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We play our final game of this round against Australia tonight. We need to win the game by 41 Points to advance. That's going to be a really tough task.

If we hadn't lost that game to Korea then all we would need now is a win. That loss is still tough to swallow.

In the last two weeks we've gotten 4 pops on FT, Thanks everyone for adding some focus there to improve this weakness.

Our season has now ended and we play Turkey this week in a scrimmage. I will only be suiting 10 players for this game. These 10 players accounted for 96% of our minutes this season and will be held over for next season. The remaining 5 players are being evaluated for consideration in next seasons squad. I am looking to prioritize spots for our youth to be able to encourage and shape their continued development. Probably at least a few of the remaining 8 spots will go to the new kids, and I will probably hold open at least 2 spots for later consideration.

We finished 3rd in the second round of the Asia Tournament which I think earns us a spot in the Repechage (second chance) tournament to start next season. We will get 1 game each against a team from Europe, Africa, and Americas. Hopefully we can win 1-2 of these games. If we win our group we would advance to the world championships, but honestly the European teams will probably be too strong for us to overcome.

Please, Please, Please keep focused on managing game shapes next season. Low gameshape down the stretch really cost us and was a contributor to our loss to Korea. I'm aiming for making a good run in the consolation tournament so we need the gameshapes to be high. Also, we've been pretty weak on Free Throws so please continue to train this area.

Hmmm... I think playing blanks ended up killing us in the final few games. BB's playing up at the moment, so I can't access the boxscores - but I'm pretty sure it chose line-ups vs Sth Korea/Australia that had none of our top scorers in the starters, or at least fewer than optimal - it also chose some of our weakest FT shooters, which only highlighted the problem you pointed to.

Korea wasn't a blank, but was related to management decision on how to cover for Yasujiro. Not sure I made the best choice there.

Both Australia games were blanks, by the second one our GS was totally shot. This season our best performances were on blank line-ups. The game engine clearly runs better on that and many of our opponents are running blanks. If you don't use the blank line-up then you're at a disadvantage. Thus why the BBs are trying to alter it. It would probably be better without it.

Not sure I agree... for us. Blanks work when you have many, many options.

Starting line-up (vs Australia):
Amori (scored 2 points)
Ueda (5)
Tsunami (3)
Asano (15)
Kishita (1)

Not sure if there's anywhere I can see the NT averages, but I'd bet most of those guys have competition within the NT that does better.

Additionally, blanks seem to do some very strange things at times with line-ups. Playing players considerably out of position - including (at times) guys like Tsunami at the point.
I think for smaller nations, like us, we have to get creative if we want to compete with the big-boys. Now... I think you've done a pretty good job, but I don't think we're going to see improvement by running blanks/LI.

Last edited by malice at 7/7/2014 6:03:13 AM

Not to mention Tom didn't run one single blank and look how he did.

Thank you for the feedback. It makes think through things and consider what are the best options.

I agree with you that the starters that the game engine chooses are less than ideal. I do like how blank does a better job with substitutions but maybe its not maximizing our potential. I'm considering some other approaches that could do a better job.

Feel free to keep sharing your thoughts. Now, back to selecting the team for next season.

Good stuff dude. Ball for your attitude - glad you realize I'm not taking shots at you.

I guess we need a new thread?

But any way... feel really bad for the team tonight - could NOT score well enough. Awful shooting, especially 3pt shooting.

The combination of Matsumoto's injury and Yasuhiro's game shape. It's hard to make up for both of them, they are the keys to our success.