What are your thoughts on the week 3 rankings? Any comments about teams, or any teams you think should be higher or lower?
Wow. Week 1 we were the #7, two weeks later…off the list. I bet success in our week 6 regional will be a bit late in the season to make up for being out of sight for five weeks.
I can certainly empathize with you… we also won a regional (I believe you were #1 seed, we were #3 pick), ranked well the first week (and pretty well the second week), but have since fallen off the list. To be honest though, I was hardly surprised. I think there are two things going on to make the top teams from Week 1 fall off the list, both of which really aren’t surprising but should be remembered:
First - and more significantly - there are simply more teams in the “pool” to be voted for. To add on to that Week 1 is even a “smaller week,” meaning more than just twice as many teams have since competed. 298 teams competed in Week 1. 1,249 different teams have competed in the first three weeks. Basically, only the top 5 teams from Week 1 should have remained on the list, assuming normal distribution. In Week 1, ~8% of 298 competing teams were on the list… by the end of Week 6, ~1.2% of 2,076 teams will be on the list. You don’t need me to tell you what that means.
Second, there definitely is some of that “out of sight, out of mind” among this. We’re voting, spending a while compiling our lists, trying to keep track of 1,249 teams, and none of that is all too systematic. We’ll remember more of the top scorers from Weeks 2 and 3 than from Week 1.
I think it’s quite likely 1676 will make the list again, particularly assuming you guys continue to improve! We’ll also be competing later (Week 5) and hope to show off our improvements, potentially earning a position back on the list. Best of luck to Pascack this year - you guys are certainly becoming a household number! 
To give my impressions on the list… Wow!! That certainly is one list of top-notch teams! As the countdown was continuing, I did often think “man, I thought they’d be higher than that!” but afterwards, I couldn’t have said where I’d move that team to! Putting the teams together into such a list is pretty impressive! As always there’ll be some bias towards the perennial powerhouses, but every one of those teams is performing at a very high level, no doubt!
I wouldn’t take the results too seriously.
it appears that is just a thread advertising the webcast, and it is not for discussing the results.
Whats the point of multiple threads though? It’s easier to keep track of, if it’s all in one place. Just my thoughts.
Agreed, and the expert polls are even worse than the popular polls. The way teams flip flop and jump around despite not playing and not having common opponents with the teams that move ahead of or behind them is pretty crazy.
now that the discussions been started here, why don’t we keep it here. but for future reference, yes lets stick with the original thread
I’m with you on this, this is a very political poll. Many teams will get overlooked. Don’t lose sleep if your one of those teams
For what its worth I’m surprised your off the list too, but at the same moment I’m not. People are very attached to robots not points. So where your team may be as valuable as many of the top 25 teams, much of that comes from your minibot. A perfect example of one of those teams is team 16, who yes went undefeated, and had a strong robot, but I think you should be ranked well above them.
other teams that suffered the same fate are 573 and 836
and look at 1985… great robot and minibot, but didn’t make the list (mostly because they competed at st. louis which doesn’t seem to be a very followed regional)
I do everything by numbers which there has been quite debate about… but that being said, 1519 would have made my top 40 or 50. many of the top 25 teams had lethal and reliable minibots. Theres a good chance if you minibot goes up and triggers every race at smokey mountain you will become a top 25 team
Very proud of our students to see us at #21 after the win at Peachtree. I know the south isn’t usually considered a powerhouse region, so it’s nice to see us get some love. I’m sure that we’ll fall out before we compete again at North Carolina, but we’ll make improvements in the mean time and hopefully jump back in there before Championships.
You guys made my top 10
looks like you have an awesome and reliable robot, and a reliable minibot.
yup, we are looking on making some major changes to our robot thursday of NC. We currently can put up 2 logos and minibot with defense played on us. There were a few matches at peachtree were we almost put up 3 logos( JUST ONE TUBE) but i told our drivers to launch the minibot instead.
Seeing how important shaving seconds is in this game, we hope to acquire tubes faster, hold them tighter, cut our lift time in half, and get our minibot faster.
IMO, if it comes down to reliability or speed I would stick with reliability. Right now your robot is top notch, get greedy and you may create issues. Sit still for even a match and your top 25 value drops incredibly (ask 2054)
For example cutting your lift time in half sounds good on paper, but could result in dropped tubes. It sounds like a very drastic change to an already awesome robot, but of course you are the only one’s who can measure the potential ROI against the risk.
2415 has a practice bot at home so they can test out changes beforehand. I trust they could make some pretty radical changes without too much detriment.
Having a twin back at home is always nice for trying out new things.
yes, any and ALL changes will be done on our practice bot and tested throughly. At peachtree…we made some pretty radical changes and it worked out very nicely. We will have our kids trained to make the changes within 2 hours on thursday.
and james, we ow you a BIG one with the girpper!!! thanks!
The FRC Top 25 list is a lot of fun to watch & it is an honor to be included. However, I don’t read too much into it. Being a popular poll, I think people vote for the teams that they know or have some exposure to. The finals at West Michigan last weekend got a lot of attention (including video) on CD. In this week’s poll, we moved up, and 27, 67, and 2054 all joined the list. They are all well deserving in my opinion, but if others had gotten the same exposure, they may have gotten the same recognition.
If you want to complain about the expert polls, consider this: for Week 3, only 4 of the 10 expert voters have a list in. Find the rest of them and have them get lists in before you complain about that.
I have considered that, and I don’t think it makes a difference, I am looking at the “experts” who have updated one at a time. Atleast one of the “experts” seems to have no agreement with the others about what bots are best (4 of his/her to 10 are not in any one elses 25, and he/she did not include 2 teams in his/her 25 that are in every one elses top 10.
There are only 8 teams on all 4 expert lists:
111
1114
148
2056
217
33
330
40
(Any given year I would say at least 7 of these teams would make the top 25)
There is no way that number can go up if more “experts” post. I wouldn’t expect every ones lists to match, but the diferences should be in the lower ranked teams. If you look at college sports polls then there is usually consensus between the experts, it is pretty rare to see a team raked #3 by one person and not ranked by any one else.
I don’t know who the “experts” are but I have to say I agree with Tom, I would not take the rankings too seriously.
As an expert (gasp!), I’m not posting because I didn’t see any teams not at WPI during week 2, and I didn’t see anybody week 3. I feel it’s better to post when I at least have a rough idea, instead of no idea.
I didn’t post one particular week because while I had internet before the posting period (and watched several events), I had no internet access during the posting period.
College sports poll comparisons can fail: I wouldn’t be surprised if before those lists come out, the experts confer at least a bit and call attention to a missed team. Here, I don’t think the experts even know who the other experts are (unless someone comes out and says they’re an expert).