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That's him...look how bored he is of shutting everyone down on D...he needs the challenge of NT games!

Picard has spent a bit too much time eating poutine this week and isn't mentally or physically ready to compete at the highest level.

Sorry about that, he got hurt in the league game and didn't play enough last week.

Sorry about that, he got hurt in the league game and didn't play enough last week.

No worries. Those things happen and it's better that it happen now than later in the schedule. He seems to be heading back in the right direction.

I posted some thoughts on this coming Monday's game against Bolivia on the offsite forum. If people want to head over there and give me some thoughts I would appreciate it.

I booked a scrimmage against Panama for this coming Monday since we have the week off from competition.

Last week I also added a player:
Daniel Spencer has been added to the team to shore up a front line that has been decimated by injuries and poor game shape. Spencer came into the season as the projected backup powerforward after playing 7 games with the NT in the past, but the meteoric rise of Christopher Moran pushed him off the team. The versatility of Haines looked like it pushed Spencer out of the NT picture but when Haines went down injured and Moran (allegedly) developed an addiction cheese-steak the NT was desperate to find a new big man. Spencer has stayed in phenomenal shape all season and his manager was actively looking for ways to get him back into the NT fold so when opportunity knocked Spencer was ready to suit up once again for the national team.

I posted something on the offsite forum. I need some thoughts on it as soon as possible.

A fairly detailed season wrap up is posted on the off-site forum:
http://bbcanada.forumotion.com/
I am looking for some feedback so head on over there.


I will also be making a "training camp" post this week and am just doing some last minute updating of the tracking list.

Here is a slightly modified version of what I posted on the off-site forum. Feel free to comment or make suggestions here or on the forum. If you're interested in following the NT or learning more about the game I suggest signing up off forum to see what is going on.

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I had hoped to make this more in depth, but for various reasons I simply can't spend as much time on these things as I had hoped. The vague and simple explanation for the short length of this round up and my slight disappearing act is that my partner has recently been diagnosed with fairly severe (but not life threatening) health problems that have eaten up much of my time and emotional energy. Obviously I have tried to prioritize her well being rather than my personal recreational stuff.

Anyway, I am looking for some honest feedback and some suggestions going forward. I'd like this to be the jump off for a larger discussion rather than simply a report back to the community.

Training:
I can't take credit for this, but I really feel like we are looking good going forward. Rather than just simply having new guys getting trained to overtake the existing stars by a couple of skill points, our good players are actually getting trained. Issa is becoming a beast and is getting very good, well rounded training. A variety of the other guards have also gotten some training over the course of the season.
Smith, Blekinsop, Spencer, et al are all done with training but TSA got an inside scoring pop and may occasionally get some two position training at rebounding.
There is a whole platoon of young guys coming up who are also getting training and I can see some of them break into the team this season including some forward prospects (EAK at SF and Maja at PF).

Game shape:
We had phenomenal game shape at the beginning of the season when we didn't really need it but as teams started advancing in the cup and league games started mattering more we had a huge drop off. Some cases were understandable - we got hit hard with some injuries and Issa's poor GS was the result of him getting lots of one position training at PG which will help down the road.

Unfortunately, we also have some key Canadian guys who are in awful, awful club sitautions. Moran is the best example of this.

I need some suggestions on maintaining GS. I don't feel like we have enough depth to simply pick up new guys as we need them. To compound matters we have a rash of short injuries to start out the season which will hurt GS for some of the supporting guards.


Tactical choices:
Injuries and game shape aside, I feel like I made a few major tactical errors:
Small forward:
This is where I made my biggest mistake. After we lost Abbott to a long injury and Wendon to poor GS I struggled to figure out a solution at small forward. EAK and Maja both are not at the point where I would trust either of them for various reasons defensively and Thomas' low rebounding and FT shooting turned out to be an achilles heal that I should have anticipated. I do need to figure out a work around in case we get hit with more injuries before EAK is ready to go (Maja is getting PF training).

Creativity:
I feel like I was too conservative and didn't take as many risks with the NT as I do with my club team. This is in part due to the available player pool: I just feel like we lack any real specialists that would let me do some of the wackier things that would be appealing. We have very few pure shooters, no clear specialist SF and our big men are all fairly balanced (i.e. no legendary rebounder or inside scorer). If I ever manage to get S. Milot's JS up then I think that he, paired with the EAK that I anticipate developing, will give us the option of running a pretty interesting inside attack but that is at least eight weeks away and we lack the big men to really pound the ball inside consistently.
Our relative strength at SF/PF (when healthy) also made me impose some limitatio