[thefro526]

From what I've seen in my time in FRC, once you're out of the top 12 teams or so, rank means very little - if anything. When alliance selections roll around, what matters most is what you can do, and how reliably you can do it - not how many matches you've won or lost.

From what I saw on Saturday in Baltimore, there was a relatively large group of "mid-range" teams (2-3 tubes, no/inconsistent minibot) which 316 seemed to fall into. The issue with being one of many teams in the middle of the pack (Statistically, not by ranking) is that there's not much that will differentiate one team from another so it's extremely difficult to stand out above the rest.

Usually, "mid-range" teams are picked based on their ability to fit into a strategy. Usually they're tasked with doing some task other then scoring, like Defense, Feeding tubes, or focusing on deploying a minibot. Sometimes a team will be selected from the mid-range based on a single advantageous trait like scoring an Ubertube with 100% reliability, or having a really consistent mini-bot that isn't fast, but works. The more versatile you can be, then the more of an asset you can be to an alliance, therefore the more of a chance you have to be picked.

If I were you, I would ask myself two questions: Do we want to stay in the Middle of the pack and create a Niche for ourselves? If the answer to that is no, then I'd ask "What do we need to do to become a top level team, and can we do it?"