Where's the defense this year?

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by Mark Pettit

As a team that was taken out of the semi-finals in LA by 22's exceptional defense, I can see the worth of planning defense into your strategy.

I think that was a good example of why your alliance needs to be flexible. 1127 and 22 were big ball robots that could hang. 330 hangs, defends the bar, and keeps the doubler off the stationary goal. The plan was to have 330 hang and defend the whole match while 1127 and 22 switch out and play offense. That worked fine in the quarterfinals, but when they came up against 991's alliance, it was apparent that since 330 wasn't being effective at keeping the doubler off, and 1127 and 22 weren't being effective at hanging, they had no chance to outscore 991's alliance.

So, for the second match of the semi finals and on, 22 played defense on the opposing robots. They had a very good drive train: 6 wheels, 4 motors, shift on the fly. They were quite effective at stopping everyone in the semifinals, because they only had to concentrate on 1 robot at a time. 991 when they were pushing balls, and 968 when they were putting the doubler on.

When it came to the finals, though, that strategy broke down. Both 69 and 980 could handle the doubler, and both could hang well. So, 22 could harass 1, but not both, and the other one was always scoring. 330 couldn't effectively keep 2 robots off the bar at the same time, and that's why they lost in 2 rounds in the finals.