BuzzerBeater Forums

Problem with the U21 level is that you are very limited with only 3 seasons to train prior to being looked at for the team. If someone decides to train secondaries first, they are almost guaranteed to be behind in the necassary skills to compete at their position. While I understand that a mix of skills is crucial to having a successful team, I personally feel like it is more important at the NT level rather than the U21 level. With that said, there is a fine line between which players are pumped with primaries and which ones are trained differently to become NT players. The reason 1v1Fs is suggested so much is that it trains 4 different skills. While training for the U21, that allows you to still train those primaries to high levels while getting secondary training.

I really dont think anyone says screws secondaries, theres just not enough time for the U21 level.

To all the candidates - will you make use of the USA Offsite/BB-USA and if so, how exactly will you use it for purposes of the running the team?

with all due respect, there is literally a post on the u21 thread offsite that says Secondaries do not matter at the u21 level.
The practices have been to take the guy with the highest ID and IS and run him out there. How is that logical in any way shape or form?

Woah...can you point me to this post? I dont think I have seen that.

its within the debate in the Consol thread on Phyrs choice of calling up his player vs a better more well rounded big this season, i would read through it as some startling things revealed themselves about the way the Offsite thinks with regards to players.



A question for any and all, if you were setting a lineup who would you choose?

Player A
7/3/5/1/4/6 - 14/14/12/6

Player B
7/1/7/9/8/5 - 12/13/12/13

Player C
4/1/4/1/4/4 - 15/15/15/2

Just got done reading through it.....

I think the real question with builds at the U21 level has to do with what tactics are being used. I dont disagree that the player in question was better overall. He would be a good option for a base offense or an outside offense at the U21 level. Problem comes with playing LI, the more traditional builds tend to perform better.

Now, put 2 or 3 of those guys on the team together with 9 GS and the team could have run a different tactic.

in the specific example it could go either way. See where we disagree is that the traditional builds perform better in LI, I run it quite often and managed to win 10 games last year with pretty much just Hendrickson in d.3.
Hendrickson was u21 2 seasons ago and performed IMO better than any other big in whatever offense we ran, and had the least IS and the most SB as well as 8 PA. I think the reason everyone says that traditional builds perform better is that there has yet to be adequate exploration of builds and tactics. Something I think you are doing a good job of doing at the NT level.

Last edited by tetrahydroc at 2/16/2016 1:13:58 PM

Good question.

It's no longer really a question of whether or not you use the offsite, but whether or not you use the managers that are on the offsite to your advantage. A lot of people on the offsite, many of which have become good D.II and NBBA managers, will post their paths to success. You will no doubt have noticed a few of them on here already (Phyr, A-Dub, and the NT Manager). I would suggest that any manager who is in D.III or D.IV and in need of that extra boost sign up for the offsite. It helps you see a lot of information that the game may not present to you in any other fashion. For example, there are old crowd-sourced data that offers some indication of what shots are taken in what offense, and what positions tend to shoot the most in those offenses. You will also note a heavy amount of conversation about the u21 and NT strategies. In short, i believe any u21 manager, whether or not they have currently signed up for the offsite or not, will miss out on a significant tool at their disposal in job, and would probably do their country a disservice by refusing to use it as a tool.

I think if tough wins, i will happily aid him in the game planning against the opponent, something that he sometimes struggles with, because it's the right thing to do. Similarly, if I were to win i would think he would be willing to contribute to the scouting of the team because more than anything else he really desires to win and is really good at scouting. He's so good at scouting and getting people behind the cause that I tried to get him not to run so that he could keep doing that for us. I think without him here the last 3 seasons, you aren't looking at the same level of players as we have now, and as many as 5-6 managers will have not found additional info to aid in their own team's development.

Josh

Shadowslam (EPK) has already touched on this just a bit, but i would like to provide my theories on the u21 training and why training primaries is important but not always the right path.

Whether people wish to admit it or not, the training path for the u21 and the training path that a trainee might otherwise take for team use are typically no different. When training a Big for the u21, you get driving, handling, and occasionally add some other outside skills, but for the most part you hit some combination of IS, ID, REB, and SB to get that player to a comparable level. The only time one would not build a player to a high combination of IS and ID is lower potential (star and all-star). It's simply a matter of timing and effectiveness of the player that a team wishes to have. Some would rather spend fewer games on training a guy on their secondaries, which would lead them to develop primaries after the age 20 season. This is a double-edged sword, as that guy with great secondaries now will have a long road to actually being good enough to play on the inside.

In reality, the only other time someone might not want to develop a guy's primaries right off the bat is when they wanted to keep salaries lower to make more money. This is true in some ways as you spend less per week, but you are likely winning more games and filling more seats the other way. I trained my players well rounded because i wanted to try and land the #1 pick in the D.III draft while training players, so winning wasn't important and therefore salary wasn't important.

This does not mean that every player should be a cookie cutter design. In previous seasons, we might have had 15-16 players that fit the offense desired. This season, we only really had 8. This is not because of a lack of scouting, this is because of a lack in players properly developed for the u21 team for that offensive scheme (PTB/LI). IF we attempt to follow this design to the end, I think we limit what we can be as a u21 squad. We need to be accepting of those 7 potential guys that may lack rebounding but have other skills that benefit the cause (such as better flow from passing, or higher OD so that they might fit the SF mold), even if our ideals fall in a different player build, otherwise we are a victim to any week where gameshape falls short. Unless we want to do the advertising for the game ourselves rather than hope that BB wants to invest in SEO again, that is a big part of what will help reestablish this team as a power.

Josh

In most cases you might want to run with player B. There are differing situations however.

For example, in a game where i had a match-up against a team that was reliant on getting rebounds to get the second opportunities to win games, i would likely want to have player C instead. That player is several levels higher at putting a higher total of rebounds up, and additionally has a higher IS for offensive rebounds.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Another issue is game-shape on the players, which is something you unfortunately decided not to include. In fact, the u21 manager basically told you that he wasn't going to call him up because of that game-shape issue he felt the player had.

I am not in the business of calling up guys in 7 GS, especially with limited call up spots.

We need guys with IS with Avalos and Barth are in terrible game-shape and we are in the knockout round if we want to run LI.

Lets play the game again.

Player A - Average game-shape of 8.1
7/3/5/1/4/6 - 14/14/12/6

Player B - Average game-shape of 7.1
7/1/7/9/8/5 - 12/13/12/13

Player C - Average game-shape of 8.4
4/1/4/1/4/4 - 15/15/15/2

Now which player would you want? It's significantly more difficult for me not to side with player A and player C over player B. I'd beg the guy with player B to change his method of training his player so that he might gain the bonuses of better game-shape for his own team and for our team. But i would inevitably settle for player C if i was going to run LI, and Player A if i was running more of a PTB scheme at that point in the season.

Josh

Q:
Should we EXPECT any U21 forfeits from "you" as a new manager for u21 like we have ... started to grow accustomed to?

EPK/Shadowslam's response

I will immediately resign in Embarassment if there are any forfeits under my tenure.

Taken from Phyr's offsite post after we secured HCA

Thank you to all the owners who trained players this season. If anyone was considering selling before the beginning of playoffs, I wouldnt blame you. I will probably call up 2 20 year olds for the last two spots. Obviously, I wish I didn't *(mess)* up the semifinal game, but we came away with the best possible outcome for being in the Consol tourney. We have won 27 of our last 30 games but I feel like I have been very underwhelming as manager. I hope someone that has the time and is an experienced offsite manager will decide to run next season.

For all purposes, that is basically what the previous u21 coach is doing. As frustrating as it was to see that forfeit, at some point you are going to have to let it go and move on to what we can take away from other teams in the consolation tournament and work on ways to have an answer for those types of teams.

With regards to the way he picked his own guy over other options, The same potential problem concerns me going forward with you running for the u21 job. You have two very good players that will be u21 players when we get to that point in time, but if there are other options available in better game-shape are you going to have the ability to put one or the other on the bench or in a backup role for the sake of the result for the team?