show put together then, and as others have brought up the corps maybe isn't drawing so much big talent like they used to. The latter, plus maybe a few staff that are not a perfect fit, are probably big reasons why they're not cleaning to Top 5 caliber. But in fact, the fortitude of everyone involved are big reasons they're even here and effectively the same ranking as the last 2 years! In years past, I wouldn't totally buy the argument that it was bad show design leading to low placements -- I would accept that for low GE scores, but not for low performance scores. OK, the show is bad, but why can't they at least clean? But of course, many of those years saw the show design fluctuate during the summer with rewrites, so of course it was hard to clean. And as years of off and on show designs, and what the former director was known for, wore on the corps' reputation, it probably was eroding the talent draw, making it even harder to clean to championship levels.

For sure. It's annoying, though, to catch yourself thinking about certain Cadets shows that placed higher than this one -- looking at you, 2008 and 2016 in particular (but those 2016 musicians!!).