BuzzerBeater Forums

Luckily for us, we managed to agree a scrimmage as a last preparation before the WC in Nippon.

Our opponent will be Australia. The game takes place at 12.00 in China, to make sure that our players will adapt to time zones in Nippon.
Australia also qualified for the WC and is our possible opponent there. Our enthusiasm is 1 and I am not pretty sure about theirs. Result isn't much important to me, what is important is to discover some new tactical possibilities with the new Game Engine.

OK guys,

I'm sorry for not writing to you but I was on my vacation. Luckily, I came right on time before the first game on the WC. Our opponents are :

Czech Republic
China
Portugal
United States
Croatia

The teams in the other group are

Al Jazair
Australia
Chile
Poland
Spain
Ukraine


As you can see, our group is pretty tougher. It will be extremely difficult to repeat our previous success, when we achieved the second stage. I think that one victory would be our maximum. Luckily for us, our draw is pretty fine and we will be able to play the harder matches in easier way.
Our first opponent is Czech Republic and I will write an overview soon.

To conclude, I would like to ask managers to keep their players at good shapes because every 8 or 9 in Game Shape would be fantastic. I don't want to be looking at 6 or 7.

We are the best!

The World BB Championship starts today in Nippon (Japan). This competition mostly gathers the strongest BB nations and it is not far from reality in this case. Twelve participants try to beat their opponents and gain the title of the world champion.

The match day 1 brings the following fixtures in our group :

Czech Republic - Misr
Croatia - China
Portugal - United States

I tried to be as realistic as possible and wrote the favorites in boldface.

As you can see, our opponent is Czech Republic - one of the BB giants. This country is among the rares who won the title of World Champion, back in season 20, when most of this current squad participated.
This team has lots of stars and extremely good players. However, I would have to choose Radoslav Urbanek as our biggest threat. He is the best BB player at the moment, in my opinion.
Anyway, he won't be the only problem for our team. Their roster doesn't look too strong judging by the salaries, but they are extremely well-equipped with secondary skills and all of them have excellent Game Shapes.
We have to stay on ground and a loss in this match isn't something terrible - they are BB elite right now.

However, the only chance we have in this match is a factor of beginning of competition. This means that surprises are possible, mostly because all of the teams have the same enthusiasm. Czech Republic isn't China and we might be pretty close to them during the match.
I will remind you how we played our first WC match 2 seasons ago :

(22787) - Even though we lost this - I dare to say that this was our best match of the last WC. We were constantly leading until the middle of the third quarter when Spanish players started playing at their very maximum.

However, this is our last match with Czech Republic which sends serious message to be careful :

(22817) - This was one of the last matches at the previous WC for both teams, Czechs had high enthusiasm and ours was totally damaged after the game with Canada. This is one of the toughest losses for Misr in the history.


This is it when it comes to our opponent, our players weren't allowed to issue any statements.

The match starts at 19.30, I might not be there since the very beginning but will definitely arrive.

We are the best!

Yesterday was the first competitive day at the World Championship, which takes place in Japan.
Our team played against Czech Republic, and lost the game - which was expected.
However, I have reasons to be happy. Even though their Game Shapes were pretty close to perfect and ours weren't that good, we managed to come pretty close to the Czechs but didn't have enough strength to gain advantage. We came pretty close to them in the second half, especially in the fourth quarter when we came to 3 points behind.

I tried to play the 2-3 zone to gather as much rebounds as possible. This is the aspect where we were much better. Rebounds would bring us more offensive chances. Unfortunately, our players didn't capitalize that advantage. Even though Urbanek didn't score much points, he destroyed us defensively.

These are the ratings : (25195)

All things considered, this kind of situation gives me hope that we are able to compete in this World Championship and achieve some victories. Our next opponent is China, which didn't impress against Croatia. I think that we will be able to compete with them next week. All we need to do is to take good care about our Game Shapes - I had to left Khawalani and Haj-Amal out from roster. I hope that they will be available to play next week.

We are the best!

Today is the match day two of the World BB Championship. Our next opponent is China, which is reigning World and Asian champion and the team with the most trophies out of all NTs. They arrived in Japan with pretty limited roster, compared with what they brought two seasons ago in Greece. However, they are still the biggest favorites to win the crown once again here.

Chinese players don't have Game Shape problems, they are mostly at 9 but Tan Yingdong and Liao Lijie, which are their main players, are stuck at 7. Our Game Shapes are pretty vague to me. Player who played 90 minutes last week raised his GS from 8 to 9 but one another player who played 61 minutes dropped from 8 to 7. This is, along with bad game shapes at PG and SG position, pretty limiting factor at deciding the roster for the team.
Luckily for us, we have no injured players at the moment.
China didn't impress at their last game against Croatia, where they won with huge difficulties. However, it is important to say that they played with lower attitude.
On the other side, we lost by 12 points against Czech Republic. We were close to them during the main part of the match, but we didn't manage to win it.

When it comes to expectations for today, I don't believe that we have any chances. China maybe looked vulnerable last week but they improved their enthusiasm and can only be more dangerous. My goal is to take all of our chances and see what happens.

The game starts at 19.30, if you're in possibility, come and watch it.

We are the best!

Match day 2 is over, and Egypt lost one more game. This isn't anything unusual, as China and Czech Republic are top favorites for the title. I have to say that our team played pretty good throughout the whole game, but wasn't able to go further and make advantage.
We played first quarter unbelievably good, and we were leading by 7 points at one moment. We seemed unstoppable then. However, China started playing amazing in offense and the result after the first quarter was 31-30. Our team slowed down a bit, which is understandable; but Chinese players continued playing excellent and they were leading by 8 points after the first half. In the second half they maintained their advantage, in a game where point after point was scored.
Anyway, the final result is: (25199) -115-107. We have reasons to be satisfied.

I would like to ask all the managers who are reading this to take good care about our players' Game Shapes because we have some easier opponents to play against.

This is the table after the two games:

China
Czech Republic
Portugal
Croatia
Egypt
USA

The bold teams have already two victories and are pretty sure to participate in the second phase. I hope that the two victories in the next three matches will be enough for us to compete in the second round again.

We are the best!

Man, respect! Two great results against the best two teams in BB universe! Hope to see you participate in Round 2 again, got to play a few huge games from now on in this group! I'll follow it :-)

Best regards, Fairness

Thank you man, we'll stay in touch.

OK guys, today is the most important game for Egyptian national team in this World Cup so far.
Our opponent is Portugal, which plays good tournament here in Japan and is very close to proceeding to the second round. They are among the three teams with the maximum score.
Portugal is a BB nation with the least trophies among our recent opponents. They repeated their best result last season, when they entered the semifinal of the World Championship. Unfortunately for them, they couldn't go any further, as they lost to the eventual champion – Poland.
Portugal won their first game against USA easily with walkover, as USA didn't have any player on the roster. In the second round they played against Croatia and achieved very important victory in an interesting match.
Their victory against Croatia is partially there due to excellent Game Shapes their managers maintained so far. They have that kind of advantage today. Luckily for us, Rahman Omer El Ibrahim is at Proficient and I expect him to destroy rival centres.

We definitely have our chances today, all of our players are available to play and the chosen ones will give their maximum.

The game starts at 19.30, come and join me, if possible.

We are the best!

After disappointing previous match against Portugal, it was really hard to motivate team for yesterday's match against USA. Team's Game Shapes were clearly weaker than those of the Americans and I wasn't really satisfied with Rahman Omer El-Ibrahim. However, after some consultations I decided to put him in the squad.

Luckily for us, we won that game! Amazing performance by our team. We were leading throughout the whole game, with Americans leading by 13-12 in one moment only. I was really surprised with such a small team holding the mighty USA in its fist.
We were extremely good when it comes to rebounding, with almost 20 rebound more. This means that we were 20 times more on the offense. Our guys didn't look like they are going to stop and it was +8 at the half time. I still wasn't convinced about our victory here because our team fell down against Portugal in the second half.
However, Misr kept playing at the same pace. We were even more convincing than in the first half and we got up to +14 before the last quarter.
That was the period where we stopped playing and Americans made everything they attempted. They played like there's no defense at all. Our coach called a couple of time outs to calm the things down. We came into the last minute with 2-3 points ahead. Americans got an advice to start shooting three-pointers. Unluckily for us, they mainly managed to drop them in. We came into the last 5 seconds with +3. In the last second, Americans tried a three pointer. I was relieved when I saw an X in the shot chart. However, it wasn't the end. Rauf Tabet made a foul on the three-point attempt.
If they put them in, we are going in overtime. Unluckily for us, they managed to score without any problem.

I really thought that we have no chance now. Luckily for us, things got back to normal. We started scoring and improved our defense. When we got to +7 in the OT, I thought that we were finally over. Americans put some more three-pointers in but didn't manage to equalize the result. We won the game!

Fantastic performance by Wlaaeldin, Malik and Rahman Omer, above all. Rahman playeed with GS 7 but was too hard to defend for Americans. Wlaaeldin showed that those two recent skill ups meant a lot to him.

What is more important is the fact that we depend on ourselves now. If we win against Croatia, the team will repeat its biggest success in history. We will reach the second round again.

Having this in mind, please take care about players' Game Shapes for the Friday.

Thank you.

We are the best!

Last edited by Tarikz at 7/30/2013 7:11:54 AM

Unfortunately for us, our WC appearance in this season came to its end. It's such a pity that we lost the second round by a couple of points. If we lost by 6 points against Croatia, we would be celebrating our new success now. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. We played CT in our last match since we didn't have anything to lose, really. I was pretty disappointed right after the match but then I realized that we already made a huge success.
We were in extremely tough group, where we had 10 times less users than the least Active community, of Czech Republic. This means that we had pretty limited pool of players and I think that we really managed to pull out our maximum. Unfortunately, the way we lost is pretty bad and sad but the point difference promoted us to the second round in the last WC.

These are the ratings of the last game : (25208)

I checked the skills of our potential players yesterday and I don't think that there should be any improvements to the squad. Roster is pretty young, with a couple of players who are a bit older but can successfully play one or even two more WCs, until the younger forces get ready for the squad.

We have limited potential, since we are micro-nation and we have to focus on building players for a certain tactic only. I don't think that it is possible to build a versatile team that can play most of the tactics successfully in Egypt.

On the brighter side, Egypt has definitely no competition in Africa and has potential to win the next 3-4 championships without any improvements. However, these young guys are getting trained and Egypt is getting more and more competitive in the International scene.

There are some young players, like Al-Ismail, El-Osman and Haj-Amal, who developed into beasts whose prime time will come into next 3-4 seasons. They are already capable of playing against the best players in the world and I hope that they will do such things successfully in the next seasons again.

I decided not to participate in the elections next season. I want to take on a challenge in a larger community. However, Misr definitely has excellent basis, and whoever the next manager is, he will have pretty easy job in Africa.

Now we have tons of friendlies to play until the end of the season, our enthusiasm is 1 and I will focus on checking potential players' skills and their development. The results aren't important to me.

That's it for now.

We are the best!