A total of 28 teams, 36 episodes, and 11,365 points later, here we go again. For the fifth year in a row, the final of University Challenge will be an all-Oxbridge affair as Merton College, Oxford, face St John’s College, Cambridge, in the competition’s showpiece event tomorrow at 8:30pm on BBC 2.

Speaking to Varsity ahead of the broadcast, the St John’s captain, James Devine-Stoneman, said he was “stunned” by his team’s success. “Not knowing how strong the competition would be, we really hoped not to be knocked out in the first round, and thought it would be fantastic if we made it to the quarter finals. Having already made history for the College in front of around three million viewers per episode is an amazing feeling, whichever way the final swings.”

Both teams enter the final unbeaten, with St John’s having dispatched Edinburgh, Newcastle, Ulster, St Andrews, and Corpus Christi, Cambridge, en route to the final while Merton have recorded wins against Newcastle, Edinburgh, Oxford Brookes, King’s College London, and Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.

His college’s best performance prior to this year was in 2008/9 when they were beaten in the semi-finals by the Corpus Christi, Oxford, team led by the famous Gail Trimble. Merton were last victorious in the pre-Paxman days of the competition, beating Queens’ College, Cambridge to lift the trophy in 1980.

Devine-Stoneman acknowledged that St John’s faced a tough challenge to defeat their “formidable opponents” and reclaim the trophy from their sister college – last year’s victors, Balliol College, Oxford.

While for both St John’s and Merton half an hour of intense quizzing lies ahead (I’m just hyping, here – we all know the episodes are pre-recorded), the only question that remains is: would you rather support Oxford or St John’s?