A team of UW graduate business school students recently took second- place honors in the Pac-10 MBA Case Competition, hosted at Arizona State University (ASU).

This means the UW team — along with first-place winner ASU and third-place University of Southern California (USC) — will face off against three Big-10 teams in the "Rose Bowl of Case Competitions" in January.

The UW team this year was made up of four second-year MBAs from the business school: Elisabeth Bykoff, Theo Iaponas, Ben Lower and Kelly Schermer.

"They're a great group," said Gordon Neumiller, who acted as the team's adviser and accompanied them to Arizona.

In this year's competition, five teams (UW, ASU, USC, University of Arizona and WSU) were given 24 hours to analyze a case, form a strategy and put together a presentation. The final presentation (which includes 20 minutes of the presentation itself and an additional 20 minutes for Q-and-A) is then given to a group of judges who judge based on both style and content. In addition to the top-three rankings, there are also honors for "Best Presenter" and "Best Response to Q-and-A."

The competition is fierce, and the ticking clock adds a major stress factor to the event, Neumiller said.

"It's quite a commitment," he said. "It's part of the culture of case competitions for the teams to stay up all night, or maybe have one designated sleeper. They're just working off an adrenaline rush, and by the time it's done, most students have been up for about 48 hours."

Team member Elisabeth Bykoff said a lot of work goes into the weeks leading up to the competition as well.

"You get really focused the week before," she said, explaining how the team practiced doing presentations in front of Neumiller and other business school faculty. "We really wanted to win."

What is the incentive for students to commit themselves to such a pressure cooker?

"Part of the benefit for the students is the chance to meet students from other schools and do a little networking," Neumiller said. "It's also a chance for schools to get some bragging rights."

Bykoff said she likes the competitive edge provided by facing off against other business schools.

"We do so many [case competitions] inside the program, it's good to do it when there's something at stake," she said. "We're a very good program — we want to compete against people."

Team member Theo Iaponas agreed the competitive edge is what distinguishes this case competition from ones that happen within the program.

"It's definitely a different dynamic," Iaponas said. "When we do [competitions] inside the school, it's still fun. It's against people you know. Going outside, you kind of feel responsible for your school. For some schools, it's a very big deal."

The team will have a chance to put their business smarts to the test again in January when they head back to Arizona to face off against USC, ASU and the three finalists from the Big-10. In 2007, the MBA Case Competition will be hosted here at UW.

Contributing writer Siv Prince: development@thedaily.washington.edu