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Losing by 12 against France is far from horrible.

Hungary U21 @ Belgium U21: 85-119 (57834)


I made my line-up on friday after the weekly training updates. Several key players were in excellent shape. But on Saturday our guard Beau Smits had an injury, so we could not count on him for the match against Hungary. Too bad because his manager just sent me that his GS was perfect. Maxime Becue replaced him in the squad.

I felt that if we want to get the most out of this tournament, I should go for a TIE. It was a risk, altough not impossible to win because of our HCA. I knew Hungary would play a CT, so I decided to go for a GDP only when I was sure about it. After some analysis there were 2 options:

My first opinion was to go for a slow pace. The Hungarian manager love to play princeton and patient. I wasn't sure if he was trying to get his best player to score or go for a 3 point contest. Anyway I told our youngsters to defend in a 3-2 zone, which could break both tactics.
After more thinking and analyzing I went for my second option, I was sure that Hungary would play motion or princeton. So I went for an outside tactic and removed the slow pace and my experience told me to set nothing if I wasn't sure.

For our attacking play: the Hungarian manager didn't use his GDP during his campaign as U21 coach. So I went for the obvious one, going with a LI because of our GS and DMI.

It was nail biting up to the game to see what they were going to do. And first thing I've seen was a perfect GDP. They went for a motion, MTM and no GDP. We took off with a perfect start. An amazing 3th quarter led us to a victory with no waste of enthousiasm. Mission accomplished.

Fun note about our game: we played with four 20 year olds. Arne, Ciel, Nemo and Maxime.

Next week we'll face a strong Serbia. They've won their home game against Indonesia, also with a TIE.
We'll go for another nice result.

In the other fixtures there were no actual surprises. The home teams could win their game, only Portugal (against France) and Ecuador (against Uruguay) lost it logically. Now the tournament can really begin }:>


Last edited by Splash_Brother at 11/17/2020 02:13:17

Serbia U21 - Belgium U21 88-80 (57883)

A game with the same enthousiasm.
A game we should have won in many cases. But the outcome is different...

At the half we were leading by 17!! The 2nd half was just horrible and we made too many fouls. We lost by the details aka freethrows and Serbia could take advantage of this. Too bad our adventure ends here, I'm really disappointed by the result.

During the campaign we lost against France and Serbia, both at home and with tiny losses. Both countries are still in the running...
When I look at our neighbours the Netherlands, who are also qualified for the quarter finals, well... that should have been us. That 7-1 was not enough and yet we had the team to go far. Our GS was good to excellent week after week.

But given the circumstances, I think everything went according to plan. The matches we had to win were won without wasting enthousiasm. That last game I didn't use the GDP. I wasn't 100% sure (balanced or inside). It was a 50-50% chance.

In the upcoming weeks there will be practice matches scheduled to prepare us for the next season.


Coach Warrior