Semifinals Recap
Lots to unpack about last night’s Semifinals results. First off, the Blue Devils pulled out another first place finish edging the Bluecoats by 0.15 points. However, it was the Bluecoats who actually scored worse than they had the previous night!
The other surprise of the night was the one point penalty for the Boston Crusaders. Word on twitter was that they were penalized for warming up in the wrong area. That’s really unfortunate!
The Top 12 Corps ended up being the same Top 12 from the Prelims on Thursday night. As mentioned there was a swap at the very top, and the one point penalty for BC didn’t really change their ranking. My RMSE for this part of the competition was 0.73 which was the best I’ve had all year to date. It would have been 0.68 had BC not been penalized, but that’s not something you can really predict and will have to go with what we have.
Finals Predictions
So it’s all come down to tonight. I can’t even imagine just how crazy it will be between those top two corps. They’ve traded placed several times in the last few weeks, so it’s just about anybody’s guess who will take home the Gold tonight.
The Bluecoats having a score that was lower in Semifinals than it was in Prelims hurt them a bit in my model. It’s giving them a score that is most likely not going to reflect what their actual score will be assuming they have a perfect performance tonight. The actual margin of victory will probably be less than the 0.44 represented here, but I’ll stand by my model and declare the Blue Devils as the 2019 Drum Corps International Champion!
Of course that would also mean that I was correct in making them my top pick back before the season officially began.
Enjoy tonight’s finals. The announcement of second place during the final Retreat will be…well, I don’t know…what else can you call it: crazy, insane, sad (maybe). It will definitely be something to remember!