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This year's U21 begins on Monday. The team this year, in a word, is poor. Aside from 5 players who would have made last year's team, it practically looks like everyone took a year off from training.

It will tough to win many (any) games. I will still do the best I can.

The focus of my energy will be on ensuring that this piss poor level of talent on our U21 never happens again. I am meticulously contacting managers of 20, 19, 18 year olds, getting trainer levels, training plans, and future positions sorted out. Next year's team is looking mucho better.

Once I'm done this I will post a U21 training guide (similar to Fewmit's US U21 guide), a practical how-to train someone from day 1 after receiving a player from the draft.

I hope to continue the excellent communication between myself/Canadian managers/NT manager so that we have a solid pipeline of talent for years to come.

You will also find it impossible to find someone who scouts more thoroughly and efficiently. The day after the draft I had all divisions scouted. Previously this took up to a week and was done by different volunteers on a division by division basis. Also, before the draft I had all 18-21 year olds scouted to update our master depth chart of Canadian players.

Age 20 managers contacted.

Barring any missed training (or far better than average training on those not listed), U21 S24 team should be similar to:

Guards: Hernandez, Olvera, Ramos, Watts, Nanyiza, Del Vecchio
Forwards: Spadaro, Kaimakis, Fischer, Eastham
Bigs: Sobuza, Ellis, Nixon, Valliere, Di Silvestro, Daly, Marcotte

Consolation Schedule:

4/1/2013 7:00:00 PM 94 Guatemala U21 @ 25 Canada U21
4/8/2013 9:00:00 AM 25 Canada U21 @ 97 Azərbaycan U21
4/15/2013 7:00:00 PM 23 Bulgaria U21 @ 25 Canada U21
4/22/2013 12:30:00 PM 25 Canada U21 @ 54 Danmark U21
4/29/2013 1:35:00 PM 25 Canada U21 @ 66 Belgium U21
5/6/2013 7:00:00 PM 79 South Africa U21 @ 25 Canada U21

So how many of those games are winnable?

I have scouted all the opponent players - salary only - not fully in depth. I've also went through their tactics/strength of opponents/enthusiasm. I see we need to go 5-1 to finish at 5-3 with not horrible PD to make playoffs.

Estimate:
3 for sure wins
0 for sure losses
3 too close to call

So the difference will be game shape, tactics, enthusiasm, and luck to get 2-1 and not 1-2 or 0-3 out of the close games.

Last edited by Kumiko (CAN U21) at 3/26/2013 10:36:43 PM

Awesome. Not a terrible draw, at all.

I'll do my best to make sure Paul Lebrun is the best, most well conditioned healthy scratch he can possibly be. :-D

Consolation play begins with an 89 point thrashing of Guatemala.

Stacey leading the way with 27 pts on 9 of 11 shooting (and 9 steals), with Poulin putting in 21 on 8 of 9 shooting.

Also, 12 assists for Blain, 14 rebounds and 5 blocks for Baddeley.

Nobody over 30 minutes played. Next up to face the Canadian intensity is Azerbaijan.

Speaking of U21... I've been really wanting to read your U21 guide, any ETA of when it's coming out?

The only thing I have to add is an example player coming out of a hypothetical draft. How to train, at what position, using what tools for estimating skill pop times, salary changes, etc. This will be done, hmm... hopefully before all star week. Definitely before the end of season draft, when newbies might be actually using it.

Awesome! Since I'm pretty sure I'm still a newbie, I can't wait to read it and learn more about training and what is required for U21.

What is required is already in the first post. Anything involving how to train, at what position, what it trains, etc, can be found in the help guide > (144856.30)