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and as promised, i am not talking about juice's failures anymore this campaign, so i will discuss those after the election, preferably over email, but you can see my general thinking in the u21 discussion. all told coco didnt know brazil would CT, so i find his decision to normal the game defensible

At the risk of sounding impertinent... what do you base your percentages on? Can you at least somewhat justify the 50/30/5% chances against Argentina? To me, your post pretty much looks like randomly chosen numbers... I'd like to have an idea of the basis from which you're generating them.

At the risk of sounding impertinent... what do you base your percentages on? Can you at least somewhat justify the 50/30/5% chances against Argentina? To me, your post pretty much looks like randomly chosen numbers... I'd like to have an idea of the basis from which you're generating them.

Despite being beaten down constantly URP is consistently showing in depth his thought process (rightly or wrongly)... this debate seems to be stacked against him (maybe a lot of his own doing initially) but if you look beyond this his tactical arguments seem far more convincing than others who have opted to perhaps rely on the fact they've devoted more man hours to the cause previously.

I'm curious to see how many votes URP takes down in the end... I feel he is fighting a losing battle unless interestingly the votes for yourself and wozzvt come out pretty even.

As a neutral I would be coming around more to this campaign and feel that this guy has to be worth a shot. You can almost forgive his worryingly poor club record as with NT you just get handed some top players to go out and play with.

EDIT: fixed crap spelling



not random.

Warning: this is wonky, so if you're not at least competent with introductory level college statistics, this probably won't make sense.

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if you play the same tactics against the same team 10000 times, your expected score might not fall ina perfectly normal distribution, but it isnt super far off

more importantly, your points per possession number should be very close to normally distributed

your opponents points per possession number should also be normally distributed, though again their score is not fully independent of your score, but the two are less correlated tan you would think (the issues come at the end of the game when the computer coach starts "adjusting" with occasionally sub-optimal strategies)

All of that is fairly obtuse anyway, so let's oversimplify because the oversimplification is more or less true enough to apply here.

With normal paces and adjusting for talent of opposition, the standard deviation for most decent teams is +/-10 points. (10 isnt the exact number but it's close enough that this explanation should make sense, without being so close that I would feel uncomfortable about some of the work i've done (brute forcing alot of games to find standard deviations no less))

This matters. With this information, and a normal distribution, and a similar deviation from the opponent, we know that, using basic math, that the standard deviations in score between the two games is:

10 squared + 10 squared = 200, but take the square root for lets call it 14.


So if you are a 14 point favorite, you are going to win that game 84% of the time. That doesnt sound like much and sounds like you are very prone to upsets but thats reallly a dominant number, and even a slight underestimation.

So if you think argentina on a neutral court was 7 points better than us in a normal, and the decision to ct vs tie moves the needle say 5 points, you can plot where you are on the normal curve, calculate the number of sigmas away you are and calculate your odds of victory.

you can also facto in enthusiasm for future games, and how many points that impacts things. these are things you can estimate pretty damn good through observation.

so while i didnt do the math to the n;th degree, i have a feel for whre things might be on the curve and adjust.

some of this is intuitive. If you were a 20 point underdog and a ct saves you 7 points, then ct'ing moves yor odds of victory from like 5% to 20%, in other words its still a huge freaking reach. but if you were in a cointoss if you normal, that ct is going to be pretty freaking sweet in tiltin the odds in your favor.

again, i personally might have missed slightly on the curve and estimated to the nearest 10% to keep my math easy, but the math my thinking is based in is rock solid.

Last edited by TheUnrepentantGunner at 12/17/2009 9:27:34 PM

Wozz has mentioned for example that he has done studied the efficacy of various tactics. I have seen his results and use them to guide many tactical choices. I don't know if everyone can see it but the database website (which is entirely wozz's creation) also has a scouting tool that breaks down opposing teams and reveals for each player the average PP100 allowed (unfortunately it doesn't work with NTs, but you can look up individual players). This is info that's available nowhere else.

Yeah, there's actually 2 tools there, a team scout tool and a matchup evaluator. Obviously, they only work for club teams since we can't get NT info through the BBAPI. They were both intended to be released to either the BB or BB-usa community (for now I think it's usa-restricted), but I'm still adding some features I want to be included before making them public. But, if anyone would like to try them and help me beta-test, shoot me a BB-mail.

I outlined my plan for a player development department here: (122310.130).

Obviously, the U21 coach would need to have a high degree of input into the player development process, possibly even having more direct say than I would into the training plans of 18/19/20yo prospects. Having worked on Coco's scouting team over the past 2 seasons, I'm pretty confident that I can work well with Coco in NT-U21 coordination.

To all candidates

How would you work with the U21 coach to ensure the pipeline of players being developed fits with the National Team?

Things are different now. What i mean by that is 3-4 seasons ago people capped at all star level were full national teamers, and the best u21 candidates were also instantly likely to soon have full senior team caps soon after. Now I am not so sure that's the case.

Let me explain:

The classic u-21 player probably has at least high 3 ball potential out of the gate, with 6k++ salary, and very favorable heights (ie 7'4 center or 5'10 pg). Player gets powertrained in the most important skills for 2+ seasons, gets called up, contributes to the u21's.

In the old days there were discussions over the top 21 year olds who were also really senior team material (or near it)

Now we don't have that problem.

THe most important thing the senior coach can do, is help the u21 coach long term with identification of prospects, especially the 2nd tier, guys with MVP+ potential, that might have 4.5k salary at age 18. They might not quite have the ideal height (6'11 bigman or 6'2 guard), and won't likely get u21 caps. But it is important to keep these owners focused on the fact that they have a stud, let them know that if they want caps for the player, here is what needs to be trained, and get diversity among these longer term players. To get a SF like wendon (Steve Smiley, currently for sale is i think our best answer to wendon) takes a LONG time to train, and we can help make sure the skills are brought up together as optimally as possible.

You will still have the base skill behemeoths, but even at age 21 these players are likely to be 2 seasons from the NT.

So thats a long answer, but hopefully it makes sense.

To get a SF like wendon (Steve Smiley, currently for sale is i think our best answer to wendon) takes a LONG time to train, and we can help make sure the skills are brought up together as optimally as possible.

Surely he cant be close to USA NT talent... cough* HARVEY SELF for USA cough*

Good luck to all candidates - I've enjoyed tuning into the debate......my vote wouldve gone to URP but this is based on what I've read and not what goes on behind the scenes.

Any predictions as to how many people have actually read this thread from the USA community (suggestion thread idea?) and more importantly how many people will actually vote?

Well I am still in the election surprisingly but I would give your vote to wozzvt because he seems to have the right idea in my mind for what to do with a National Team. Even though I am a brand new user and still grasping some of the basics of the game I still have legitimate opinions. URP has given some reasonable numbers that he has come up with and Azariah has shown signs too but wozzvt has the best strategy for the National Team if he were to win in my mind. Good luck to everyone.