It seems like that was the question at the beginning of the season, whether it was better to go for all three goals or one goal and stuff it full of balls. Now after 9/17 regionals have finished (3 more will finish up in a day) the answer is still unclear.
There's no doubt in my mind that in qualifying one goal and balls is definitly the way to go, but for the elimination rounds its not so clear. In a strategy where a team focuses on the third goal and filling it with balls it becomes much more diffacult to get quite so many balls in when the other teams robot is there fighting for that goal. The two regional events that my team has attended (GLR and OH) were won with the three goal strategy. This may bring into question the quality of ball-bots at these events. However i am of the opinion that some of the best 1 goal+ball robots were in attendance at these events.
http://www.soap108.com/2002/stats/eventlevel/index.cfm
As you can see these events were top three for number of balls scored on average. In addition to that at GLR team 47 (18.43) and 65 (17.14) attained 2 of the top averages for balls per match at an event. Which in some cases exceed the top team at a regional by 5+ balls per match. And I'm just going to add stats aside they are both VERY good at stuffing a goal.
So basically what im saying with all that is my biased goal dragging point of view still believes the final matches are going to come down to goal control.
-dtk