Still Crum-bling on the hill in Allentown - August 5, 2023

[MikeRapp]

1 hour ago, drumcorpsfever said:

Two point difference was clearly the case in Atlanta. It was plain for all to see. In Allentown, no. You can see things are legitimately tighter between 1-4.  indy is going to be a rush!

But this is baked into the scoring methodology of DCI. The top corps can’t go over 100. The closer we get to the end of the tour, the closer the top corps get in point spread. It’s always this way. It has to be.

[NewArpege]

2 minutes ago, LabMaster said:

Totally agree.  The initial thinking by many that this was BD’s year, no one would catch them, is proving to be a false acquiescence to BD’s creativity and performance ability.  What was not being considered or given credit for, was the ability of Boston, Crown and Bloo’s staffs to improve their shows with smart layering and development and generally cleaning the bejesus out of each caption. BD is not running away with it.  I mentioned before that it’s not that BD is that good, it is also that these other corps are pretty darn good themselves.  Additionally the past few years there has always been talk of how good the top 6 are.  I believe this year this has expanded to the top 8.  We are being treated to some great and amazingly diverse shows.

Very true, especially about the caliber of the top 8. There’s not a bad show in the bunch. 
 

This season has panned out like I thought in early season. BD is dominating but they aren’t unbeatable (not saying they won’t go undefeated…just saying it’s more competitive and corps are within striking distance).  But we can bet, BD is going to clean and tighten this week and they could easily pull away again. BAC is running a near perfect production last night and still didn’t catch BD with errors. I’m not sure if Crown can tighten drill enough to flex up to BD, but they have opportunity space to grow more with drill cleanliness and guard who was down .3 under BAC last night. 
 

It’ll be exciting to see next weekend. 

[drumcorpsfever]

15 minutes ago, MikeRapp said:

But this is baked into the scoring methodology of DCI. The top corps can’t go over 100. The closer we get to the end of the tour, the closer the top corps get in point spread. It’s always this way. It has to be.

True. And the eye and ear test this weekend shows a tightening between them. Pretty cool on how shows progress and clean throughout a relatively short season. A testament to the mm’s and staffs. 

[LabMaster]

8 minutes ago, NewArpege said:

Very true, especially about the caliber of the top 8. There’s not a bad show in the bunch. 
 

This season has panned out like I thought in early season. BD is dominating but they aren’t unbeatable (not saying they won’t go undefeated…just saying it’s more competitive and corps are within striking distance).  But we can bet, BD is going to clean and tighten this week and they could easily pull away again. BAC is running a near perfect production last night and still didn’t catch BD with errors. I’m not sure if Crown can tighten drill enough to flex up to BD, but they have opportunity space to grow more with drill cleanliness and guard who was down .3 under BAC last night. 
 

It’ll be exciting to see next weekend. 

Hopefully Boston will continue to clean as they really hadn’t focused on cleaning until this past week, which is a tad late to really get after it.  The guard is now beginning to hit their stride too after a slow start and upping the difficulty this year.  They have been developing more of a character role as well with this show.  Atown was a good one for them so they are off and running now.  Actually brass and perc are also getting in to total performance mode.  Very exciting.  But all that being said, everyone has their one last tour show, then major focusing for and in Indy begins.  Indy is going to be epic this year.  More than ever it seems.

[MikeRapp]

Just now, drumcorpsfever said:

True. And the eye and ear test this weekend shows a tightening between them. Pretty cool on how shows progress and clean throughout a relatively short season. A testament to the mm’s and staffs. 

I never really know how much the score tightening is the result of the methodology or the corps “getting better.” It’s undoubtedly both, but my suspicion is it’s more of the former than the latter.

[LabMaster]

27 minutes ago, MikeRapp said:

But this is baked into the scoring methodology of DCI. The top corps can’t go over 100. The closer we get to the end of the tour, the closer the top corps get in point spread. It’s always this way. It has to be.

There are also fewer negative elements in shows as they change, layer and clean.  More complexities begin to emerge, More differences become clearer as do similarities. Captions tighten, true strengths appear,  allowing judges to discern differences and evaluate comparatively. A half a tenth at this point may have been a few or more tenths a month ago. Box 4 is now box 5 in all captions.

[pistolpete]

Head to head matchups are the only ones that matter. It will all be decided on Saturday night in Indy.

[Maleguena1988]

So, the rankings on DCI.org mean nothing to performance order next week?

[Barneveld]

2 minutes ago, Maleguena1988 said:

So, the rankings on DCI.org mean nothing to performance order next week?

correct.

Performance order for Thursday is determined this way:

Quote

Order of appearance at the DCI World Championship Prelims (August 10 in Indianapolis) will be based on the reverse order of finish of scores averaged from events in San Antonio, Atlanta, Winston-Salem, and Allentown. Open Class participants will be seeded in the first blocks of performing corps based on reverse order of finish from Open Class Championship events. In the event a corps is not scheduled to appear in a major regional event, their last score received prior to that regional event will be used for averaging purposes.

https://www.dci.org/news/explainer-how-performance-order-is-set-for-2023-dci-tour

[90svet]

23 minutes ago, pistolpete said:

Head to head matchups are the only ones that matter. It will all be decided on Saturday night in Indy.

....and 5 years from now, rings and medals will be collecting dust or be in a landfill; and 75% of MMs will care about nothing other than appreciating the life skills that they learned while matching.  They will be more worried about taking care of themselves and their families moreso than what placement they had years ago at a drum corps contest.

And for the small number that care a bit more, even they will reduce the importance after they use their placement at Finals to secure a job while referencing that placement on resume.  And, for that subset, it would likely only matter if pursuing career in teaching/performance.