[David.Cook]

OK, here is another way...

First, I totally agree that you have to talk with teams and get a feel for where they are, but I don't think that is enough.

If you have a chance of ending up in the top 8 (or 10), you need to have a draft list about 25 or 30 deep to rank who you will pick. I personally believe it is better to quantitatively rank teams, and here is what we did for our two regionals.

We made a quick little spreadsheet (all our student have ibooks) and we rated the 'bots during the qualifiers. We scored three main areas: Driver Ability, Offense, and Defense. Each of these was 1/3 of the total score. In Offense and Defense we had some sub-categories like for defense, ability to get under the bar and being a powerful pusher (versus getting pushed around). Where ever we had sub-categories, the rankings are averaged before the three areas are totaled.

We rank on a simple 1-5 scale where 5 is the best. At VCU, we ranked the last two qualifier rounds, entered the data, and then sorted the spreadsheet based on the total score. Using this draft list, we ended up with the winning alliance. Here is the strange part, I don't know if we would have picked the teams we did if we were just going off personal subjective opinions.

The other thing that was fun about this is that we gave 5 guys on our team the job of rating the matches - one to watch each team and one to run the numbers back to the two of us who were putting the data in. It was a hectic three hours Sat AM, but the guys who helped get the data enjoyed it, and we were very happy with the results.

Our only adjustment to that original scheme for the Chesapeake regional was to add a fourth category for a subjective opinion (1-5) of the team & bot. Then each of the four categories contributes 1/4.

Background note: One of the reasons I suggested to the team that we rate this way is from my experience as a volleyball coach. Sometimes I see a player make a few outstanding plays, and that player sticks in my head. But our players keep stats for all their matches, and frequently I find that the players who were contributing more consistently weren't the ones I noticed, but rather someone who was always doing what they needed to. It is important to make sure I play the players who consistently contribute.