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Nice one Revo!
Gongratz!
Now you should look at the ratings of italy's last game...
Or Poland's ratings or Spain's ratings... God how can you ever beat that? :O
That should be your goal ;P

their are 2 reasons why Italy/spain are stronger than Belgium.

1) they have more manangers ==> more draftee's, more guy's get trained properly, better number of top draftee's, larger number of trained players, more players helping out their NT as NT staffmembers, thus enabling them to keep track of more players, monitor their training better, etc etc.

so they have a much larger pool to chose from for their NT and even if a player ends up with a trainer who won't train him, it's no problem. they'll have a few others ready to take up his spot almost immediately...

2) they have got farm teams aswell. in their community, their are some managers who just make cash to keep the GS up from a NT player, or to train a NT player to 400k salary (which no normal team can handle... Top BB teams can take up to 950k salary for their entire team... paying one player 400k isn't very good in that case, cause you still need to divide the remaning 550k over minimal 5 other players...)


The only way to improve their NT, is by finding a new farm who can hold up even more salary... They don't have that much room left for improvement. Where as we still have alot of room to improve. (we also have less managers to train top guy's too...)

One day i hope that the Belgian NT will be able to play in the world cup. But that won't be happening anytime soon ( unless we would be able to win the consolation tournament to get HCA in the european championship the season after or so).

Belgium belongs in the top 25 in the NT. A NT has to evolve step by step.

when i started as NT staffmember ( that is now 6.5 seasons ago) a Guard needed to have OD 14... Nowadays, you won't find a Guard with an OD less than 17 on our NT.

you can't just say: ok, next season, minimum lvl of OD is 17. no, you have to gradually build it up. step by step. the next step, will be to move the minimal OD lvl for a guard up to lvl 18.

my first 2 seasons as a NT coach weren't exactly very succesfull. however, i've sticked to my plan, of gradually improvement. i keep asking the owners of the NT players for training. But you can't expect improvement from one day to the next day. And the efforts paid off last season, earning belgium a ticket to the european championship for the second time in their BB history...

Our NT team still isn't a very strong one, but it's not a team that can be pushed over anymore. If NT teams, such as Germany, feel the need to play normal against your NT because they aren't sure to win against you using TIE like they used to do, then it's fair to say that the Belgian NT is moving up nicely. All that has to be done now, is to ensure that we keep moving forward. We can't be happy with what we've achieved... We have to keep improving, cause once the improvement stops, then our NT will come to a halt and we'll lose alot of spots on the NT ranking again.

This said, the NT team that i have now, is the legacy of Sum.
Hupez, Waelput, Thys, Deseure, Loddo, Mees, Ottevaere, Dorchain (just to name a few) were all trained under Sum's supervision when he was the U21 coach. Joe and I have continued Sum's work, taking care of the training after their 22nd 'anniversary", but It's Sum who scouted those players when they were 18y old, and who motivated and advised their trainers on how to train.

It was Sums efforts ( and that of his staff aswell) that got the NT where it is now. If Joe's Legacy is as good as Sum's, then chances are high that our NT will keep improving and will, slowely but steadily close the gap with the top NT nations. But we'll only see Joe's Legacy in a few seasons time.

Belgian NT has routed the Indian NT team tonight.

I had figured out that they had a weakness in the outside defense.... OD 13 or 14 won't stop our belgian NT. We nearly hit 1 out of 2 3point shot attempts, which shows that we got a outside attack. This win has given us a beautiful overall point difference.

Next week a very important game against the English NT. In the event of a close loss, we'll probably still make the top 32. In the event of a win, we could end up having HCA in the first round of the knock out tournement. We are playing away, so it's gonna be a very difficult game, but we'll see how things go. Let's hope for the best, but expect the worst.

LA-Revo

nice one. Keep going!

well, this was the last game of the regular competition.

In the event of a Win, we'd probably have ended up just inside or just outside of the top 16, so we had a shot at HCA. However, i decided not to CT. Away game + having your bigmen lying in ruins isn't worth losing all your enthousiasme for HCA, which you aren't even sure that you'll get.

I've opted to be in the top 32, thus take part in the next round for sure. From here on out, it will be hard, but each game we play now, is a bonus.

We only lost by 1 point against Englands NT, that while playing 3-2 zone against us was a total no-brainer. So i'm still rahter happy with the result. I would have prefered a victory, but you can't win em all. Our team played well, and only lost by 1 point on their Home court, while they went CT vs us Normal.... It clearly shows that on a neutral field, we'll beat em 9 times out of 10 ( the one time that we'll lose, is because of horrible GS ;)

From the next game on, it's gonna be very tricky. Whoever we face, it's gonna be a good team, no matter who we end up drawing.

Revo

damn. I wanted a european team. Holland would have been great. i haven't been looking at the mexican NT for over 3 seasons, so i hardly know any of the players... I've created a whole databank of NT players with their skills these last 3 seasons, but those are mainly european guy's...

Ow well, lets await the GS update. Maybe we'll end up lucky, having a good GS and them having a horrible one ;)

a game at 3 AM.

ok, i'm not staying up for that on. Our NT will have to do it without me rooting for them in the chat ;)

Last edited by AthrunZala at 6/21/2011 6:31:05 AM

Well, we lost the game. Considering that we were playing away, against a pretty good team, i think we should be happy with the result.

I should stress that due to requests for training, some of the usual NT stars weren't on the team this season (they wanted to train, but it's hard to train C's on PG/SG spots and vice versa. Sometimes they faul out, other times they play nearly 2 full games...) Their GS was fluctuation much to much, so i went with the players who's GS would be taken care off.

As all know, i also had to sacrifice 2 spots on my NT roster to Ballaert and Dorchain, since their managers got banned. Playing with an 18 man squad sometimes is hard to get a good tactic due to the GS of all the players. But if you have to sacrifice 2 spots because some managers felt the need to cheat (i won't specify names, but paying 1.5M for a 6k 30 year old player is very clearly transfering money from one account to another) then i find it dissapointing.

Reflecting on this season, i got mixed feelings. I'm happy with most of the results. We made it into the final 32, and got knocked out by a strong team. However, i do have my regrets. I was informed ( and i verified that information too with mutliple ex-NT managers and U21 managers) that their was an Enthousiasme Reset after the repechage games for the world cup. Thus, South Africa, should have had enthousiasme 5 in the game when we faced them ( our enthuosaisme was 7 at that moment). So risking a TIE against a Normal, while playing away, was a risk, but one that i had carefully considered and though through. However, during the game, i was informed by the South African coach, that their hadn't been a Enthousiasme reset, and that their enthousiasme was lvl 10. lvl 7 vs lvl 10 enthousiasme, playing on an away court, then a TIE is just suicidal, and we lost a game that we should have won.

Had we won that game, we would have most certainly had Home Court Advantage in the first round of the KO stages of this consolation tournament, and HCA really has a big impact, especially at NT lvl, where most teams ( who make it to this KO stage) are more or less eachothers equal in terms of strengh of their NT rosters.

Other than that all games were played well. Once again, i've learned a few important things this season. I've done my best to keep the Belgian NT ranking as high as possible, hoping for a favorable draw for next seasons European championship Qualifier.

NT elections will be comming up at the end of this season, so you'll have the opportunity to evaluate me then. If you still are unpleased about me as a NT coach, then i probably will end up seeing it in the voting results. But i won't say any more on the election stuff, since that is supposed to happen during the first week of the season 17 ;)

As for the remainder of the season:

Their will be a few tests. First off, their will be 2 Belgium U21 games vs Belgian NT games, where ofcourse, the Belgian NT will be playing with very few of it's real players. Since it is rare for both NT teams to be available for scrimmages, we'll be preforming some tests on specific idea's that have been developped over the past few seasons. If our idea's prove to be correct, then we might have to tweak a few points in the trainings programs that are suggested to those who decided to train belgian players (for those who are training Belgian players, but not for the U21/NT, feel free to ask about the results at the end of the season)

Other than that, their will be other tests, such as the use of certain specific tactics that were impossible to use up till now, since the Belgian NT didn't have the specific players to be able to use this tactic ( i'm talking about Tactics such as Princeton and Isolation tactics)

And their will be one final test, at the end of the season, where i'll be trying to play against a foreign team on a neutral court, where i'll be testing something specific that i picked up from one of the NT opponents.

This means that players will be selected and fired from the NT on a nearly daily basis. I'll be selecting alot of player to update the database ( especially young players) of our young players. For each game, i will try to take the players with the best possible GS for the games. So don't be surprized if your player is in the NT one week, and is dismissed the week after it. possible selections or dismissals of players won't mean anything for next seasons NT squad.


Last, but not least, i'd like to thank some people.

first off, all the guy's in the U21/NT staff, for having lending me a hand through out these 2 past seasons. Of these staffmembers, a special mention should be made for Joe and Angi, for their great work.

I'd also like to thank GM-LoD. Even tho i've played this games for 11 seasons now, i've still picked up a few new things from him this season.

I'd like to thank the managers who have trained the Belgian NT players. these are:
JoeMaverick (Gilmont, Thys, Mees) and By-Soprano(Mees), Sonics (Hupez), cauet (Marchoul), Scotty P(Francaart), Luciro (Luyckx), divan en Baseman (Deseure), Ventola7 ( Lahure), LA-Shawnas (Dorchain), Dunk_forever (De Patoul, Loddo) and GM-Alexfurgeson (Loddo), Mavrik ( Sokmen), Roel_V (Ballaert), NicoNam ( Abu and De Neef) and Zoefkonijn(Waelput).

I'd also like to thank ( and appologize to ) ppmmp, for having sold off a few players, to make room for a belgian player. However, he was very unfortunate since each time, someone else ended up taking his players away. Obira is, because of his will to recrute top belgian players, facing the danger of getting regulated. I hope that he'll be able to stay in the BBBL, because i'd hate to see a manager who has put fourth such a large effort to recrute a belgian player ( with the intension of training him) get regulated.

Futhermore, Ofcourse, i would also like to thank all the mangers who's players weren't on the NT this season, but who have been doing their utmost best to train those players.

And last but not least, i'd like to thank all those who voted for me 2 seasons ago, despited having had 2 very rough seasons with the NT prior to it.

Since July is nearly upon us, all that remains to be said is i wish everyone a nice holiday (and for those who still have exams, good luck with them. It won't be long before holiday will be their for you guy's too!) and ofcourse the best of luck for the remainder of the season.

It was fun leading the Nt these past 2 seasons, and i'm looking forward to season 17, for more than one reason ( and hopefully, i'll be able to continue my work as NT coach, cause i still feel that their are things that i can improve)

regards

LA-Revo

You still have my vote for season 17 !