Distance to hoop from side of fender??

[Greg Shaw]

What is everyone else calculating as the distance to the middle hoops from the side of the fender. Some of my students calculated the distance from the front to be over 14 inches--but they calculated the distance from the side to be less than 14 inches. Even after hearing what seems like a good explanation, I am skeptical. It is my understanding that the purpose of the fender was to protect the hoops by making it impossible to reach the hoops with an arm. We are questioning our ability to build a shooter, so we really need to figure out if an arm has the potential to score a basket.

[EricH]

From the centerline of the field: 27 3/8" inches to the center of the 2-point hoop. 18" diameter hoop (ID); take half of that (and we'll go up to the nearest 1/2" to allow for field variation). 45.5" from centerline to outside of hoop.

Fender is 101" wide; this gives 50.5" per side.

Net difference, 5" from the edge of the 2-point hoop to the edge of the fender.

Now, can you exploit that?

On the Alley side, be cautious! 51"+2"=53" for the Alley, so 103.5" is either taken or a high-danger zone. Half of the end of the court is only 162" wide, so you have 59" to maneuver--if you have standard bumpers on a long robot, it's 43" long, leaving 16" for opposing robots to miss you, and with [G28], they won't try to miss if they're in contact with the alley.

On the other side, you've got a lot more room, until they figure out that that's your only scoring position and start planting robots there.