BuzzerBeater Forums

Do you consider the past few seasons of the NT a success?

I would consider a worlds semi-final appearance the minimum for a successful season. That said, last year wasn't a crushing disappointment (being only 1 different match result from the semis), but definitely wouldn't meet my standard of success.

How would any of you define success for the NT moving forward? Is it just incrementally moving along laying down a foundation for hopeful future success, or are you a win equates to success, and everything else is unacceptable?

I think that on the quality level of the NT, making the semifinals is success, and getting beyond that will require some degree of luck (GS, injuries, etc). Outside of winning, a NT manager should leave a strong foundation for future managers and the U21 manager by assisting with the player development and opponent scouting programs (and encouraging participation of managers that don't have the "coach" next to their name).

Is it mandatory to be on the offsite forum or participate in chats during games in order to have a valid opinion when it comes to the NT? If any of you got challenged or criticized for decisions made, how would you handle it? With venom, or diplomacy? I'd like to help with the NT in some way, but I don't feel that having to be a yes man would work for me, and I certainly wouldn't want to be dealt with like URG if I disagreed with anyone from the current power structure.

No, it shouldn't be mandatory to be on the offsite forum/participate in chats to have a valid opinion.

No, people shouldn't get a free pass to Monday Morning Quarterback -- if you don't participate ahead of time or structure your input toward changing future results, I'm not terribly interested in hearing your dissection of past results.

People deserve a baseline assumption of diplomacy, but at the same time, the coach deserves the right to react in kind if attacked personally. I know I'd love to be a paragon of virtue as NT coach, but I'll state up front that I'm human and likely to respond with my nose out of joint at least once if someone is over the top with negative criticism and not much constructive.

I don't have enough information to give my opinion as to whether or not the treatment URG has gotten in this thread is "fair", but I can say that I'd certainly try to avoid outright vitrol in a public forum as much as possible.

I would vote for wozzvt, as he's got a lot of blood, sweat, and tears invested in the NT program and I disagree with UnrealGunner's assertion that we need to blow up the old regime and start over.

1) I guess I'd have to admit here that I don't have much experience working with tactics for an "unwinnable game", as my team hasn't really been in games where I felt that I had to throw the kitchen sink onto the court to compete, and I haven't messed with weird stuff in scrims/PLs. I think it wouldn't hurt to do something odd, but I can say that every time I've tried to go against my bread & butter with my club team, the results have been spectacular...ly bad.

2) Yes, I would keep the same general policy (not sure exactly how many slots were left open on average by Juice). I would probably be inclined to have a roster of 15 through most of the competition, leaving 3 slots open for injury subs or a "quirky specialist"

3) My 15-man roster would probably include 10-12 "standard" players -- 2 at each position, and maybe a spare flex-guard and flex-big; and then 3 "specialists" of some sort -- abnormal SF candidates, defensive specialists, etc. I'm kinda opposed to defensive black holes for my club team, and my defense-first attitude would probably carry over to the NT as well.

4a) I would say I don't, as I don't have experience with NBBA/II level competition. That said, I'd say it's not necessarily a liability either--having not had the benefit of that experience, I also don't have the tendencies that are developed when faced with such competition--which may well make my tactical choices a little more "bizzare" than the other NT managers are used to seeing.

4b) About all I could say for "tactical" results at my club level would be the almost-win I had at the end of Season 8, where I switched from my normal inside tactics in big games (at the time I was just coming off of PF/C training and my bigs were my better players) to a motion tactic that wound up getting around my opponent's zone and left me up 2 after 3 quarters on the road with equal effort put in and a slight enthusiasm disadvantage IIRC. Of course, my team collapsed in the 4th, so I didn't even get a win to notch on that...

5) I'll admit that I didn't follow either NT that closely this year, and barely followed the senior team at all; I think I'd be inclined in general to try to pick my spots and plan the whole group in advance. I'd possibly consider throwing a game for enthusiasm management purposes, but it's hard to say in advance that I would in fact do something like that. Every game thrown is one more margin for error gone; so it'd definitely be a very close decision that would be situation-dependent.

6) The whole "groups are drawn by your previous results thing" was news to me when it came up in a U21 thread earlier this season (and I took the posts in that thread to mean that it was news to most other people involved in the program too). Given that, I'm not really willing to second-guess Juice at this point. Going forward, I'll definitely consider the future group when making a decision whether or not to enthusiasm manage on a "meaningless" game.

. Is it mandatory to be on the offsite forum or participate in chats during games in order to have a valid opinion when it comes to the NT?

I saw Azariah did respond to this but I wanted to point out being part of the offsite forum is kinda a requirement to participaite in the game plan itself other than BBmails with the coach due to secrecy and for those who haven't signed up please do it would be great to see more active faces on it.http://s3.zetaboards.com/BuzzerBeater_USA_NT/index/

Is anyone going to question me because I have the answers to this team

Tong Tong BB-Charles asked some very good questions start with answering those please so we can get a better perspective of you as a coach

Yeah, sorry Coco. I didn't mean any disrespect from my question. It just seemed that it was all those that were active on the offsite boards versus one of the guys that wasn't, and being attacked partly for not being an active member of said board while still venting his own attacks (I'm guessing) on Juicepats.

I understand that if I"m not on the offsite forum, then any points/criticisms I make will be coming from a position of partial ignorance. So being as someone who is not on there, it looks like a bunch of people on the boards coming at someone because he has conflicting viewpoints and is not. So that does worry me a bit. That's the point I was just trying to make. It doesn't make me feel like I want to be a part of that.

Thanks for the honest answers guys, good luck!

Edited for poor grammar

Last edited by Toonces at 12/16/2009 10:15:07 PM

I understand that if I"m not on the offsite forum, then any points/criticisms I make will be coming from a position of partial ignorance.

We tried our best to disseminate information to those that chose not to participate in the offsite forum, with sticky threads in USA directing people to our database that any USA user could view (without information that would actually identify the player), and my BB-Mail was always open - many users did avail themselves of that option.

I don't see any reason for that to cease for the next leadership.

i wasnt counting offensive rebounds either

its fg + ft/2 + to

How about and-ones?

i'll be honest, right now they arent in my calculator. until this season it made no difference because it had to be felonious assualt for an and-one to be called. i tried counting and-ones this season, and didnt have enough data to get the true distribution (i still think its really small, but bigger than before).

if i had reliable data on and-one's, i would implement it.

the other tricky issue is the rate of free throws being called on 3 point shots versus two pointers. i had it that your odds of getting fouled on a 3 point attempt was a fixed percentage less than a 2 point attempt, but i sort of realzied that was incomplete, as alot of mid range shots dont draw as many fouls as going up strong... but i think my approximation worked relatively OK looking at retro-active predictions.

If elected, I propose to create either a closed Federation or a group of folders on the off-site forum for two areas: NT Player Development, and NT Opponent Scouting.

I'm not set on either method of creating it, as both have some advantages, in my opinion. The Federation method has the advantage of being built-in to BuzzerBeater, and can be handed off from NT coach to NT coach through appointing new MODs, etc. The primary drawback to the Federation method is that feds are supporter only; and I definately don't want to make the NT staff an "exclusive club". The off-site forum method works around the Supporter-only limitation of Federations, but then you have a separate username/password to remember, a separate site to have open, and the extra effort of signing up for the off-site forum may put some users off as well.

As of right now, the USA has 3,295 active teams. If 1% of those teams were to participate on NT/U21 staff, we would have 33 users available for player development and opponent scouting. If we assigned 10 players to player development, that would give us something like 4 "guard mentors", 4 "big man mentors" and 2 "SF mentors" (or some other ratio to be determined later). We could then split the other 23 users among opponent scouting for the NT and U21 teams. The team in the Worlds cycle would need fewer scouts, say 8, to keep track of the opponents that we will be playing against. The team currently in the Continental cycle would get the larger portion of the scouts, to keep track of not only our Continental playoffs but also the other ones (getting ahead in determining European managers' preferences will give us an advantage going into a Worlds cycle, as we'll have had time to try to adjust the development of our players ahead of the Worlds, especially for U21). Assuming 15 scouts for the Continental cycle, I'd allocate it something like 5 to Americas, 5 to Europe, 3 to Asia, 2 to Africa... although that is of course a rough estimate and subject to further refinement.

If I went with the Federation method and managers that didn't have Supporter wanted to help the National Team, I would assign them a role identical in substance to what a Supporter manager got, and would have them BB-Mail or otherwise get the information to me and I'd re-post it with accreditation into the Federation forum myself. If I don't win the election, I'll offer my assistance in setting up the above idea to the new coach.

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I know that the "1% of users" concept I sketched out above is kind of a new concept to the current debate, so I wanted to emphasize this:

In the long run, what matters more to me than winning or losing at worlds is creating and sustaining a foundation for the national team so that other future managers have the best possible chance to succeed. If I fail to have at least 1% of US managers active on NT staff by the end of my term, I will consider my tenure a failure and will not seek a 2nd term.