[Jeremy L]

"When picking alliances if there is a team that is not in the top 15 but are good is probably because they either didn't have a strong alliance or not all the robots showed up."

The beautiful thing about alliance selections this year with the 1-8 then 8-1 picking is the balance that can occur on alliances as opposed to previous years. As for our team at UTC, we had a pretty interesting time picking our 5th seed alliance. Aces high (176) was our first pick, and was not in the top 10 after qualifiers, and our second pick was the Uberbots (1124), which finished the qualifiers 34th! After winning the regional and defeating the 1, 3 and 4 seeds along the way, it became clear that good alliances were determined by good robots, not seeding. A robot that is consistent can easily end up in first place or last place, but performance in elimination rounds depends on the individual robot's qualification performance, not whether or not it got lucky in qualifier pairings.

Scouting has always been an integral part of a successful alliance, and our team's method in particular has become one of our strong points. Knowing your allies and your opponents equally well can be the difference between victory and defeat.