[NickTosta]

Strange, strange things are afoot on Archimedes. I think the root cause is different for each team, but I've noticed that many of the top teams on our field seem to be having very, very strange consistency issues. In no particular order:

1114: Apparently they were having some kind of issue with their sidecar. Based on that latest match against 67 (Q52) they seem to have fixed that, as I don't think they missed a single shot. Oh, and speaking of 67...

67: I heard from our scouters that they did incredibly well earlier in the day, but based on what I saw in Q52 against 1114 it seemed like they were having incredible difficulty putting the balls where they needed to go. I also heard that they stopped moving at some point in one match. Exact opposite of 1114 - amazing early, having a rough time as the day goes on.

2056: Earlier in the day I watched them make like 9/10 baskets from the fender. Later in the day (Q34) they made about half that, maybe 3 or 4 of the 10+ shots they made, missing balls both from the key and fender.


Just based on what I personally have seen from watching matches while we queue, and what our scouters have told us, it does seem like something is conspiring to make everyone's lives painful. Of course, we also have first hand experience - in our first qual match we made almost every shot, in our second and third we struggled to hit 50%, and then in our last qual match of the day we were back to making almost every shot again (80% ish probably).

Oh, I think it's reasonable to say that the top 8 looks nothing like anyone would have predicted. Maybe it'll settle out; maybe it won't. Very strange things afoot.