Vetting defensive picks

[Brian Maher]

Teams who have looked to pick defenders in the past, do you ask prospective defensive picks any questions to assess their suitability and/or willingness for the role? If so:

• What do you ask?
• When do you ask it? During regular pit scouting? The morning before alliance selection?
• Do you ask anyone in the pit, or is there someone in particular such as a head scout, drive coach, or team captain that you seek out?

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by Brian Maher

Teams who have looked to pick defenders in the past, do you ask prospective defensive picks any questions to assess their suitability and/or willingness for the role? If so:

• What do you ask?
• When do you ask it? During regular pit scouting? The morning before alliance selection?
• Do you ask anyone in the pit, or is there someone in particular such as a head scout, drive coach, or team captain that you seek out?

Garnet Squadron has done a lot of business with S.P.A.M. at the Orlando Regional. One of their match scouting items most years is "Defensive Move". It's one of those things that's tricky to define (perhaps someone from 180 will chime in here), but obvious when it's seen--a well-timed thwack, slowing someone down by swerving, stealing a game piece, etc. That's what got us picked in 2014, and that worked out right nice for all concerned.

If they're putting up good metrics (noticeably more moves without drawing fouls or dying or whatever), clearly they're good at it--I can't see anyone being insulted by being picked for that. (Phrase it as a positive--messaging is important!) Place an encouraging word with the drivers or coach Friday afternoon and go from there.

[New Lightning]

I think that it would be really hard to know if you need a defending robot in your strategy until you are on the field for alliance selection and you know which alliance you are going up against and who the have partnered with.

The only reason that drafting a defensive robot would make since would be because you know that no matter what you do you will never be able to out score your opponents. In that case you would need some way to bring down their effectiveness and a playing defensive robot could certainly help level the playing field. However the only way for you to know how many points there going to score is to know who is going to be on their alliance. And as I stated earlier the you won't know that until you are on the field. You might have a good idea who the alliance captain that your going to face is, but more than likely you won't know who their first pick is going to be, so you have to wait till you are on the field.

So in terms of prep for drafting one I would say that if you have any in mind after you make your pick list just ask them on Saturday morning would they be comfortable doing that for you. I find that if you are anywhere close to being in a picking position and your looking for a team to play defense for they probable will not be very highly ranked, especially since they would have to be your second pick, and they will be doing to do pretty much whatever you ask them to do in order to get picked.

[Tungrus]

One question to drive team: what dog breed do you like?

Any one with answer: pit bull or chihuahua will be on top of my list

[EricLeifermann]

Picking a team you want to play defense is done by paying attention to how the team drives on the field. Any robot can play defense. You should want the team that knows how to handle their robot and who don't make wasted movements on the field.

[Chief Hedgehog]

Better have a good drive train and an even better driver. The drive coach needs to be able to read the referees and know when they are about to call fouls.

Scouting refs is as important as scouting teams when it comes to eliminations.

[Tungrus]

Originally Posted by EricLeifermann

Picking a team you want to play defense is done by paying attention to how the team drives on the field. Any robot can play defense. You should want the team that knows how to handle their robot and who don't make wasted movements on the field.

You are right, any robot can play defense, but its the driver's mindset. Annoying little robot can throw off a good scoring robot.

[Ari423]

Originally Posted by EricLeifermann

Any non-mecanum robot can play defense.

Fixed that for you

[EricLeifermann]

Originally Posted by Ari423

Fixed that for you

False, playing defense doesn't have to be a bumper to bumper pushing match. Every second you cause the other team to waste is time well spent.

Though most teams don't have the practice with mecanums to play defense well with them.

[Ari423]

Originally Posted by EricLeifermann

False, playing defense doesn't have to be a bumper to bumper pushing match. Every second you cause the other team to waste is time well spent.

Though most teams don't have the practice with mecanums to play defense well with them.

My team has played defense for 2 seasons with mecanums. It's not impossible, and when you're good at it, it can wreak havoc on robots that show when they're about to shoot. In 2011, we were the 2nd seed at the Philadelphia regional with a mecanum robot that didn't have any manipulator just because of our driver's ability to play defense. That being said, it would take a very special case for me to pick a mecanum robot as a dedicated defense robot.

Any tank drive robot with a bit of driver practice can play effective defense. The same can only be said about exemplary mecanum robots with a lot more driver practice.


EDIT: It was the New Jersey Regional

[CalTran]

Originally Posted by EricLeifermann

False, playing defense doesn't have to be a bumper to bumper pushing match. Every second you cause the other team to waste is time well spent.

Though most teams don't have the practice with mecanums to play defense well with them.

Originally Posted by Ari423

My team has played defense for 2 seasons with mecanums. It's not impossible, and when you're good at it, it can wreak havoc on robots that show when they're about to shoot. In 2011, we were the 2nd seed at the Philadelphia regional with a mecanum robot that didn't have any manipulator just because of our driver's ability to play defense. That being said, it would take a very special case for me to pick a mecanum robot as a dedicated defense robot.

Any tank drive robot with a bit of driver practice can play effective defense. The same can only be said about exemplary mecanum robots with a lot more driver practice.

2013 Arkansas Razorback Regional we ended up playing harassment defense on mecanum wheels and a tall robot. Zip around the pyramid and midfield and make them always take the long way and force them to not full court shoot. Something similar could be done this year if they're a retrieval zone robot, where you make them go completely around the airship rather than bee line from one corner to the other. And man, delaying a gear cycle...

[Brian Maher]

Thank you all for the excellent advice and comments, though none of them address one piece of the puzzle I am curious about: interacting with prospective defenders to make sure they're on board with playing defense. I've heard of situations where a team isn't exactly thrilled to be playing defense, despite being picked for them to do so, or is unwilling to put a blocker on their robot for defense purposes. I am looking for advice to avoid situations like this.

[CalTran]

Originally Posted by Brian Maher

Thank you all for the excellent advice and comments, though none of them address one piece of the puzzle I am curious about: interacting with prospective defenders to make sure they're on board with playing defense. I've heard of situations where a team isn't exactly thrilled to be playing defense, despite being picked for them to do so, or is unwilling to put a blocker on their robot for defense purposes. I am looking for advice to avoid situations like this.

Haha, as far as the actual post, seems like a simple question - Friday afternoon or Saturday morning, you have someone walk over to their drive team and ask "Hi, we're XXXX, we're seeded X, and looks like we're going to be X Alliance Captain; we were impressed with your driving and were interested in picking you during alliance selections as a defensive team. We may also need to slightly modify your robot (or cheesecake your robot depending on how down with the lingo you want to be). Would your team be okay with this?"
If yes, they stay on the pick list. If no, move on to the next team.

[Ari423]

Originally Posted by Brian Maher

Thank you all for the excellent advice and comments, though none of them address one piece of the puzzle I am curious about: interacting with prospective defenders to make sure they're on board with playing defense. I've heard of situations where a team isn't exactly thrilled to be playing defense, despite being picked for them to do so, or is unwilling to put a blocker on their robot for defense purposes. I am looking for advice to avoid situations like this.

If you're looking at a specific robot only in terms of it's capabilities to play defense, I think it would be a good idea to stop by their pit before alliance selection and ask if they would be okay with playing defense and cheesecaking a blocker. If they say yes, that takes care of that problem. If they say no, you know you probably shouldn't pick that team.

In 2014, my team's robot was effectively just a tall drive base, but we did a good job of playing defense* (see a pattern here?). Before alliance selection at both of our competitions, teams came to us and asked if we would be willing to play defense for them if their alliance strategy called for it. Of course we said yes. It only took 2 minutes and they had the answer you're looking for.


* We actually played defense so hard that we were breaking our opponents' robots. This was the year of the white Clippards, so we burst a few of those. We started keeping a tally in sharpie on the side of our robot of the number of robots we broke, turned off, or otherwise disabled throughout the season. IIRC that number got into the double digits.

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by Brian Maher

Thank you all for the excellent advice and comments, though none of them address one piece of the puzzle I am curious about: interacting with prospective defenders to make sure they're on board with playing defense. I've heard of situations where a team isn't exactly thrilled to be playing defense, despite being picked for them to do so, or is unwilling to put a blocker on their robot for defense purposes. I am looking for advice to avoid situations like this.

To learn this, you will need someone who is good at reading people's attitude, and ask the prospects frank questions. The person asking and the person "reading" do not necessarily need to be the same person. For example, if you have one person ask the the questions in a routine way and obviously take notes of the words, while someone else gauges responses of both the coach and the driver and makes notes after leaving the discussion, that well selected "reader" is likely to produce the info you seek.