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I've been waiting for this question

I'm a fan of blank lineups in general but not a fan of full blank lineups. I believe you should blank your lineup when you have a plethora of options that you could play in two(or three but your asking for mistakes and miss matches when you blank 3 positions) positions. A blank Lineup would be effective there because the Game Engine will pick the two best out of the bunch they feel is best suited for the offense you run, and they will also distribute the minutes in a very equal manner. It is huge later in the game since those positions aren't as tired since they've been subbed out a lot more.

Magiker pointed out some of the flaws with going full blank lineup. At certain points(Almost always the last 2 minutes of the game) you'll have extremely weird and undesirable lineups in the game. An example he missed that you can add on to his list is that when we blanked 3 positions vs Hong Kong. Hobilla, a true center with ok subs, got a bulk of his minutes at SF. The reason? We ran LI and the game decided that a big at SF would be best suited for this offense. It didn't even care about the defensive math ups. Hong Kong ran motion in that game and as a result their two leading scorers were both SF's. Luckily we won that game but if it did that vs a better opponent we probably would have lost.

My point being that blank lineup is a high risk/high reward tool.

Also If I'm elected I'm never going to blank the SF spot ever. That is the position where too many weird sub packages and head scratching line-up choices occur.

I've been waiting for this question

I'm a fan of blank lineups in general but not a fan of full blank lineups. I believe you should blank your lineup when you have a plethora of options that you could play in two(or three but your asking for mistakes and miss matches when you blank 3 positions) positions. A blank Lineup would be effective there because the Game Engine will pick the two best out of the bunch they feel is best suited for the offense you run, and they will also distribute the minutes in a very equal manner. It is huge later in the game since those positions aren't as tired since they've been subbed out a lot more.

Magiker pointed out some of the flaws with going full blank lineup. At certain points(Almost always the last 2 minutes of the game) you'll have extremely weird and undesirable lineups in the game. An example he missed that you can add on to his list is that when we blanked 3 positions vs Hong Kong. Hobilla, a true center with ok subs, got a bulk of his minutes at SF. The reason? We ran LI and the game decided that a big at SF would be best suited for this offense. It didn't even care about the defensive math ups. Hong Kong ran motion in that game and as a result their two leading scorers were both SF's. Luckily we won that game but if it did that vs a better opponent we probably would have lost.

My point being that blank lineup is a high risk/high reward tool.

Also If I'm elected I'm never going to blank the SF spot ever. That is the position where too many weird sub packages and head scratching line-up choices occur.

Also If I'm elected I'm never going to blank the SF spot ever. That is the position where too many weird sub packages and head scratching line-up choices occur.

I'm going to disagree on this. We lost the first 2 games at Worlds to Poland and Israel, and they both had bigs playing at SF. Poland blanked it, and Israel set it. Difficult to say the GE made the wrong decision by playing a big at SF against us when they won. Also, the other 3 world's semi-finalists played bigs at SF for most of the season, either by blanking or setting.

We had a unique player to play SF for us the season, but we won't have that all the time and we might have to be a little more creative... although it looks like we have a good one again in season 18. If we didn't have B-rod this past season, it might have been good for us to blank SF to get a rotation of a big and a guard.

Moreland played well when the GE put him at SF, so I don't think it's something to just discredit. Probably best to test it out and see what the GE does in the first round of Americas, rather than never doing it.

That was a great question fewmit. *Hat tip*

Yes but Poland playing a SF vs Italy was the reason they lost that game. Again blank lineup cares about offense and only offense. We all know that defense is what wins games. Now if we are planning on running LI vs a team we are 100% sure they're running LI, than it's not as big a problem but it is very risky, more so than other positions, to blank the SF. There was much discussion on the offsite forum about R@G the championship game to take advantage of the big at SF like Italy did, so even though we may not have directly thought and said "Let's R@G and take advantage of the blank lineup" our reasoning behind that discussion was we knew Poland would play a big at SF.

Last edited by oriolekid at 11/4/2011 11:55:38 AM

Playing a big isn't always bad though like magiker said and as you have said now about playing one in a LI. Thats why when making the decision on the lineups and tactic, whether it is myself, or you, or magiker, or someone else, needs to think about all the options and make a decision from there. There may be times when playing a big at SF is the best option which means blanking the lineup may be the best option too. Even at SF. That's what makes the question tricky because we have all seen what blanking does and while we can say our opinions now on what we may want to do or think about doing we cant officially decide till the time comes.

If you look at the results and back at the debate thread, you'll notice two things: 1. They voted for a homegrown manager. (Makes sense. Would you want someone from another country running your team for two seasons?) and 2. No one asked me any questions. (I have no explanation for this, maybe because they were settled on a candidate since they barely had enough managers to put together a vote. I'm still unsure.) Anyways, it was an NT too. Not to take the U21 lightly (it most definitely is not), but the NT is kinda a big deal, ya know?

Damn you

nyah

Now let me ask you a question. Do Doctors know the name of every single patient admitted in the hospital without looking at their charts?

Of course not. But the numbers of names he can remember may be an indication of his involvement and dedication to his patients' welfare, and by extention the quality of his practice.

Yes but Poland playing a SF vs Italy was the reason they lost that game.

A combination of a lack of offense, combined with no defense at SF. So yes, I'd mostly agree with that. But they made the finals blanking SF all season with no real great SF option.

Again blank lineup cares about offense and only offense.

Not sure I agree with that, but I don't have any evidence otherwise. If we had a 13/9/2/13/13/9 - 12/8/8/7 player, does he start at SF over B-Rod in a blank? I'm not sure...


If we have a unique player like B-Rod, then we can start him at SF in a LI offense. Agree there. But we won't have players like that next every season. There might be times when it's better to blank SF, than start a guard there. We've seen some of the best SG's with low IS don't perform that well in LI, no matter how good the DR is. If we don't have a good SF option, then blanking SF might be a good way to go.

Related two part question for all of you...

1. Experience is one of those things that's typically gotten ignored by the u21 (and NT) squads, but there's some pretty good reasons to believe it can have a big effect. It also seems like we have a pretty good idea who a couple of our Season 19 stars (current 20yo's) will be already.

Given that there seems to only be a couple really close games during each America's run, do you think we're in a position where we can play some of these guys this season to build up some experience in order to help our season 19 efforts? Is this something you'd consider (not just carrying the guys, but playing them)?

2. When it comes time to pick the roster, do you look at experience? For 21yo's, exp can range anywhere from 1-4... while I imagine small differences might not matter, how many skills would you be willing to compromise for 4 exp over 1-2 exp?

I am a believer in experience. My SG with 10 experience single handedly won me a game in the final 2 minutes last year after being horrible before that point. However you can't value experience highly if range of experiences is very small, like in the case of other U21'ers. The deviation would have to be much higher for me to ignore core skills for experience.

Last season our starting 5 vs Poland had 3 Exp, 3 Exp, 2 Exp, 4 Exp, 3 Exp. The one guy with 4 Exp, Brent Selby had some late FT's, but he was also the PG and he also missed two of them in the final minute and he has 8 FT. He didn't show experience there but he played well all game. Experience related? Can't be sure of that. The guy with 2 Exp, B-Rod, jacked shots up all game and was VERY streaky all season. Was the streakiness due to experience? We can't be sure. This is a complicated topic to argue, but the fact that it is complicated and hard to find clear examples of experience, shows that it can't be relied on in any U21 game.

Edit: Corrected grammar mistake. Sorry about that.

Last edited by oriolekid at 11/4/2011 1:21:30 PM