ASU quiz team participating in national tournament

ALBANY — What is the next year evenly divisible by 30? How many soldiers were in the Charge of Light Brigade? How many votes needed to win the Electoral College?

Albany State University students tried to answer those questions and many more Tuesday night as they prepared for the 27th annual National Championship Tournament of the Honda Campus All-Star Challenge.

Head coach and university professor John Williams fired question after question in rapid succession in an attempt to simulate the game play they will face this weekend as the team travels to California.

This is Williams’ second year as coach, but he’s no stranger to the competition having competed as a student himself for four years from 1999-2003. Last year the team was able to make it past the preliminary competition and got into the higher money brackets, which Williams said they traditionally do. While the team has seen first round success the past few years, they’ve never made it past the Sweet 16 round. Williams said he likes his team’s chances of getting over that hump this year.

“This group has heart,” he said. “Last year’s group had a lot heart, but both me as a coach and the team as a whole, were going through the first year jitters. But this year this team has heart…having heart means whoever steps across from them, they’re gonna challenge them and play them as if they know they can win. ”

The season for the team started officially in early October. Then they started getting practice games in and as well as forming the nucleus of the team.

The team has three returning members including senior team captain Casey Williams, who said he’s not only able to use last year’s experiences, but his coach’s’ experience a player as well.

“[He brings] a lot of wisdom,” Williams said. “He’s seen it, he’s seen how the game was run over different years, so he gives us pointers, what we should learn and what we should look out for.”

Sophomore Ashli Jordan, another returning member said as rigorous as the training can be, their classes help with the training process.

“Many things during our course work does appear during the competitions,” Jordan said. “It’s easy balance because the things you’re learning in your course work does appear during our club work.”

Only four members of the team will made the trip and Williams said they will use intense game play to look at how students perform as a team, what their areas of specialty are, as well as how they’ve performed in both the qualifying tournament and the scrimmages they’ve had thus far to determine who goes.

The competition begins today and ends on Wednesday and will include categories such as general knowledge, pop culture, black history, HBCU history, music, sports and more.

Williams said the ultimate goal is to win the national championship and build a dynasty at ASU. They’ve been able to retain Williams and Jordan as well as Morgan Bush, who said the level play she saw from her teammates last year motivated her to raise her game this year.

“Last year I was actually on B team, we actually didn’t get to compete, we got to watch ‘A’ team compete at the National Qualifying Tournament in Alabama,” she said. “From watching them it motivated me to be able to prepare myself this year. It made me want to go home and study more to prepare myself so I could make the A team.”