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Congrats. Do you think you have a good chance of being the last African team?

against al Jazair I think we have better momentum, although challenging. I am very worried about Ghana: their coach is doing a wonderful job leveraging a lower than average roster, but he's smart and he's taking the best out of scheduling, as done so far. We have to try to win twice, then we'll see.

I have reviewed once more our first bad loss, but there was no way to understand he would have put a SG as SF, as in the first games he did not set the roster

Congrats. Do you think you have a good chance of being the last African team?

against al Jazair I think we have better momentum, although challenging. I am very worried about Ghana: their coach is doing a wonderful job leveraging a lower than average roster, but he's smart and he's taking the best out of scheduling, as done so far. We have to try to win twice, then we'll see.

I have reviewed once more our first bad loss, but there was no way to understand he would have put a SG as SF, as in the first games he did not set the roster

after last nigh update, our ranking jumped 10 slots ahead.

South Africa is now #54 in U21 worldwide ranking, the best spot ever (at least since when I can check it).

Congrats. Do you think you have a good chance of being the last African team?

against al Jazair I think we have better momentum, although challenging. I am very worried about Ghana: their coach is doing a wonderful job leveraging a lower than average roster, but he's smart and he's taking the best out of scheduling, as done so far. We have to try to win twice, then we'll see.

I have reviewed once more our first bad loss, but there was no way to understand he would have put a SG as SF, as in the first games he did not set the roster :/

Well good luck. Congrats on the rating improvement and I hope you can possibly get it into the top 50. :)

Congrats. Do you think you have a good chance of being the last African team?

against al Jazair I think we have better momentum, although challenging. I am very worried about Ghana: their coach is doing a wonderful job leveraging a lower than average roster, but he's smart and he's taking the best out of scheduling, as done so far. We have to try to win twice, then we'll see.

I have reviewed once more our first bad loss, but there was no way to understand he would have put a SG as SF, as in the first games he did not set the roster

Well good luck. Congrats on the rating improvement and I hope you can possibly get it into the top 50.

thanks. top 50 looks like now as something tough but feasible, if everything will go well. it was impossible even to dream at the beginning of the mandate. as mentioned, all that is possible because managers and staff are performing very very well. we just need some luck, good shape, no injuries, smart tactics

Congrats. Do you think you have a good chance of being the last African team?

against al Jazair I think we have better momentum, although challenging. I am very worried about Ghana: their coach is doing a wonderful job leveraging a lower than average roster, but he's smart and he's taking the best out of scheduling, as done so far. We have to try to win twice, then we'll see.

I have reviewed once more our first bad loss, but there was no way to understand he would have put a SG as SF, as in the first games he did not set the roster :/

Well good luck. Congrats on the rating improvement and I hope you can possibly get it into the top 50. :)

thanks. top 50 looks like now as something tough but feasible, if everything will go well. it was impossible even to dream at the beginning of the mandate. as mentioned, all that is possible because managers and staff are performing very very well. we just need some luck, good shape, no injuries, smart tactics :)

Well good luck. Hopefully you can get home court for next season and then take that all the way to the World Championships. :)

Our NT is at #36 now and the U21 is at 54. I think we all know where the credit is due...wonderful job NT coaches. We are one of the least active nations and yet our NT is better than so many others. Great work!

Unfortunately, I have not received a decent trainee in a while, so Steve Ellsworth and Thimbellike Nxu will be the only potential NT stars I have, and only Ellsworth at this point even looks to have a chance. He's 6'7 with skills that are about 6 or 7 across the board, so he'll be trained to be a SF.

Last edited by jclebeaux at 8/19/2010 10:23:14 AM

Our NT is at #36 now and the U21 is at 54. I think we all know where the credit is due...wonderful job NT coaches. We are one of the least active nations and yet our NT is better than so many others. Great work!

Unfortunately, I have not received a decent trainee in a while, so Steve Ellsworth and Thimbellike Nxu will be the only potential NT stars I have, and only Ellsworth at this point even looks to have a chance. He's 6'7 with skills that are about 6 or 7 across the board, so he'll be trained to be a SF.

Much appreciated edit: even more, considering my poll slipped down to 40%

We are doing our best to capitalize as much as possible. Without my staff, and without patient, contiuous work of talented managers there would not be any possible result. That's true for U21 and even more for NT, as it takes much more time to grow NT players. It is also a side effect of previous coaches' work (Jordan and Trex): Jordan did a great job, and is doing the same in his new NT.

About draft, well, there is nothing to do. It's question of luck. With no impact by bots, this season we picked just one single tall man! And some potentially good players were picked by managers who have left the game afterwards, loosing many training sessions... To improve here, there is nothing to do but having a larger basis. At the end of the day, if NT is less dependent on a good draft session (even in the long term there is a difference), U21 definitely depends on it. If you look at a well managed U21 (Nigeria), last season they had several 20 and 19ers as one draft session was simply horrible. And it is hard to compete with young guys.

Last edited by GM-BlackMouse at 8/19/2010 12:47:47 PM

It is late, so I just want to leave a quick comment to the match. Tomorrow I will have some more time to give some details.

We were limited by roster condition, and there were no more option even looking at database. Guards were limited, and we was attacked exactly there. Against a tough defense, I wanted to capture as many rebounds as possible: evaluation tells me I did the right thing, but score tells another story.

Our MOTS was balance by Island's, so even this extreme attempt was countered. No chance to win at the end.

Ghana got its 4th won and is very close to get home field; Al Jazair lost and is still +1 compared to us.

Keep fighting. Too bad game shape wasnt good for us.

The day afterit is easier to review a loss

In Island, we had to fight to win and keep chances to get home field for next African Cup. We faced this match with a mess in PG spot: Schartner was back from injury, recovering to a miracolous 6 in shape, not enough against good opponents; Resha, his natural backup, went broken Saturday; Adam, our SG backup, was 6 in shape. I felt simply crazy to try to attack in motion, as in plan, so I changed to an aggressive LI with Issa in SF spot: it was risky against a probable R&G (as we were short of guards), but I was to leverage better rebounding and internal attack to compensate. Attitude was a critical factor, so I spent a MOTS. Finally, I shifted Kolane in PG (as we had no PG...) to leverage is shooting and defense, as Neimand was too low in primaries to be a starter, and Mbangwa as "heavy" SG.

Everything went as expected, apart of Island's MOTS. Evaluations are the best we ever had, probably in SA history. (11595) Attack was good, rebounding was expected to be better than Island's (it was, and we capture 2 rebounds less ^^), lost balls were not bad (13 against Island's 14), but at the end we took not so good shots (32/94, with 0/13 3prs), and we forced not enough fouls. Let me name Diliza Issa as our MVP: I hope that will be appreciated by his new manager, who was able to recover an almost lost talent and prepare him to a match like this. Thank you to jclebeaux for having given Schartner in passable condition - unfortunately, not enough to compete.

However, nothing more could have been done. Island had a better roster. Even looking at whole db, there were no suitable alternatives. Our biggest problem is that we can even build a somewhat competitive roster (we are #54, don't forget!) but with a minimal number of players. If you fail or is unavailable for whicever reason, we don't have backups. At this moment, we have just 5 guards (schartner, kolane, mbangwa, resha, adam) + an incomplete prospect (neimand) that we can put on the field in an international competition (consolation, qualifiers, or top matches in Africa).

Ghana won against Senegal, while Al Jazair lost again, so we can still top the seconds while Ghana is unreachable. We will work to close the official matches of this mandate with a third won.