Clenching a small buzzer in his hand, Ike Jose, senior in Engineering, sat with his three teammates in front of hundreds of people in Chicago. Twenty feet to their left was the opposing four-member team from the University of Virginia.

The room was silent as the moderator began to ask the toss-up question. As he progressed further into the question and gave more and more clues, a Virginia team member buzzed in with the correct answer before Jose could press down on the small buzzer.

Scenes like this were repeated over the course of the match, and by the end, the University of Illinois Quiz Bowl team lost to University of Virginia 545-150.

According to team president Billy Busse, junior in Engineering, the Quiz Bowl is a year-round intercollegiate competition that is comparable to “Jeopardy!”

“‘Jeopardy!’ has short questions that are typically one clue, and you can only buzz in at the end,” Busse said. “Whereas Quiz Bowl tends to have longer questions, and you can buzz in whenever you know it.”

Quiz Bowl questions address a variety of different academic disciplines, such as literature, history, science and sometimes popular culture.

The questions are arranged in sequence from harder to easier clues. They’re designed to reward the player with the most knowledge of the subject, Busse said.

Although Illinois lost the Division I finals to Virginia last spring, Jose, the team’s lead scorer, thinks receiving second place was an accomplishment.

“We weren’t expecting to be there in the first place,” Jose said. “It wasn’t a pretty match … (but) we beat Yale, Harvard, Chicago and Brown to get there.”

Now a new season is starting, and Busse has high hopes.

“Last year, we made it to the finals and got embarrassed on stage by Virginia,” Busse said. “This year is going to be different.”

Their biggest competition this year is Maryland, Pennsylvania, the University of Chicago, Virginia and Michigan, Busse said. This season, they beat Minnesota, which was tied with Harvard last season at sixth place.

According to the president of Pennsylvania’s Quiz Bowl team, Eric Mukherjee, Illinois’ team is predicted to be ranked somewhere between first and fourth place in nationals.

“The current predicted frontrunner is the University of Virginia,” Mukherjee said. “Penn, U of Michigan and Illinois are all in contention as well.”

When asked how he thought Pennsylvania would do against Illinois this year, he voiced his concern about a possible game-changer at nationals  — Aaron Rosenberg, a new addition to the University’s A-team.

“The fact that they’ve acquired Aaron makes me a little uneasy about our chance,” Mukherjee said. “If anything, Quiz Bowl has taught me not to (mess) with Aaron Rosenberg.”

Jose said that Rosenberg is a graduate from Brown that joined Illinois’ A-team this year when he entered the University’s Electrical and Computer Engineering graduate program,

Rosenberg joined Jose, Busse and Austin Listerud, sophomore in Engineering, all of whom were on the A-team last season.

Mukherjee also highlighted Busse, saying he is “a young up-and-comer who’s already demonstrated that he can get good science buzzes.”

Mukherjee mentioned Jose as a challenge for the Penn team. “(Jose) has the most random possible pockets of deep knowledge … (that) can lead to somewhat widely varying results depending on how the questions slant,” Mukherjee said.

Austin can be reached at [email protected].