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Season 20 Week 2

Last week we Overcame a CT from our opponenet and a little bit of gameshape issues to secure a 15 point victory over Cyprus. Once again Furusawa was a huge force with 30 points and 15 rebounds. We also recieved big contributions from Oishi (20pts and 6 assists) and Tagawa (11pts, 8 assists, 2 steals).

After the first week we are 1-0 PD +15 which puts us at 21st in the standings. But, its just the first week.

In Week 2 we face the tough Serbian team and will be playing at their place. They are ranked 38th and just came off a 117-103 victory at England. They look like they have some really good bigs which will cause us trouble. However, we had a decent gameshape update and hopefully that will help us out.

As promissed I want to post prospect rankings so everyone can get a glimpse of what talent is on the way. Players are in order of how close they are to making the team (based on a scoring system)

Guards
Player Age Potential Team Country
Hironobu Yokotami 23 Sup Celtics Montevarchi Italy
Hideyuki Honda 22 PA Baikinman Japan
Kenya Mizuno 24 HOF Hillheads Warriors Scotland
Masamitsu Honda 25 MVP Penetrator City Serbia
Takao Shiomi 23 Sup Mythical Man-Month Japan
Makoto Asada 23 MVP Atl Estacion II Spain
Hideharu Ouchi 22 Sup Baikinman Japan
$ - Yasushi Yokoyama 22 Sup Mi smo Kamikaze Serbia
Issei Takashima 23 Sup Mi smo Kamikaze Serbia


Small Forward
Player Age Potential Team Country
Yuusuke Tsunami 22 SUP Fire Country Trailblazers Japan
Motosugu Sendai 22 MVP Mythical Man-Month Japan
Takao Shiomi 23 SUP Mythical Man-Month Japan

Bigs
Player Age Potential Team Country
Tohru Asano 23 MVP Kitakyushu Japan
Masahide Iwata 23 MVP Swoosh Japan
Soichiro Motoori 22 MVP Kitakyushu Japan


As you can see, we have alot more talent coming for guards then the other spots. I guess this is normal here in Japan. I have heard of some good players in U21 which could help build out the list further as they come up.

$ - indicates player currently for sale.


Last edited by Taiyo at 6/4/2012 6:39:30 PM

Very interesting and good report. Great game against Cyprus it seems we are in safe hands this season.

It turns out that Serbia was even better than expected, and we got crushed by 30, 121-91.

Summary of the game:
- Serbia out shot us 60% to 43%
- Serbia out rebounded us 54 to 30
- Furusawa had our best player rating at 15.5, that matched their worst player rating.
- And we played in Serbia.

I think they were a bit underrated at 38, I hope we don't draw many more teams like that.......



Well, now we wait for the remaining six games of our schedule to be posted this week and then we'll take a look at the outlook for the rest of the season.

On another note, Kouzo Yasujiro made his first National Team appearance with 2 minutes of mop up time. He went 1 for 1 for 2 points, and grabbed an offensive rebound.

Not bad for just 2 minutes. I'm looking forward to much more of that in the future.

We've now been assigned our next 6 games..........

Could we have possibly recieved a worse draw? Anyway, here's the details:

6/12 @ #14 Argentina - Likely Loss
6/18 Vs #76 Scotland - Probable Win
6/25 Vs #20 Hong Kong - Likely Loss
7/3 @ #29 Schweiz - Likely Loss
7/9 @ #24 Eesti - Likely Loss
7/16 Vs #48 Deutschland - Maybe....... 1000 user country that is poorly managed


I wanted to compare to a similar rival so I check Singapore....... Check this out
(http://www.buzzerbeater.com/country/65/nt/schedule.aspx)

If we had their schedule I would expect to advance. I haven't bothered to look at others yet. Doesn't seem fair but I guess its done randomly. Just a bad draw for us this year.

That is a very cruel draw. Is there anything we can do strategically that can help us in the long term?

Week 3

Tomorrow morning at 7AM Japan time we will play our third game of the season. We face the #14 Argentina team in Argentina. They are just coming out of the World Championship Repechage (2nd chance qualifier) where they were 2-1. Their roster is fiercly stong and they will probably make short work of us. We'll give it our best effort and hope to keep it close. You will also get a chance to see some more action from Yasujiro as he is listed as a back up this week.


Final 2 Call Ups

After some deliberation I have decided on who I will call up to fill the last two spots on the roster.

Criteria: I focussed on our areas of need, Bigs, and Small forward and then selected the prospect in each category that has the best overall skills and is the most likely to become a strong contributor to the National team in the future. The results of that selection process are no surprise.

Please welcome SF Yuusuke Tsunami from Fire Country Trail Blazers (Japan) and PF Tohru Asano from Kitakyushu (Japan). Both these players are still early in their development but are also highly probable of being strong contributors in the near future. I'm not sure they will see significant playing time initially but we may get them in for some action during scrimmages or once we are officially eliminated.

I would say Asano is very early in his development but he is getting better every week. But I do like seeing the flag next to his name so it will make me train him even harder.

Yes, It's probably a little early for both of them. But last season I held on to 3 spots and never ended up using them. I'd rather use the spots rather than waste them and I can try to find some opportunties to get them a little experience.

And I guess a little extra motivation helps.