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a good W! keep it up! ;)

i had been bisy IRL last time and had no opportunity to be active on forum, but now everything a bit better.
We played against Tounisia last Monday (29506). That match was really useless, beacause Tounisia has nearly 0 chances to play in the 2nd group stage and match result wont be counted. I can not analyze the performance of the team, because the opponent is very weak. Lets move on.
Our tomorrow rival is Egypt. They surprised me previous week and won Nigeria on equal attitude. We might have better enthusiasm and better roster and game shape, so i expect only to win.

(29511) +29 vs Egypt
I am satisfied with result and with the perfomance. I tested patient offence to find our best shooter as GE sees it. As for personalities, E5 duo and our front court won this game.
That was the last easy match for us at this stage.

(29514) +19 vs Nigeria
I have to say that this W is all about tactics. I expected Nigeria to play outside tactic and decided to play 3-2 zone. As for us, we have better front court so it was predictable to play inside. I decided to play Princeton, because it is outside tactic but guards shoot more from inside. Also 2-3 zone cant stop it and the worse defence vs Princeton. Nigeria played Motion - easy stopped by 3-2, and 2-3 defence failed as i wish to be. Also, they played with higher attitude, so not so correct tactic could lead to loss.

PS: I write this message via mobile phone, so pls sorry for some possible mistakes.

a solid performance so far! ;)

Actually, nothing special. We were by far better then opponents and only Nigeria was strong rival. It is obvious, that we will be in the semifinals, but upcoming matches are important to be 1st after 2nd group stage and play vs weaker Nigeria, than vs monster Senegal or strong Algeria.
Also, i am just a coach, not GM, so significant contribution in current position is made by players owners, who are doing mainly great.

Last edited by Mod-Borgore at 8/22/2014 1:11:10 PM

Actually, nothing special. We were by far better then opponents and only Nigeria was strong rival. It is obvious, that we will be in the semifinals, but upcoming matches are important to be 1st after 2nd group stage and play vs weaker Nigeria, than vs monster Senegal or strong Algeria.
Also, i am just a coach, not GM, so significant contribution in current position is made by players owners, who are doing mainly great.

even GMs have no superpowers to enable training!

well done (so far...!)

Today we are playing against Senegal, the team with the best roster this year. While preparing to this match I thought that it is not enough just a words to prove their straight and made some researches. Here is team comparison :

TOP10 salary:
Senegal = 128740
South Africa = 94151
TOP10 DMI:
Senegal = 1667700
South Africa = 900100

The situation is not so optimistic, but its ok, cause salary isnt very accurate index as skills themselves. As for DMI, we have really bad gameshape this week and only 1 bench player has 9GS. Senegal has a few key players in proficient GS so the DMI difference is quite big.
Lets move on to one of the best index for national team - match ratings calculations (BBStats).

AVERAGE BBSTATS
Senegal = 101.62
South Africa =98.27

MAX BBSTATS
Senegal = 107.88 vs Algeria
South Africa = 109.86 vs Egypt

Well, BBstats is really great index, because it shows how the team plays and game ratings include all information about players, tactics, enthusiasm, etc. This index doesn’t works for teams, cause the numbers will differ a lot during the season because of cup matches, transfers and so on. But it is great while evaluating NT straight.
So, the 3 point difference in average BBstats is like math variance and doesn’t play huge role for us now. Aslo, according to the data, Senegal played 2 normal games already that is our advantage.

Tactics:
We are playing Patient and 2-3 zone. 2-3 zone will help us to stop their SF-P-C players and provide more rebounds. We don’t have enough players with ID to stop them and Man-to-Man could lead to huge amount of 2nd chance points.
We play patient offence, because our best shooters are guards and Senegal has weak guards in bed GS, so I expect over 50% FG from Mandela, Toivo and Brocklehurst. As for forwards, they just need to grab rebounds.

Good luck us!

(29518) -8
The game was really weird. I watched the game from the start and i was shocked. We started 1-15 and the first made FG was on 9 minute. Then we managed to recover and even got a 1 point lead in the 2nd. All other quaters were very tight. 4 minutes before the end we had -2, but game engine decided that its time to shoot 3 points and nearly all shots were missed. Actually, the score -8 was made by FT, the real score had to be like -4 or smth. I dont feel like i made a mistake, the opponent was too good this time. The key to success was GameShape and too much turnovers. 2-3 zone worked great, we grabed many offencive rebs and actually managed to limit their main force. Our guards were stopped by 3-2 zone, but if we played inside offence we would lost like at least 30 points.
Senegal was lucky to win 2nd game in a row in a very close game. I will try to prepare better next time. This loss in not fatal, but we have to win Senegal in the 2nd group stage.
Peace out

We lost 2 matches against the strongest team this year. I just want to explain my thoughts and the reasons of defeats

Senegal has the best chances for gold and monster roster. They prepared well before match and had significantly better game shape. 3-2 zone and strong personal defenders with high value of ID havent left us any chances. I decided to play normal, because despite all our weaknesses, we had chance to win. The difference was just -2 and if i decided to use GDP we could even won.

Algeria lost just 1 point to Senegal on equal attitude and aslo had great GS vs us. I was just stunned on Friday when i saw training update. Brocklehurst, Mandela and Toivo, our main offencive force had 7 GS. Our forwards has 9 GS, so that was obvious choise to play Look inside. That tactic could provide the lowest loss. -23 is not what i expected to get, but that is the real power of our team at this moment of time.

Our last 3 games summaries:

(30101) +13 vs Nigeria
Tough opponent and 4th place candidate. We played 2 different halfs, 1st was ours, but we lost our advantage in th end. Brocklehurst hit 10, Cebekhului 19, while team leader Mandela enjoyed his best shooting night of the season with 39 thanks in large part to a stunning three-point shooting performance (6-11). The only problems were turnovers and poor FT%.

(30105) +71 vs Marocco
Onesided game vs outsider. The main hero of the night was Danny Brocklehurst who converted tripple-double - 24 pts, 11rebs, 10 assists (btw he assisted game buzzerbeater, which made his TD)

(30107) -3 vs Algeria
The last time we met they outscored us by 23 points. I decided to play another tactics, inside iso and actually it helped. They might have slightly better game shape, because one of our leaders Toivo constantly has unexceptable GS and could play much much better every game. Both teams played great defence and it was realy nailbitter in the end. We fought hard. With 9 minutes to go we were under by 12, but we fought back. We were down by 3 like last 1,5 minutes and could not made a single FG. As for Algeria, they missed 4 consecutive FT in the end. The game engine decided that the best shooter for the decisive 3pt is Cebekhului (atrocious jump range) and we lost. However, this loss is optimistic, as we can pla on the same level with Algeria and under better circumstances we can win next time.

nice summary. thx. ;)