BuzzerBeater Forums

Great win Gully!

Thanks mate. You've even got here before the customary long winded report on the game!

ENGLAND AVOID ROMANIAN BITE
Difficult to know where to start tonight, the game went so well. So I'll do my usual trick of starting before the beginning. I felt we needed a couple of call ups this week to take the place of a couple of players whose game shape had fallen. I wanted to call up one guard and one big, but having looked through my entire list of guards, none had good enough game shape to warrant a place on the squad. Of course the obvious choice, Madelin, is injured. I then looked at SFs, and found only one who had proficient game shape but his D was so low I just couldn't call him up. So we ended up with two more bigs in the squad, and both played tonight. This leaves only four slots open on the squad.

There's not really much I can say about the game. Our team were very very good today. Romania normalled, and gambled with gdp, predicting outside, which was wrong, and playing 3-2, while we were playing an inside offence. I think variation is a key thing with gdp, and I do enjoy punishing teams who get it wrong.

While tonight's performance wasn't perfect, at times Romania scored more freely than I'd like, we were very strong offensively. Facing extra effort isn't always easy, especially when you're not at home, and our big men really delivered in the most outstanding fashion.

Marshall top scored from the SF position with 31 pts, MacAusland was top rebounder with 14, and Marshall and the ever youthful Sharpling had 8 assists. Strangely most of of Marshall's assists were to Luke Innes, which I'd like to think is an indicator of how good our passing is as a team.

One thing I noticed tonight that's slightly unusual is how our offence seemed to focus on two individuals, rather than the usual spread. Marshall took 20 shots, and Innes 19, out of a team total of 91.

Finally, their defence was so stretched early on that their starting PF Alexa fouled out after 9 minutes. Possibly because their 3-2 zone wasn't working for them.

In the other games in the group, all went with seedings. Lithuania looked troubled early, but Finland and Estonia had very comfortable wins.

Its noticeable that we've not faced a team taking it easy yet, whereas the other teams have. I have a feeling we're seen as the weakest of the top 4 teams in the group. I think this is wrong, but I can't stop other people's perceptions of us. It just gives us more reason to be pleased when we win.

I think despite their record, we're facing the strongest team in the first half of our schedule next week. Armenia are a bit stronger than their ranking suggests. Game shape will be one key aspect. Thanks for the excellent job there this week but as always we need it to continue. The other main thing is that I need to make sure I do my job properly and make no mistakes.

I think Romanians were still in the queues to vote for their presidential elections from yesterday. Seen queues going around a few blocks in west London in the evening.

As usual, good win and very nice job!

ENGLAND SUFFER LAST SECOND DEFEAT
Obviously this is a huge setback. There's not a lot I can say, it was a very disappointing performance, brightened by a fightback that really should never have been needed, before that last second sickener.

There's a lot I could have done differently. Looking at the ratings after the match, perhaps motion would have been a better choice, but its rather simple to look after the game and say that. I felt that PTB would enable us to get the ball to where it would help us most, this is what I've found happening in past games, so I chose it today because with their 7m dmi C, I felt we wanted to avoid him. Yes motion could do the same but Armenia had similar OD and ID ratings last week so didn't really look as weak as you would expect a nation with 10 users to be.

And of course I could have predicted LI, but didn't. Despite their hugely talented C, I felt our superior depth would be enough.

Ok, what went wrong? Well, for one thing, our PGs taking FTs kept ending up playing at PF after substitutions which was highly annoying throughout. Sharpling can do a lot but defending a big man isn't one of his talents. And it seemed to happen to every PG we played. Innes and MacAusland didn't even play half the game after dominating last week. The big thing was our guards taking too many shots when they were missing but it appeared Armenia's ID was forcing us to go outside. The second quarter, where we scored 11 points, compared to an average of 31 in the other quarters seems anomalous. I think thats simply beyond any analysis.

Game shape was good this week, certainly there's no blame there. I'm sure you're all disappointed by this defeat. I can only say that as NT coach I feel it even more.

Its important to note that though this is a setback, it doesn't change an awful lot for the next four games. We are not out of the group at all. Because we'll be playing teams who will probably be 4-0 after 4 games and will all have to play each other, and us, if we win two of those games we still have a good chance of qualifying with a 5-2 record.

Your feedback is always welcome. I'd much prefer to receive criticism after a loss than apathy.

I'm gonna go and change Zeus approval vote for this loss.

It's unlucky that PTB didn't work for us this time, hopefully we can be on the other side of a 1 point game very soon against a better ranked team!

Last edited by Lemonshine at 11/10/2014 2:37:48 PM

Getting beaten on a buzzerbeater after such an amazing fight back in the last quarter was sickening. One of those days, we failed to shut down their inside. That's all I can see.

There big men were just a bit too much to handle. The 7m dmi C looked very neat and just outclassed us but a performance you can take positives from as well as improvements for the next game.

Last edited by js8 at 11/10/2014 4:34:42 PM

Why didn't you predict an inside offense, just a case of feeling you had enough in the bank? Or worried that Poland and Lithuania had made that call and he was due to switch it up?

I would have thought they have to be pretty wedded to inside tactics against the better teams with that roster, just mixing it up at home against a lower ranked team occasionally to try to keep people honest. Hindsight being a wonderful thing obviously....

Why didn't you predict an inside offense, just a case of feeling you had enough in the bank? Or worried that Poland and Lithuania had made that call and he was due to switch it up?

I'm sure you're aware its not going to be as simple as saying its this reason or that reason. Its a little more complex than saying one specific reason.
Without saying too much about my personal opinion on when to use gdp, in case other nations are looking, I prefer to use gdp when I'm the underdog. Its a risk that can cost you a game you would otherwise win when you get it wrong. This is looking like it might be a mistake.
Both things you said are correct. I did believe, particularly after the week before, that we had enough in the bank. And I did feel there was a possibility he'd change tactics, perhaps to II. I think this looks like a mistake too.

I would have thought they have to be pretty wedded to inside tactics against the better teams with that roster, just mixing it up at home against a lower ranked team occasionally to try to keep people honest.

Fair comments, except that all the games are neutral, there's no home team.

I think the biggest factor is I felt we had much better depth, and given the substitution patterns normally favour us, because it keeps the fitness of our players higher than the opposition, I felt this depth would enable us to dominate the second half. I still felt we had a chance even at half time. This was half correct as we had a really strong third quarter. I'd have expected it to continue into the fourth, but it didn't.

I have a feeling that in a game that's influenced by the random nature of statistics, if you ran the game 10 times, we'd win the next nine, some of them quite comfortably. We haven't been dominated quite as badly as that second quarter by anyone, even the bigger nations we've played. Its almost unexplainable. But yes, gdp would have won it for us.

Thanks. I hope you realise I'm not asking the question to try to make a point or second guess you (the point I have made unwittingly with the home/away comment is that I don't usually pay much attention to national team games...), rather that I feel you did an really good job last season and are always open to discuss the games in detail, so I will probably learn something.

My perspective would always be that it's either the right decision to use gdp or the wrong decision. That decision is obviously complex and subjective and it's usually the wrong decision once you conclude that in most cases you're basically guessing, but if you only ever use it when you're an underdog, then you are more open to being upset and won't reap the full reward from that part of the game when you're not the favourite if (as I suspect) other GM's are less reticent to use gdp.

I take your point on statistical variance though, I formed my views on the value of gdp from reviewing what in the grand scheme of things is a relatively small sample of games. I could be miles out with my assessment of how impactful correct predictions are and how hurtful incorrect ones are...