BuzzerBeater Forums

I just saw that a conversation had started on the forum and I responded to it. I don’t usually post on forums, and it looks like I won’t in the future either.
I think I would prepare the same way whether the opponent is Latvia, Lithuania, Dublin Dragons, Yetis, or Buzzkills. But I admit, I don’t focus on the NT team. I read what was written, and out of all that was said, I could only respond to two things that I’ve also noticed myself.
The first is O’Rourke. He may not be the best Irish center, but he’s definitely the best defender. Since our other elite centers earn about the same amount, and because they have better Inside Scoring, it’s obvious their other three defensive skills are much weaker. That seems clear.
Two things follow from this: If the opponent wants to dominate inside, O’Rourke should start at C to neutralize that. If we want to dominate inside, he shouldn’t start at all, because his inside scoring is weak, which makes him a liability even at PF. So the fact that ever since I’ve known him he’s played only as starting PF is a questionable decision. That’s what stood out to me from last season.
I don’t think I said anything offensive or untrue, so the vehement reply was unnecessary. I wasn’t the only one who bid on O’Rourke, so I reject the comments questioning my judgment. You could say he won me the cup, so I’m perfectly happy with every cent I spent on him.
The other thing I commented on was simply that I checked the games from this year and saw that half the season was played with auto lineups. So the coach didn’t spend even a minute managing the NT team during half the season. It wasn’t that he missed a couple games, or forgot to set the lineup, or made a mistake — he just hasn’t touched the team since the start of the season, and this has nothing to do with the match results.
I have no idea what happened in previous years, and I don’t care enough to investigate. But this much was obvious at a glance.
These were the two things I pointed out, in my opinion, respectfully. Without any personal attacks, and without the rough Dublin-style tone from either side.
This was the first time I voted in the approval rating. And since I spent more time on that single click than the coach has managing the team this season, my rhetorical question is: what exactly are the 38% of people satisfied with this year?
And I’m stepping out of the discussion now.

Ok, let’s start from the most serious accusations about Holmes, who in your opinion is in the NT only because he is my club player, which is completely far from reality, because Holmes was an NT player even before I was the national team coach, and I got Holmes only 70 days ago. Based on his full skillset, Holmes is still like our 5-6 player in PG-SG position. But according to all your logic he is totally useless and cannot even be close to playing. But if we open eyes and stop pointing fingers into empty clouds, we would see that last season this player played only one game, but it looks like I play him every week :) Of course, we keep silent about your player Brian, who is also in NT roster, because that is convenient.
I don't really care about Holmes, so this is far from the most serious accusation.
As far as I know, based on his skills (17-13-18-20-20-9-11-10-6-6), compared to Kernaghan (19-10-18-19-20-11-14-12-8-5), he’s only better in JR — and in everything else he’s either the same or worse. A JR of 13 isn’t going to keep him on the court, so overall Kernaghan is the better player.
That said, I wouldn’t put either of them on the national team. And I definitely don’t think either of them is among the top 5–6 guards. (Holmes is out of form as well.)

Let’s move on… it’s always easy to make conclusions when you look at things only on surface. Same as you talk about my team and your team achievements, but to give you some context, a few seasons ago I stepped down by my own choice because I started to coach Jermaine, Donal and Casper, and not in a single season in super league I had intention to fight for league title or cup. But nothing strange when your whole text is based on achievements and how we are close to Latvia just because of one player, and that only shows that you actually don’t understand how big gap Ireland has from top 50 teams.
I haven’t achieved much myself either, you’re misunderstanding me again. But let me say it one more time: I didn’t mean it as an insult. It’s just a fact that you don’t have many achievements.
Precisely because we’re in the bottom third of all countries, I thought maybe we need a match tactician, someone who’s actually pulled off an upset or has some kind of tangible result to their name.
I don’t believe you need any kind of special knowledge to see that Latvia is clearly a much better team. But since we “only” lost by 13 points, with proper preparation and a well-set roster, maybe a miracle could’ve happened. Because yes — if everything lines up and the prep is right — even if it's once in a thousand games, upsets can happen.
But if you don’t even set a lineup, that really doesn’t help. And neither does just complaining like Rigol Rockets do, saying we don’t have good enough players. That’s exactly why enthusiasm and tactics matter so much, that’s what gives us a real chance to steal a result.



Last edited by benwo at 8/6/2025 11:47:44 AM

I should also mention about rotation. :) You say in last few seasons there was no rotation at all, I don’t even get how you can write such statement when it’s enough to open last season’s team stats and see that 26 players were used and tested, such statements just make me laugh. The season before that 22 players were used. The whole idea, which I communicated, is to give young players and those close to NT level a chance, give their coaches motivation so they want to train them and aim for NT spot. But often, like I see, we hit the same wall because of your statements, where result means everything, even when you just don’t understand how far we are from top 50 teams. Your talks about beating Latvia only proves you don’t understand where we are as a country.
This part just shows how out of touch you are. Are you seriously measuring rotation variety based on which random guys played in the 11th or 12th spot in garbage time? That’s unbelievable.
And sure, you organized a charity game at the end of the season (I genuinely appreciate that, it was a nice community effort). But that has nothing to do with actual rotation variety.
I looked back at last season, and there was no rotation at all.
Tone played PG in every game. Farquharson started SG in every game. O’Rourke started at PF in every single game. O’Dea played SF in all but one game, where he was a backup SG. It was always the same players, on the same positions, with only the tiniest end-of-the-bench changes.
The tactic was exactly the same for the first 4 games — and 3 out of the 4 opponents predicted it correctly; the fourth didn’t even try. The same setup was used again in the last 3 games too.
So we can safely say that anyone who faced the Irish team could be certain about our setup: Tone at PG (with Cummins in consistently bad form), Farquharson at SG, O’Rourke at PF, most likely O’Dea at SF, and Haverty at C. The lineup and tactics barely change.
No sign of a fast-paced “Villanova-style” 4-small-1-big offense. No low-post-focused attacking setups. Nothing.
Rigol Rockets complain that our guards aren’t good enough and that this is all we’re capable of. I don’t buy that. I think there’s more potential in this team than what we’re showing.
Sure, our guards aren’t monsters with insane skills, but with proper rotation and variation, we could get more out of them. In my opinion, our PF position is weak. The only guy who’d be a good fit there — Fahy — isn’t even on the roster. Neither is Kelleher, his teammate, who’s also clearly better than Holmes.
For example, Tone could even be pushed up to PF in certain matchups because of his strong IS, especially when we’re playing inside-focused offense. But here? There are no matchups. No game-specific tactics. Just one "tried and tested" saved starting five — occasionally with one bench guy swapped out.
With a weak roster like ours, we should be exploiting the opponent’s mistakes and weaknesses. But instead, there’s zero adaptation to any opponent. You just send out what you decided at the start of the season is the "best rotation" — barely even tweaking it in friendlies

I fully understand the situation and where we are and really it does not matter if we fight against Israel or Latvia, because for now we have no chance against such teams.
This is honestly unbelievable. "We had no chance anyway, so why bother setting a lineup?" We actually did want to get more out of the first two games than our opponents and that effort drained the team. That’s what cost us the Georgia game, we had little left in the tank.
It’s crazy that you don’t see what a series of missteps this was.
About this season. same as you last 3-4 weeks I was super busy and missed chance to prepare the team and rotate it, I admit my mistakes and I don’t pretend it was accidental. It is how it is, now there will be more time and rotation again. By the way sorry for your loss.
I see you were able to set your own club lineup — just like I set mine.
So it clearly wouldn’t have taken much more effort to do the same for the NT, especially considering that’s why you ran in the election in the first place.
But instead, you derailed the whole season right from the start.
This isn’t my loss — it’s the loss of all 38 managers who were expecting you to log into the NT page at least once in over a month.
And I just want to wish you good luck and start looking at things more wide, it’s not only about winning, especially when you cannot win. these elections were my last, you can candidate in next ones and show class how we can beat Latvia and other similar teams with just a couple of player changes and I HOPE IT HAPPENS! About discord link, I will send you in PM.
This is pretty frustrating.
You get elected, then do absolutely nothing and when someone points that out, your first reaction is to take offense and talk about stepping down, right at the beginning of a two-year term. That’s a problem.
You’re misunderstanding the whole point here this isn’t about me. It’s about having the most competent person in charge of the team.
And maybe it’s time to seriously think about what each of us considers a wide range of perspective.
And for the end. As a NT manager I have full rights to choose players I want to play and use, once you will be a NT manager you will be able to do that too :) Ofc, you have right to hate it or to love it :)
You have a pretty strange sense of humor.
The lesser issue would be that you put in whoever you want, but this year you haven’t put anyone in anywhere at all. The game itself automatically sent the team out for the matches. There’s nothing to smile about there, and it’s definitely not why the 4-5 people voted for you.
Obviously, I don’t have full insight into everything, but I think I raised valid questions, and none of them have been meaningfully refuted.
I’ll briefly outline my main problems so the discussion doesn’t get sidetracked by all these Holmes debates:
1. You did absolutely nothing this year and ruined the entire season.
2. There’s no rotation (see above).
3. There’s no vision for the future.
4. You’re missing key players (Kelleher, Fahy, Cooney or even McEvoy, Castle, Magauran).

You’re in your own world with all respect. O'Rourke is a multi-dimensional player, just like the guys from the top national teams. His IS is low, so he can’t be used in all situations, but in many cases, he can be the playmaker and the heart of the defense. In the NT, none of this is utilized — he’s just randomly thrown in as a PF where he performs poorly. Your own argument proves just how completely lacking in tactics the NT team really is.

So this is how you evaluate players and teams — by how many points someone scores? As far as I know, the match engine generates that randomly based on skills and team tactics. It’s the skills that matter, not how many points someone scores. The score is just the entertaining result of the engine simulation.

As for the "life happens" part,If someone doesn’t have 5 minutes a week, they shouldn’t apply for the role.

I agree and even though that wasn't the original topic, the biggest issue is that the only person who missed the election was the new coach himself. But I don’t think there’s any need to take offense, the main goal should be to move forward, not backward.