BuzzerBeater Forums

Lacey 1 FT away from a perfect game -_-

Good win Astra, Germany next! 6-1 here we come ;)

Hello everyone

Time for a new update.

We lost last week vs Germany U21. We got overrun cause I played Tie. I felt this weeks game vs Taiwan is a quite even match and one that we needed to win in order to qualify for the next round. Thus far this seasons it is closer than before in the top and some teams had a crazy easy draw so a 6-2 is a must to get through to the next round. It doesnt even give you HCA for sure.

Today we played vs taiwan and we won. I expected Taiwan to CT and since we needed to win too I CTed too. I am glad I did. The final score was England 93 - 77 Taiwan. Think it would have been alot closer and perhaps too close when we would have normalled. Taiwan played an inside offensive opposed to the normal outside one that they have played more or less every game. So our 3-2 was slightly wrong, but it still stopped their super guards from scoring too many points. I was planning to play an inside offense, but at the last moment changed it to base offense and it was the right choice. Taiwan played a 2-3 defense. We got outrebounded alot, because they played with 3 bigs, but their TOs and our assists were a big help.

The key players for us were Dyce and Lumley. Selected Lumley because off his decent OD and his id and rb skills. He would normally not be my first choice, but hey cant have it all.

Contacted one or two coaches again with regards to GS and lets hope they will try to get that organised. Players like Blanco and Dillon are players we need.

With the 6-2 best score ever for the U21 england team we did qualify for the next round. Lets wait for the draw and lets hope we get a home game :) even if it is unlikely.

Laters
Moominpapa

Nice work, Astra. Good tactical thinking, good performance. Good luck against Bulgaria tomorrow!

wow atleast one person besides me cares about the U21:)

Astra, jsut be sure to get to the next round.

then you'll get to Face U21 Belgium :D

then you'll have a shot at taking revenge for the loss that your NT suffered by our hands

Rev

Hello Everyone

Our U21 run is than finally over. We played CT with 4 enthusiasm (after last weeks CT) vs Bulgarias Tie.

I knew Bulgaria would play an inside offense and I knew we would never put up an inside defense matching that. not in a million years, so I took a gamble and the gamble didnt pay off.

I played a 3-2 defense with a motion offense, hoping that we could stop their guards passing balls to their bigs, but it didnt work. We got heavily outrebounded and that made more than the difference.

Once again the most disappointing thing was that I couldnt field our best players, simply because their GS is fooked. I did contact several coaches AGAIN the last 2 weeks reminding them I need their players, but also telling them what benefit they have from a good managed gameshape. It clearly shows that some people dont understand or dont want to understand.

We have some good 20 and 21 year old players, but their coaches cant seem to manage their gameshape and that cost us a bit. Besides that, have to be honest, I believe we have gotten the best out off this group off players and it is time for the people that think they can do better and always patronise me and criticise me, take it over and do better than the 6-3 score we got. 6-2 before the knockout phase. I only lost vs germany u21 and canada u21. I am proud off my achievement and cant wait to see certain other people do better than me... To get us to the next level we need to beat countries like germany, canada or bulgaria U21 and I cant see that happen. (talked to the bulgaria coach tonight and they have 50+ on gamedays on chat). But miracles exsist and i wish the new U21 all the best.

Moominpapa

euhm, don't know what to think of your gamble really...

just want to point out, if you are going to try and prevent their guards from passing the ball up (what i wouldn't recommend at any given moment!) then i'd think it would slightely be more logical going iwth the 1-3-1, getting the extra pressure on that PG fast...

but then again, i'll be honest to say that i wouldn't go with the 3-2 zone hoping to stop their bigs from passing...

i'd expect a 3-2 to open up EVEN more room for the Bigs to do their stuff... but then again, in your situation, you had to go with a gamble, the gamble didn't pay off.

from what i've seen you did some good work. whoever will be the next U21 coach, it will be important that he knows how to train U21 players ( preferably he would have had some experience on a good working NT team, that way, he knows wht to look for on players) and the staff surrounding him will also be very important. cause a U21 team on your own, that's hard to pull off. so in that aspect, you did more than great Astra

hats of for ya achievements with the U21, and let's pray that the next U21 coach will be able to continue your work and expand the U21 staff aswell. cause more staff ==> easier to track dow more talents and monitor more talents ==> more talents getting trained, more competition for the spots ==> more competition, will result in better players ==> better U21 ==> better NT

so the next U21 coach knows what he needs to do. get some staff would be a good start, and preferably some people from england or who have ties to england ( if the coach were to be a forreigner)

Rev

Great run Astra, too bad it had to end but at least it was a loss to a superior team. I know the GS issue has been ongoing for both NT's and with that in mind I think you got more than could be expected out of what was available. Well done.

Everyone has to admit that it was a really difficult game so,you should be sure that no one will blame you for this...I agree although with Revo that 3-2 was a not a very good choice just because the big difference in rebounding but the priority order is deffence-rebounding-offense so in this point of view there was not any other choice..In addition the most important player for this game(reffering to young,i saw his skills in TL last week)was bad shaped so...
England had a quite good team this season and this was proved in to the court,it may havent got to difficult games(could be worse surely)but it is a fact that went through the knock out round,this is some kind of succes..There are countries with more users and doing worse..Just think that England is nearly the same as Hellas(hellas has more than 2000 users)and if you add to this that active users in forum as long as i read are less than 20...But the main job for a U21 team is to train players and in this case(i do not know what was your job,next 2 seasons will prove it)i think that England should be better..I am working with absolutely less players and having some players that would be good for England too...And i cannot understand why this happening to this country,users have the main responsibility for sure..But this idea to keep players in good teams is not very good,just keep them in teams that can train them
I can feel you,when you are very happy when someone seems to be interested in U21 NT..I am U21 Malta s coach and noone seem to be interested,but in Englang you have many users to try to making them active(this threat is a very good start but seems it doesnt work eh?good try although)...Maybe some games or other tricks could be useful,but who knows?There are some countries with a large number of people on their forums..Have you ever thought what is their secret recipe?I don t know it but it could be some good start for the community...

Congratulations for your caimpaign. You did what you had to do to get to this phase, and now you needed to take risks. You took and they went wrong. But if you had not taken them, the result would be the same, so you had nothing to lose.

So again, congratulations for your good work and good luck for the future ;)

Well done Astra you put a lot of time and effort into the team and did a great job with the players and help available.
I think the English community was lucky to have you represent them and the U21 team and i hope that in the future you will still do things every now and again to help :)

Lets hope we can all do our bit to help and encourage others to help to make the U21 a stronger team in the future.

Ive been inspired by what ive seen and i will be doing my best from now on to help the U21s in whatever way i can - whether helping to scout or training some guys myself one day.

We can do it!

Fluff