Teema: US Senior National Team

Hey FYI... it looks like young players that are currently on the national team can stay. It's probably a good idea to keep most of them where they are (rather than cutting them in order to put them onto the youth teams), because they'll lose any chemistry that they've built up.

Check out the comments at the bottom of this news update for more info:
handball.powerplaymanager...

Today's game we fielded mostly new players with a few key players in the line up. Womack played along new teammates on defense and Wells, Dukarski and Hyde shored up the offense. The first half we played with a 3-2-1 system and a balanced Offensive play and attacked the 5-1 system on the wings. On the second half we switched over to defend the Pivot attack and at the same time we switched to the major 5-1 attack. Hyde was a very disappointing 2/10 and a horrible 0/6 at 9M. 1 of those shots would have tied the game. All in All with the low chemistry it was a good game on the road to see how some of the upcoming pieces would play.

This season we have Friendly games against Belgium, Austria, Estonia and Romania.

In the World Championship we are grouped with Germany (23rd), Venezuela (36th), Poland (1st) and Sweden (15th). USA is the 29th ranked team. We will be the underdog in this bracket. 4 teams fighting for 2 spots.

Next weeks game we will continue to build on chemistry by rotating in key players to keep them close to 70% and get the new players in to slowly build. I will move the players about tomorrow so they can enjoy the bonuses.

We played a good game against a closely ranked Belgium team yesterday. First international win for myself. Tactics we hit the major and minor both halves and fielded rookies with a few veterans who needed some chemistry. Dominic Fugate and Bryan Weber made their first appearances. One more Friendly then off to the World Championship. This week we will continue to focus on building chemistry and move Dominic Fugate to the starter position to gain some more experience.

Next week we play our first game against 23rd ranked Germany. This is a very important game for USA. If we can win 3 of four against Germany and Venezuela and then steal one win from Sweden and Poland then we have a very good chance of finishing 2nd or 3rd in our group. It is a very tough bracket. Germany is a very good team. I think they are better than Sweden.

xalthos will be stepping now as the Assistant Manager and will be going over the lineup. The line up will be announced once that is complete.

We are now 2-2 on the exhibition schedule. We dropped a 33-25 decision against Austria. Another game of building chemistry for new players and Dominic Fugate was given a play at being the starter. Woodall was man of the match for Team USA scoring 9 goals on 12 shots and picking up an assist.

Here is the starting line up for the upcoming World Championship. We are going with a full squad of specialized players. The attacking squad is the more experienced side of the ball. The defensive side has better traits. We are carrying 1 goalie and 3 two way players as backups. Players in the WC will get full weeks training bonus during scheduled games. Other weeks will be given to players who are building chemistry. Xalthos and I are looking forward to our first game.

> > > G1 William Jack
> > > G2 Lloyd Russ
> > > ALB Thomas Hyde
> > > ARB Stacey Wells
> > > ACB Rickie Devore
> > > ALW Little North
> > > ARW Charlie Dukarski
> > > AP Jeff Rice
> > > DLB Don Womack
> > > DRB Morris Glau
> > > DCB Stanley Hudgins
> > > DLW Lee Helm
> > > DRW Joseph Mcfarland
> > > DP Jacob Horne
> > >
> > > Backups
> > > G Dominic Fugate
> > > B Mitch Hilton
> > > P Matthew King
> > > W Webb Densmore

USA upset Germany at home today with a 31-29 score. We were surprised that Germany lead with a wing attack and then switched to backs. We were expecting them to come at us with backs and our game plan was to keep them shooting from the 9m line. Our defense played a stellar game. Take away the 15 fast breaks and we held Germany to 30 shots and 16 goals. 22 of those shots were from the 9m. Add in 9 turn overs , 7 steals and 2 blocked shots our defense won the game for us. They even chipped in 7 fast breaks and scored 4 goals. For a rookie defense this was a perfect start.

We attacked Germany with our backs the first half and then switched to a more balanced attack. We ended up with 43 shots and played a passing game. This resulted in 13 assists and a horrible 15 turnovers. 19 of those shots came from the 9m. Stacey Wells took the bulk of those shots and was 8/16 with 5 assists. Jeff Rice shredded the German defense scoring 6 goals against this beast Kim Demir . Germany has the best goalies in our group, so were really proud of the lads today.

William Jack played a very good game as backup today. Stepping in at key moments and ended up with 50% saves during 20:15 game time.

USA wins an upset and returns in 2 weeks to play Venezuela. The other game today saw Venezuela upset Sweden. This is very good news.

Next week we will go back to building chemistry.

All in all. First win as an NT Manager.

Good job Tesc, I knew you could handle it quite well.

The weekend had a very dramatic upset. Poland lost to Sweden. The other result was German win over Venezuela. Poland risked by playing VL and now they will have to spend some energy. We were hoping that they would spend the energy early and put Sweden down by 2 games. Now we will just have to fight harder for one of the three spots. We will be going with the same lineup as game one and will publish the thoughts on tactics after the game.

The USA has won their second game against Venezuela 30-24 at the San Gyro Arena. Lloyd Russ played a fantastic game and had a 45% save percentage. Lee Helm was stellar defending with 2 steals and scored 4 goals.

We went into this game knowing that Venezuela would attack with wingers so we played a game of keeping them to the outside. This resulted in only 18 goals from their offense off 40 shots.

We attacked the first half with our backs knowing that they would be defending using a 4-2 system. We tried to pound down the middle which resulted in a very close half. At one point we were down 7 to 3 but after the 10 minute mark our backs started scoring and we outscored Venezuela 27-17 the remainder of the game. The second half we switched over to a more balanced attack. Jeff Rice had a fantastic second half gaining 4 assists and 1 goal.

With this win USA sits at 2-0 and tied for first place with Germany. The Germans upset Poland today and now are 2-1. Poland is 0-2 which is a huge shocker and should be up for the next game which is against us. Poland will be even more dangerous now that they must win almost every game going forward if they want to advance.

Wow... We got absolutely thrashed today. Poland is so damn good. Even though they played Normal vs. our VH, the end result wasn't even close.

And talk about collapsing in the second half. They had 30 SOG, and went on an absolute scoring rampage, out-scoring us 16 to 5 in the last 16 minutes of the game.

William Jack had a rough day today.

I know... I was hoping for one last VL...

Well this game we went in looking for one last VL game from Poland. We knew they would play a 5-1 balanced game and we tried on the first half to see how our 3-2-1 system would pan out. Well turns out better than our 6-0 system. Poland just outclassed us in every fashion. We ended up losing 41-28 and fall to 2-1.

Germany lost to Sweden today so next weeks match against Sweden will be very important for USA. We will be playing at home and this is the game we want to steal from Sweden.

Tough loss today against Sweden at home. We are now 0-2 against Poland and Sweden and we are sitting 2-2 and in 4th place. Our shooting today was horrible and that is what cost us the game.

We needed to steal today's game. Next week then to go 3-2

The USA won a convincing game against Germany yesterday. We are now 3-2 and sitting in 2nd in the group. We are 2-0 against Germany and we hit one of our goals yesterday by getting our 3rd win versus Germany and Venezuela.

We played a very sound tactical game against Germany. We started the game attacking the outside and then switched to the middle with our pivot attacking. This ended up being the perfect play as Germany was defending on the inside the whole game. Our defensive plan was to defend low in the middle and then switch stopping the backs. Which turned out to be exactly what Germany attacked us with.

2 upsets over Germany is a fantastic result for this building USA team.

We are off next week and then come back on the road in Venezuela. 3 games to go. We will need to win one game to give us a good shot at advancing to the next round.