BuzzerBeater Forums

Hey everyone, my name is Mike and I’m running for U21 coach.

I was Rambo’s assistant coach for our World’s Gold win this past season. I’ve learned a lot about what it takes to be a U21 coach. This included scouting all the other World’s teams, watching the replays of several opponents matches, especially the odd results to get a sense of what happened, and looking through the database, trying to determine the players that can help us in the coming week and the rest of the season. I then would contribute, along with several others, to the tactics discussion on the offsite.

I’m confident I can do these tasks as well as anyone. But while scouting and tactics are important, they’re only a small part of the job. Getting people to manage game shape is crucial; enthusiasm management is even more so.
But in my opinion, the most important part of the job is communication and creating interest in the U21. We just won World’s, which is awesome, but no one will be happy with a few semifinal appearances in the coming seasons. The goal now is higher. We want to become a perennial World’s championship team. The only way to do this is creating interest in the National Teams. The more interest we can generate in the U21, the better talent we’ll have to work with. The more talent we have, the better our chances. Our U21 teams have gotten better each season, and we had the most talented team in this past Worlds. While Rambo’s management of the team was impeccable, a lot of credit also goes to jfarb, Wozz, and Jelme for generating a ton of interest in the national teams seasons earlier. Jason has continued this with the “Make a U21 player contest.” The winner of this election will benefit from everything Rambo has done to generate interest in the U21.

If I win, I will absolutely continue this trend. For starters, we can never have enough PR. Rambo and Tangosz had some great write-ups about the U21 team this season. We need more of that; hell I probably should have some. The major goal I have is leaving the team better than I found it. The more people involved, the better.

One area of the U21 team that I feel that I can improve is the coordination of training of the 19 and 20 year olds, with the goal being a team that can have skills complement each other. Jimmie Brown was important to our Season 16 Americas team, which played a lot of outside offenses. When we realized we were going to play a lot of LI in Worlds, Jimmie Brown’s manager smartly switched to more 1v1 and passing training. That was instrumental to our success, and we could really use more of this. I will communicate with managers of the top 19 and 20 year old players to understand the direction they’re going with their players. We can then do our best to create teams that have good complementing skills.

Finally, if you’re not already on the offsite forum, I encourage everyone to join. It’s a great place to learn about the game, national teams, and get involved in U21 and NT tactics discussions. We’ve had a lot of great ideas from a lot of different people. You can find the link on the US NT page. Please join!

Part 1
Hi guys I have decided I will be running for U21 manager this season, along with many other great managers.

Before I get into the meat of this speech let me just take a second to state some facts. Well my name is Kevin, but just call me oriole, or okid instead. I started BB at the very start of Season 12 in DivV.99. Currently I stand at the start of season in DivII.2. I first became involved in the U21 right when Jelme started his first term, and joined the off-site forum around that time to get advice on my U21 hopeful Dan Gardner. Unfortunately he didn't make it on the U21 as two dominant bigs by the name of Paul Owens and Eric Numbers just happened to block him. I loved being on the receiving end of training plans and the entire system in general was fascinating seeing all the elite USA players, and the competition. Now 6 seasons later I still find it fascinating to find a unique or very talented player that we can try to mold into the new star.

I spent 3 seasons as an 18 y/o domestic scout and there is a level of satisfaction when you help with a training plan and you then see that player progress at a U21 rate. It makes you feel important even though you aren't the U21 manager. I've always told myself that the domestic scouts are the backbone to the U21 managers success. As you can see we just won gold, and that was because that age group was the first class that was scouted by numerous dedicated domestic scouts. Before Rambo, the community just wasn't involved enough and the resources and help was not at the disposal of past U21 managers . They did the best they could but it was much rarer to find an American Div V, or IV team have a U21 player. They just simply didn't know what to do with their players. I did take a break this season as a scout due to RL focuses, which is what also halted the U20 camp threads which I deeply apologize for. That is not the case now

My one achievement thus far that I can feel proud of is me reviving the training thread section of the off-site forum. It was in June 2010 and at that time all chatter, which was very small, was about the NT rosters, and sometimes about gameplanning. Going back to my goal of getting Gardner on the U21 team, I decided I would make my own thread about his, and my other players, training. I didn't think it was going to catch on, but sure enough it did, and it is probably the single most enjoyable part of the forum for those who don't care too much for gameplanning.

As for what I'd do if elected, there isn't much more to implicate. I would definitely try to emulate Rambo's success, and keep the community active. But that is stuff every candidate is going to promise, and stuff that the U21 manager will HAVE to continue. Instead I'm going to tell what I would differently as the coach. The one thing you should know about me is that I'm not Rambo. Does that mean I won't win gold? It does not. Does that mean I'm not going to make some of the same, necessary, decisions Rambo made? No. That means that I'm a new flavor of coach. I like switching up tactics because nothing pisses me off more than becoming predictable. am I going to run OI, or Princeton in a win or go home game? No I'm different, not an idiot and I'm not going to say FU to my advisers that are urging me to reconsider my original assessment. I'm going to say it now, but knowing when to listen to me, and listen to my advisers is going to be the single most difficult thing I'll do. What I loved about Rambo, is that we all thought we convinced him to TIE, or Normal, but he went with his gut and it worked out so well for him. That is a quality you simply cannot teach.

Part 2 is right below this

Part 2
The biggest thing you should know about who I'd put on the team is I prefer niche players over the "Most talented player". First off no one is right when they say who is more talented. If I want to run LI one week I'm looking for guards with great passing, and Driving-IS sum first, the other shiny skills 2nd. I'd also put the 17/15/14 guy in over the 14/15/17 guy. It just doesn't make sense to play a guy who can't score in a position where he'll take a lot of shots. I'm not going to put a 16/15/15/12/7/5 1IS guy in 9 GS in a LI offense just because he's the highest salary or has the highest DMI. No I'd put a 12/9/14/12/12/12 7 IS guy in 8 GS before I put the other player. Same thing with R@G. I'd look over passing a bit in favor of JS/JR sum. We don't need three 14/10/14/12/12/12 guys in R@G. We could use maybe one of them just so our OF isn't in the crapper but we don't need more of him. We want guys who can score to be in situations where they need to. This has been done in a couple of instances at the U21 and NT, but I won't say with who since we don't want other countries to know who is our LI PG, or R@G SF.

Other than that there is not much more to say. Ask questions in the debate thread, or BB-Mail me.
Remember you're a communist if you don't vote for me.

I am the owner of America's Team.

Enough said.

Hell everyone, my name is Isaiah and I am running for the U21 manager.

First off, I have been helping out with the NT/U21 now for about 3.5 seasons. During my time of helping out, I have primarily been a domestic scout for 18/19 year old players. I, just like every other scout would say, believe this is a crucial part to having a great team.

If I am elected manager of the U21 team my goal is to lead the team to a worlds goal again. However, that is what everyone who is wanting to get elected will say. So besides that, my number 1 goal is to continue growing the U.S. community and help every owner learn more about training and tactics to make the whole community competitive. By doing this, I believe will lead to more quality players to potentially be on the NT/U21 teams.

As far as my style, I'd like to say I'm more old fashion. Number one priority in my eyes is defense. Every since I was a little kid(I am 21 now) I was always told that defense wins you championships. That doesn't mean I wont give up a little defense to get more offense though, it just means defense will be the first thing Ill look for when selecting a team. If you have any questions or concerns about this, just let me know and Ill be more than willing to talk to you about it.

If I am elected I also plan to continue the great scouting we have had in the recent years as well a add a little to it. I know there are always coaches out there that have a specialty type of player when it comes to training. There are guys/gals that are great at training guards, and there are guys/gals out there that are great at training bigs. There are also guys/gals out there that are great at training SFs. My goal is to get the best guys/gals at each specialty to help with the scouting process. I remember back in the day when I started Buzzerbeater I wanted to train guards and there were some people that gave me advice who only trained bigs. The advice was ok but there was always better advice out there from the ones who trained guards personally and had more experience. That is why I want to find these coaches with specialties in training to make the process easier and more efficient.

Lastly, I'm not the best with words so if you have any questions just let me know and I will do my best to answer even if it means I have to answer 100 times. Thank you everyone and good luck to everyone running.

Hello there everyone! I’m Kyle, more commonly known as Panic, and I’m running for manager of the U21 team for the next two seasons.

I’ve worked on the NT and U21 staffs for a few seasons now, doing assorted things, namely a little PR work the last two seasons, and scouting the past 2-3 seasons. Those two things, along with a steady presence on our highly informative offsite forum helping with tactics and training strategies with other members, has given me the experience I feel is necessary to do this job.

Being the U21 coach is not just attempting to do well in international competitions. Winning Worlds last season was a great milestone for our country in BB, and it will lead to nothing but future success, but my main goal if elected will be player development and collective growth by not just player training, but helping our younger managers become knowledgeable members of our community. Obviously one of my other goals will be to win Americas and Worlds, but I would like to lead the community as a whole to become collectively better.

As for my philosophy, I would like to become more innovative than in the past. As always, defense is a crucial part of any team, but I will encourage player flexibility across multiple tactics and trainings. Perhaps a bit unorthodox, but nothing earth-shattering. Another thing I’d encourage is less of a reliance on LI. While arguably the best tactic in the game, becoming too predictable can become problematic at times, which I am against as a manager.

In closing, I’d appreciate your votes for me and I wish the best of luck to my opponents in the election. Thanks for reading, and don’t hesitate to ask me questions in the debate thread!

Your heart has to be in whatever you lead. It became apparent that this decision was somewhat easier to make because you have to follow your heart and lead with it and the U21 team and National Team has always taken up my whole heart… The allure of coaching the U21 USA National Team has no price. It’s one of those priceless things. None of my decisions were based on myself because i'm not selfish. It was what was going to give me the most happiness and I couldn't be happier if you let me be your U21 manager.