BuzzerBeater Forums

ENGLAND 90-54 CYRPUS
England cruised to their second win of the campaign over one of the smaller teams in the group, Cyprus. We shot the ball quite well, just under 50% as a team and defended solidly to limit the Cyprians to a low amount of points to boost our point differential.

ENGLAND 81-93 FINLAND
This was a really tough loss to take, I definitely thought we had enough to beat Finland despite a few key players missing because of poor game shape. After watching the game, we defended poorly in the last quarter and couldn't make our chances count. Mark Halflife was once again our best player and is proving to be a huge talent at London Kings and could be set for the NT in future seasons.

It's going to be tough to qualify from here if I'm honest. We have two solid opponents to play in Greece and Portugal and we'll have to win both of them to stand a chance of going through, but I'm still optimistic this can be achieved. As a whole, game shape has been poor, especially for key players, this season. Some players have been good but the majority are operating at around average/respectable, and that's just not good enough. If we're to beat Greece and Portugal, we need this up.

Also, my apologies go out to all concerned about my lack of response to emails and posting in this forum. I've started my new job in the last week or so and it's been absolutely mad! (I even forgot to set two lineups for my own team!!) so I apologise, I'm not ignoring your messages or being lazy when coming to reports.

Congrats on the new job. Shame about the loss, I know what its like to lose to Finland.

Is there a reason this guy Stuart Deshpande (36290190) isn't on the team? Impressive salary for a PG.

Congrats on the new job. Shame about the loss, I know what its like to lose to Finland.

Cheers mate, and yes it was a tough one to take.

Is there a reason this guy Stuart Deshpande (36290190) isn't on the team? Impressive salary for a PG.

Yes there is, he's not good enough.

Tough loss. England at both levels seem to get targeted by similar level teams with effort.. Best of luck with the new job as well js, hope you have 'England u21 manager' on your cv ;)

England at both levels seem to get targeted by similar level teams with effort.

Yeah, funny that. You might almost get the impression that people don't like England. I do think that's part of the problem.

Some of it does actually come about because of our position in the BB world. Not a large country, not a micro. This does tend to leave us in a large group of countries chasing the same thing. Which makes us a target for the extra effort.

In the Euros especially we're usually the fourth highest ranked team, especially at NT, which means the four teams under us are most likely to target us rather than the top 3, and the teams above us might prefer to use extra just to make sure we stay below them.

One of my aims with the NT was to move us up so that might become less likely. I failed.

Yeah you're spot on with that and thank you mate haha!

ENGLAND 114-60 ARMENIA
After a tough loss to Belgium last time out, England matched up against a weak Armenian side looking to bounce back and hopefully improve on their point differential. We dominated every quarter and put in a good shooting performance all round with all 12 players contributing to the scoreboard. Phil MacNeish top scored with 17 points and also managed to dish out 6 assists whilst Joshua Boyle and Stu Feldman also recorded double doubles.

ENGLAND 58-70 GREECE
This game was a must-win for England if they were going to have any chance of qualifying. The game started slowly with both defences on top and all players having a tough time of scoring. The game burst into life in the second half and there were chances for us to close the lead and take advantage but unfortunately, we couldn't convert our chances and were still turning the ball over on too many occasions. The game ended with Greece winning by 12 to all but end our chances of qualifying out of this extremely tough group. On my behalf, I'd like to apologise as I got the lineup wrong. Witten defended well but just could not score and an alternative option would have been more beneficial for us in attack. Joshua Boyle should also have started, he shot the ball well but I felt Greene was a better option. The injury to Feldman was also a killer blow as he's progressed superbly this season and has been a key player at points.

It's not impossible to qualify from this position but we'll need a miracle if we are to progress to the next round. Game shape was a lot better this week and we might have beaten Greece if I didn't f**k up the lineup but hindsight is a wonderful thing and we have to move on. I won't give up on our chances as we play Estonia next week, who are undefeated.