Hello to all South Africans!
As you might have seen I'm avaliable for another term as the head coach of the NT, as usual everyone either at the National Team Debate Thread or by PM. In my opinion the team is best of with a NT who is reliable, as we all know some players that run in the election get inactive after a while or dont put any effort to take the responsibility that goes with the job. Also I would rather have someone like me to get elected as NT coach who is very realistic and stable at what he is doing, than someone who is either over ambitious/not realistic in the goals for the team. It's very important to continue the way we are going now, and not take the risk of having at NT coach that thinks he will take this team to the top and make radical changes. I've go the experience that is needed to lead the team for another term and reliability to do what needs to be done.
To show everyone the most important results from over the past 2 seasons here is a short summary:
Season 44 - 46 comparison
World Ranking 71 -> 67
Points 102 -> 121
Afrobasket 43 - 45
Record 4-6 -> 4-6
Point Differential -128 -> -66
Losers Tournament 44 - 46
Ranking 71 -> 54
Record 1-7 -> 3-5
Point Differential -86 -> -27
Here are my goals for the next term:
1. In the AfroBasket Championship win a medal again, we done well the previous two times and i'm very confident that we will do again well this time. The gap between the African teams above us is still big, but were getting closer bit by bit. Ofcourse it would be nice to reach the final of the tournemant but right now it's still not realistic to aim for that, it's important to hold our position and improve little by little just as i did the past 2 terms.
2. Keep climbing the national team ranking every season, that's the goal last time and it will be the same goal this time.
I will be aiming to reach rank 60-55 within the next 2 seasons, this is hard enough by itself but managable and realistic.
3. I've been trying to push coaches of our NT players to give them maximum training, but with little success as it seems to be a hell of a job to have them see the importance of SA NT rather than their own team and the way they are managing their team. I did move out some of the older and weaker players to make space for the more talented and younger ones, and which good effect. The next term I will make sure to update news of the NT on the forum as much as possible and try to see if I can make the involvement grow as we are a small nation with very limited amount of users compared to almost all teams above us. We need to do it together as it will be a tough job to raise the level of South Africa from now on, but as you know i'm up for the challenge and confident that we can do it.
I would like to mention that a bronze medal was won during the Afrobasket 45 reaching the semi finals, this was my second bronze medal for South Africa since I was elected. As you can see nothing but progress in every category, and my goal is to keep making progress in as much categories as possible rather than making statements about reaching the final of Afrobasket or keeping things vague. What you see is what you get!
Greetings from your proud South Africa NT Coach!