Greetings to all!
First I would like to offer wishes fo good luck for all of my fellow competitors. I am pleased to see so many people interested in getting deeply involved in the game and the nuances.
First, a little about myself. I am an American, living in Virginia. I have been playing the game for 1.5 seasons. I began in USA Division III.2 with a 4-8 team and led it to a 4-6 record the rest of the season. I spent most of my time digging out of a rather large hole in the standings and focused on purging my roster and getting good young talent in place. I was then relegated to USA Division IV.40 where I went 21-1 and won the league, boosting me up to USA Division III.3 where I am obviously awaiting my first match.
I think the important lessons learned by me thus far are the ability to analyze and acquire new talent and reposition my team. As mentioned above I spent a great amount of time scouting and bidding on new talent with only 5 players remaining from my original roster, 4 of which are starters. My actual career in life is an analyst so I spend a great deal of time analyzing and crunching numbers which is a large part of this game. My greatest enjoyment about the game is scouting players and I have developed several formulas to determine who is the best rated player for the scheme and style I would like to play. I have also started a rudimentary database using the transfer list to determine the relative worth of various positions depending on the age and skill set of the players.
In addition to the numbers game, the schem and style versus your opponent is the other major part of Buzzerbeater. Although it seems to be nothing more than a glorified game of rock-paper-scissors, I find it intriguing scouting opponents based on their historical game and trying to put in place the perfect scheme and starting lineup for that matchup. As a National Team manager I will be ready to scout each opponent as well as crunch the numbers to help determine the best fit possible.
I chose South Africa because it is a smaller country on Buzzerbeater but I believe it has great potential. I think it would be difficult trying to jump into a large country like USA or Canada but I still think Suth Africa has the talent to compete against any African nation which is what I look forward to doing.
I think it is important to set goals in the process of improving this team. These goals should be short term and achievable such as scouting every South African player and getting in touch with every team owner about possible improvements of players and training mechanisms. I also think we should set mid range goals like win a small tournament or beat a major rival. It is easy to say I will lead South Africa to the World Championships, but that would be a lie. It will be a difficult road but if we take small steps and keep improvign a little bit each week it will be possible to think about competing with the heavy weights some day. For now the long term goal will be to win the African continent and become recognized on the global stage.
I have suggested the idea of having assistant coaches in another forum but even if nothing is added I would welcome a cooperative style of management in which all South African players or anyone interested in helping to build the South African national team can contribute in whatever capacity or level of effort they desire. I also would strive to help the members become more fluent with both the game engine as well as the nuances of running a national team in any way possible in hopes that some day they might be able to take over themselves and continue the hopeful success of the team.
Thank you if you made it all the way through. If you have any questions shoot me a message and I will be happy to respond as best I can.
Thank you and once again good luck to all of my competitors!