[pabeekm]

I would think it varies by person, team, and year based on what one’s capabilities and reasons for wanting to win are. If you want to win to prove that you can build a truly excellent machine, then that makes sense and you’d be more inclined to answer the A's. If you don’t believe you can dominate but want experience being around the teams who do, then that makes sense, too, and you’d probably rather pick the B's.

How beneficial either option can be for a given team depends on what they recognize as their biggest areas for growth. As long as a team is willing to use their end result, be it failure or success, and milk it for every opportunity it presents to improve their program, then they are clearly doing it right. Sometimes improving means testing your formula by trying to dominate, sometimes it means doing everything you can to be around the teams who have got it down; it just depends on where you feel your program is at right now.

This is coming from someone on a team who has been going for B's in order to get to champs and experience as much as possible, but may be finally ready to aim to dominate because of what being there has taught us.