Asunto: US Under 19 Team

It absolutely will be. That tie that they and Slovakia had was absolutely brutal for us. Goal differential has no meaning for us anymore. We flat out just need to win 1 out of the last two games.

In one aspect, it's nice to have control of our fate (it's a rare thing in World Championships... lots of the time, you're dependent on "other things happening in your favor" ). But on the other hand, it does really suck. Because Slovakia is "waking up" and no longer playing on low (as they're looking to ensure advancement). They're the strongest team in our group, and their third place status belies their true strength. I honestly don't think we'll beat them, though I'm gonna try anyways. haha.

So it'll probably all come down to us versus Canada in the end.

And you know...? that's the way should be. Rivalry matchup on the last qualification game of the season.

Canada narrowly beat Serbia 33-32 today in U19. Here's hoping we can both qualify and leave Slovakia out of the playoffs

awww darn. well that was a horrid loss to Slovakia.

Seriously... just atrocious. I mean, their tactics were set well, but still... after scoring 18 goals in 27 shots in the first half, we only managed 9 goals in 12 shots in the 2nd (we actually did really well on the offensive end in that respect... 75% shot percentage excluding shots wide, but we just never had the damn ball lol).

The 4 goal lead we had didn't matter at all, as Slovakia just went HAM in the second half. They nearly tripled our shot count, doubled us in goals, and caused 13 turnovers... just a bad, bad, bad second half showing by the U.S.

I can't be too upset i suppose, because I figured it would come down to the Canada matchup, but a win against Slovakia was very much in reach and the kids just cracked and gave it away.

ehhhh. 2 goal loss. most of the game wasn't even close though... the U.S. goalies (likely tired) seemed as though they weren't stopping much of anything today.

I'll look at the match report out of curiosity, but man... what a bummer. Our fate was ours with two games left and we just dropped the ball rolling into the end of qualification. Damn, i really thought we might've had a shot at qualifying this season with some of the early upsets we got.

Splitting the series with both Canada (#11 World Ranking) and Slovakia (#2) was solid but losing both games to Serbia (#19) doomed qualification chances

wow... i hadn't realized that Canada was so highly rated. i actually considered the U19 USA team to be slightly better (on paper) this season.

Part of me feels like I should've better managed the squad's energy this season, but I didn't want to risk losing to Venezuela just because i was trying to conserve on that...

Oh well... next season. All and all, I'm pretty proud of our performance this season for the reasons you mentioned.

Hey there gents. I'm gonna be posting a list of the new blood for the U19 team as soon as I get around to doing an in-depth scrub of what's out there.

The database that I HAD used in previous seasons went dormant, so I've been doing things more by "hand" this season... so i'm running a little behind schedule with my national team roster moves. I'll have all the additions / subtractions* done by the deadline this weekend though.

One thing i noticed is that all four of my team's goalies will likely play somewhat prominent roles on national teams this season (1 on the Senior team, 1 on the U21 team, and baring any surprises, 2 on the U19 team). It'll make things a bit... interesting when I plan my lineups for saturday friendlies this season. But i guess having to throw some random player in as goalie for those several (irrelevant) friendly matchups isn't the worst problem to have.

Anyways... I'll keep you posted on the roster changes as I make them throughout this week.

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*many of the players who were added last season from teams about to die will be cut for the next season or so for more seasoning. They weren't QUITE ready to be regular national team roster players, and weren't quite good enough to take up the few "young stud" roster spots I have reserved. They were only added to "protect" them, a goal that was achieved.

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Hey guys... I know it took me a bit longer to get the final roster "finalized," but I was planning a rather extensive trip across the pacific, and I'm not really good with planning those sort of logistics so it took me a while to get it all squared away.

Anyways! here goes...

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Summary:
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So after last season, we had some holes at several positions that needed to be filled. Some were easier than others to fill. Goaltending was remarkably deeper than I initially anticipated, and strikingly, there actually wasn't need for me to add Antoine Strauss to the squad at all (as I had previously thought would be necessary).

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Goalies:
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Daryl Marshall will fill in very nicely along with John Field in net. Dan Varner and Pascal Hunt were considered for the 3rd slot. I decided to go with the former largely because Cataclysm already has a few guys on the national teams, and I thought it'd be cool for [handball_team=16083] to have a guy that got the nod. (Yes that was really how close it was - the two are remarkably similar in most every other differentiating way). Antoine Strauss will get the call next season. He doesn't really need to be on the team this year (there are other options), and I really make a point about not adding my own players unless they are going to be starters, or they're being added in a developmental capacity. Plus, it'll be nice to have a goalie for my saturday friendlies.

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Backs:
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We didn't need a ton of help at Back. Our defensive backs were still very deep from last season (many of which will be very good players in the future for the older national teams). But I ended up adding Joseph Vaughn for more offensive depth at Back. He'll slot in as the 3rd starter alongside Nolan McQueen and Robert Mercado . Ronald McNamara will serve as the 1st substitute, but given his less specialized stats, he won't be leaned on heavily outside of emergencies. Charles Younger will remain in a developmental role this season (always called up for the extra experience, but not really playing many games). Devon Weaver is only on the team this season to protect him when [handball_team=15886] eventually folds.

On the defensive side, Tyrone Cambridge and Gene Trimble will almost always start, while Chad Pinson and Gregory Paige will somewhat split time in order to maintain some semblance of team energy. Scott Serna rounds out the defensive backs in the developmental role. He'll be a very good starter next season as an 18 year old.

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Wings:
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We only had 3 wings on the roster at the start of this season, so we needed to make a couple additions there.

Unfortunately, we're not incredibly deep in areas of need at the position. Crispin Beeman (the 2nd best USA-born 17 year old) would almost certainly have gotten the call this season for defensive left wing if not for the fact that Phillip Marvin more than adequately fills that exact position. So the search for more defensive support instead went to Fred Randle . He'll slot in on the right side and should do well there. If we're in dire need, Michael Horne is an option, but he's really not quite ready this year and will likely join the team next season to fill the void left when Fred Randle departs.

On offensive wing, we'll likely be running with Justin Mckenzie and David Allen as starters. I added Ira Hopkins essentially for depth... plus it won't hurt to get him some experience, as he'll likely play next season once Justin Mckenzie departs.

Other than Michael Horne and Crispin Beeman , I also looked at and considered Sanford Bickham as an option, but his training is really all over the place, and he doesn't really specialize in offense or defense, so he was sort of hard to justify adding (I'd probably never end up using him, so it'd be largely a wasted addition).

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Pivots:
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Everett Benitez serves absolutely no purpose. On this national team or his home team in league play. He is quite literally redundant in both, stuck behind the much superior Dexter Stapleton . I'm actually quite confused why both were trained as defensive pivots. Anyways... Everett Benitez is also only on the team due to the eminent demise of [handball_team=15886]. He likely won't ever be called up and probably won't see a lick of gametime as long as Dexter Stapleton is healthy.

Offensive pivot is quite possibly our weakest position on the team (another reason Everett Benitez 's training is particularly frustrating). Hugo Wilhelm will be the starter in the role as Ronnie Lindsey isn't quite ready yet for full duty.

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Developmental:
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In addition to the other developmental players I mentioned above (Charles Younger , Scott Serna , and Ronnie Lindsey ) Leon Barnes was added late last season as he was one of the highest quality 15 year olds at the time. His team has good facilities, so he'll likely be a very good player in the future. It appears as though so far he's being trained as a balanced back, though my preference for him would be that he were more specialized (one way or the other). He'd be more likely to become a staple of the national teams that way (just a thought in case zomg is reading this...).

The list of 17 year olds that I'm watching includes the following players:
Dominick Cervantes (offensive wing), Fernando Vogel (offensive back), Travis Darnell (non-specialized back), Michael Horne (defensive wing), Vic McElroy (offensive wing), Dom Moon (offensive back), and Hans Carr (offensive pivot).

The list of 16 year olds I'm follwing includes:
Mitchell Moody (offensive back), Burt Whitney (non-specialized pivot), Angel Calloway (defensive wing), Jason Beach (defensive back), Reuben Cohen (offensive wing), Thomas Bacon (defensive wing), and Canu Arnett (offensive wing).

Random tidbits:
-Travis Darnell would almost assuredly be added to a developmental slot (due to his very high qualities), but I need him to pick a side of the court. He could be a very good player on the national teams, but will likely fall short of his potential as long as he's expending so much training on both shot and block. I added Leon Barnes last season before I realized that he was being trained in a non-specialized fashion. We don't really need two of those guys at the same position.
- There are a honestly LOT of very good wing prospects that are 16-17 years old. The above list of 14 players represents the highest OR 16-17 year olds that aren't currently on the Youth National Team. 7/14 are wings.
- Scary fact: none of those 14 players are goalies.

Well today's game against the Ukraine U19 team was certainly a tactical nightmare... >_<

So I'm going through the U19 prospects / roster, and I'm noticing that after this season, we are going to be hurting for goalkeeping.

I have a 16 year old guy (Brooks Jones ) who's roughly 600 OR (he'll be 800ish OR this time next season when he's 17), but that's all i know of off hand in terms of goalies.

I still have yet to do the deep dive through my collected list of prospects to see if there's any goalies hidden in there, but I wasn't aware of any 16 or 17 year old gems last season (guys who are now 17 and 18 respectively), so I'm not very optimistic.

Anyways... if any of you guys have any goalie prospects that you know of or that you think i may have missed that are between 16-18 years old, feel free to reply to this post and let me know.

Thanks.

(P.S. I've already made some additions and a subtraction or two from the U19 roster. I'll have a full synopsis post up sometime this weekend).

Shepherd Bierlein is one of the few prospects my terrible academy has given me that's worth keeping on the roster. He's not great but might be OK for a season till someone better comes along.

I have Darrell Wright and recently sold Mort Christopherson . They're relatively average, but they may be useful if you're really lacking depth. If you like Christopherson, you'll probably have to convince his new team to sell him.

Shepherd Bierlein looks perfect. basically, I was just looking for something to fill in the "gap" next season, since many of the goalies i knew of off hand were younger (16 and 15). That should buy us some time.

Interestingly, he and both of the guys capsaicin mentioned right after your post are all actually on my watch list.

I acknowledge that I sent out the appeal without really taking the time to delve into it. Good to know that my scouting works even if I'm too lazy to use it at times. ^_^

With today's win against Ukraine, the U19 team is now 4-0-0. Only 4 teams in the world (ourselves included) have won 4 out of 4 games. That puts us in pretty good company and a REALLY good position going into the second half of the qualification round.

Not only that, but thus far we've also managed to conserve a great deal of energy too. Of the 8 competitive halves played, 1 was Low, 3 were Normal, 2 were High, and only 2 were Very High. So most of our important players are still quite spunky.

Given that China is a very weak team this season, and we're all but guarenteed to get one more win against them in the 2nd half, we have a couple of options at this point:
1) We can pull back INSANELY on the energy usage and just go VL the rest of the qualification round (focusing on beating China and letting everything else go)

2) we can just go on as we did in the first half, trying to win games with the least amount of energy expenditure possible (shooting for a very nice seed going into the knockout round).

My preference is probably the latter... just because I'd hate for something weird to happen in the China game and them be stuck with "must win" games against the 2 tougher opponentents in our division to close out the qualification round.

Either way though, I'm pretty excited that we're off to such a good start this season. It's the best start the kids have ever had since the U19 tournament started. I feel as though we have a talented enough squad to go pretty deep this season.

you can always use the backups and spend the energy and go get the important win with regulars and what energy is needed.