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Widerström is posted as a PG ;) But his skills are the ones of a big.
And you train your boys in guard skills...

Yesterday we played against the Philippines and won with 116:94.

The Philippines came down from the world cup qualification round and entered our tournament. They have some strong guys and from the stand point of reaching the ko rounds, I thought they would go for a win. With the same effort it would be a more difficult game.

Our double edged sword Tuikalla hurt the Philippines more than he hurt us. He's playing a strong season until now and I really hope that he doesn't kill one of our games
Tjädermo, Säfen and Birgersson were efficient like hell. 66% in a combined FG is great. The whole team has a good offense. Currently we have a top 4 offense. And because of the young age of our players there is still some room to grow.
Our defense is more in an average area but this topic should be solved during this season. There is a lot of defense training for the young ones.

Next week we play against Croatia. A strong and very difficult to play team. I will wait until the update on friday and make a line up and set the tactic.

And the last point: I also saw the topic about the swedish NT and the lithuanian manager who wants to be the next NT coach. I am going to candidate for the NT position again. I think we made some great progress during the last five seasons. Build up a big player pool and there is a steady developement of the team. Yes, there are setbacks. We lost some games against strong opponents and didn't reach the next round because of the point difference. But bottom line is that we get better and better and I really like the community and the work you invest in your players. So I would like to keep up our team work.

And the last point: I also saw the topic about the swedish NT and the lithuanian manager who wants to be the next NT coach.

I'm quite confident not many managers would want to swap you out for an inexperienced Lithuanian at the moment, myself included.

But never get complacent! Or someone will be there ready to take your job! ;)

Yesterdays loss was a strategic decision. Birgersson's injury was a big hit. We had two nasty double downs on friday and Croatia had the home court advantage. I decided that a suicide action (with a low win %) was too risky and that we have to go for the other four games.
Birgersson is back since the injury update and I hope the rest of the team will stay healthy.

Some words about the Croatia game. Until the middle of q3, we were an equal opponent. Our defense was strong and we got our points on the offensive end. But than Croatia found its offense and they made some runs.
Säfen has still no equal scoring partner (among the guards) and this is maybe our biggest issue at the moment. But some managers are working on it.

Monday's game against Ghana was a win. As planned. And here it already ends....
The first half was, I still don't know why, a desaster. We had problems at both sides of the field. Our high payed players couldn't score and were stopped by low salary players and on the other side Säfen's opponent scored like he wanted. A half GDP and the HCA were pluspoints for Ghana, but still the first half was bad.
After the side change Birgersson started to play like expected and our team moved forward and won bei a blowout.

Next Monday we will play at home and our opponent is Japan.

Maaan, what a game. It was close until the end but we managed to win. And in the end that's exactly what we needed.
Birgersson and Tjädermo were two monsters today. Birgersson's 27 rebounds are huge. Thanks to these two the bigs of Japan were almost non-factors.
Tuikkala was his usual self. He hurt Japan (20 pts and 10 rebs) and he hurt us (his opponent scored 26 pts). Every game with him is like balancing on a razor knife.
Behind these three, Säfen may fell behind. But it was thanks to him, that we won. 1:22 before the end and with a tie at 99:99, Säfen scored 2 pts. 101:99 for us. Japans Tsutsumi went for a dunk and was blocked bei Säfen (1:12 to play). After a shooting foul Japan scored both free throws and the score was 101:101. With the next play, Säfen played a pass to Birgersson and dunked it in. 103:101. 9 seconds to play. But just before Japan could have a last chance for a buzzerbeater, Säfen interfered and stole the ball and sealed our victory. He was the defense anker at the outside and our bigs in the paint.
Thanks to this win, we have still a very good chance for a higher position.

Next week we play @ Columbia.

Start of the 4th Q really had me worried there - down almost 10 pts at one point and I assumed that their outside scoring would continue to scorch us as fatigue set in but woo!

Sweet win!

It was almost the same situation like against Israel. We were also down and came back. But against Israel it was too late and we lost with -3. And this time we could hold our ground and took the win. Two more games and if everything went well, we will reach the KO round.

Nice win last night! Woop woop!