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National Team Press Release


Season 20 Preview

Tonight we start Season 20 in which we will participate in the 86 team World Wide Consolation tournament. We will play 8 qualifiers against randomly selected teams. The top 32 teams advance to a single elimination tournament. Going in we are ranked 47th in the world. If you take out the 12 teams who will play in the world championships then we are the 35th ranked team in the competition. Our ranking puts us just outside the top 32. So I think we would call it a success if we qualify for the second round.

Since the games are randomly chosen and we don’t know the last 6 games yet, it is difficult to put a prediction on the season. But I would expect us to be somewhere on the border of advancing and not advancing, with the quality of matches having some influence over that.

Our first two games will be at home against #75 Cyprus and away at #41 Srbjia. I would expect us to win the first one and have a challenging time in the second one. As everyone knows, game shape is an important factor in our performance. So let’s all work to keep those game shapes high so we can get the best results.

Let me take a minute to discuss the roster. First, I want to officially welcome top prospect, 22 year old center, Kouzo Yasujiro to the team from Swoosh (Japan). He will start as a reserve but I expect as the season progresses he will get his chances to play. As he continues to develop or as injuries and game shapes dictate, he will gain more playing time. We’ve been in need of some help inside so I’m really excited to get him on the team.

For the rest of the roster, I have retained all the players from last season’s team. This could be the last season for our two 33 year olds, SF Yuhei Suenami from Northern Kyushu Ramen Kings (Japan), and C Kaname Kouzuki from Kyoto Shogun (Japan). I haven’t seen any skill drops for either of them yet so they will continue to be useful this season. We will reassess where they stand next season. Let’s wish both players good luck this season. (Maybe their owners may want to invest in some career extension?)

We still have 2 empty roster spots. There are a number of interesting future prospects I’ve been watching and we could use two of the spots for a couple of them at some point. I’m still deciding who I want to use those spots on so stay tuned. I will post a list and stack rank of the top National Team prospects soon.

Half-time, down 50-48. Ulp...

Great run in the 3rd...

Big second half run for 15 point victory. And that was with Cyprus playing a CT. I guess that's why it was close for the first half.

Great write up and an excellent win. Keep up the outstanding work.

The trouble is exceptional + trainers with Specialty: Career Extension look to be going around nearly a million. If you ever see one looking a bit more reasonable let me know but for now I have my exceptional with no speciality.

Season 20 Week 2

Last week we Overcame a CT from our opponenet and a little bit of gameshape issues to secure a 15 point victory over Cyprus. Once again Furusawa was a huge force with 30 points and 15 rebounds. We also recieved big contributions from Oishi (20pts and 6 assists) and Tagawa (11pts, 8 assists, 2 steals).

After the first week we are 1-0 PD +15 which puts us at 21st in the standings. But, its just the first week.

In Week 2 we face the tough Serbian team and will be playing at their place. They are ranked 38th and just came off a 117-103 victory at England. They look like they have some really good bigs which will cause us trouble. However, we had a decent gameshape update and hopefully that will help us out.

As promissed I want to post prospect rankings so everyone can get a glimpse of what talent is on the way. Players are in order of how close they are to making the team (based on a scoring system)

Guards
Player Age Potential Team Country
Hironobu Yokotami 23 Sup Celtics Montevarchi Italy
Hideyuki Honda 22 PA Baikinman Japan
Kenya Mizuno 24 HOF Hillheads Warriors Scotland
Masamitsu Honda 25 MVP Penetrator City Serbia
Takao Shiomi 23 Sup Mythical Man-Month Japan
Makoto Asada 23 MVP Atl Estacion II Spain
Hideharu Ouchi 22 Sup Baikinman Japan
$ - Yasushi Yokoyama 22 Sup Mi smo Kamikaze Serbia
Issei Takashima 23 Sup Mi smo Kamikaze Serbia


Small Forward
Player Age Potential Team Country
Yuusuke Tsunami 22 SUP Fire Country Trailblazers Japan
Motosugu Sendai 22 MVP Mythical Man-Month Japan
Takao Shiomi 23 SUP Mythical Man-Month Japan

Bigs
Player Age Potential Team Country
Tohru Asano 23 MVP Kitakyushu Japan
Masahide Iwata 23 MVP Swoosh Japan
Soichiro Motoori 22 MVP Kitakyushu Japan


As you can see, we have alot more talent coming for guards then the other spots. I guess this is normal here in Japan. I have heard of some good players in U21 which could help build out the list further as they come up.

$ - indicates player currently for sale.


Last edited by Taiyo at 6/4/2012 6:39:30 PM

Very interesting and good report. Great game against Cyprus it seems we are in safe hands this season.

It turns out that Serbia was even better than expected, and we got crushed by 30, 121-91.

Summary of the game:
- Serbia out shot us 60% to 43%
- Serbia out rebounded us 54 to 30
- Furusawa had our best player rating at 15.5, that matched their worst player rating.
- And we played in Serbia.

I think they were a bit underrated at 38, I hope we don't draw many more teams like that.......



Well, now we wait for the remaining six games of our schedule to be posted this week and then we'll take a look at the outlook for the rest of the season.

On another note, Kouzo Yasujiro made his first National Team appearance with 2 minutes of mop up time. He went 1 for 1 for 2 points, and grabbed an offensive rebound.

Not bad for just 2 minutes. I'm looking forward to much more of that in the future.