Asunto: US Senior National Team

riiiiight. completely forgot that this is totally public and that the Hungary manager could see it all.

oops.

weird... the halftime update just said that there's 0 spectators? o_O

Now that's what I call an awful game. Total fail by the goalies.

Yes but why was pascals playing. Tomorrow I guess il at least know his qualities

rough game... at one point I thought we might claw our way back from the big 1st half deficit.

was kind of annoying reading every save the "BEAST" made.

I'll also be interested to see the game summary, because it looked like our 7m shooter and starting goalie had pretty forgettable games as well (but it might've just been in my head).

Pascale rate is as good as Jack. He in fact played better. Pascale, at least when players were called, was the 2nd best goalie in USA.

Fastbreak didnt work (for neither team)

7m shooting wasnt good

Teams had about the same statistics but seems that we had more turnovers as they shot much more at goal.

We played Hard

High vs VeryHigh Are we conserving energy now ?


I agree with Runny on playing Pascale. Good experience is being slowly spent on a throw away who will not be be on the team next year.

I think you really need to look at attacking the 9m line while you work out the goalies.

Some quick thoughts (Might be common knowledge but I thought id post anyways):

- Fast breaks against good teams will generally lead to more turnovers. ..

- Fast breaks seem to be are more effective when you don't make subs... against teams that have less speed and do sub.

- 6-0 doesn't ever seem to work well with fast breaks (in my experience at least)... think about it: you dont have any "forward" guys down court to pass to. Their defenders are already back in position relative to your players, so its harder to get a jump on them and easier for them to cause a turnover.

Its kind of like doing 3-2-1, slow transition... Its just kind of an odd combo.

some countries are playing hard, some very hard and a few normal.

I wasnt sure and decided to go Hard.

If we think about what players need to gain experience and etc, then we should start nobody.

I set our star to play 42 minutes but since he was crap today he didnt play that many.

and i also believe the experience is "equal" no matter how many minutes. I say taht cause i remember one article saying one of the changes they want to make in the near future is to gain experience based on minutes playing.

I agree with the goalie comments to an extent. But had we just gone with Jack the whole way, it would've been considerably worse. He was the problem, not Pascale.

You don't ride the goalie that's playing like crap harder if you want to have a chance at winning the game.

Problem with 6-0 is when you come up on a good shooting team.

6-0 works well with fast breaks. I have used it very successfully against a few opponents when the time was right to use it.

Bottom line.... we were outclassed by a better team

[1] I agree with the first point... which is why I said 6-0 might be a bit too conservative/passive for a national matchup against a team of this quality.

[2] On the second point, I flat out disagree. I don't think you've really taken a look at your results this year. The ONLY way a team can have success with a 6-0 fast breaks setup is if they're playing against teams with inferior speed, or if they play with higher intensity.

Lets take a look at your success using the tactic combination this year though (since you mentioned it). Here's a quick an dirty analysis:

You've used a 6-0 fast breaks setup in 5 halves this season. You've lost all but 1 of the games in which you've used this tactic combo.

In the 33 halves this season you DIDN'T play 6-0 fast breaks:
- your average fast break success percentage is 77.7% (101 goals out of 130 tries).
- your average number of fast breaks per half is 3.9 and your average number of fast break goals per half is 3.1
- your average turnovers per half is 5.3 (175 turnovers in 33 halves)
- your average GF (goals for) per half is 15.3 (505 goals in 33 halves)
- your average number of SOG (shots on goal) per half is 19.8 (652 in 33 halves)
- your average GA (goals against) per half is 13.8 (455 in 33 halves)
- you played VL 2 times, Low 3 times, Normal 21 times and High 7 times. Using a weighting scale of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 to indicate the respective intensity levels (1 being VL and 5 being VH), that's an average intensity of 3.0

In the 5 halves you DID play 6-0 fast breaks this season:
- your average fast break success percentage is 72.2% (13 goals out of 18 tries).
- your average number of fast breaks per half is 3.6 and your average number of fast break goals per half is 2.6
- your average turnovers per half is 7 (35 turnovers in 5 halves).
- your average GF per half is 12.8 (64 goals in 5 halves)
- your average number of SOG per half is 16.6 (83 in 5 halves)
- your average GA per half is 15.6 (78 in 5 halves)
- you played Normal 4 times and High 1 time. Using the same scale as above, that's an average intensity of 3.2

===

I mean honestly... I can't really see how this formation has been successful for you at all. Literally ever metric that I would use to determine success points to failure.

I mean you're using more energy than average when you played 6-0 fast breaks the 5 times you did it, yet you absolutely had inferior results in nearly every respect (on offense, defense, and in transition).

Sure it's a small sample size (only 5 halves played), but it's still pretty damning results I think.

Sorry if that seemed overly nit-picky. data analysis is weirdly enjoyable to me.