BuzzerBeater Forums

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.

1) Charles, Princeton/FCP with 3 guards, 1 SF playing PF and one Center who happened to have respectable outside defense might be the best option. Again your odds of winning are small at best anyway. Juice in season 6 i think went with a point guard and 4 big men, which didnt work but was an idea. While FCP increases the number of possessions and that is bad when you are decisively the weaker team, the marginal value of a turnover versus a rebound is much more important against an offensive juggernaut.

2) I would certainly add a few more players. Teams that have a track record of good game shape management and have players that i would consider backups to our presumed top 5 should earn the right to keep those backups on the roster.

3) Ironically i think the best specialist might be a guy with only prominent inside d/rebounding but level 20 inside shot or near it. With the new game engine, you can hide that guy at small forward maybe on defense (especially if he has respectable outside d), play him offensively at power forward or center, and wreak havoc with a true power forward playing small forward at offense(and guarding a center) and your usual center playing center. It's probably not a likely skill, but its the one i'd be interested in.


4) i watch alot of live games, where you can track things that dont show up in the box score (Namely rebound rates from 3 feet vs 15 feet). the new engine will force us to watch more. it's annoying but more exciting, so thanks!

4b) My semis game season 7 vs rojos. Will post more later, have to leave for work now

I always try to ask something a bit controversial and start a debate, but it looks like we've gotten a debate started without my having to do anything. :) So, let me ask some of these questions I like to ask as a game designer...

When I was managing Nigeria in Hattrick, I was faced with a handful of matches that I "couldn't" win, even with a MOTS. I actually had a fair track record using non-sensical tactics in these games, things like a 0-7-3 or 0-8-2 formation against an opponent who wasn't ready for it. A large part of this was that I studied how the game engine responded to strange formations and tactics, and then kept the best of them in reserve for critical moments.

I've heard several candidates say that there are a handful of teams we just can't beat as an explanation why simply making the semifinals at Worlds is a good result. In many ways, BuzzerBeater has a wider range of different types of players and ways to use them than Hattrick, although it takes some experience to really figure out the best way to optimize tricky tactics. I think this is a lot of the reason that Josef Ka has had so much success with the Byelarus U21 team. Given this, a few questions:


5) JuicePats in particular used a very different style of enthusiasm management than almost everybody else at Worlds. Was he doing something better or worse than the rest of BuzzerBeater? How would you have handled the tough group we were dealt?

6) Part of the reason we seem to be in tough groups might be that we have a tendency to focus on minimally getting to the next stage and then conserving enthusiasm. At the U21 level, Brasil played crunch time against us and avoided Argentina, while we saved enthusiasm but lost in the semis anyway (so did Brasil). The situation was set up because we didn't put effort into a game against Argentina that decided which group we would be in for the second round. Should we have been willing to give up enthusiasm to end up with different opponents? Similarly, our tough group draws at Worlds have been in part because we tend to CT the semifinals (and qualify for Worlds) at the expense of trying to win the continental trophy. Is this a good policy? Should we care about winning the Americas?

Ok, these responses are longer than I intended, but these are good questions and I want to give them their due.

I've heard several candidates say that there are a handful of teams we just can't beat as an explanation why simply making the semifinals at Worlds is a good result.... 1) Imagine that you have a one-off, "unwinnable" game. ... Any record of those working for you at the club level?

First of all, I don't think there are any teams we can't beat. But I also don't think that we assume we win, say, 60%+ of the time vs teams like Italy and Spain, and that's what I base expectations (as opposed to goals) on.

As for quirky tactics, it really comes down to lineup management. Sure, FCP/Princeton give some unexpected looks, but the main variability comes in who you play and where. This is, frankly, much harder at the club level given the smaller player pool, but I've had good luck with some different lineups (playing 3 centers against, well, you, going 4 guards to max out OS/OD, etc). I'm hesitant to say I'd do too much of this at the NT level, because I think there should be very few unwinnable games for us, and using these sorts of tactics generally works by adding a lot of variability to the outcome.

2) The US team has tended to leave several spots open on its roster for much of the competition, since it costs enthusiasm to drop a player (but not to add one). Would you keep the same policy? If not, why?
3) Given the above, is there room for a "specialist" player?

I'm going to answer these together. First, I'd keep the roster as small as needed. We have a good sense of who manages GS well, but you never know when injuries, transfers, big cup games, etc will throw a wrench into this and require you to add a specific position.

That said, we certainly have room for a specialist. In fact, there's a fascinating guy out there now with only 13/13 IS/ID, but 20 rebounding. You'd certainly have to game plan him in, but I think that could be used very effectively. There's another PF that was a backup much of last season that has pretty poor (by our standards) rebounding, but some incredible JS/IS ratings. Again, depending on who you put around him, that can be a very valuable weapon.

4a) Do you understand the game engine better than your opponents? Why (or why not)?

I've done a lot of work using the BBAPI to research tactics. I've been around since mid-way through season 2, and have watched countless games at the club, NT and u21 level, but I think we've all done that. The stuff I've done recently with the bbapi has been illuminating, and has turned up some surprises.

For example, if you're opponent is playing LI, both 2-3zone and 3-2zone are equally effective (in fact, in upper divisions, 3-2 is slightly better, 53% vs 50% chance of beating the LI team on a neutral court). This makes some sense (shutting down the passers prevents the inside guys getting the ball in good shooting positions), but is not intuitive.

Another example, if you think your opponent will play a 2-3 zone, the worst thing you can do is be patient (only a 39% chance of winning). Better to take the open shot as soon as you see it (both motion and RnG predictably kill it, so much so that to ever play a 2-3 zone, you have to know their outside game is incredibly weak, which is rare in competitive NT games).

A final example, everyone gets enamored with the inside scoring ratings Italy put up in the world's, but unless you can get those type of insane ratings, a lower outside scoring rating can actually be more useful. What I mean is, each level of outside scoring is about twice as valuable as inside scoring in predicting outcome and point differential.

There's more, but I'm running out of characters in this post, so I'll continue in a sec...