[barn34]

I can assure you that they made the right call going defense against us. In fact, I was hoping they would have made a change to all offense because I knew that was a favorable match up for us.

With 120 in our lineup, we averaged 229 points.

In matches our alliance was left undefended, we averaged 243 points.

On Einstein, when facing defense, we averaged 215 points.

Tesla averaged 221 points with 3015 in their lineup (more offense)
- if you remove their worst match outlier of 165.

Tesla averaged 213 points with 1405 in their lineup (heavy courtyard defense)
- that's only a delta of 8 points of offense sacrificed with the potential of reducing our potential offensive output by 28 points down to 215.

213 vs. 215

or

221 vs. 243

Which situation would you want?

Going with 1405 on defense put them essentially even with us on the potential scoreboard, and that was represented in how close the final matches played out. These matches were essentially a coin flip in this scenario. Letting us run wild on offense would have been a much more difficult scenario to overcome.

With that said, we did just enough in the midfield to slow down 2056 so they couldn't get that 1 more ball that would have made the difference. Any time we saw them in the midfield, we looked to make them work for it. Anything to cost them an additional second or two. Over the course of a match, that can add up to potentially be the difference when it's so close. Turns out, that's exactly what happened and 1 foul was the difference.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, we're both champions in my book. #2champs a year early.