BuzzerBeater Forums

It was you, don't play dumb.

"we peel off you like a Musa of a goat".

Ha-ha.
That is the expression in our country, when someone beats you in something. It doesn't mean an insult, although it sounds like that in English. Sounds harsh but not quite 🙃

Jog on, champ.

Is this some of your local joke or do you want to kick me off the forum? 😁

Pozdrav! 🇷🇸

Just some friendly advice to help you with your good grace and humility. You’re embarrassing yourself and your countrymen. You’ve had your fun. Time to move on.

We've made a solid start to our Consolation Cup wit a 21-point win over Croatia, 117-96.
After some initial foul trouble, particularly to the very lively John Duffield in the early stages, we got a hold of them in the second and third to have the game stitched up and the fourth quarter mostly what you would call junk time. Not a bad effort given two of our best bigs were out of action through injury or game shape.

Our ball movement was a feature and reflects the benefits of trying to field a solid passing team. Aaron Grunter led the way early to finish with an impressive 24 points, 4 boards and two assists while team captain Hongjing had 23 points, two boards and 4 assists off the bench.
Starting guards Houghton and Duffield each had 7 assists on the night, which was a great sign, while Houghton also knocked down 19 points.
Begum was also lively off the bench with 18 points and 5 boards, showing the benefits of eating less pies and running more laps, while Biglands, Bill and Cull kept the rebound count in our favour.

On paper Croatia is probably the toughest of our seeding games so hopefully this is the start of a run that gets us to the knock out stages again. Game shape will be important so hopefully our managers find a way to keep their weekly minutes around that 65-mark and preferably not higher than 75 if it can be avoided. It'd be great to try and push deep into the knock out stages this season if we can and challenge for a Home Asian Cup next season.

Let's go team!

Also, I apologise for the lack of chat on here over the last month, it's been a rough patch in my home life following a death in the family and then surgery for myself, so I've just been keeping the team running and letting some of the social stuff slide. But I'm back at the keyboard (one-handed) and looking to keep this community growing!

Feels like there's a good window of opportunity emerging for us in terms of the NT players we have for the next couple of seasons, so if we do turn this good consolation draw into HCA for next season I am confident we can ride it all the way to a world cup berth. Especially if recent forum talks about dropping the repechage and expanding the tournament itself come to pass.

Considering what you've been going through recently, you've done a fine job to stay on top of the main tasks one needs to for an NT. Making lengthy posts here is never a requirement, especially when the outside world gets in the way.

Thanks Jay,

Hopefully if we can get one or two managers a little more on board with game shape by next season and we have another two or three guys in key areas keep progressing to plan we should be looking solid for at least the next three to four seasons. Have stacks of depth in some areas, just a little bit of work to do in a couple of others.

Well, we did what we needed to do against UAE - chalk up a solid win.
Our win over Croatia has given us the luxury of trialling some things over the next couple of weeks so we have a good reading of what sort of options we have come the knock out games.
Long time big man Bridesmaid Ian Bill is loving the space created by the recent retirements of some long time gun bigs and is thriving at PF, while our Laga-aia and Cull got to have a run in some new spots. Laga went bang, Cull not so much, but he was probably further out of position. There's more to learn.
The win pushes us up to 34th in the seedings, two spots out and we've already squared the ledger of the 0-2 start we get coming from the Repechage Rounds to be 2-2 with a +64 points diff. That means if any teams currently seeded from 16 down to us drops a game next week we'll jump above them and into playoff position and from there it's ours to lose.
The goal is to try and finish inside the top-20 in the seedings this season and give ourselves the best possible chance at getting through at least the first round.
Standing in our way right now are Puerto Rico (0-4), Ghana (0-4), Norway (3-1) and Lebanon (2-2). The last two of those are probably our biggest hurdles to a knock out stage, but if our awesome community of managers keep producing game shapes like they did this week we should be a great chance.
The primary goal is to make the knock out stage, the secondary to be the last Asian team standing to earn home court rights at the next Asian Cup. After that we dare to dream. There are some VERY big fish in this Consol Cup this year, but we won't die wondering.

We went into Tuesday morning's game hunting a percentage booster and we nailed it, scoring an 82-point margin against Puerto Rico. That was despite some absolute carnage to our list on the night, with three guys getting injured and two others fouling out, which saw some guys playing minutes out of position. Puerto Rico may not have had our measure in terms of hoops on the night, but if this had been a boxing match it appears they had our number!
Laga-aia was blistering in his 14 minutes before taking a hard hit, nailing 20 points. Any time you score more points than minutes you're doing ok, I reckon.

Bill and Cull offered plenty in the paint while our defensive effort overall was super - though it has to be said it can be easy to read too much into a stat line given the mis-match this game was.
Looking to keep that sort of form rolling this week.

That win put us up into the knock out bracket - we're currently the second highest ranked side on 3 wins, placing us 23rd.
It's ours to lose from here, basically meaning winning our last three games ensures us a place, so now i's about the points diff we can muster to improve our ranking.
Ghana this week in a week and then Norway in All Star week, a week that is notorious for some sketchy game shape - fingers crossed our team of managers keep doing their thing and providing really competitive game shapes.

This week's win brought to a close the seeding rounds of the Consolation Cup and I'm pleased to report the first of our objectives has been achieved, winning each of our 6 games to finish 6-2 and rank 13th in the seedings the third highest of the 6-2 teams and the highest of the Asian based teams.
This has drawn us a first round knock out game against Japan, who if our game shape remains solid we should be a reasonable chance against.
There are three other Asian sides left in the Cup, Japan, Philippines and Hong Kong. Our next goal is to go deeper into the knock out stage than those guys to earn hosting rights to next season's Asian Cup. Our squad is coming together nicely for next season and with home court I feel we should be confident of at least making the semi final stages and then we can dare to dream of making a World Cup.

The knock out stages have taken their toll on our older guys, with Ronnie Gibbins and Du Hongjing having squeezed every last drop of talent out of themselves and likely to be having a rest under their grandpa knee rugs unless something goes wrong with our line up from here.
Both have been absolute warriors for our squad for a long time, Hongjing finishing as the all time leading assist disher and the third highest scorer after 128 games in the green and gold. Gibbins finishes as our 12th highest rebounder of all time and 6th highest for blocks.
The next generation coming through have a slightly different look and feel to them to these two old school guys which will require some slightly different management and use, but based on current form things are looking bright.

We play japan at home at 7pm on Monday night - tune in and enjoy the ride as we push for a spot in the second round.