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Well the game was simulated. According to what shows up in the box score Italy was the better team. Italy had 11 turnovers (same as Holland) but also had 5 offensive fouls called against (to 0). Italy had 9 rebounds who ended out of bounds (to 3). That's 11 net possessions changed 6 of which are turned around without showing anywhere.

This GE has garbage efficiency ratings for players compared to real life and it compensates with higher numbers of possessions and here is where the problems arise. Turn around enough possessions and the worse team wins even if he's worse in every aspect of the game. Which is what happened here.

But isn't this the interesting point? I always assumed that offensive fouls and rebounding out of bounds were clear indicators that your team was mismatched in key positions when it comes to player on player defense/offensive skills and a bad game plan. Look at a Big Ten College Game and you'll see a match-up where teams are evenly matched but one team is just executing so poorly that the guards can't find good, easy looks so they force into a bad look for inside players who either do an offensive foul (charge = bad driving) or take a forced shoot with bad outcomes.

I do agree on the stat sheet needing an update to include more pertinent information but I still see this outcome as falling under the probability curve.

I think this would be the easiest improvement to implement to clarify the results a little more. That way the statistical output would be more clear, as I have to agree that offensive fouls and rebounds lost out of bounds are caused by (lack of) skilll too and not just randomness of the GM/referee. I think we can all agree that normality can cause great variance from input to output, but I concur that the output should be clear and the result should logically follow the output.

That said, I feel for you Italians, and wish you best of luck in future seasons.


Last edited by Jeründerbar at 2/15/2017 2:34:13 PM

But would have felt somewhat nervous about a 100% certain crunch from Netherlands

What's the point of Crunching exactly? A guaranteed loss in the next round? Phyrric victory?

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gfD134ED54)
What would the history of sport be without games like this?

I can find you a thousands upsets where a team or an athlete stepped up and played better or competed on equal footing with a better team.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9COEbgjvOI
Soviets played better than the Americans (some of the players did recognise they didn't deserve to win that game, others thought they'd been cheated out of the gold medal) and William Jones did the right thing stepping in and clarifying that the Soviet Union still had 3 seconds to play.

What happened in this BB game is NOT the same as the 1972 basketball Olympic final or the 1980 ice hockey game where the winner deserved. This is more like Bradbury winning the gold in ice skating in 2002:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3i4lsieGQc for the Italian friends
Tried to find an English version who could make you understand what really happened but I couldn't. This guy who shouldn't have made it through the quarterfinals ended up winning the the gold medal due to people falling or being disqualified in each round.


Last edited by Lemonshine at 2/15/2017 8:33:37 PM

Ironic that you chose Phyrric, because thats exactly what i accused our u21 manager the year we were in consolation, Phyr, of not being mindful of. I also suggested that tough was not wary of Normal's last worlds for the US, and several times in round 1 i begged for a normal to be used. I was too critical after the fact i believe, but i don't take back what I believed at that point in time.

I think that each nation has their own goals. I'm not going to suggest that Cletus that is running Canada doesn't want to win it all, but I think last worlds he probably had a goal that was to qualify for worlds through the repecharge and make it to the second round given that they hadn't made it to round 1 of the worlds in quite some time, and hadn't made it to round 2 in even longer (if ever, didn't look that far back). If i were in his shoes in worlds season 35, i would've used normal a few times in round 1 to ensure that i made it into round 2, even if i was riding a 1-2 or 0-3 record in.

Nobody is going to really remember whether or not the Netherlands got eliminated or advanced in the consolation tournament, because not too many care about winning the best of the rest tournament. So why wouldn't the Netherlands take the opportunity to say "hey, we've got a once in a lifetime opportunity to knock the 2nd best ranked team in the u21 worlds out of the consolation tournament with little long term downside". That win right there could mean a lot for people in that country, because now they feel like if they give it their all, they might be able to compete with the best teams. They might get 2 or 3 people from the Netherlands that now are willing to invest time in the u21 efforts knowing they could turn into Estonia or the Ukraine.

While it's hard to dismiss the TIE from italy here as a strategy that they should not have gone with (I think it was the right call), after analyzing their team composition and the Netherlands to this point, i feel as if i am compelled to believe that Italy slept a little bit on this matchup. The Netherlands has been running 3-2 a lot, and has defaulted to neutral or outside offenses. Running the generic LI without considering how to stop their PG from distributing the ball to others in motion was not the best strategy, nor was going with your bigs at SF. I think had you played a guard at SF or played your best OD at their point of distribution might have eliminated the high opportunity chances. You made the same mistake many of the power nations make every now and again against the underdogs. In this particular case, you were probably very unlucky with regards to the anticipated outcome, but the chance was always there. If you need proof of that, look at your game against Finland in the Euro's.

Last edited by FurY at 2/15/2017 5:29:49 PM

You may be right but to me last 32 or last 16 won't make much of a difference both in ranking or definition of success. Which is why no team going seriously for the B3 was ever normalling a league game. At worst you Normal and hope you get lucky. It's just that Motion with those ratings and stats just does not cut it, as one can also see in the losses they had in the round robin.

without considering how to stop their PG from distributing the ball to others in motion

not sure what point you're trying to make but that PG had 4 assists to the PF player, 1 to the C, 1 to the SF and 1 to the SG. That's 5 assists to big men. Considering the defensive ratings the guards Italy probably do have 14 or 15 OD across the 1-3 positions (maybe 13 at SF), which is in fact reflected in Holland's PP100 ratings (53-67-58). Besides the SF Italy used is probably in the PF formula because of a hole in some outside skills to be in the SG salary formula but looking at his stats he must have pretty reasonable OD and balanced skills if he's averaging 1 steal per game and 3.1 assists in 34 minutes playing at PG in D3 Italy. 13 OD 12 IS will fall in the PF salary formula in most cases.


In respect of the loss to Finland in the Euros: Finland does have a good team and they have been ranking higher than England until last season (England improved dramatically in the rankings thanks to the victory in the consolation tournament), both Innes and the starting PG fouled out and statistically the teams were very close. This game does not bother me in the slightest, although the number of fouls on both sides was very high and it affected the result, but I'd consider Finland the underdogs only because England was playing at home, not because they are a vastly inferior team.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 2/15/2017 7:47:47 PM

wasn't looking at England versus Finland, i was looking at Finland versus Italy. I think that it's really hard to put Finland or England on equal terms with Italy if we're being fair at all. They won in an upset.

4 assists to the PF, 1 to the C, 1 to the SF, and 1 to the SG were made assists. How many were missed is really the question.

Once the ball gets distributed to a shooter who attempts a shot, it's solely on the shooter.

Nope, by outcome shitty I mean that the outcome is ridiculous.
I won matches in which I should have lost by numbers, that's shitty too. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining or whatsoever about the match, the fact we lost is just annoying but I would have said the same even with the opposite result+value+ratings.
We're talking about different things I assume. If your point is only to say "I like that weaker team can have by effort the chance to win against stronger teams" I can say even that I agree, not mostly but it's something sport-related.
If you see that this match ended like this rightly (speaking on the GE point of view, so ratings, statistics, matchups...) because of the CT/TIE I disagree.

The title of this topic "U21 Consolation Tournament -- Season 37" is misleading. I haven't read anything about the tournament. I heaven't read any basketball reviews of matches. I haven't read any previews of the upcoming rounds. I also haven't read any congratulations to the Dutch U21 team.

Basically, nothing about the U21 Consolation Tournament.

What I did read was math and statistics problems. I suggest to those not able to handle unsolvable math problems, to go back to reading math books, there you will always find the solution to a problem.

Thank you for congratulating our U21 coach Jeründerbar for this historic upset. One of the greatest upsets in the history of the U21 Consolation tournament to stay on topic. We appreciate it! ;)