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Well congrats to Erie Razors...they held the Tornadoes to under 100 points, 83 to be exact, becoming the first team to do so in either a league game and only the second to do it in a league or cup game. The Tornadoes played a little defense of their own though and still managed to put up a respectable point differential despite their inability to light up the scoreboard, limiting Erie to 53 points on 19 of 92 shooting (20.7%). Also Faina sustained a hard hit and was held out much of the second half as a precautionary measure. He finished with 11 points on 5-7 shooting in 22 minutes. Antonio Astudillo, one of the team's original recruits from its first days, seized the opportunity and ran with it, aggressively drawing fouls and converting from the charity stripe (9 of 11) for a team-high 19 points.

Len Smiley is expected to be a long-term project, but he continues to improve and has impressed in game situations albeit against weaker opponents. He had a difficult time getting his shot to fall tonight, finishing a disappointing 3-11 from the field but recording a solid overall stat line: 6 points 6 rebounds, 7 assists compared to only one turnover, just his second in league play this season. For the season is averaging 7.9 points, 3.3 rebounds, 5.3 assists, and 0.6 steals in just under 25 minutes a game. Not bad for someone who's the fifth option to score on the court at any given time.

During post-game interviews, team captain Rich McNeill noted, "you haven't seen the best this team can bring. When we give everything we've got, we'll be virtually unstoppable." Whether he was referring to starting the rookie Smiley over dynamic passer Li Zhizhi (currently injured) and last year's starting point guard, starting all-star point guard and team assists leader Angelo Iriarte, or whether he was referring to the "take it easy" mentality that can be observed in the team's games this season is unclear. Still, it's something to monitor going forward, as the team saves high intensity for playoff games and worthy cup opponents.

On to the game against southside boyzz, as the Tornadoes embrace the opportunity to compete against other clubs from around the country. Rumor has it that the manager keeps his team motivated for the extra weekly game by treating them to dinner or promising them a short weekend of practice for every cup game they win. Whatever he's doing, it's been working so far.

Well last night's cup game was a mixed bag. On the bright side, the Tornadoes stayed alive in the cup by rolling to a 40-point victory. Also positively, Iriarte got 48 minutes at PG for training purposes. On the significant downside, Rafael Faina was injured and is expected to be out for two weeks. The team shouldn't miss him for league play, but in cup games it could hurt. Fortunately the next cup opponent looks to be manageable even without Faina's scoring punch. And anyway, there are much worse backups than Himadas, and Zhizhi is expected to be back for that game. It will certainly be close, and we might even lose.

Training update: Smiley failed to register a pop for the first time this season and in his career. Pressure training was very disappointing as Iriarte popped in ID, but no one popped in OD. Very disappointing on the whole.

Even without leading scorer Faina, the Tornadoes still rolled to a 116-37 point win, highlighted by stifling defense (the opposing team failed to score double-digit points in a period until the fourth quarter against the backups). Staggering performances were registered by Angelo Iriarte (22 points on 11-13 from the field and 11 rebounds in only 22 minutes), Len Smiley (career-highs in rebounds and assists with 14 boards and 12 dimes, flirted with the triple-double but only scored 7 points), and Simon Zoric, who also came close to the triple-double (29 points on 13-19 shooting, 22 rebounds, 8 assists, 5 blocks). The team had a scare when star center Lorenzo Catapang went down after a hard foul on a shot attempt and was unable to return to the game. Thankfully he avoided serious injury and is not expected to miss any time. [side note: seriously, I upgrade to a basic doctor from a minimal one and I get two players injured for multiple weeks and a third knocked out of a game? If someone injures Smiley I will ragequit). Simon Zoric replaced him and did his best Catapang impression from the free throw line, missing both attempts. Catapang has failed to make a single free throw on 313 career attempts.

Man why didn't this happen when I was playing against you...would've made it so much easier.
You winning with Iriarte at the PF, makes me shake my head...and then I noticed that he was playing at PF for most of this season. Then I missed the feeling of being in a league full of bots.

Yeah I know isn't it great? I can do whatever the hell I want with lineups, enthusiasm, etc. (including normaling or even CTing the cup games) without worrying about losing. And anyway he's a backup to McNeill, but even still average in all big man skills makes him a passable D.V PF. Then his mediocre OD and inept JS aren't too sub-par for a D.V PF, while prolific passing is great for a PF in just about any division. So because he has great passing and a lot of other scorers, he never has to take bad looks, hence the high shooting percentage. And since I'm training Smiley, he has to play somewhere else most of the time.

It definitely would have made it easier, but wasn't it so much more fun to know you at least beat one decent team en route to promotion?

What more must I do to get perfect ratings from the fans? Out of 5 balls on "all things considered, I am happy with the direction the team is going in" I have only 4.5 balls. This despite being currently 8-0 with a 73.5 ppg differential, still alive in the cup, and coming off a 20-2 season with a 794 PD. Also, I haven't made a player transfer for a month, and the team is only getting better. What can they possibly object to?

Decision time! What do you think: shold I CT my next cup game, since my opponent will TIE against bad teams, but against the non-bot cup team he faced he normaled even though he could have TIEed? I feel confident he'll normal me. Looking at the salaries of his players, I definitely can't TIE and would probably lose on normal without Faina, maybe even with him. I also know I can build up my enthusiasm again in league games and I'm so much better than any other team in this league that I can almost certainly beat them regardless of enthusiasm, although Avenel Falcons and Erie Razors are both doing a good job of managing their enthusiasm. So it's not like I absolutely NEED the enthusiasm for league play. I remember you had a pretty good cup run last year before getting an unlucky draw this year, so any advice?

Also, McNeill had 1 foul in 36 minutes of play heading into the fourth quarter of a blowout. He was playing at PG for training. He picks up 5 freaking fouls, the last with 6 freaking seconds left to go, and doesn't get 48+ minutes for maximum training. I know it's not a major difference, especially compared to the reduced training speed for being 22 years old, but still, very frustrating. Now I know what you must have felt like with Pringle sometimes.

LOOOL I saw McNeill had 6 fouls and it said 48 minutes in the box score, oh wells.
I would CT, I had the same problem as you except my game right after was the War Eagles and an Allstar Break and I just normal'd that game. I rather go for the 50K and go further into the Cup, because...well free 50K does help for when you promote this year. Its not like anyone can beat you.

And a pretty solid cup win. Not dominant, to be sure, but solid enough to make me wonder if I could possibly have won it without CT'ing. Considering it knocked my enthusiasm from 12 all the way to 5 (!) and I'm playing a D.II team, I figure I'm out of the cup next round, so I'll have plenty of time to build the enthusiasm back up. In other news, Smiley popped in OD and also randomly in rebounding (mixed blessing there in slightly higher salary), Iriarte popped in OD, but no pop for McNeill which, due to his age, is not a huge surprise.

McNeill isn't popping, because of his to his height, i'm guessing you trained Pressure, 22 is still pretty young...Berard popped 5 times in 6 weeks pretty good c:

Last edited by Lemony at 12/9/2011 4:14:50 PM

Well, the nice thing about having Zhizhi back: not only do I get a great passer to play PG for me now that Iriarte seems to have found himself a job at PF, but I get to play Smiley at SG for single-position outside shooting training without compromising my lineup. My only question: if I want to make Smiley a true PG, which I do, then I have to do a lot of passing training. And what's the point in having three players with really high passing? But I really love the idea of having him be the PG of my future, not the SG, especially since that's where I plan on playing Faina due to his inept ID, so McNeill can slide to SF and not have his mediocre ID exposed by D.IV and D.III PFs. In that case though, where does Iriarte fit? Backup PG? Then what to do about Zhizhi? And who will play PF, and how can I afford a decent one, especially while still expanding the arena, which is too small for D.IV in the long run? These are all long-term questions that I'll have to answer when Iriarte can no longer get by at the power forward position. But for now, Smiley has popped 8 times (granted only five of those pops are in guard skills-1 JS, 2OD, 1DR, 1PA, with the other three being IS, ID, REB) and should pop soon in HA, JS, and JR, maybe DR too. So he looks to continue progressing quite nicely. I'm not saying U21 just yet, but he'll be a very good player for my team for a while.

In other news, ho-hum, Smiley played 48 minutes at SG, the outside offense and defense ratings took a hit, but still another 58 point victory (I know, I'm slacking from the normal 65.7 average, but it was without the two top wing scorers Faina and Aldridge and also due to 2 3-pointers in the last 30 seconds). There's just no excitement. I'm looking forward to D.IV, where I expect to be able to hold my own but am equally sure that I won't immediately contend for a title. But even if everything went wrong and the more experienced D.IV teams exposed my guards' lack of perimeter defense and my forwards' lack of inside defense, while simultaneously shutting down my center by playing hack-a-Catapang (0 for 313 FT attempts at last count, and even worse now), even if wins were nearly impossible to come by, I could at least take pleasure in knowing that the wins I did get actually meant something. And I don't expect it to be that bad. But even if it were, it would still be more exciting than this.

I must admit that there are some perks about playing in a bot league, one of which is that I can play whatever lineup I want, and that's mildly entertaining. I've toyed with the thought of playing Catapang at PG against the Falcons, just because I can. But still, even the fun of that wears off. It does make it easy to train Smiley. And also hopefully in a mostly bot league I can pick up another decent draftee along the way to either train with Smiley or sell for cash to pave my entrance into D.IV--I know Erie Razors does scouting and the Falcons might do some too, but there's usually more than one good prospect anyway. You might say that there's rarely more than 1 elite prospect, which is true, but I did get Smiley from them, didn't I?

Anyhow, there's still BB work to be done, fine-tuning the roster as I alluded to in the first paragraph of this late-night semi-rant. There's also IRL life to be lived. This is just a game, after all. But it's a great one and even the tediousness of working my way to the top in some ways enhances my enjoyment. The things most worth doing never come quickly or easily, and the same is true here. So, starting point league V.101, final destination NBBA (with Len Smiley hopefully leading the charge)!