Back in 2011 973 had the fastest minibot bar none in Galileo and really all the teams should have known that if they had done some quality scouting. Combining their minibot with 254 or 111's and they had the fastest 1/2/3 combo around. Our scouts were blown away that they they fell all the way to the 2nd pick of the 2nd alliance.
We were really lucky to play with 1114 on the number 1 seed alliance that year. Our robot was decent with an above average minibot. We were a solid pick but not elite. The really amazing thing is how we teamed up with 1114 to make our minibot system way way faster! We actually swapped our entire minibot deployment system for a 1114's spare system got reinspected and went to play. It was actually documented here..
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...4+1114+minibot
This kind of harkens to the sharing of ramps/cheesecake this year...
Adding to the 2nd pick steals, we felt the same way with 177 as well in 2010. You couldn't beat picking a team that not only had a great robot but also had been to Einstein the past 3 years in a ROW! how did they get missed?!?!
I easily see this happening again this year especially with more divisions and a much higher bar of quality robots.