თემა: I.1

Since the Oregon Sixgunners went dead, the U21 handball team has selected a new arena--Mirror Arena will now be the home of the U21 national team!

Oh hey. nice! i think that's the first time i've ever hosted national team competition (including when I was the U19 manager lol). ^_^

I also just noticed that i have a 1st overall draft pick, for the first time in like... agggggeeeess. Now, to just find a A or A+ player to pull. it's not looking good so far on that front though.

With this win, USA U21 is now 4-0 in qualifying. We've outscored opponents 107-77 thus far, though I have used Very high in all qualifiers. This total includes a 10-0 forfeit win over China. So in games we actually played, we've outscored opponents 97-77 in three matches.

We're averaging 32.3 goals for on offense, and yielding 25.67 on defense.

The number one player in points total (across all three games) is Isiah Ellsworth, whose 18 goals and 9 assists combine to have him lead in points with 27 (though, interestingly, he is not the #1 player in either goals or assists).

Next up is a visit to China, which will not be a forfeit.

Sorry guys. I botched an easily winnable qualification game by looking ahead to conserve energy. As a result, we lost to China 33-29, while I played on normal and they on very high. Had we been at home, or had we played high, I'm confident we would have won comfortably. I'm also surprised, to be honest, we even lost at all, even with those factors. Still, can't overlook anyone.

It's not the end of the world. The conserved energy should still help in the future. With 8 points, you might make next round even if you lose the next 3 games. It would still be ideal if you could make the next round while conserving energy. Ultimately, you want to be able to do well in the next round to get a good seed which would increase your odds of having a chance to progress further in the playoffs. It helps that you don't have to worry about demotion in handball.

Just so you all know, two of our U19 national team players are up for sale from a dead team-- Mike Harding and Aubrey Denno

With a win today over Croatia, our U21 team has qualified for the next round!

Query for the upcoming season: Whether I'm the manager of the U21 team or not next season, we're going to need goaltenders. We will have one returning goaltender, and no one aging out of the U19 team is a goalie. So my plea is to ask if any of you know of any US goalies who will be 20 or 21 next season!

Gerard Collins is a goaltender that originally came from my sports academy. He got sold to a team with horrible facilities, but maybe he'll suffice if you're desperate for depth and need someone in case of an injury. I wouldn't depend on him to develop into a useful active member of the team though.

Thanks, I'll keep an eye on him in case of emergency! We have three goalies this season, but two are aging out, and I'm just now getting experience for next season's presumed starter.

Roscoe Jones looks like he should work. good team with good training too. AQ isn't bad either.

he'll be around 1350-1400 OR around this point in the season as a 21 year old. There's definitely worse option out there.

Also... just in case you wanted an absolute emergency option, Adam Collins is a 20 year old right now, so he'll still be in the age bracket next year as well.

Thanks for these guys! I think Jones would be a nice addition. He could have been on the U19 team this year, but I think they were getting some others ready for the future.

Just throwing this out there, but is anyone going to run for senior NT and U19 managers for US? I'm locked in to running for U21, but the time of the election is approaching!

crazy. teams ranked 4, 5, and 6 all finished with the exact same record. not just points, actual wins, ties, losses. i've never seen that before in all the years of playing ppm.