Picking alliances can be so essential, yet I struggle to my team to take it and scouting seriously enough. I'm not sure what the magic recipe is or if one even exists, I just know each year we try to improve on it.
One comment for the team(s) that don't understand why they didn't get selected is to say it is more about the seeded teams selecting than it is about "selling" yourself to another team.
We were in the fourth seed at San Diego and had to turn down an alliance selection from the #3 seed because they couldn't hurdle and we felt that we needed to be in an alliance with at least 2 hurdling bots. But low and behold in the 2nd round of selections, we missed a chance to get a third hurdling bot and the #3 seed team picked them. Hindsight is always 20/20 !
BTW: Here's a link to Finals Match 3 with both matches and commentary by refs as it was shown on the webcast...
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/joman...SVR2008FM3.wmv Thanks for the mirror Joman!!