BuzzerBeater Forums

Hi all, after my very good day yesterday and an Umpire reuinon, here is what has happened at the National Team lvl yesterday:

România 105 - 118 Italia
After having lost to Norway earlier, Romania knew that they'd have to take some risks if they were to keep their hopes up for qualifying for the european championship ( which would be a first in their history!)However Italy was much to strong and still beat them pretty easy. They just ended up wasting some precious enthousiasme and now face the extremely difficult task of having to beat both Belgium and Suomi and pray that their goal average(+12) will somehow get them above Belgium(+83) and Sumoi (+67)

Belgium 93 - 91 Suomi
The match of the day and the result might have ended the suspension of the qualifier (IF Romania beats Suomi next monday, then it's all over!). Big big big game from our boy's and altho our GS wasn't at it's best like it was against the Netherlands, we did well never the less. Cosimo had a big game from Q1 to Q3, going 9-10 from the field and pulling down 9 Rbs and blocking 2 shots in just 16 minutes of work! And Fleeton had a huge 4th Q, getting some crucial offensif rebounds and putting the ball back up and in to keep Belgium somewhat close to Finland. But the biggest preformance came from Vercaigne, who nailed his 2nd 3point shot to cut the lead down to 2 with 188 seconds left on the clock. He also made the all important Buzzerbeater at the end of the game, giving Belgium a much needed win and a very good position to qualify ourselves for the next round.

Azərbaycan 108 - 96 Nederland
The big surprize of the evening! Azerbejan clearly has got a grudge against the Netherlands, why would they otherwise play CT against them? This ends all dreams for the Netherlands about possible qualification with a 4-3 record ( it already had become a very long shot, but this is the dagger). You got to feel for the Netherlands headcoach. 2 seasons ago, things took a turn for the worst with some unlucky games against them ( Makedonija and Russia...) and now they started well, with a wing against Suomi, but haven't been able to beat anyone else ever since...

Cyprus 103 - 130 Norge
Logic score, Cyprus is one of the weaker teams of this pool and Norway just took care of bussiness. Norway is actually heading for the 4th spot as it stands now, depending on if Romania can still secure a win somewhere or not...

Italy 112 - 96 Belgium
a logic loss against one of the great BB Nt teams. They nearly always are in contension for the world cup, so no shame here. I'm pretty impressed that we managed to keep the score so close. With some key players out of shape, this is a pretty good result.

Romania 129 - 111 Suomi
I wasn't expecting Romania to actually pull it off even if they used their CT against Suomi. And i especially didn't expect Suomi to play TIE! But then again, 3 losses would put them out of contension for the second spot. But thanks to this, the chances of Belgium making the next round have greatly improved! But more about that later on. One thing is sure: Suomi have been knocked out of contension for the 2nd spot, which is a great relief for Belgium. Cause Suomi in CT against Italy in TIE, they could win that game. had they won tonite, then we would have been forced to go all out against Romania and be sure to win our next game to go to the next round. And you got to feel for Suomi. They lose a couple of Bigs ( 300K ones!) so they were weakened. And once again, playing 2-3 is a real risk, as is shown in this game. If suomi had played Man to man, they probably would have won this game, despite the Ct from Romania...

Netherlands 123 - 95 Cyprus
a logical defeat for Cyprus. Netherlands get a win and will try and salvage whatever ranking they can on the NT rankings list to avoid a super heavy pool in 2 seasons from now. for the second season in a row, things didn't turn out in their favor. Sometimes you got to be lucky, and they just have had bad luck so far... But BB usually is a fair game, so some day, the sun will shine again for them (after this dreadfull period of rain)! And i'd hate to face them then, cause they really do have a good team ( you can't defeat Suomi on equal power if you don't have some luck and a pretty good team. And the Netherlands have got a better team than us in general. We just got a few exceptional players that can cause some mismatches that works very much in our favor). I hope that they'll win their last game too ( just because they are our northern neighbours. They can be really enjoyable when they want to, and i've often seen alot of humor in their chat during the games).

norway 108 - 91 Azerbejan
No surprise here. Altho the Azerbejan coach wasted some enthousiasme. not sure why he did so, considering that next week he's got a game against Cyprus which will decide who ends last in this pool...




As for next NT game:

We know that:
1st place (and the first ticket) will be going to Italy. Nobody can jump over them, not even on goal average (unless they lose by 50 points to Suomi and we were to win by 50 points of Romania... which isn't going to happen)

in contension for the second place are Belgium and Romania. If Belgium doesn't lose by more than 18 points from Romania, then Belgium will go on to the next round. Futhermore, Romania has used up alot of their enthousiasme, where as ours is still at our highest possible lvl. This means that Belgium has a great advantage against Romania. However, Romania doesn't have anything to lose anymore, so they will play CT against Belgium. But let's to talk about losing. Belgium will be playing to win the game. No need to take any unnecessairy risks when qualification for the next round is within our grasp.

Netherlands, Suomi, Norway, Azerbejan and Cyprus are out of contension for the second spot that would qualify the team to move onto the european championship and thus will play for the best possible rankings in their last games.

On to next week, and let us hope that we will emerge victorious, so that we can move onto the next round with a solid record!

Revo

congratulations !...

Sweet redemption.

i'll post more info tomorrow. We're going to the european cup! HELL YEAH!

gratz.

no matter what happens in the tournament, we can already be proud of the achievements of the Belgian staff

i'm pretty dissapointed by the results tho. I wanted to win atleast one game... But my whole planning fell apart due to unexpected results from certain teams. Ow well, we were the weakest team of our group, so it's no shame. But i still regret not having been able to win atleast one game. Who would have though that the French NT would turn out to be the second weakest team of our pool?

We did what we could.

Anyhow, i've started with updating the database for our NT players and i've already found some very pleasant surprizes. Howver, most nations are starting to get 300k C's and 200k guards, and unless we find some managers who are willingly to take on such salary, we won't be able to compete for anything better than participation in the european championship.

the only way that we might be able to do better, is to create players that would be nightmare match-ups... problem is, it's hard to get em and demands alot of sacrifice from the trainer training those players...

their is no easy way to succes. But if we keep working and keep putting a competitive team up, then we should be able to aim for the top. What concerns me most is that nobody has shown any interest in our NT or it's job as headcoach, and i would hate to step down only to see what i've worked for so hard during these past seasons, go to waste...

anyhow, what can still be expected of Belgian NT this season?

We'll be doing a test game, in which i'll be testing something new out. Futhermore, i'll be calling up alot of players, to update em in our database. As mentioned, alot of interesting things have surfaced. Deciding who will make the team next season is going to be a hard process. We got about 25 players who all could make a valuable claim to be part of the NT (if only everyone would keep their GS up...)

If anyone has any intension of getting the NT job, might want to start mailing me. That would give you a season to introduce you to the job, to show you what it all takes. Alot of managers underestimate the ammount of work the NT demands off you. So i'd rather introduce a couple of guy's to how things work, to be sure they know what they are getting themselves into when they are going for the NT election. I would like for someone else to take over the job, but if none seem serious, then i might run for another campaign untill we get a serious candidate.