Highest Seed not Chosen for Finals

[team222badbrad]

Well here are a few things I think are common in Alliance Picking:

Lower numbered teams usually pick lower numbered teams.
Rookies usually pick rookies.
Teams that know local teams or have "family" teams usually pick their local friends or local "family".
When I say family; I mean teams that have branched off of one certain team.
For example my team branched off of one team that had several high schools involved way back in the years of FIRST and now most of these high schools have their own team.
Family teams can also mean teams that have mentored a certain team for some time.

Remember that just because your team could have placed 8th does not mean that a team ranked lower than you could have placed 1st.

Our team has also been subject to not getting picked even though we thought we did well, however, this is not really the case for us anymore.

[KenWittlief]

the alliance picking proceedure is very fast and its hard for the team captains to keep track of whats going on

also, some teams dont expect to make it to the top 8, and do very little scouting.

[Chris Fultz]

I think many of the reasons listed here are good, but our selection process is based on our scouting, not ranking. There are so many variables in the ranking that are totally outside of a teams control.

We look at indivudual robot performance and how it would fit with our robot as a team. What is a good fit for us might be a terrible fit for another robot.

I also think as you get to the tougher regionals and to the Championships, the selection is also influenced on having a solid reputation to perform, and on how well you have performed what you say you can do.

[Steve W]

Ranking is not a good science to tell of ones ability. At the end of day 1 in Pittsburgh team 63 was ranked 16/30. The fact was that they had a lot of problems and really only moved once. They came to every match and tried all competition to get going. They knew that they were broken and even removed themselves from the pool for elims. I am not sure of the final ranking but it shows that ranking cannot be the prime way to chose.

Promotion of your team is also VERY important. Make others know that you are there and how good your robot is. Show off all of your strengths and how you could help the alliance. To do this you have to have had good scouting yourself

[TimCraig]

In our very first competition we made a concentrated effort in the last rounds to move up to 16th so we'd get picked into an alliance. We weren't.

Having watched a number of alliance selections, it's pretty obvious that most teams don't do much of a job of scouting or even have a plan. The alliance captain is up there stumbling around listening to numbers shouted from the crowd to make a choice instead of having a ranked list of teams to chose from.

[George A.]

Originally Posted by Chris Fultz

I think many of the reasons listed here are good, but our selection process is based on our scouting, not ranking. There are so many variables in the ranking that are totally outside of a teams control.

We look at indivudual robot performance and how it would fit with our robot as a team. What is a good fit for us might be a terrible fit for another robot.

I also think as you get to the tougher regionals and to the Championships, the selection is also influenced on having a solid reputation to perform, and on how well you have performed what you say you can do.

I can't agree more. So often do you see teams that really can't contribute to their teams much get picked by a team due to poor scouting. I know for a fact that most of the good teams have extensive scout teams that rigorously pick apart the little nuiances of a team as to why they are seeded where they are. If they are an amazing team that just got unlucky as to get paired with broken partners several times, that's noted. More often that not a scouting team will do it's job. But it's when they don't do their jobs that the real diamonds in the rough get unnoticed.

[Kelvin Ng]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

the alliance picking proceedure is very fast and its hard for the team captains to keep track of whats going on

also, some teams dont expect to make it to the top 8, and do very little scouting.

haha that happened to us =P

[Brandon Holley]

At the 2002 nationals, Team 11 finished 9th in galileo and wasn't picked

[Babyhueyhnx]

this has happened to us numerous times at nats and regional events. we don't really have much of a PR team. Usually every year we are passed over even though we consistently place in the top 10 at every regional year after year. the same holds true for nats.

[Dan Richardson]

2002 We we were ranked 11th out of aprox 40 after being 2-4 all competition until our last 2 matches where teams Expressidly calluded against us and descored to lose a match, because it would knock their friends above us who would pick them.

They throw a match, so someone else would be ranked above us, because they knew that they would be pick by the other team. Thats just about as backwards as it gets. Atleast the way I understood it to happen from the drivers who were clearly upset.

[Koko Ed]

Many posts in this thread point out how alot of teams who have seeded do a poor job of scouting and are unprepared when they go up to choose a team. At Finger Lakes we had done scouting before the regional, on practice day and during the day and it still wasn't satisactory. For one thing alot of team lie about their abilities and this year in particular it takes more people to watch robots during a match. Alot of teams don't have the personel to do this. This is why it's important to have a unoversal database so people know who is there and who is not.

[coastertux]

1640 was 23/55 and we were not picked...

[Tom Bottiglieri]

We were ranked 1-3 at UTC last year until our last qualification match, which was gave teams right below us a huge amount of qualification points, and dropped us down to 11th.

We werent picked..

[Collin Fultz]

kind of off topic but kind of not...

93 was last at BMR and picked for finals.

game recognized game

[whakojacko]

at sacramento we were either 13th or 14th i forget but people picked a lot under us. Didnt turn out so badly though because were then went to be the 2nd pick of the #3 alliance.