Week 1 Analysis

[Craig Roys]

Originally Posted by piersklein

All this hype over aggressive defense this year is astounding. How did so many teams not anticipate this aspect of the game? This is especially important when some teams build weighted chassis battering rams as robots. I know my team wont have a problem, our entire robot is double extrusion and welded steel

It's not the defense that's the problem. We built our intake arms to be flexible to withstand being hit and we brought lots of spares and built them so they are a relatively easy swap. The problem is the way the game is being called. We expected to get hit and have our intake broken...we did not expect that if we were sitting still to shoot a ball and another team rams into us and breaks our intake (they initiated and caused the contact) that WE would be assessed a 50 pt technical foul for contact in the bumper zone. That's only one of a number of examples of fouls being called on the team being hit (not just our team). I'm not sure why G14 is not being enforced...many penalties I saw were the result of a defending team forcing the offensive team into a penalty.

Just to be clear...I'm not blaming the refs. I agree with the sentiments of many others in that they have WAY too much to try to do to possibly watch everything that's happening. I appreciate the job the refs have to do and I know that they are trying the best they can in a very difficult job this year. Separate scorers would help which would allow the refs to focus more on what the robots are doing. I do think that technical fouls are much too large for the amount they are being called.