BuzzerBeater Forums

To all candidates, please tell me the importance of Shot Blocking to you, personally and u21.

1. How will you manage (or delegate managing) the U21 pipeline? Scouting, outreach to managers, suggesting builds, etc.

I plan to be very hands on, so I will be staying on top of all the scouting. This means ill be sending bbmails for updates pretty regularly for 20s and 21s, but would hopefully have a few people that would assist me with keeping the 18s and 19s updated. Doing all 4 age groups would be a lot to handle so I would be open to have whoever is willing to keep on top of some players to do it.

2. Do you prioritize specific builds or are you looking for a mix? Do you prioritize calling up players owned by domestic managers? Why or why not?

I would like a mix, that way we can be diverse in what we run. We usually have a lot of the same builds, with a few outliers here and there, but never enough to actually fully run some cool, effective lineups. As for the domestic managers question....not really. I more look at the minutes the player receives to see if they will be kept in good GS throughout the season. If I see a player getting 48 mins every game they are not going to be called up, even if they are maybe a little bit better than a different player that gets good minutes. That 48 min player would just sit the bench with their low GS. Now in the case where I have 2 similar players that both get good minutes, one owned by US and one foreign, I would likely select the US owned player. So I guess maybe a little bit lol

3. What do you think our U21 program has been lacking in recent seasons, if anything? What will you do to address it?

Key Decision Making. We have been making it pretty far (with the exception of this past season), but haven't been making the correct key decisions in crucial moments when we get to the playoffs. I am confident that with the knowledge I have learned in these past few seasons that I can make the correct decisions in these moments.

1) I like have a trusted team, let’s say 3-4 strong, that can help with scouting or player interaction. Being able to call every promising u21 player up to see starting skills and progress will be my job. Discord makes it easy to connect with a lot of managers as well. I like specialty builds for players that otherwise wouldn’t have a chance at u21. A true SG with JS JR that has next to no secondary skills. An elite D and passing big. High passing but no shooting skills. Those are fun builds for any player that would be nice to have in the pipeline in case we need them.

2) See above. I was just in awe of the big Italy had two seasons ago that destroyed us in the finals. No IS, lots of ID, SB, and passing, with high passing and JS. Having players like that who could step up has won other countries championships. Our « cookie cutter » builds are elite. We might be the best in the world at those. We should have those continue to be the ideal build for most players. But this game is all about the little variances that certain builds can offer, and supplement.

I like USA managers just because they are easier to reach and smack on the backside of the head when they screw up GS. Really discord users most of all. If there is a foreign owned player, I’ll go to the previous seasons and see what kind of minutes that player has. A good history would not eliminate any player. A fantastic player with a bad history will get a nice google translate message, pleading for better minutes. But two equal players, one American owned and one foreign owned? The American manager is getting their guy called up.

3) I love everything GForce has done the last 6 seasons with the community and scouting. Some of his losses were not his fault. Taking continental competition more serious? Treat that Semi like it’s Italy or Spain! That’s about my only big complaint.

Last edited by oriolekid at 01/11/2022 16:34:29

To all candidates, please tell me the importance of Shot Blocking to you, personally and u21.

Reuben Jones in theory was an awesome player, but he never played like one. SB is tricky at u21 for that reason. I like it a lot. I think your teams interior D is better with SB even in place of ID sometimes. Zone offenses work better with SB, and you have to construct a team that can do M2M as well as a zone D. So for overall roster construction, it is key.

To all candidates, please tell me the importance of Shot Blocking to you, personally and u21.

Ill start with personally, up until recently I really didn't care about SB for my team. I just never thought it was actually very useful. But after seeing the effectiveness of some players with it, I definitely like to see it on my players much more. I think you can do some pretty cool things with SB.

For u21, I would say it is pretty important. I don't really like seeing 7 or 8 SB on bigs anymore. That used to be the norm but the norm is outdated. SB can be used to exploit teams in a very unique way as long as you have the build to do it. The SB build will obviously have tons of it, but the typical build we all always see definitely needs to have SB trained in some capacity. A big without SB nowadays is an average big.

But to expand, it’s tough for a u21 to have SB, ID, IS, and Rebounding so you have to pick which one you leave out. I could look long and hard at a 15 IS 13 ID 9 Reb 16 SB guy, for example. My curiosity might demand me to see how he plays.

No thanks

With the instruction to be train ID until I tell you to stop.

Is not the ID, 9RB is just asking for some sort of a treatment with no lube.

1) My team of BB Elites will staff the pipeline scouting team.

2a) No specific builds but builds that have the necessary skills. Not a great deal of variance for this age group to attain compared to NT.

2b) I don’t care where they’re from as long as they train and manage GS. Some of the best NT players I had were foreign owned.

3) Me.

Personally:
1) SB
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374) Everything else


For U21: It depends on the rest of the skills. I built some of our first SB bigs for U21 but also know they have to fit with the rest of the team and have others filling in the gaps if you have higher SB and a lower bigs skill.