[jblay]

Originally Posted by Cory

We lost because we played poorly, not because one of our two hangers was in the back. We simply could not get free from 2041 who did a fantastic job neutralizing us.

We knew exactly what we needed to do to break 469's cycle. We watched every single video there is of them. We studied how 217/67 won (and lost) against them. We spent hours practicing in our lab against a looper. We knew exactly where the balls were going to go...we just could not get to them. Again, 2041 did an unbelievable job locking us up for the duration of both matches.

Although I agree that 2041 played superb defense and them riding up on 254 basically stopped any kind of maneuver 254 could make, 254 still effectively limited 469's cycle. In the first match of the semis, the match was within 2 but 469 was let loose when 254 went over the bump to try and hang and that is where that match was lost in my opinion. If 3357 could hang, that match would have been very close and Archimedes could have taken it. I'm not saying 3357 wasn't awesome, and I'm not saying you guys would have topped Curie with another team, all I'm saying is that 3357 may not have been the perfect fit for the strategy you guys ran, because you essentially left the opposing scoring zone open during the finale.

As a side note I was wondering about something that happened in the first match of the semis. 254 entered the opposing tunnel at the end of the autonomous period to try and prevent 469 from setting up, 469 pushed them out of the tunnel at either the end of autonomous or at the start of teleop. When I was checking out 254's pit I noticed that they have a ratcheting system on their gearboxes to prevent people from pushing them. This ratcheting system looked like it also disengaged to allow 254 to back up. Was the gearbox I saw not from their drive train or did something else happen during that match?