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Heres another question that is rather selfish. I've been gone for a couple season (maybe 5-6?). What has changed in the game engine that can be exploited and what has changed in the scenery of the national stage? We can be local with the Americas side.

Well although some people may disagree with me on this, I feel like LI has been pushed down a little bit and 2-3 defenses and SBing in general is a bit more effective. An example of this would be the B3 Tournament championship, (65653784), where the team that won, played 2-3 for defense and beat a stacked team when his own roster had one of the lowest salaries in the tournament. It is very impressive to me and proof that things are changing a bit in BB. I think teams with good Forward/Wing positions generally end up performing better than teams that just stack their bigs. The GE has also changed due to the GDP which many people do not have a lot of information yet but it will certainly help while face standard LI/M2m teams that do not play anything else. As for the national stage, I am only focused on the U21 NT so I do not watch the NT as much, but the U21 NT is a lot like it's been for the past few seasons, but a bunch of people on the offsite have been trying to create different type of players to see how they work into the U21 NT and how effective they can be (Patrick Connor and Joseph Hamel come to mind from last season, as well as Keith Irizarry this season).

I don't quite agree with you. I feel like last season, the USA NT probably has a much harder time to get to finals and may have not got there at all if the decision to throw the game against Panama wasn't made. There are certain cases where you could and should throw a game in my opinion.

I don't recall a single time where the U21 has ever thrown a game. We are always the best continental team, and it's stupid to throw a game during Worlds. In fact the U21 has not even lost a game during continentals in 10 seasons, or 18 months.

Sure the NT has a history of throwing a game during continentals to better align who they face in the semis. The US is not the world power at the NT level that it is at the U21 level(another discussion for another election).

So, no there is not any incident where we should ever throw a U21 game, which is all that needs to be known at this level.

The original question was asking about in what situations would we be willing to throw a game if at all. So although we probably will not come across this situation, the point is, that if we were to come across it, my approach would be to look at the bigger picture and do whatever is necessary in order for our U21 NT to succeed and get further in the tournament. Do I believe that we will come across it? Not particularly. However, I felt he has a right for an answer to his question, rather than saying that we won't have to worry about it because it probably won't happen.

We'll never throw a game during worlds, since it's win and advance, so there's no position jockeying there.

If, let's say, Canada has the best U21 BB has ever seen and winning our final game means we face them in the semis, than, yes, I would consider throwing that game so we don't have to face them until the meaningless finals. That's not going to happen ever, unless some of those farm team players have dual Canadian citizenship.

And the U21 has thrown a game oriolekid. I believe you were new at the time.

In what situations would you ignore go against popular opinion (on the offsite mostly) and go on your own?

Not many situations at all. I'm a team player. If the offsite members (Mainly A Warrior, Hunterz, and fewmit) all think something different than what I had in mind, I'm just going to have to suck it up, because if the majority of the group believes one thing and they have good points, then I trust them. It comes down to the saying "We can agree to disagree". I may disagree with what they are saying but I have to respect their opinions and if they have other people backing them up then I see no reason to not go with the majority. This is why it is also important to get more people involved on the offsite, because then there are more voices to be heard and on hard decisions there will be more perspectives involved.

Last edited by E.B.W. at 12/24/2013 11:13:28 PM

BB-Charles, can you use your powers and relegate my team into the abyss of BB, D-VI. I'd like to further slide into the depths of absurdity as I discretely add another impressive accolade to my collection. Upsyndrome, D-VI champions! I envision my fame reaching new heights, as I'd be widely viewed across BB as the KBD of the lower level divisions.

You are elected to lead, not to follow.

Now with that said I agree with you. Except many a times, I believe Jelme most famously, has gone against the popular opinion with both good, and bad results. Jelme is one of the best U21 coaches we've ever had.

As the manager you know the team better than anyone. If with 100% of your heart, you believe that 2-3 zoning against a dominant LI team will yield better results than just M2M, than consult the offsite, see what they want, and if you're not convinced completely to follow their advice, than screw it. The offsite, like any group of more than five people, tends to level out at play it safe. Sometimes playing it safe simply does not work.

Now if all week people have been saying play LI, with Lineup A, and then you set your lineup as RNG with lineup B, without telling anyone because of a gut feeling, than you have a serious problem and don't deserve to be managing.