That loss to Singapore put us in a bit of a jam; we couldn't do PD manipulation as the mentality was just to avoid facing the top seeds in the first round. Out of the five undefeated teams, Romania is the only team we would've beaten in the first round, short of using crunch time. Finishing 29th in the seeding rounds would've been ideal, but winning our last game by exactly the margin needed to finish there would've been almost impossible. Unfortunately for us, we instead finished 27th and drew Bosnia...
In hindsight, CT'ing them may have actually been a good idea, since New Zealand also CT'ed and won. That's a 2nd round match-up we could've easily won... we then lose in the quarters of course, but that may just have been enough.
The margin of defeat also makes you wonder if we could've at least made it a contest with a 3-2 zone, jamming their high salary guards...
With that said, had Singapore not CT'ed us, allowing us to beat them, and all other results remained the same, we would've finished 16th-17th... and that would've put us on a collision course with Poland. In hindsight, our team just wasn't as good as we thought they were... I mean sure, our GS update this week wasn't the best, but it wasn't exactly horrible either, we still had our fair sure of players in strong or even proficient gameshape.
Iran is pretty much assured HCA for the next Asian tournament; New Zealand will get hung, drawn and quartered by Bosnia, and even if Iran don't get over Estonia, they have the higher seed, and with the other four Asian teams going down in the first round... Iran will be dangerous next season.
Speaking of which, next seasons preliminary squad has just been selected, and we are spoiled for choice in the PG and SG positions. We also have a few good SF candidates, but our team may lack strength at the PF and C positions. We do have some good players, but we don't have a Michael Wayne who can really dominate, and our depth in the bigman positions also leaves a lot to be desired.
I wouldn't be surprised to see next seasons U21 manager run an outside offence on numerous occasions during next seasons tournament...