Teams from the State of Wisconsin have been sooooo close to winning the Championship recently, but so far have come back with just silver medals. In 2015 and 2019, Wisconsin teams were the first pick of the finalist alliance on Einstein. In both cases, their alliance looked like the stronger one going into finals.
In 2015, we saw 2826’s alliance put up the highest scores in Einstein QFs and SFs, and in division playoffs they put up the highest official score in the world. They had problems in both finals matches and despite great effort from 987, they succumbed to the amazing consistency of the Newton alliance.
In 2019, we saw 930’s alliance go undefeated in the round robin part of Detroit Einstein, only to be outlasted by the Darwin alliance in a crazy defensive game. They were one point from winning, and if their climb had worked in that match like it had in so many others, they would have gone home with the gold.
To my knowledge, there have been no teams from Wisconsin to have won the Championship. I think that with all the power of teams like 2826, 930, 1732, 2062, and many others, the state is due for one. My question is: What are the other states / regions that are in the same boat?
Perhaps Minnesota. They’ve had an explosion of teams recently, and at least one division has had a Minnesotan number one seed in both 2018 and 2019. The next step will be for their top teams to make Einstein regularly.
That’s not true. They got 1 out of 4 cans in Finals 1 and 2 out of 4 cans in Finals 2. They had already beaten the Newton alliance in Semis when they took 1 out of 4 cans.
Watching the match video from Semis 2, Newton lost that match because 118 had a can stuck on their grabber the entire match, greatly decreasing their maneuverability. They effectively lost their can advantage with that.
I do agree that Semis 2 was an underperformance from Newton compared to their ceiling. However, what 2826’s alliance was able to do in the match with only 4 cans (1 from the step) was impressive. They scored 256 points, which the Newton alliance was able to surpass only once in the entire tournament (266 points in Einstein QF 5), even with their normal can advantage.
If we want to split hairs, San Diego getting to Einstein round robin. The closest they got was 1538 winning Chairman’s. In the last two years, we’ve seen 2485 and 3128 lose in division finals off the top of my head.