BuzzerBeater Forums

First off, i would like to thank everyone who voted for a manager in the most recent u21 election. You showed me that you did care for where the u21 could go by listening to what predominantly myself and spark had to say, and showed both of us a good deal of support. I know he is proud to have gotten some votes, and i think that it's only a matter of time before you give him another chance at the u21 job, whether it be in the next election or the following election.

Secondly, i have created a discord server for BB-Canada. you may access it at the following address

https://discord.gg/jWTVvu6

For those that have not used discord, it is a cross between a VOIP (such as raidcall, ventrillo) and messenger service (MSN messenger, the now defunct AIM). It can be accessed via a web browser without any cost or download necessary (though i prefer the program and phone app personally). Once there, simply mail me on buzzer beater, or any admin that i get setup. Eventually i will transfer ownership to someone from Canada so it can be Canadian owned and operated, so don't worry about me doing shady things as an American down the road :D. Once we know who you are on discord, we'll verify your account and you'll get access to additional channels of information. I'll be on as much as i can be going forward, so you'll have direct access to your u21 manager.

Over the next couple days i will be updating the entire list of 18, 19, 20, and 21 year olds so that we can see what the team looks like now and what prospects will be available to choose from going forward. As far as the Americas season 44 is concerned, I will allow for those interested to suggest who they think should make the team, but i have the top six or seven players that i will likely be putting on the team regardless given their skillset in comparison to others.

Other than that, expect this communication thread to be mostly a global notification area going forward. I will post results and decisions that led to wins or losses occasionally, as well as notifying you of the work of specific owners and scouts whom involve themselves in the u21 in all roles. My goal for the first season is to establish a process for player development that sticks in Canada for as long as the game engine stays the way it is for 18 year olds, and make the semi's.

Thanks again :)

FurYak

In lieu of me being able to scout while working through updating the players in the spreadsheet, here is the basic training premise for most players you will want to develop.

If you have a 6+ potential PG, SG, or SF height players (typically most will fall between 6'0" and 6'7"), you will almost always be advised to train 6-8 weeks of 1v1 @ FW when possible.

If you have a 7+ potential PF or C height player (typically most will fall between 6'9" and 7'2"), you will almost always be advised to train 5-6 weeks of IS @ C when possible.

If you have a unique players (A guard height player with 24+ starting big skill points or a big height player with 36+ GSP), there will be occasions in which the plan is diverted to make a unique player for your team and/or the u21 squad, so feel free to mail me on here directly in those situations.

The primary question is probably why i have the same training plan globally amongst prospects. To be honest, it's a cross between the most heavily TSP gaining training regimen in the game engine, and the fact that i believe in elastic training off of the DR/HA grades of a player (if a player gets too far ahead in these areas, it slightly increases the rate of development elsewhere). There has been talk about this on the BB-global channel as well, so it's not something i have created out of thin air.

Congrats on the election!
Also keep in mind that players with potential 8-9+ should be trained with the nt in mind before the u21, there are so few of them that it's not worth trying to have them be the best 21yo players possible if it makes them cap too soon or lack secondaries when they reach 27-30yo

The elastic all training you get early on in 18 makes up for some of the losses in secondaries slightly late. In addition, outside of the sf height players, superstar won’t be good enough for the national team starting spots. The guards will be talented enough to cover the depth, so supplementing them with a the better secondaries 8 potentials night work. Won’t ever really have enough room to make bigs that are capable of keeping the game close when the starters rest.

I did read quite a bit about the theory of elastic effect and starting with 1 on 1. What's your opinion about the level in which it is time to switch? ~11 or higher?

I will be very busy next two weeks but after that I am willing to help. got plenty of experience with the game as a former NT manager (second round in worlds while having only one player >130 TSP if I remember correctly) and with couple of championships under my belt.

Depends on how well rounded you want the player to be, potential, and handling's starting valuation in comparison to others.

There are two or three ways one can help.

1) Active in Discord/Forums
2) Developing Talent directly for the u21 and/or NT depending on the potential.
3) Being a Scout.

Note that when i refer to scouting a player, i don't really mean that you have to scout 40-50 people. Instead, my expectation would be that if you are very talented at developing good Small Forward and i have a newer owner who wants to learn how to do just that, you pass on your knowledge once i send you the owner's name. I feel like giving "scouts" the responsibility of helping out a group of active owners is far more rewarding, whereas i can get a skill update during each break between americas and worlds. Naturally, i will ask you to keep tabs on players under your mentorship wing once they hit 21 and help keep owners on track gameshape wise, but it eliminates redundant requests for skills updates every 4-6 weeks.

Updates!

1) Scouting was completed at about 2pm today. Enthusiasm reset hit about an hour ago, so at this point it's up to you to update me with skillsets going forward if you have a 21 year old that you think is close. I'll also be asking periodically, so just keep an eye on the mailbox as i'll be sending them out in bunches this week. Our first game is monday evening, i'll drop most of the roster sunday night or monday around noon. Feel from to hang out on the discord channel https://discord.gg/jWTVvu6 during the game or after the game and say hi. We already have 8 Canadian owners on the discord, would like to see some more folks drop in.

2) Speaking realistically for a moment, we don't have a particularly strong side for this americas cup. Our goal will always be to reach the finals of the Americas, as that guarantees a world's birth. But realistically, i think getting into the repechage is the most important minimal goal.

3) I plan on running for one term after this, but would prefer to limit any stint i have to at most two terms. If you think you might want to learn how to develop u21 talent and scout and understand talent, feel free to jump onto the discord and get into contact with me. The success that i like would like to produce would be one that secures a path towards future u21 teams, and not just for the few seasons that i have control over the u21.

As an extra incentive, i'll post my purchases and selling prices for the bigs and guards i produced for the u21 over the last 10 or so seasons.

Young Li - 1.4m purchase price (age 19 with training done in age 18 season), 1.8m exit price
Mark Richey - 300k purchase price (fresh at 18), 2.4m exit
Lon Mock - 5k purchase price (fresh at 18), 2.363m exit
Dennis Lester - 400k purchase price (fresh at 18), 3.121m exit
Patrick Meloni - 532k purchase price (fresh at 18), 2.512m exit
Tom Bernier - 1.3m purchase price (late in age 19 with mostly 1v1 @ FW development), 3.57m exit.

Players that were reserves or unused:
Eric Brennan - 1.3m purchase price during age 19, 1.9m exit
Don Jewell - 129k purchase price at 18, 1.29m exit

13.1m in straightline transfer profit, 9.0-9.5m in total profit after trainer cost and salary costs of the team are considered. This isn't me posting for the sake of gloating, there is serious money to be made developing some u21 talent, and that can fund your Naismith run to knock off some of the top players there!

Hope to see you all on discord or even on the in game chat Monday!

Canada 121 - Ecuador 81

Takeaways:

1) We did not play inside in this matchup, we called mostly bigs up Saturday night into Sunday Morning, with just 1 or 2 guards on the team, and they guessed that we would play inside based on that. 2-3 zone + inside guess when your opponent plays neutral or outside and has the players to do so is a recipe for disaster, difference of skill or not.

2) We did not really play a full squad of talent here, so to get away with a 9 man squad and not have the full compliment of our bigs or guards because of gameshape concerns didn't impact a ton here. However, not every matchup will be a gimme by talent disparity. We need everyone for some of the games we have coming up in a few weeks time.

Sorry to anyone who was on the discord for this game, i was stuck doing IRL things and had to resort to watching via phone for most of it. Let's try it again next week!

If anyone wants to train or sell u21 players, don't be a stranger and hit up the discord! We have plenty of friendly folks over there willing to help out with league matchups, training assistance, or even finding someone to buy some of the u21 talent and train it if you simply don't have the room. So feel free to stop on by, or even mail me if you would rather and i'll do what i can.

Updates heading into monday.

We had a relatively good gameshape week this week, with all but one of our players in 8 or better gameshape. Our sole non-strong gameshape is one of our backup/reserve rotation players at the moment, so I do not anticipate heading into monday with any drastic changes to the team.

Owners of 20 year olds will start to see some mail come their way over the next week or so. There are a lot of potential spots for our worlds/repechage/consolation tournament run, so if you have a player in the 7-8 potential range and you develop them in primary skills, there is a reasonable chance that they could make it (especially the bigs given their are only 4 skills to boost directly).

We're starting to see some really good development on a handful of 18 and 19 year olds. I can't stress again how important it is to get players off to a good start in skills that can help you win games long term with the changes a handful of seasons back to the financial structure of the game. You've seen a success story from me about the financial benefits of talent development for just the u21, but developing any player for any purpose really is beneficial, even if you are only developing them during the cup and scrimmages during the season and playing to win in the remaining games. So if anyone wants help with that we are perfectly willing to help, u21, nt, or personal, feel free to talk to anyone in the discord at this point or even shoot me a pm.

I am hopeful to be around for part or all of tomorrow's u21 game, feel free to stop on by.

Quick reactions from our game today!

1) We are too troublesome for teams to be competitive without a talent advantage to get around the defense we can put up right now. Our defense is not good enough to win against the top 10 teams in the world, but against teams 50th and below i suspect we'll see more of the same.

2) Motion is an interesting offense, but i don't know that we gave it a fair chance to show much today. Maybe we will use it again in a future game with more players that fit the playstyle.

3) Our rebounding this game was poor in comparison to everything else this game. Part of that was to be expected based on the bigs we have called up, but watching us play Paraguay like this after getting destroyed by Peru makes me wonder how well we can play at full strength in comparison. Won't know until we make all of the moves.

We have a bye week this week, see you in two.

A quick hitter this time, since i'm not sure there is a ton to talk about

1) We've changed it up a few times now with the offense, but this week's performance in terms of ratings was the best (even though we stopped running it up due to minutes from our bench eclipsing that of our starters in some cases, while our opponent kept throwing the starters out there). Our starting bigs were just too much for the talent that our opponent could put out against us, although i am a little disappointed with Mario Brunori and Daryl Tracy's performance off of the bench. While not massively talented offensively and known more for their defensive skills, i had expected something more than i saw out of them.

2) We sit at 3-0 going into the Argentina game. 4 of the 7 teams in our pool are now at 1-3 or 0-3. With a win in any of the next 3 games, we stand a reasonable chance of finishing 2nd or 3rd in our group. This means very little enthusiasm has to be used in the next 3 games.

While this likely means a 4-2 outcome to the groups, i remain confident that we can catch Peru and Argentina in terms of talent should we eventually get into the semi-finals near the end of the Americas seasons. More importantly, the presence of several 20 year olds this season puts us in great shape to fight for a repechage birth and/or take care of business should we get relegated to the consolation tournament.

As we get closer to the halfway mark, a lot of you will get a few messages on your 18-19 year olds as i would like to know more about what i can expect from those trainees going forward. Hopefully you are all as excited as i am about the future of the canadian u21 tournament, or at the very least are very hopeful to have your players perform at a level capable of boosting your team to the next division or keeping you at the top.

FurYak