[kirtar]

Of course. Last year the teams that were picked (in the competitions I went to) scored rather consistently every time with some anomalies (e.g. 71's arm being broken in the middle of a match), and thus by even getting one match for each team it could be possible to get an idea of who was good and who wasn't. However, this year, the scoring is highly dependent on your opponents since they are your targets (well actually, the trailers behind them, but they control the motion of said trailers).

Of course, raw score is not as important as what I call "score differential." As you mentioned, it is important that you score more than you are scored on. In fact, I'll probably even ignore scored supercells and focus on the total number of balls that are scored. This year, data will be less important and for the most part, I'll let the human element always override the data, with the data providing a very rough idea. With all of the variables (i.e. scoring on your opponents), it will become more important to judge by watching rather than by running averages.