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Canada U21 - Season 14

Last season, the Canadian U21 team played in the world championships for the first time ever. We were fortunate to have a very talented group of players, but were beat out by some very good teams in the opening round. That meant that we ended up playing a grand total of 9 scrimmages; that's right, 9 scrimmages. The good news is that we still managed to move our world ranking up from 12th to 9th, breaking into the top 10.

The upcoming season should put an end to our scrimmage marathon, as we will be playing a new season of the Americas Championships. Back in season 12, we rode home court advantage to a 12 game winning streak, and a 2nd place finish. This resulted in the team qualifying directly for the world championships (as the top 2 teams in each continental championship secure spots at world's). In season 14, our team is comparable to what we had in season 12, only we will be playing all our games in Argentina this time. This means that it will be difficult to repeat our success from 2 seasons ago, although that is still the ultimate goal. If we come up a bit short, then I think it makes sense for our secondary goal to be a top 6 finish, and a ticket to the repechage round. In that scenario, returning to world's would require some good luck in our repechage group draw, and a strong early season performance from the season 15 squad. I believe that our current group of 20 year olds is very strong (160834.1), which is a good thing for season 15, whatever our situation ends up being.

Our first round schedule this season starts off with what should be some easy games. With that in mind, I think it makes sense to begin with 10 players, and make additions later as needed. The main candidates for the team, and the selection process, will be covered in a training camp thread (160842.1). As I've done in the past, I plan to do write-ups on every player that joins the team this season, whenever they are officially added.

Like previous seasons, this thread will be used to highlight the progress of the U21, and to regularly direct everyone's attention to the BB Canada off-site forum for more details: http://bbcanada.forumotion.com. GM-RiP (24916) is the one who handles invites to join this forum. Sign up, and send him a BB-Mail, if you are a Canadian user, and would like to join our detailed top secret discussions of all things related to the National Teams. I do, however, plan to put more content directly into this thread than I've done in the past.

I'd like to thank everyone for the chance to manage the U21 again in Seasons 14 and 15. I found the last two seasons on the job to be very rewarding, and I'm excited about the next two seasons.

Last edited by The Mogul at 10/13/2010 10:30:28 AM

We're all looking forward to another successful season under your leadership Mogul. Here's to hoping we get that little bit of luck we need to be a great team again!

Our Americas Championship Tournament begins tomorrow (Monday) with a game against Panama. The game will be played at 6:00 PM EST, in Argentina, as Argentina is hosting the tournament for this season.

The opening roster for the season has been officially selected, with details posted in the training camp thread. I am expecting a strong performance tomorrow night, and it should be exciting to see the U21 get the new season underway.

Additional pre-game details have been posted on the off-site forum, for any Canadian manager that is interested.

Tonight we came away with a nice 115-84 win against Panama. There were a lot of very strong performances from our guys, and I'm happy with how the team played. For player of the game honours, I'll give the nod to Pat Clear, as it was fun watching him put up a very efficient 13 points and 17 rebounds in 18 minutes.

Next week, we have a break in the schedule, and will be playing a scrimmage. Edit: The scrimmage will be against Iran U21, and will be played in Iran at 9:30 AM.

The following week, we face Barbados, which should be another comfortable game for us. We probably won't win by 96 again, like we did against Barbados in season 12, but we'll still have a chance to put up a lot of points.

Last edited by The Mogul at 10/20/2010 5:42:51 PM

Oct 25 scrimmage @ Iran: Post-game recap

This morning there was a block party in Iran, as the Canadian U21 swatted away 12 shots en route to a 78-66 victory. It was a bit of a struggle for us all game on offense, but luckily, our defense stepped up, especially early on in the fourth quarter. The game had been essentially tied for most of the way, until we opened the fourth with a 14 to 4 run, and never looked back.

One twist to the game was that Glenn Richards, who was playing well for us, picked up 4 very early fouls. After getting his 5th foul early in the second half, it looked like a foul out was coming at any moment. For fun, Richards decided to get injured instead, and he went down hard at the 29 minute mark. This allowed Vidyacharan Jaiswal to play 18 minutes at center, and while Jaiswal struggled a bit with rebounding and fouls, he came up big with 3 key blocks and some efficient points.

The PFs, Clear and Maisch, did a great job on defense, and pulled in a lot of rebounds. Clear put up one of the better Canadian stat lines tonight, with 21 rebounds, 3 blocks, and 10 points in 39 minutes. Because of Clear's consistent effort from start to finish, I'll give him the nod for Canadian player of the game. That's two in a row for Clear, which is something I never would have predicted, and which is a nice surprise.

At PG, Satchwell and Hightower completely shut down the Iranian PGs, but also couldn't score themselves. Hightower did put up his first 2 points of the season for us, after he got a lucky bounce on an out of control layup.

At SG and SF, Torres and Yates played heavy minutes, and did alright as volume scorers today. Torres dropped 21 points on 23 shots, while Yates managed to put in 18 points on 19 shots. Both guys also had solid all around games. Of particular note is the 12.0 individual rating that Yates put up as the starting SF, which is a very good number for a U21 SF at this point in the season.

All in all, it was a nice effort from the team today, and a solid road win, despite only being a scrimmage. Next week, it's back to games that count, as we return to Argentina for a game against Barbados.

Last edited by The Mogul at 10/25/2010 12:05:07 PM

Nice victory and some very solid ratings. Which bodes well for a stron U21 season.

Another great write up as well, thanks!!

I thought we were in trouble when Richards went down. The game was still fairly close at that point and I'm glad to see we held on for the win.

Wooh, those PG per 100 ratings were pretty painfuly on both sides.

Post-game recap: Canada vs. Barbados, Nov 1, 2010

Canada has 579 active users currently, and Barbados has 8. Keeping those numbers in mind, the Barbados U21 managed to put up a pretty good fight tonight, despite Canada winning by a final score of 103-52.

The Canadian team was in control of the game from the early stages, and managed to outplay Barbados in just about every category. One area where Barbados did well, however, was rebounding, and Barbados grabbed 63 boards to Canada's 61. Barbados also shot the ball about the same as the Canadians from outside, going 2-16, while Canada went 3-16. Canadian officials, however, insist that the Canadian shooters simply had an off night.

The leading scorer for Canada was Max Torres, who put up 19 points in a team high 32 minutes. Torres looked great in the first quarter, but turned invisible a bit as the game went on. In general, no one on Canada exploded for a huge game, but everyone managed to contribute to the overall effort.

For player of the game honours, I'll randomly select Vidyacharan Jaiswal, for putting up the highest individual rating (14.5 in 20 minutes at C). Jaiswal also managed 11 points, 10 rebounds, and a solid defensive effort in his minutes against Scott Halliday (who put up the highest rating for Barbados by a large margin). I'd also like to give a commemorative trophy to Lawrence Castillo, for his game against Barbados back in season 12. Castillo's epic 32 points on 14-15 shooting remains a thing of beauty, and still fills Canadian hearts with joy. Ah, the memories.

Next week, the action continues, and we will be playing Guatemala at the standard time on Monday (which is 6:00 PM server time for us this season).

nice

Post-game recap: Canada vs. Guatemala, Nov 8, 2010

The Canadian U21 got off to a great start in this one, and ended up coasting to a 123-53 victory. The 70 point margin of victory is something I'm very happy with, and it was aided by Guatemala having crunched Costa Rica last week.

Looking at the details of the game, we had a comfortable advantage in every category, and every positional matchup was in our favour. Our PGs had an especially large edge, and happily attempted to both go into "Jordan" mode. Satchwell finished with 20 points on 19 shots, and Hightower went off for 13 points on 12 shots (in only 16 minutes of action).

While the PGs were busy volume scoring, the SGs and SFs also put up some numbers, while spreading the shots around. The C's and PF's were especially good today. Coming off the bench, Pat Clear put up a fairly ridiculous 10 points, 6 rebounds and 7 assists in only 16 minutes. That is some top quality passing from a PF. For player of the game honours, I'll give the nod to Vidyacharan Jaiswal. Enjoying the opportunity to start at C, Jaiswal dropped 23 points on 16 shots, while also grabbing 20 rebounds, and posting a team high rating of 14.5.

Next week, the action continues, with a game against Costa Rica. So far the U21 has benefitted from excellent game shape, and hopefully we'll see that continue in the upcoming weeks.

Last edited by The Mogul at 11/8/2010 10:08:57 PM