[Cory]

I'm still on the fence when it comes to the game. I think it has some potentially serious flaws, which are being hotly debated right now (penalties, impeding, etc), but wow, Midwest had some REALLY exciting matches.

I think a lot of regionals will see a lot of boring play, but when you see a regional with the caliber of play that the upper echelon teams had at Midwest, it sure is exciting.

I'll give you the three things I learned from the webcast:

1) Teams need to get exponentially better at avoiding penalties. Many a match was won, and then lost when penalties were counted.

2) Boy, you sure are screwed if you lose hybrid by any more than ~20 points. Anyone complaining about the value of auton being too low last year should be very satisfied this year.

3) Placing trackballs at the end was much more important than anyone imagined, especially with penalties turning what looked like easy victories into close matches.