ONLY AT THE MICHIGAN STATE CHAMPIONSHIP

[Adam Freeman]

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli

Wow, I actually do disagree with Adam every once in a while. From my experience in the divisions and at MSC eliminations, I believe the MSC eliminations are always tougher than the Championship division elimination rounds.

That's OK, I think we can still be friends...

In this case, I hope your right because I'd like to have a much easier time this year at Champs, than we did at MSC this weekend.

Thinking back, it's probably 50/50.

- 2009, I think MSC was a bit more competitive than the Division champs. But we also had 111 at Champs, who was IMO the best robot at Champs.

- 2010, we had to face 469 @ MSC...so that would say MSC was tougher. But, I think outside of 469, the teams in the division eliminations were a little stronger.

- 2011, no question we had a harder time fighting the likes of 2056, 71, 2826, 987, and all the super fast minibots that showed up at Champs than we did at MSC.

- 2012, we also much harder time in St. Louis, when we had to go up against 1114, 2056, and 4334 in our division eliminations.

I would suspect that typically the elimination round scores on average continue to increase, even from MSC to Division.

I'm sure Jim Zondag would have data to prove this arguement one way or the other.

[Richard Wallace]

Ok, I probably don't even rate an opinion in this discussion -- seeing that Adam and Paul have already weighed in. So, before Jim brings that data to the party, I will sneak in my humble observation:

I was at MSC, and six other district/regional events last year. And I volunteered at the Championship, resetting the Archimedes field. I saw a lot of matches. From what I saw, MSC quarterfinals are the most competitive of any event except IRI. But, beginning in the semis and most especially in the finals, Championship divisions have the edge over MSC.

IRI still beats every other event for raw competition. This year I expect to see discs overflowing from the center goal, three robots at the top of the pyramid, skid marks and smoke from fullback robots -- in Paul's words, borderline insanity. Maybe a little over that line.

[XaulZan11]

I think the Championship probably has the better top 24 robots, but the nature of the competition can lead to watered down elimination matches. With such a large field and thus so few qualification matches, the chances of a below average robot seeding in the top 8 is pretty good. Additionally, I suspect the average team only really knows a handful of the 100 teams in their division coming into the event, making scouting and learning all 100 teams a huge challenge (there always seems to be some very odd picks at the CMP). MSC has 12 qualification matches and the average team already knows the majority of the teams coming into the event, making the 24 teams in the elminations very close to the best 24 robots.

[AndyW]

There were quite a lot of matches where the score difference was less than 5 points, especially on Saturday afternoon.