301 points! and could have done more

[MrForbes]

A few points after a good nights sleep.

The challenge offered by Mr. Sanghi was to donate money to FIRST. The donation was in proportion to the number of matches where both alliances scored over 200 points in a match. There was a separate, larger donation offered to FIRST for each team in the winning alliance. There was no money ever going to any person or team, under any conditions, for any action. The incentive was a way to leverage several teams' fundraising, by reducing the amount of money they need to raise to participate in the Arizona regional next year.

The concept of match fixing, or "taking a dive for money", never crossed my mind. It troubles me to think that members of the FIRST community, whom I respect so highly, would even consider such a thing.

The matter of our strategic decision to play no defense in the final match....when we saw the first final match score, we knew we had been slaughtered. That's my euphemism for getting fewer than half as many points as the winning alliance. In the paraphrased words of some famous guy, trying the same thing again and expecting different results would have been insane. We tried something else instead.

All six teams in the Arizona finals built robots that were designed to score. We managed to play one match where the robots got to do what they were designed to do. They did it within the game rules. We almost achieved a secondary challenge while doing it. Our team knows we did all we could do to win. We didn't leave anything on the table.

The best alliance won. It's that simple.