That was pretty much it. Double checked everything Sunday night before the Monday afternoon game. Checked the "make this the default lineup" box just in case there was any lineup problem like at the season's start. Not with our team but with others. I did this all season.
How the game went!
The bastards crunched. F%#@
Did guess inside correctly. Got 4 out of their 5 starters guessed correctly.
Along with HCA, and even with a GDP guess correct, I knew it would be a miracle to win this one. I didn't guess LI because I knew from previous games their guards were not big LI point contributors AT ALL. So they might have went LP. I didn't want to nullify the FOR SURE inside guess with an incorrect pace guess.
1st quarter -- Koszakov had a massive quarter, 7/9 shooting, 0/1 3s tho. 16 points! 10 for Pav backing up! A 28-20 lead! 7 assisted baskets! No foul trouble, 3 total by 3 different players. Czech points were spread out a little more than anticipated, 4-4-3-2-2 for starters. OMG could all that game planning work?
2nd quarter -- Koszakov cools off going 1/6 and we score half as many points as the first. Ouch. 5 more assists and only 1 more foul so we're still looking good. 3 turnovers as a team at half is outstanding. And with 6/7 free throws we're not giving any easy points. SF Lapka for them has 4 fouls already. 13 assists for them is troubling. Beast C Vesely is only 4/9. Have a chance.
3rd quarter -- Tight quarter that ends 20-19 for Czech. So we are just down 1. Koszakov up to 11/23 for 29 points. Just 1/5 from downtown is not what I was hoping for though. Curley shooting 1/6 and Mughal 0/5 semi-confirms we were good not going inside offense. 5 turnovers in the quarter hurt. We are also getting out offensive rebounded 18-4. EIGHTEEN TO FOUR. And we're down just 1. Hold on, onto the 4th.
4th quarter -- With 4 minutes left we were down 9. With 40 seconds left we were down 4. Sadly, that's as close as we got, missing threes while fouling and giving up free throws at the other end and losing by 9 at the horn.
How were we close?
a) 38 from Koszakov and 21 from Pavliuk in 53 minutes between them (I had hoped to get 50 points from SF slot, I haven't checked how many from Pav were at PG instead
b) 10/13 free throws, good % but low amount
c) 15 turnovers isn't bad although 12 came in 2nd half
d) out-blocked them 7-6
e) held them to 32/82 (39% shooting) to our 31/77 (40%)
f) held their PF and C to 12/30 shooting
How we lost?
a) they crunched at home (and needed to)
b) they out rebounded us 54-38 (21-8 on offense)
c) they got 35 foul shots to our 13
d) ID on our guards wasn't high enough and their PG went 8/16 for 18 points, which really killed us (SG only went 1/7 for 4 points)
Feel free to comment, question, praise, second guess anything I've done here. Sorry if my notes weren't complete or if I was rambling or if all the text is hard to read/understand/etc. I would be glad to give more depth on anything here or U21 or BB related at all. Thanks to all managers of U21 players this year and for future seasons for contributing. Let's keep up the upward trend!
Thanks for reading.
Last edited by U21 CAN Cletus at 1/18/2016 4:49:48 PM