The Strategies That Won Michigan States | FRC FUNalysis

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:05]Hello Fun Nation. My name is James and welcome back to Fun Analysis, the show where we break down the best and most interesting matches in First every single week.

[00:00:14]Week seven is home to one of my favorite events every single year, the Michigan State Championship. And today we'll be breaking down the historic, the pivotal, and the intense moments that put together some of the highest level Rebuild play we've seen yet. Follow along with DTE Alliance number one and your Michigan State Champions right here on the Fun Robotics Network.

[00:00:36]All right, without further ado, let's take a look at our state championship winning alliance here for the first Michigan District Championship captained by Hall of Fame team 27 Rush, their first pick team 7769 The Crew, and their second pick team 3668 The Troobots. This really, really incredible high-level alliance, there's a lot to learn from here in these matches. We're going to break down three of their matches throughout their playoff run, starting off with DTE playoff match number seven.

[00:01:03]And this is the Michigan high score.

[00:01:04]They're going to put up 841 points in this match and it's just incredible. And the first thing that I want to take a look at is these auton paths. You'll notice traditional double swipe auton from both alliances, and then you're going to see the Troobots come out here. And we're going to pause it right here. They are fully into the blue alliance's zone and they are going to do this swipe that's a a deeper swipe that not only is this good to help with their transition period feeding. This also takes away from the other alliances' second swipe. It's a really, really nasty auton move that they they [clears throat] pulled out here, this red alliance. Awesome. Love to see that strategy. It's a risk, right? There's penalties involved, but it pays out as they come out with an insane 194 fuel in auton.

[00:01:49]So, with this first match, I want to take a look at how red plays these different parts of this game. First of all, transition period. Obviously, they're going to score as much as they can. And then during the off shift, where do these three robots play? We're going to pause right here. I just want to take a look at this. You have your two dumper robots, or two your captain and your first pick, in this case Rush and The Crew, are both in the neutral zone and feeding. And then that third robot, The Troobots, is a actually a double turreted robot, quite a good robot to get as the last pick of a field in a like DTE.

[00:02:19]And they're going to be on that far alliance zone and they're feeding. Full field. Realistically, they're more putting in the neutral zone, but that's okay cuz Rush and Crew are dominating that zone. And you're going to see the similar off shift off shift play from them throughout most of their matches, where Troobots is trying to steal and Rush and Crew are just dominating the middle of the field as they like to do in this game.

[00:02:43]And it just it starves the other alliances. You see right here team team 8517 has to go all the way during their own shift to go steal from the red alliance just because that's where the fuel is, because red alliance is just dominated there. And we'll keep playing this here. And now we'll see what does red alliance do during their on period.

[00:03:02]All three robots are back and shooting and just pouring, pouring, pouring more and more fuel into the hub. Even The Troobots have come back with their hopper full of fuel that they collected from the other alliance's zone.

[00:03:13]And they're going to actually go back and feed now and continue to help so that Rush primarily can stay in the zone and be able to, you know, deal with some of the defense that blue has, but just continue to pour that insane throughput that they have on.

[00:03:26]And The Crew is going to be able to do much of the same as well.

[00:03:29]And both of these alliances, you know, do a really good job. Alliance four here is no joke either. There's a lot of really good alliances in Rebuild, but the Rush Crew bots here are just really simply incredible.

[00:03:43]One thing I actually want to back up a second to go take a look at to 128.

[00:03:47]Notice how good that both Rush and The Crew are at finding anchors. They see the defense here of 8517 and both the Rush and The Crew are able to find the trench and the tower as anchors to avoid that defense.

[00:04:01]That's something that we'll see as a really, really high level of defense bots being able to take away those anchors, but then of offense bots being able to find those anchors. Especially as dumper robots, it's really important not get pushed off. I think that a lot of these robots are, you know, locking their wheels, doing a lot of different things to do similar to this. And really to be honest, throughout the rest of this match, we're going to see the red alliance continue on as scheduled and just score and score and score. And in this last minute here, they're going to put up about 400 fuel in this last minute, which is just bonkers and just really incredible play from the red alliance. And as this match continues to wind down, we're going to see The Troobots do a great job of doing their kind of long-term feeding role. As well as they also have a level one climb on their robot, so we're going to see them grab that level one climb at the end. And we're going to kind of zoom ahead here second to the end of the match.

[00:04:52]Lots of scoring, lots of scoring to our Michigan high score of 841 unpenalized points, just shy of the world record and man, incredible job by this red alliance. Lots to learn from there and a lot they learned from this match as they go and face some harder matches now um throughout the rest of their playoff journey.

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[00:05:37]So, next we're going to take a look at is actually the finals two match on the DTE Energy Foundation field. And this is actually the closest match of the the number one alliance's entire run.

[00:05:48]And we're going to see the auton path that we talked about right here.

[00:05:51]Troobots are going to be able to come and do that sweep and that makes a big difference in this match.

[00:05:56]You'll notice that coming out after the first swipe, alliances one and two are basically even.

[00:06:01]Alliance two here, I mean, alliance two is incredible here on DTE. It's featured captained by 5907 The CC Shambots. Their first pick 6002 Zubotics. And then their second pick defensive all-star here 9771 F Pro.

[00:06:16]Um really well well put together alliance in my opinion and would have won I think a lot of the other fields at at a FIM States. Just really, really high throughput. But that offensive or sorry, defensive swipe there by Troobots is what ends up being the difference maker there because blue alliance comes up short with that second swipe, whereas Rush and The Crew are able to grab, you know, about 16 more fuel in that second swipe in comparison to the blue alliance because of that Troobots auto swipe. And results in the 60 point lead here coming into teleop, which is basically the difference in the match.

[00:06:54]Um which is, you know, there's a lot of different things, small things that you got to do right. One of those small things that I think the blue alliance does a really good job of doing here is I'm actually going to back us up here just a second.

[00:07:06]Watch how the, you know, the transition period is a really important part to get that that first couple points. And 5907 hits The Crew, but then 9771 goes right down the trench to block and take away any opportunity for The Crew to shoot during that transition period. You know, that that essentially saves 50 points to cut away The Crew having a hopper full of fuel.

[00:07:29]Which is a pretty crucial move there to take away those transition shots. And as we continue to to see the the different play and everything.

[00:07:40]Blue alliance does a good job of trying to play some double defense here, but I want to see take a look at what Rush just did there. Let's back it up like 5 seconds. Rush is facing double defense here from 6002 Zubotics and from 9771 F Pro. And Rush is able to do a really good job of forcing themselves to this anchor right here so that as soon as they can start shooting, they're able to start piling on and there's not much that blue can do. Blue is able to realize this. 9771 pivots and starts attacking The Crew, which is an effective pivot for them. And now Shambots are over as well playing some defense. And because of that defense, um yeah, it's actually one of the stranger pinning calls that I've ever seen in First there, but that's called on the Shambots.

[00:08:20]But regardless, this defense is really one of the main things that keeps them in this game because you'll see Zubotics and Shambots still able to put up really, really good throughput during their shifts as well.

[00:08:34]And you know, The Troobots is playing defense and stealing defense as well.

[00:08:37]Um but it's definitely a kudos to this whole blue alliance for for staying in this more than more than anybody else was able to do. Um One of the things that we talked about just a second ago was teams locking their wheels. We'll see Rush right here when getting hit by F Pro. He's able to lock their wheels and and be able to kind of shave off those bumps pretty good. Um But um one of the things that I think that the blue alliance's defense did here that cost Rush a lot of time, we'll notice Rush has to go back out to the neutral zone here to collect some more.

[00:09:12]And F Pro is able to get in their way and and completely they're going over the bump cuz they got a full hopper.

[00:09:18]And it's going to cost Rush a good 10, almost 15 seconds of time they could have been shooting. That gives blue kind of a window here to start getting closer.

[00:09:27]Ultimately, it's not going to make the difference in the match. The firepower of the red alliance is just incredible, right? But really, really good opportunities here for the blue alliance to get close. And this was this match ended up being decided by about 80 points, which is really yeah, much closer than anybody else got against this insane number one alliance from DTE at FIM States. And so kudos to them for that as well as kudos to the the Rush Crew bots for really taking it home and in the face of some adversity.

[00:10:02]And speaking of adversity, we're going to talk about the actual FIM Stein finals matches.

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[00:10:31]So they made quick work of the two upper bracket matches um in FIM Stein playoffs. But now that we get to finals one and finals two, finals one one quick thing I'll mention was there's a really odd situation where Troll Bots and Robo Jackets get tied up.

[00:10:47]And I actually want to pause here a second.

[00:10:49]And that really impacted the first match. So we're going to focus more on the finals two match and see these alliances more at even strength and and what happens here. So first of all, let's back up here just a second.

[00:11:02]We're going to take a look. Robo Jackets kind of gets caught up a little bit on some fuel.

[00:11:08]And that that impacts their auto tons here.

[00:11:11]And interesting situation here as well where the blue alliance debuts this other auto ton from 7197, the Mount Mega Bots, who is there their second pick.

[00:11:22]Who's going to try to do a similar kind of steel auto ton to Troll Bots.

[00:11:25]But for whatever reason, the the blue alliance robot's actually going to end up going back into red alliance zone and blocking that the trench there, which cuts off the Troll Bots ability to do their swipe auto ton as well as Rush's second swipe. They're going to A stop there.

[00:11:40]Um really interesting situation.

[00:11:41]Unfortunately for the blue alliance, Robo Jackets and Strike Zone both have some auto ton failures of their own as well and aren't able to capitalize and will still come down come out of auto ton down.

[00:11:53]But quite an interesting shakeup there.

[00:11:55]And I and I think that that's one of the things we'll see that I learned from Michigan State that we'll see at worlds is that the auto ton chess match is real in this game. Who's going where?

[00:12:06]We're going to see some placement calls for sure.

[00:12:09]And it's an interesting situation.

[00:12:11]One of the things I actually want to again we're going to quick scootch back here to 208. Watch the crew. They're going to go for kind of a full field right down here.

[00:12:21]This full field steal, right? And they're going to come back over the trench and actually going to get kind of stuck on the on the bump and then they're also going to get beached on some fuel here, which cost them a lot of time in their feeding now. Now fortunately, Rush is able to quickly come save their partners in crime.

[00:12:38]But interesting situation. That's one of the only times that I saw Rush or the crew get beached at all throughout Michigan States.

[00:12:45]Impressive communication for them to get out of that situation pretty quickly.

[00:12:50]One of the things that I think was really good here from Strike Zone is they're able to do a really nice steal.

[00:12:58]Watch them come right here. They're going to steal all that fuel that Rush was about to do. And it forces both the crew and Rush to have to be starved and leave into the neutral zone during their during their shift, which does end up costing them to some extent some fuel, especially with the good defense there from 7197.

[00:13:16]Feisty little robot there that's able to really zip around and and show what speed can do in defense in this match. We're going to continue to see some some good scoring from both alliances. Ultimately, blue has firepower but not the insane 300 plus EPA that red has in both Rush and the crew.

[00:13:38]And we're going to see scores remaining close here as we get into the end of the blue alliance's last shift and going into red. But even when red you know red already has a lead going into this last shift. And and they're just going to pile it on and blue alliance realizes this and all of them are partaking in defense to some extent here.

[00:13:57]Doing a really good job of of just fighting tooth and nail, absolute dog fight here.

[00:14:02]And one of the things as well that I really want to highlight, this is really really solid defense from 7197. They're getting those last minute pins.

[00:14:11]They're on on 7769. But they're also going to in just a second watch them cut off Rush's ability to then So Rush is doing a full field steal watch 7197 cut off Rush's ability to go get to the tower. They want to get in the way there, stay tower side because the tower's the protected zone, right?

[00:14:30]And it ends up making it lots of Rush's short shots come up short there.

[00:14:34]Obviously aren't going to impact the match. But that's really good defense.

[00:14:37]And I think that world championship level defense needs to be super super aware of how you can keep the opposing alliance robots away from those anchor points of the tower and the trench.

[00:14:47]Ultimately, the red alliance DTE Energy Foundation Field is going to win the Michigan State Championship in just an incredible outing from them. [music] And a great great outing as well from the blue alliance in their active division.

[00:14:58]Strike Zone, Robo Jackets, Mount Mega Bots. Kudos to them for putting up a great effort there in the FIM Stein finals. But yeah, huge kudos to so many teams so many teams this weekend at the FIM DCMP. You just got to say wow to to a lot of this this rebuilt play.

[00:15:13]Just really really awesome. But that DTE alliance just unstoppable execution and masterful machines. I really can't wait to see Michigan take on the World Championship in two weeks because the level of play we saw this weekend is going to translate really well to the grand finale.

[00:15:28]Team 27 Rush finishes with four blue banners at just this event and eight on the season plus an insane 71-2 record.

[00:15:35]7769 Crew and 3668 both grab their first state titles in a majestic fashion.

[00:15:41]Congrats to them and thank you all so much for watching. Let me know down below what you were watching this past [music] the loaded week seven lineup or anything else that you caught in these matches. My name is James for the Fun Robotics Network signing off.

[00:15:54]Thanks for watching. Don't forget to like, subscribe, [music] and click the bell to stay up to date on future fun videos.