BuzzerBeater Forums

Let me be the first to say thank you guys for those running to be the U21 coach. And also, let me think Magiker for a wonderful job in the past 4 seasons.

Question for those running, why do you believe you are a better candidate than the others, based on facts, and how do you plan to build our depth at the U21 level? Because looking through the database, it seems we don't have as many players on pace for the U21 team like we may have seen just a couple seasons ago.

Question for anyone running.

While we have had arguably the best U21 program running in the past few seasons, our national team has struggled to be as successful. A lot of this comes from people training players with bad secondaries that can be effective at the U21 level, but they won't be effective at the national team level with the bad secondaries, and secondary training can be too slow when the payers are older. Would you be willing to advise trainers to sacrifice some primary training early on in order to create better national team players, even if this means that the U21 team is not a championship contender?

Both good questions.

@Isaiah: I'm really reluctant to compare myself to the other candidates and say I'm better than them, especially fewmit. But if you look at my posts, you'll see that they're usually very thoughtful and respectful of other people. You'll see that I know what I'm talking about and I'm definitely qualified to speak about and coach at the U21 level. I think I've shown my managerial skills in the rapid improvement of my own team over the past couple of seasons, as I mentioned in my election speech. If you want direct comparisons, though, you can look at our club teams and see where they are (fewmit in D.II, myself in D.III, everyone else in D.IV or D.V) and use that to try to estimate our managerial skills. You can look at our team histories and guess at our experience and knowledge of the game. But without knowing everyone personally I don't want this to degenerate into a bunch of personal attacks, so I'm not going to directly claim to be better than everyone else.

As for the second question: building depth largely starts with our scouts. Wozzvt comes up with lists of players by their salary and potential and our scouts contact all the top prospects with information and advice about training for the U21 and national team. I think our scouts do an excellent job of sending out BB-mails and reaching out to all the managers, and being wiling to stay in contact with and help mentor those who are interested. Obviously not every manager is going to be willing to train specifically with the National Team in mind. But one thing we can improve on is diversifying the builds a bit. As I mentioned in our debate speech, a lot of the players become sort of cookie-cutter models for LI (PG/SG high OD/PA, PF/C high IS/ID/REB at the expense of most other things). These builds are the default for a reason, but in order to improve depth I think we're going to have to encourage managers to try slightly different things according to their player's strengths and weaknesses. We haven't had a legitimate pure shooting guard for a while, perhaps not since Jonathan Yi. We have small forwards but not really any power forwards. If our scouts can identify players who might fit those sort of roles and work with managers to prepare them for that, we'll have a deeper and I believe better team.

This sort of ties in with moflaffle's question. I think we're already trying to do something like this. On the offsite, we have a specific section devoted to a 'NT pipeline', where a few of the elite prospects in terms of skills and potential are designated for special training, which may not make them ready for the U21 but will hopefully make them better NT prospects. I would definitely be willing to expand this pipeline, but I would probably only siphon off top prospects who will be 21 in a year when we are playing Americas, when having top talent is somewhat less critical to our success. This shouldn't make the U21 not a championship contender if done right. For U21 purposes, MVP is probably all the potential you need, and most or all of the players in this pipeline are going to be HOF. Also, this sort of pipeline is going to be relatively small, since the NT has much less turnover than the U21 so the criteria for this sort of specialized training is going to be very high, and most players will not meet the criteria. I really don't see this as a huge issue.

Question for those running, why do you believe you are a better candidate than the others, based on facts, and how do you plan to build our depth at the U21 level? Because looking through the database, it seems we don't have as many players on pace for the U21 team like we may have seen just a couple seasons ago.

1) What must people want in the U21 coach (OK, what I've wanted. No idea what all you rubes are into..) is someone knowledgeable about how our team has operated and why it's been a success, and with the energy to be very involved and focused for the entire 6 months of the term. I like what I've got to offer.

2) I agree, this may be starting to be an issue. You'll recall though that just last season that the season 20 team was the best ever. This year was a drop off, and magiker made great use of the roster he had. The pipeline doesn't seem to show a "season 20" class coming in the next year or so. The facts are, we have a somewhat stable user population in USA, we have a great scouting program, and we have some dubious on-site PR that tries to keep the team in the public's eye. What more can we do? On small thing I think we need to reemphasize what Rambo and others has said in the past: training a U21 player is possibly the best way for a V or IV manager to learn how to play the game at a higher level and improve and promote with good young players to boot. Now is a good time to figure out a way to start pitching that.

While we have had arguably the best U21 program running in the past few seasons, our national team has struggled to be as successful. A lot of this comes from people training players with bad secondaries that can be effective at the U21 level, but they won't be effective at the national team level with the bad secondaries, and secondary training can be too slow when the payers are older. Would you be willing to advise trainers to sacrifice some primary training early on in order to create better national team players, even if this means that the U21 team is not a championship contender?

So to back up a step, what we're talking about here is big men who's primary skills are pumped for the U21 team at the expense of everything else, because those are the type of big men needed for a LI U21 team. Then after U21 the players with remaining cap who may be NT candidates are deemed too expensive (or too slow) to cross train secondaries anymore because their high salaries require them to be used at position.

So I'm not buying this as an either/or deal you've laid it out to be. A good example is Beaucage, who got a good shot of secondary training after U21 is and now on the cusp of the NT. Granted, his secondaries still kinda suck, but they really sucked donkey before! It's not like you can't find people to train secondaries for NT players. There are many such managers who have done exactly this recently in the NBBA alone. Not that this works out all the time, but there is a 3rd way.

The real question here is what the the manager with the young stud wants with his player? If he wants to home grow his own NT player I would say God bless you, sir! Traineth secondaries until he literally passes out. If he wants to have a player who can do both then explain to him the training issues he faces. The NT and U21 coaches are in large part at the mercy of what managers are gonna do with their players no matter what we may ask. Those managers who are open to suggestions need to know all the options available to optimize their player. If he wants to maximize the chances of making U21, primariesprimariesprimaries. So, long story short, I may or may not advice said manager to train secondaries, but I'll definitely say stuff.

Question for those who are asking the questions. Why are you leaving such open ended questions that require the candidates to respond in a book that a lot of people are too lazy to read?

The users that are really interested in the U21/NT want to know what their plans will be so they can make an educated vote. They don't want regular or vague answers.

Hi. My full name is Mickey LT McCoy Junior, but you can call me Mick. I know that a lot of you are going to vote for coco and that is fine. Your vote is your vote. You can choose but let me tell you the truth about me, and I mean all the truth.
My first season I loved this game. Even though my team was bad I just liked lots of stuff about it. Next season we did better. I still thought my team was good. Season 20 I finally made it to the playoffs. My chance to get out of my league but I blew it in 3 games. It was a good experience though. In season 21 I made the playoffs but loss the first game. I then went and got many great people. I will tell the truth to you about anything.
All I am asking for is just one small season to be a national team manager.

questions to people running:

Since with the Level of NT and U21 are different, how will you guys *make* the U21 Players *suitable* for the NT? Trying to say what will happen if the U21 Guys are not being trained properly? How will you guys show you got what it takes to BE the manager? Gamplanning? Players and skills and tactics debates? Will yall be taking some ideas from the Community? Or will stick with the Usual Dominant LI?

Sorry if these are stupid or already asked questions, but this is gonna decide who I vote for (so far leaning towards smallfrie/fewmit)


thanks

also for the McCoy guy, and D-Wade.......do you even know what these guys discuss about? Players' Skills? Player discussion and tactics? Just saying.......also a Q for McCoy: Why are you talking about yourself? I thought this was about the U21 NT? Where's all the "I will help improve.........." ?