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Since I only managed two posts in the last year's thread, I believe I will surpass this easily in this season

First of all, thank you for the re-election, and I hope I we will continue to strengthen the Swedish BB community together.

We started with the European championships, hosted by the Czech republic, this (past) Monday with a surprisingly tough fought win against Azerbaijan (77745).

Especially the first quarter was very painful to watch, since we were completely destroyed by a team, which should be, theoretically, vastly inferior. By the end of the first half we managed to get back into the game, took the lead in Q3, but were never really convincing with our game. By the end we managed to increase the points difference by +15, which is about 20 points short of what I was hoping for.

First games are always quite chaotic so maybe I shouldn't overanalyze why we didn't perform better. But on the other hand, we definitely still have some weaknesses and probably still miss some more strength at certain positions.

More will be known after next games, where we won't be able to escape the truth. First we play against Estonia, who tried their chances against higher seeded Italy in their first game, but failed by a short margin (77748). Then it will be Denmark, also a very ambitious and growing team, afterwards Ukraine, who also dreams of qualifying to the second round. These three games will most likely show our current value, so I keep fingers crossed for a good game shape.

Best regards and have a happy and healthy 2025!

P.S. Once again I give you the invite link for the Swedish BB discord channel: (https://discord.gg/xZNmX6jdX7). There is much more traffic there, than on the forums.



Last edited by Deschamps at 1/9/2025 9:21:14 AM

We have played the three decisive games in the past three weeks. Unfortunately, the outcome is not what we desired, so this EC can already be marked as unsuccessful.

The game against Estonia (77749) was the most decisive. I am sure that if we won this one, the following game against Denmark would have turned out differently. But unfortunately we lost after a thrilling final minutes. Before the game I knew, that our GS is much worse than the one of our opponent, and quality-wise, we are also behind. So I decided to try to even the odds by increasing our rebounding, which can sometimes lead to inferior teams being competitive. 2-3 zone and inside attack were indeed boosting our rebounds, but unfortunately Estonia played motion, against which our defensive capabilities were limited. At the end, we lost 106-109, and final moments are still not fun to read in play-by-play list.

Next game was Denmark, which is a lower seeded team, which meant we were seen as favourites. Unfortunately, this game was not even very close with both teams playing the same tactics and having the same entusiasm (77753). After the game, I somewhat regretted my tactical decisions, and this was the game, which we should have won. But again we were missing some of our best players, which limited us severely. Similarly to the game against Estonia, our biggest disappointment was our best player, Kristian Forsbratt, who didn't deliver what was expected of him. Until two seasons ago, a veteran Tommy Fyhrhult was taking the decisive shots and leading the team, but now our core of best players is much younger, which is reflected in game dynamics. We usually start very slow and get behind quickly. Also, decisive moves are often bad, such as offensive fouls, traveling violation, etc. Here, we just have to be patient and wait for youngsters to gain some more experience and stamina.

The last game was against Ukraine, who was still hurting after a 2nd OT loss against Italy on previous Monday. We forced a win with a higher attitude (77758), but still it was a close game with CT-TIE, so nothing to be much optimistic about. By far our best player was Frank Giltorp, who is actually by far the worst player regarding skills in our starting 5. But he has experience and stamina, and that already means something. He scored 46 points, had a very good FG% (14-24) and made some decisive moves. Same can be said about Tommy Fyhrhult, who lost a lot since his peak, but is still a valuable player. So at the end we won the ugly way, but a win is a win, and we need to keep our ranking somewhat decent.

In the following two weeks we play against Italy and Lithuania, where we can't expect much. Then comes Armenia, who lost against Denmark after OT today, so they are quite decent. I am sure it will not be an easy game for us.



Last edited by Deschamps at 1/27/2025 3:38:55 PM

We have only one game remaining at this season's EC - the game against lower ranked Armenia. It is a psychologically difficult situation, since a win would mean no significant moral boost, yet a defeat would hurt us a lot. After a CT against Ukraine, I suspect we are vulnerable, but still in role of a favorite.

In the last two weeks we had two encouraging games against Italy and Lithuania, where, although it was still two losses, we exhibited better performance than expected.

The game against Italy (77761) was lost by 20 points. This is the difference I would expect if we played under the same parameters. However, our enthusiasm was much lower than the one of Italians, so I expected at least 10 points higher difference. Not to get to positive on such a loss, we still weren't any real threat in this game, Italians quickly took the lead and got further and further away as the game progressed. Finally we witnessed some good performance from Kristian Forsbratt, who was our scoring leader with 24 points (FG 11-1) along with Lasse Lundell.

Although the game against Lithuania finished with a similarly high loss of 17 points (77765), our performance was one additional step better, and might be the best game we have played at this EC. After all, Lithuania is ranked #1 in the world rankings and is currently the world vice-champion. Additionally, the enthusiasm difference was very high, yet we were really a threat all the way to beginning of Q4. Solid defensively and offensively, disciplined with rebounds, so it is an encouraging game even if it didn't get us any glory. Again, Lundell and Forsbratt were leading the team offensively, and we were missing the contribution of Finn Egghall, who got injured after 19 minutes of playing time.

Before the last game we are theoretically in contention for places 4-7 in the group, but practically it is more 5-6. Currently it is:

1. Lithuania 6
2. Italy 6
3. Estonia 4
4. Denmark 3 (-52)
5. Ukraine 2 (14)
6. Sweden 2 (-27)
7. Armenia 1 (-222)
8. Azerbeijan 0

The last games are:

Lithuania-Italy, which will decide who will finish 1st and who 2nd in the group. Both teams are already in the second stage, so an easy game is expected

Ukraine-Azerbeijan, where Ukraine should win, the only question is about the points difference

Estonia-Denmark, where Estonians are seen as heavy favorites, and both teams are likely to play with the same attitude.

So basically, if we beat Armenia, then we will be ahead of Denmark, if they loose against Estonia, and they will be ahead of us if they manage to win their game. Getting ahead of Ukraine will be very difficult, since we have to win Armenians by 40+ points more than Ukraine will win against Azerbeijan, which is not very likely. If we loose against Armenia, then we will finish 6th, since they cannot get ahead of us in the points difference category, well only theoretically they can. But of course that would be a bitter defeat and we will do anything to avoid it. As the last couple of games have demonstrated, we are a level above Armenia (who lost by 70 points against ITA and 85 points against LTU), but some games (notably against Azerbeaijan and Denmark) have proved our lack of consistency, so it is difficult to be completely sure.

As I debated earlier, we played our last game of the EC against Armenia. The game turned out to be much easier than anticipated - we finally formed our ranks and got proficient GS all across the roster, while Armenians had some problems. We also didn't hold back and went all in for the last match, while Armenia kept some of their enthusiasm for friendly matches, and went "only" normal into the game. So the end result, 112-75 (77769) meant we achieved by far the highest win in this tournament, which got us to a 5th place finish in the group.

The game itself was quite uneventful. We steadily increased our lead by approx. 10 points per quarter. We had some problems guarding Armenian star player, Rupen Bohchalyan, who scored 26 points with a FG 10-14. Other players were much less effective, although our defensive tactics (outside box and one) should in theory focus more on preventing good shots from their best scorer. Among our players, we had a very homogeneous distribution of point scoring, Egghall, Forsbratt and Lundell scored 14 points, Sören Häggin scored 13 points, while Håkansson, Gilltorp and Nilsson contributed 12 points each.

The defeat of Danes against Estonia meant we got ahead of them in the rankings. Ukrainians were also not very convincing against Azerbeijan, so we could also hope to get ahead of them - at least for the first three quarters. Unfortunately for us, Ukraine stepped up in the last quarter and increased their lead by +19, while we stepped down and only managed to increase our lead by +4.

At the end, this got us where we belonged at the start of the tournament - 5th place in the group and nowhere near the fight for the second round, which was reserved for Lithiania and Italy. However, especially Italy was under a lot of pressure, their matches against Estonia and Ukraine were very, very close. This emphasizes the fact, that the differences for one individual match are not that high, which was evident also in our games against the two group favorites. However, what smaller teams lack is consistency, and across the span of five difficult games even very small differences in quality become very evident.

At the end, I can call this tournament uninspiring. Not completely unsuccessful, but I believe we were able to achieve more. This was the final, now really final, season of the NT legend Tommy Fyhrhult, who finished his NT career with 161 appearances (#1 in the all time list), 2783 points (#1) and 522 assists (#6). Another retiree is Frank Jonasson, who got to impressive 134 appearances. He was never the first choice in the PF/C positions, and was always just a backup. But, given our small talent pool among high players, he was frequently used, which brought him to such high number of NT games. Kudos to him as well.

Getting some new PF/C players is also our first priority for the seasons to come. Petter Börjesson also has only one good season left, while Håkan Dallius is the next oldest regular player in the NT. This means we are really, really thin with high players, but if everything goes perfect, that we might survive this without noticeable decline in performance. But we really need to do everything completely right. A more steady influx of high players is expected when current U23 year olds mature, which will take some time.

Just a quick summary of our season 68. In buzzerbeater terms, it was awful or even pitiful, and our weaknesses were highlighted in almost every match we played.

The away loss against Andorra (79354) quickly decreased our chances for qualifying to he playoffs for the third time in a row. Afterwards, we tried to neutralize this loss against Greece (79416) with a higher (normal) attitude, but we were far from being successful, and it became very obvious, that we cannot match such teams at the moment.

Two games with normal attitude left us without accumulated enthusiasm for the away game against Iran (79461), where we were also not competitive, and one game later we finally managed to get our first win against Cyprus (79484) at home. Then came another disappointing match against Macau (79531), where we were once more dominated. Afterwards, we played our only good game of the season, beating higher ranked Romania (79565). Although it was a home game, and Romania also had a very bad season, it was a light of hope in our depressing campaign.

For the last two games we had nothing to loose, so we attacked Bosnia (79607) with a crunch time. Although we also positioned ourselves well tactically, we were nowhere close in this match, and it was again a bit depressing. For the last game of the season, we managed to beat our weakest oponent in the season, Jamaica (79634) even with depleted enthusiasm.

Bottom line, we tried many tactical combinations, lineup combinations, but at the end we were still unable to bridge a large black hole of our centers. Also, our team got a lot younger in the recent seasons, and this also shows. I expect we will reach a plateau for a while (in an otherwise falling trend, so plateau is good in this case ), then we'll start to climb. We have a really good generation of players, aged 30 and younger, starting with Sören Häggin (30), Kristian Forsbratt (29) and Herman Hansson (27), who are world-class players, or will soon become such, and will reach their peak in a couple of seasons. But they will not yet enjoy the benefits of world-class PF/C teammates, here we will have to wait for Michael Ahler (24) and beyond.

I started with encouraging managers to train Swedish players when current 23-year olds were 18, and theese generations carry quite a lot of depth and outstanding quality, so I am still very motivated to continue with the Swedish NT. Here, I thank again to all Swedish managers, who put a lot of effort into training and maintaining players of all ages. Again, I invite you to discord, where informations are a bit more up to date

https://discord.gg/xZNmX6jdX7


Last edited by Deschamps at 6/24/2025 11:52:42 AM