Watching the webcasts today, I am starting to see something very interesting that hasn’t been evident in previous weeks: Defense. Especially at Buckeye, in every match, there is a defending robot that crosses over the barrier and plays heavy defense. Is anyone else noticing this? Is this the final and complete version of Rebound Rumble? Or will it change again?
I think that since we are in the second half of the competition season, that the game is less likely to change from now on. Obviously, it will still change regional to regional, but week 4 is very exciting, especially over at Waterloo.
Second, I think it is because of the teams competing this weekend. There are some great teams competing everywhere this weekend, and a lot more pressure to step it up, especially because many are competing for their second time. Because teams have learned the game in a better sense over the past 3 weeks, they are playing smarter. Smarter, better playing leads to better performances from teams and brings with it more defense. Couple that with teams that almost NEED defense if you want a shot at 4QP, and I think you have your answer.
I believe our team is the only team in GTE regional that went to the other side of the field until 610 did once in the elims. We are a rookie team and we thought our best bet was to compliment the more experienced teams. (Obviously we wouldnt just be able to make a consistent shooter without any experience) So, hopefully that might put us ahead in worlds. As far as other regionals, its a rare thing to see mainly because of the foul potential of hitting them in their key or ‘area where they throw balls into’ (My technical word for it).
You will absolutely be seeing more defense as the play improves.
Specifically, ball starvation starts to become an issue. If you have 2 strong shooters on a team they can quickly sweep their side of the field. If the human in bounders are bouncing those scored balls to the other side of the field, it’s a necessity to have a robot shooting them back and playing some D. If you simply wait for the other team to score baskets, the matches become a zero-sum game in teleop and all that matters are the bridges.
I expect to see defense in almost every match at the Michigan State Championships.
At the Lenape MAR district the 8th alliance beat the 1st alliance in the quarter-finals due to defense. The 1st alliance wasn’t prepared to deal with it and was eliminated.
During our elimination matches at Lenape we always sent over a robot to move balls onto our side of the field. Ball starvation played a major role in our victory there.
2056 made a habit of “stealing” balls from the opposite side of the court at GTR-East as well.
The 1st alliance lost because we didn’t execute. We were aware that 1370 was going to come over and were prepared for it. We simply didn’t execute our strategy. The 8 alliance simply outplayed us in those two matches.
2056 is learning the ball stealing strategy from 16, who have been doing it since week 1. I expect to see quite a lot more of it at Champs.
At Lenape, I feel that if the first seed alliance had been better able to balance reliably, they would have won quite a few more matches, making it to the semis or finals, since they sure had more scoring potential than the 8th.
Most notably, the 1 alliance and also the 4 alliance (in the semis) failed to score a single bridge point against the 8 alliance (who wasn’t even playing any sort of bridge defense). The 8 alliance couldn’t out shoot any alliance so they played smart, keeping the score close with excellent D and double balanced every match (all the way to the finals, sweeping the quarters and semis). This made for some very exciting matches as every match was decided in the final seconds.