The stretcher would have been a great strategy if teams had enough time to practice with it, and if strategies had developed enough. As I've said before, the first rounds of regionals are pretty bad strategy wise. Teams struggle to find out what their robot can do, they aren't as efficient as in later regionals or nationals, and therefore won't take as many chances. By the time nationals came around, teams knew they had to score ~700 points to win, so they developed strategies to do so. If teams had more time to develop & practice strategies with the stretcher, teams would have used it more. Everyone at IRI saw Beatty use the stretcher to try to get 800 points in every seeding match. I know they came close at least once; it must have been because of 111's excellent job riding the stretcher
And I'm sure with more practice and with the perfect alliance, they could get it.
Mike