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Thanks man. I knew you had a really good team and just hoped to make it close. To be in front for so long was great but I had a feeling your strength would show in the end. Good game.

To be honest, I was a bit scared One loss and my community will burn me. Today, I can sleep calm til next monday.
Good luck

What would your ideal U21 player look like at each position (at the start of their age 21 season), obviously it's different for each offence but try to list a reliable starting five. Let's say the guards are drafted at 6/6/6/6/6/6 4/4/4/4, the bigs at 4/4/4/4/4/4 6/6/6/6, and the SF starts with straight 5s.

Ok, finally, what everyone has been waiting for.

I did find this hard, and I'm not sure I really like what I came up with. The above starting skills aren't ideal for what I'd want but are an excellent device to see what you can do, and the totals are about average for what an U21 player should start with.

PG: 8/8/12/12/12/12 6/7/4/4
SG: 11/9/12/11/11/8 6/7/4/4
SF: 9/7/10/10/11/6 7/9/5/8
PF: 7/5/6/9/10/6 10/11/7/10
C : 6/4/5/8/9/5 9/12/11/11

Tbh, those players wouldn't necessarily be starters. And at SF, for the U21s you're much more likely to want a guard there who has some ID, or a PF with some OD, as its difficult to make a decent SF at 21.

If anyone wants to come up with different players and really you should, I don't like mine that much, then if you do add skills somewhere you would have to say what skill you'd not train in order to increase the one you want.

(38871)
England U21 75 Lietuva U21 93
I think we all knew this was going to be tough. Going in, I wanted to keep everything slow, in order to keep the scores low, and hopefully close.

I'd like to say I'm a genius and played 3-2 in order to restrict their ability to get the ball inside but actually I had a slight feeling they might use an outside offence in the hopes of wrong footing future opponents, and was wrong. Fortunately the 3-2 zone does affect the opponent's passing but as you can see Lithuania's big men scored quite easily and forced fouls.

That said, the game wasn't a disaster. Far from it in fact. The first quarter was astonishing. We played really well, scored freely, forced fouls and really had Lithuania rocking. We led by 8 after one quarter, and by 7 at the half. We just weren't good enough for it to last (no shame there, Lithuania are very good) and with some padding to the score in the fourth quarter that I found slightly annoying we ended up losing by 18.

Another unfortunate situation in the second half was that one of our big men sat out much of the half because of his fouls. Normally I don't make players sit out, but hadn't realised when setting the lineup that it had been set that way. I'd have preferred him to play but its hard to say if it affected the result, as he looked likely to foul out anyway, and its arguable we were better off with him playing late in the game.

Standings here: (http://www.buzzerbeater.com/world/standings.aspx?teamid=1...)

I often leave changes quite late but this is the first time I've literally made a last second change.

Slight warning today if anyone's here. I've gambled today, and it could go horribly wrong. I felt it was necessary to give us any chance in this game. If it should go wrong I still feel the decision was justified, but of course everyone is entitled to disagree.

Doing something a bit different for the monday discussion (which should last all week!) as I'm going to leave it all to you. Any questions or comments on the draft welcome, especially from newer players who may not have drafted before. The scouting reports should be due soon so this seems timely.

Slight warning today if anyone's here. I've gambled today, and it could go horribly wrong. I felt it was necessary to give us any chance in this game. If it should go wrong I still feel the decision was justified, but of course everyone is entitled to disagree.

Standings: (http://www.buzzerbeater.com/world/standings.aspx?teamid=1...)

(38874)
Hungary U21 80 England U21 66
Not the result I was hoping for. As clear above, I felt I had to gamble, and because I'd already used a 3-2 defence more than once this season, I felt I wouldn't see an outside offence used against me, and so the gamble was to set up an inside defence, which ended up against a patient offence.

As I think is clear from how the game went, patient didn't really work that well for them. They didn't get many assists, their shooting wasn't that good. Rebounds and fouls were the big problem for us. The zone defence and bad gdp guess were probably a factor there.

As I said in the quote though, I felt the gamble was warranted and the wrong result doesn't mean I feel it was now a mistake.

Monday will be the last game for the 21yos in the current squad. I hope we'll play well enough to give them a fond farewell.


Last edited by Gully Foyle at 10/22/2016 8:05:20 AM

Meh, don't really like the cheap trick involved, but defensively we played our best game of the season. Thanks, though.

Sorry for being ignorant but, why did a SG and PG start as C in this match?

Not bashing the decision, those two being the top scorers clearly meant the tactic worked a treat but, I just don't understand the reasoning.

Sorry for being ignorant but, why did a SG and PG start as C in this match?

Not bashing the decision, those two being the top scorers clearly meant the tactic worked a treat but, I just don't understand the reasoning.

That's the cheap trick I was referring to. Because centers usually have low to very low OD you can create a massive mismatch by placing a good shooter such as Sanderson to play center, in the hope that the patient offence will lead him to shoot well and shoot often. As you already know, it worked. Defensively the players at center were switched to play SF.

The reason I don't like the tactic is because it is as close to an exploit as you can get when it works. And if your opponent plays 3-2 you're likely in trouble. However, as U21 coach I'm almost forced to do my best no matter how I feel about it personally and so this week I went with our best chance to win.