Thanks for the question. I'm glad we didn't get the same question, as BB Canada has changed a lot in my opinion since the times that RIP ran the program.
To answer your question, that first season for me, I was mixing in a lot of 'feeling it out' (as it was my first NT season ever) and trying to conserve enthusiasm more than some of the other teams. The Uruguay win was huge. His team was probably better than ours, but I wanted to use our depth and extra enthusiasm to our advantage. They used more enthusiasm in that game and guessed GDP correctly, but it worked out.
To be honest, it was a community effort. I've always kept a positive outlook and others have reciprocated. You guys gave me super good game shape (at least until the very most important game at the end when some key players had lower game shape that week). I also felt that i worked well with my assistant Manziel(unfortunately he had to do real life things the last little while) and that we each brought something different to the table, so we were a good mix. I still feel that I sometimes took a few too many GDP gambles(something to work on) but I felt overall my choice in tactics to offset the other teams' strengths and weaknesses was a strong point. Because we aren't super strong compared to other countries' top end talent, we depend on depth . And we had great depth and i also feel i mixed in some great veterans who had very high experience points, that helped when in the clutch.
I know some of you might have thought that I was a fool for trying to make worlds , which cost us in the consolation this year, but to be fair, our best chance of making it was now, as our best players and highest tsp players were aging players. So silly or not, I felt we needed to make the attempt, and it almost worked. These next few years are gonna be interesting to see if people can finish off their training to get the next generation to us. I specifically try to put (amicable) pressure on those training big men, because we just do not have the depth in the pipeline(at least in the next 2-4 seasons).
Would I change something? Well, I've always presented as being open to suggestion and open to change. So there is always worth in changing approaches. Clearly, I need to use GdP less, but sometimes I felt like our team wasn't as good(maybe I was wrong and our team was better than I thought).. one huge change is making sure by using NT Scouting tool, to make sure that we don't lose best players(if i can help it) to BOT teams. Losing Cockayne still hurts alot, and i wont get into it because I've already stated that before. So that is something I will keep tabs on better.
I also would like to continue to try to learn more about different tactics, so we don't seem so obvious in our tactics. I read the forums, but if i win, i'd love to have managers around who can help me, understand with greater depth the types of players needed to run other offenses that we don't usually use.
Sorry about the rambling.. the British Open is on tv.. hopefully i answered some of your question.
MC
Last edited by Music_Chick at 7/21/2018 1:10:25 PM