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Oriole, my question to you stems from something that peaked my interest from your speech. You talk about preferring "niche" players over higher salaried "most talented" players. While I agree that certain players fit certain offensive styles, I do feel like at the U21 level it is very hard to be able to utilize this in multiple offenses. In the beginning you on average will have 10-12 players start on the roster. The GS varies and it's hard to fit a bunch of niche players in your roster that are in good GS. Say you decide to roll the dice and start with 16 players and save 2 callups. Then you have already sold out to the fact that these main 16 guys are what you are taking your chances with and crossing fingers on GS and training. In my opinion Poland lost the U21 final partially because of the fact they dropped 4 players throughout the tournament hurting enthusiasm. So since that is bad strategy, I guess what I am leading up to is A.) How do you deploy this strategy with the limited number of roster space? (what will be your strategy for this) and B.) Will you only be looking for niche players that fit one style of offense and make our team really good at that one style?

Not doubting the merit of the strategy. I am just intrigued by that part of your speech and am interested in the answer.

I'm not going to answer your first question since there is nothing that we can critique about Rambo since he won it all. Doesn't matter what the rest of us thought about some of his decisions. Overall they were all good ones. End of question.

There is always a moral dilemma a U21 manager faces about whether or not you care more about the U21 teams success, or the owner of the U21 player clubs success. For us to become perennial powers, we have to ask ourselves that question before we proceed with anything. What I mean by that is when we give an owner a training plan, we can't abandon them there and only check back for updates. That right there is caring more for the U21 team. I think that has become the norm, even with Jfarb's efforts to notice mistakes that these teams are making and help them with it. Honestly who has the time to notice all that? You guessed it. We need to assign a mentor to each manager of a remarkable U21 and possible NT prospect. We have had mentor programs in the past but if we want to help both the club and the player, we need one single person to help them. Currently we have probably a dozen 18 y/o scouts. If elected I'm probably going to ask some of my more experienced and knowledgeable managers to take one player and monitor them frequently. I'll probably also take a few off 18 y/o's and give those guys two users to monitor closely. You might be saying, "oriole don't the scouts already kind of do this?" And my response would be "No Jimmy. No they don't. They ask for skills first, and try to help when they can, but they don't have time to monitor 2 dozen prospects closely"

Also I believe that paragraph tells how I feel about scouts. They are EXTREMELY important.
That's an experiment that has such a high reward, we can't not do it, even if I'm not the one elected.

Also Rambo's rating dropped after he shared he was part Polish last week. We cannot allow part anything to be at the helm of this team. They need to be full American, Jelme style.

Also Rambo's rating dropped after he shared he was part Polish last week. We cannot allow part anything to be at the helm of this team. They need to be full American, Jelme style.

*Ahem* I'm looking at you, "America's Team". ;)

My fathers side of my family immigrated here from Bialystok, Poland in the early 1900s. Maybe Rambo and I are spies living a double life here in America like those Russian people we caught. Becoming managers of the NT and U21 for 1 term was all our secret plot. Kinda backfired when we actually beat Poland in the U21 final tho.

Oriole I like your idea for improving the domestic scouting. Will take a lot of work, but I agree that we could do more than just check in on prospects, especially our top level prospects.

As for Rambo, true we won gold and critiquing results is pointless, but I know the candidates probably at times disagreed with lineups, maybe even tactical decisions, roster decisions, and I'm not saying that you guys were wrong or he was wrong. We won! Maybe there was no wrong decision in some cases, but even before the final game I saw some disagreement on the offsite about player selection that to me indicated a different philosophy on LI and GS issues, etc. So you guys can talk about your vision for the roster, and what type of players you are looking for in specific offenses that maybe differed from what we did last term, or have ever done.

I knew this would draw a lot of interest.
First of all, if elected, I plan to avoid Repe. Easier said than done but I'm not even going to think about Repe, since if I've already failed the team if I lead us to Repe. Also I'll probably start the season at 12 players since Americas U21 will have maybe 3 good teams, and odds are that we'll have a cakewalk week1, and even if we don't, it's week 1, and GS is not a factor yet so we should have the ability to win with those 12 players.

More than likely we'll only run LI or R@G. Most Nt's only run those. I am going to call up some traditional NT'ers, the 15/15/15 bigs or the dime a dozen combo guards. Just not as many. They'll be depth unless GS, injury, or extenuating circumstances occur. So let's say 5 are designated to those players. Since LI is much harder to stop I'll probably have more LI guards than R@G's. Also I should say I do not believe in calling up almost identical players. If I have a 14/7/15/12/12/12 guy I'm not going to call-up a 13/8/14/13/12/12 guy. It's basically the same player and if one doesn't work, than two won't work. If I go two LI PG's, you would be able to tell them apart if given their skills without a name. Same thing with the big men. Jonathan Yi is one of these niche players and he's most likely a day one call-up. Not all niche players are extra baggage that are in addition to the original 12 players if that makes sense.

Also I'll have the ability to switch up tactics if I get both my R@G and LI players on the roster with room to spare. Like I said in my speech(I think I did), I hate being predictable and will switch up tactics. This plan allows me to do this, rather than favor one over the other. I do like LI more from a personal standpoint since they're higher % shots, and 2-3 zone doesn't work as good as 3-2 zone. You'll probably see LI more even with this plan, unless my guards are that much better than the big men. I'm still going to switch it up some though.

As to your dropping player point, I never plan on dropping players unless I truly have to, and I'm going to do my research on the players I want to call-up before I call them-up. If I notice that the prior season a player played 48 minutes every game, I'm probably not going to call him up. Also dropping or adding one player does not hurt enthusiasm very much. By a miniscule amount. It's dropping/adding many players that effects enthusiasm the most. The enthusiasm penalty grows after each player is dropped or added.

Yes, I'd like to think so. What Rambo started with the pipelines I think was part of, along with the win Monday, the most important two things he did. Those were, and will be, his lasting effects. The pipeline and scouting system along with continued community support I think will make us biseasonly contenders.

Why do you think the Americas will only have 3 good teams? Curious as to which teams you think they will be.

Also, why do you think LI is harder to stop than RNG? (besides the zone comment you made which is debatable but plausible). Obviously, the two finals teams were LI teams and at least 3 of the final 4 were (not sure about Germany?), but what about Italy upsetting Poland?

Couple questions for every candidate:
1. Let's say you start with 12 players on the roster. How do you plan on choosing those 12 players?
2. Name two goals for your term that don't include: win the Americas, win the Worlds or avoid repechage.
3. Lets assume you had two of the best big men in the world. Give me two ways you could try to get their managers to stay in good GS

and the always fun question:

4. If I gave you 90 skill points (not including FT or ST) how would you allocate them?

I'll start with fun, plus I'll do the others tomorrow.

I came up with 10/10/15/10/13/15 7/4/4/2.

Cause who doesn't love a good defensive passer who flourishes in an LI. We saw with Selby that even with low JS/JR, players can score with adequate driving/IS. Although you could defend any way you make a good player, one that plays well in the best offense in the game is a good idea.

Last edited by Panic at 11/1/2011 10:50:19 PM

So we won gold last season. Question to the candidates, how do you plan on improving on gold? Could we have done better last term? Platinum?

I promise to lobby BB-Charles for the following changes to the trophy:

Champion: The winner of U21 Worlds will win a platinum, diamond-encrusted trophy, as well as enough money to support two (2) monster big men for the NT.

Rambo just settled for gold. I won't.

Seriously though, I believe no country has gone back to back in the history of U21, but some teams have established themselves as perennial Worlds contenders. Do you think we are part of this group now, and if no, would you change anything about the system we have in place to help us get there? Mainly wondering what you think of the pipeline tracking Rambo set up, the way we do domestic scouting, mentoring, etc.

Scouting is one of the most important parts of U21 success. Some credit of this past Worlds’ win goes to the season 13 scouts. Good thing we have a real stand-up guy coordinating the initial scouting.

I don’t want to change scouting all that much. Sure, I’d like it to be different, but a lot of that is unrealistic. We have hundreds of prospects and not enough people to scout. I could say better communication with the managers of the top prospects, but if they don’t respond, there’s nothing you can do. We had the most talented team at Worlds this season, and our pipeline looks really solid. We’ve needed stellar scouting to get there.

So you guys can talk about your vision for the roster, and what type of players you are looking for in specific offenses that maybe differed from what we did last term, or have ever done.

This completely depends. Obviously need OD on every guard, the more PA the better. Outside offenses need the extra JS and JR, while the inside offenses don't. For bigs, I'm not picky about subs. It's a race to the top, and I'll take Merrill and Hammond any day. I think a lot of this is what's available. How many guards have enough OD to be called up? And of those, how many are in high 8 or 9GS? In a good week, that probably leaves 5-6 call-up options. And of those, which skills complement the rest of the team. If we're short on passing, might have to put more weight on passing when deciding a call-up...