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Originally Posted by iCurtis
I would have to say our final quarterfinalist match against 133 1519 and the other team was one of the best matches there. We even had the announcer confused.  |
As one of the coaches of Team 1519, I definitely agree that the quarterfinal match you mention was one of the most amazing of the day. (BTW, the other team on the alliance was 1153, the number two seed.) It seemed like the lead/momentum went back and forth at least four times during the match.
We were very surprised at the importance of strong defense. By Saturday morning, most alliances had realized the importance of having a robot playing defense, as in the qualification rounds it wasn't unusual for an alliance with one good stacker and one strong defender to win over alliances with two strong stackers.
Since we were way behind on the robot build schedule, we didn't have a stacking capability until Saturday morning. As a result, on Friday we had not attempted to stack, but instead played defense almost all day. We were amazed at the number of top teams that aggressively scouted our robot on Friday night as a defensive ally. As a result, on Saturday morning we continued to focus on defense to demonstrate our capabilities there even though we had a new stacking capability. We found that one quick defending robot could generally keep two good stackers from making much progress. After dropping the hanging tetra in autonomous mode, Team 1519's robot was on the field solely for defense and our robot took an awful lot of battle damage as a result. Being in the opponent's zone as a defender against two or three other robots resulted in mangling a couple frame rails on the robot such that they will surely never be straight again. The elimination matches had a surprising amount of "brutality," but it sure made for exciting play.
We are disappointed that our rookie competition season is now at a close, but we're looking forward to offseason competitions, as well as next year! Thanks to all the teams that gave our rookie team advice and suggestions during the tournament!