Téma: US Senior National Team

Speed & 3 pt shooting should go hand in hand.Gotta get open, cant do if youre slow,especially with poor jump and agr. Speed is also useful for the 3pt shooters in grabbing rebounds. From what ive seen, speed seems to be almost as important as jumping when it comes to rebounds,for all positions.

Tec seems to be commonly over looked for PF & centers,from what ive seen in the market.

Blocking,i have seen no real difference in ones ability to block with high blocking attributes. Just a thought, maybe it has more to do with ones ability to press without fouling as apposed to creating more blocked shots.

Inside game is where its at imo. Shooting is for the birds,low percentage,less chance of rebound. If i had a training facility i would hammer on Tec, speed,agr and jumping. Blocking focused less as speed will create turnovers and rebounds.

Speed for the PG & SG.

Time to prepare for the upcoming season. And, that means scouting the opposition.

Slovenia and Romania are likely the toughest opponent we face, as they went into the Round of 16 last season. Bosnia was eliminated in the second round (as the US was). Iran was eliminated in the first round.

We could use help scouting Slovenia, Bosnia, and Iran (in that order). Romania was heavily scouted last season. So, barring a big roster change, I think we can pass over them for this season.

Please pass your scouting reports to me, so we can update the Foreign team spreadsheet.

I am putting players from Slovenia onto my scouting queue. I can make .87 scouting progress per day. Once I finish the players remaining on my queue, I should be able to scout 15 Slovenian players by the date of the first match against Slovenia.

The election is official, I am the new NT manager. I hope I can prove a worthy student to my predecessor. Thank you to all who have sent emails. I appreciate your well wishes.

It is also official that BradGilbert is my assistant. And, for our home court, I have chosen RNGesus arena: Church of Chance.

I sent friendly invites out to fill up our empty calendar dates. We will start finalizing rosters and such over the next few days.

Good luck to the three new NT managers!

There isn't an U17 forum, so I'm just going to post this here. I really don't care for getting into internet arguments, but there are some key omissions, and it will not be possible to add or dismiss anyone until next season. Hopefully they will still be considered for the U19 and senior teams in the future despite being left off the U17 team.

If for instance Kreger's team suddenly stops training him and eventually folds (this happened last season with players from the Psychos in hockey), it won't be possible to replace him from outside the roster. 400+ OR 15 year olds also cannot be added if any are generated, though I think the height factor makes it hard to seriously consider 15 year olds anyway.

It seems that the entire U17 team came from I.1 (Kreger counts as being from I.1), beyond the three prospects and depth players from the Purple Lotus (I'll concede that Steen at least looks potentially promising). There's only one player from a team outside the United States.

The center depth is really weak, but that's more the fault of a lack of options. Either Spaulding, who seems to have bad AVQ, or the 16 year old Cerwin (who needs to grow by 10 cm to be effective, granted, he is a very promising future center) looks like the key center. I never scouted him or got any scouting information after adding him to my spreadsheet, but Dean Bray looks like a potentially strong candidate from a team with very strong facilities.

Among PF's, Kreger was a very solid choice. Wolverton has good height for PF, though he's trained to play SG. The extra height will make Wolverton a useful SG (though there are better options) for the U17 team, but he'll be broken afterwards. Even so, it could be an intriguing (if impractical) strategy to focus on developing players that will have good height for the U17 team to gain an extra advantage on countries with more depth. Sommerfield has decent height but seems to play SF. Ron Wood is decent, but he might struggle to reach 200 if he is a PF (he probably isn't). That leaves Cerwin and Nicholas, who double as 2 of the 3 center candidates and two low OR prospects in Bourassa and Ryder. Gabe Jacobs did not make the team (I only had his information from a season ago, though he was trained fine then). Israel Dodge also missed out despite his strong qualities and OR while Ryder makes the team (I doubt Ryder has much better key qualities than Dodge if that was the reason for adding him; Dodge's technique was admittedly underdeveloped).

SF is the most surprising. The U17 eligible player with the second best OR was left off of the team: Warner Boydson . While he plays in Poland and comes from a division II team, his original team has one of the best sports academies in the United States (they produced Timm, another top 17 year old, though he was trained for the wrong position like Wolverton). The players that made the team in his place include Forrest (former SF that might be converting to SG with weak qualities, about 50 lower OR, very low height, and weak shooting/blocking; it seems I neglected to update his entry on the SF page since when he looked more like a SF), Beasley (I don't have him scouted, though I see an AVQ of 59), and a few others below 410. Freddy Martin , unless he was trained poorly since he was scouted by coach2live a few weeks ago, might also have been a strong candidate. With the lack of PF and C depth, the absence of Boydson could hurt. Boydson is already better than most older SF's and probably has the highest long run ceiling among SF prospects.

While I'm a little biased about this one, I'm shocked that Harrison Hughes isn't on the team. He has one of the best EQ's in the country, has the 6th highest OR among U17 eligible players, would have the 4th highest OR on the current team after the 3 PG's (he has swiftly been gaining on the other players on my team due to his elite qualities), and is one of the few U17 eligible players that actually gains experience (8) playing in games (he will be a starter and the second best player at 17 on a top 20 U.S. team by the end of the season). In his place, Charles Sheppard makes the team, despite being over a season behind in OR and 7 behind in rating. It is doubtful that he has better qualities (even if he did, facilities would offset the quality difference). Unlike in the case of Boydson though, there is a solid SG in Dunbar and maybe Glover (5 rating points back from Hughes).

The PG choices are extremely solid.

I admittedly focused more on scouting older players last season and hadn't looked into the current pool of 16 year olds. It's possible that Bray, Jacobs, or Martin could now be trained poorly. They also probably aren't so much better. While Dodge is better than some of the players that made the team, he shouldn't necessarily have been a lock. Hughes and Boydson should definitely be on the team.

Anyway, I wish the U17 team and its manager good luck this season and in the future. With strong tactics and good luck with the random number generator, the U17 could still be successful. As long as there are no key injuries, the quality of the starters is probably close to as good as it could be, excluding SF. In hockey the U.S. U18 team won fourth place in the top division despite losing its best player, a generational talent, for most of the tournament. In that same tournament, an average Portugese team somehow stole first while an extremely strong Czech team with unusually high experience didn't even make the playoffs.

To be fair, I neglected to contact Eliza with information about running a national team, such as the restrictions on adding and dismissing players, since I wasn't asked. I should have forwarded the information I had sent to others anyway, in addition to the spreadsheet information I did send.

Capsaicin, I will agree about your very first point, most of the team is from D1, not sure why that's even remotely a criteria, obviously a good place to start looking, but there are plenty of players better than a lot of the current selected team in the lower levels.

OK. My first mess up. I had us in the wrong Group before. For opposition scouting, I need Portugal, Greece and Latvia--in that order. We still have Romania, but as I said before they have already been heavily scouted.

Sorry for the confusion.

I saw the same schedule at the time, but it seems that the schedules were changed once the new national team managers took over.

I'll cover Greece now. I have 3.38 players left to scout on my queue before I start with Greece. I can cover 10 players from Greece. I will just scout the top 10 players in terms of OR. I can scout more players if I continue scouting for the second game against Greece.

It looks like everyone but Latvia should be beatable (though upsets are always possible in PPM).

Romania's manager from last season is still the assistant manager this season. I believe Romania heavily rested its team early on in the tournament last season.

I can start scouting Portugal. I'll just go from top to bottom in their player list

Also we want some nice long descriptions and thoughts.

D
E
S
C
R
I
P
T
I
O
N
S

A
N
D

T
H
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G
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S.

I think that about covers the long and short of it.

I have the first 7 queued up or scouted already, sorting by OR highest to lowest. You are welcome to pick up after that. And thank you!!!!!!!!!!

Sure thing, I will do just that.

OK. This is the real answer for you.

Here is a quick review of Group 5, just looking at the team strength. Team USA is one of the stronger teams in the Group (45,45,41,42=43). Greece (41,41,39,42=41) is the weakest team in the group. I expect them to play tough, but to be beatable. Romania (40,42,39,41=41), while a slightly weaker team, has always been a tough competitor. Games go back and forth pretty evenly between the US and Romania, so I expect this season to come down to another duel of tactics. Portugal is a more balanced team (42,45,42,44=43). Even though the US and Portugal have the same overall strength, I expect this to be another tactics duel. I also expect them to be tougher than Romania. Latvia is the strongest opponent in the Group (47,50,47,47=48). I expect them to be much like the Czech Republic was for us a last season.

We are still waiting on scouting reports for these teams’ players to finalize our strategies for each opponent. I am scouting Portugal, and expect to have the top 8 done by game time. Capsaicin is scouting Greece. Xalthos is scouting Latvia for us. Romania has updated their roster, and we are in need of some scouting there now, too. Message me for who is scouted and who is not if you are assisting there. But, one manager per opponent is not enough. Anyone who can assist with scouting these teams would a welcome help. Send the scouting reports to me, please.

The exhibition season is all about playing the younger players so they get some chemistry in case we need to call them up. The roster is set, though. We did fill some positions with players that may be slightly lower in OR, but are better trained for the position.

We believe we have what it takes to make it through the first round of international play. There are two teams, possibly three, we should be able to beat. USA has been the team that just made it to the next round every time, so far. My goal is not to be the team on the bubble in the first round. Last season we got beat in the second round. Elimination was partly due to not matching tactics well against opponents. We are hoping to have learned key lessons from that. And, we want the chance to apply those lessons.