Who plays better defense, Midwest or Northeast?

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by Andy Grady

I urge you to find time to watch both regionals and compare. If the New England Regional and Granite State regional, as well as Midatlantic aren't more defensive oriented to the naked eye, then apparently I've missed something in the last 12 years. I would go as far to say for every defensive robot you name in the midwest, I could probably name 3 in New England...flat out. Fact of the matter is you will find that Midwest competitions are extremely passive...it is score score score...and I'm willing to admit...it has been very successful for them. When you take a midwest team out of its element, and stick them in the northeast...toast...(excluding 1998, where defense was more of a detriment than anything else).

Andy,

Here are some scoring stats from 2004 that I collected.

Granite State -- Average Score: 55.7
UTC -- Average Score: 72.2
Northeast Average: 63.9


Great Lakes -- Average Score: 49.6
Detroit -- Average Score: 52.0
Midwest -- Average Score: 65.5
W. Mich -- Average Score: 72.7
Midwest Average: 59.5

I'm not going to try and draw some large scale conclusions from a limited set of data, which clearly has some flaws. But, if the Northeast was so much more defensively oriented as you say, you would think there would be a much greater scoring disparity.

Maybe you'd care to educate us on some of the great Northeast defensive robots of the alliance era. For me, only two teams really come to mind, 121 and 61.