Chief Delphi - An in depth look at the Michigan State Championship

The Michigan State Championship did not disappoint. There were incredibly high scores and incredibly close matches. You’ve heard many of the statistics already, but let’s rehash: The average qualification Winning-Losing score were 153-111. Michigan provided a new World Record High Score of 244*, by an alliance that could’ve scored 45 more if one robot hadn’t fallen off the pyramid. There’s a new World Record Highest Losing Score of 192 in QF 2-1. Michigan has also created a new World Record Autonomous Score of 90, courtesy of the amazing #2 alliance. This event had unmatched depth: the 24th highest OPR was a ridiculously high 49. If the robots did not provide enough drama, the Detroit Public Television webcast brought MSC to another level, presenting FIRST to the world in a way never before seen.

But let’s talk about what you might not have noticed. Nearly one out of four qualification matches had a combined score over 300, plus another 11 matches in eliminations, for a total of 41. This happened only 26 times in Week 1 through 6. Michigan teams scored over 200 points 7 times in qualifications this weekend (the 2054/67/2337 alliance did it twice more in elims). With 67 and 469 involved in three and two of those, respectively, it was no surprise to see them playing for it all in the finals.

Defense played a really minimal role in qualifications, with every team trying to show off their scoring abilities. However, once we got into Saturday afternoon, everything changed. Several teams that had played primary scorer for their alliances at districts made a quick transition to playing tough in the trenches. This sudden change in strategy meant that scores did not increase from qualifications to eliminations as much as they usually would at a normal event. The increase in average score of 23% is a long shot lower than the 77% difference between elim and qual scores in week 1 through 6.

Speaking of long shots, full-court shooting did not play as much of a role in eliminations as many expected. However, it was the two alliances that most effectively utilized full-court shooting that made it to the final, whether it was 67’s deadly accurate shots or 217’s long passes down the field to their pickup partners.

As expected, pure cyclers encountered trouble. Almost every robot in the eliminations cycled at one point or another, but only one alliance that relied heavily on cycling made it to the semifinals. By the finals, every team still in the competition had some other ability. It really was the pickups who were in the greatest demand. Four of the six versatile finalist teams had pickups and the top three alliances had four of the best pickups in Michigan.

In fact, the top alliances each had their own specialisations. The #1 alliance played the FCS game to perfection, dedicated one of their robots solely to offensive blocking. The #2 alliance had an auton advantage in every one of their elimination matches, thanks to 3539’s effective 7-disc and 469’s centerline autonomous modes. The #4 alliance could’ve beaten most alliances across the country with their 100-point endgame alone.

In the end, I can’t help but wonder what might have happened if 67 hadn’t had drivetrain problems, if 2054 hadn’t had shooter motor wires come unplugged, but I get the feeling that the outcome would have been the same.

In the first match of the MSC finals, the #2 alliance tried to simply outscore the #1 alliance and failed magnificently. There’s a saying that “the hardest thing to do in sports is to walk into your locker room at halftime of the Championship game and change the strategy that got you there because it’s not working.” 469 put together a great alliance that could win a lot of different ways and they switched up their strategy. 217 played the defensive menace role beautifully despite jerry-rigging their FCS blocker between finals matches. There’s no questioning that that #2 alliance earned their State Championship.

Good luck to all teams and see you next year!

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*Note that this is excluding foul points. The actual score of this match was 247 with 3 foul points. The next highest score worldwide was 243.