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Due to a lack of replies other than Koop's, I'm giving the 6th and final point in the voting to Luka Cicvaric. Because Nepotism :P.

Tonight we play against Hanguk aka South Korea in the Concrete Jungle. Watch the match and join the chat here:

(35435)

Scully dominant, Australia now assured second round spot

Not that it was ever in doubt to begin with, but with the 120-56 win over South Korea, Australia moves to 4-0 in the preliminary phase of the Asian Championship and now cannot mathematically finish lower than 4th (in practice, 3rd due to the PD difference between us and South Korea).

Kerehi Scully's only brick of the night was one missed free throw attempt in an otherwise superior 20 point display. There were few bad performances across the board to speak of though in a game which saw the Australian team shoot 53-88 FG, a 60.2% success rate.

The next two games should provide a much stronger gauge of where our team actually stands in regards to competing for the title, with Malaysia and then Japan coming up.

3 points: Kerehi Scully (20 points, 9-9 FG, 12 rebounds, 3 blocks)
2 points: Michael Wayne (17 points, 7-10 FG, 6 rebounds, 3 steals)
1 point: Ryan McMillan (13 points, 5-8 FG, 5 rebounds, 4 assists)

I'm pleased to announce the debut of 26 year old emerging Small Forward talent, Chris Gingut, in tonight's match against Mayalsia. Our first real test of the tournament, come watch if you so wish:

(35438)

Our first real test of the tournament

hmmmm, not quite .... but in a good way ;)

Thanks for giving Chris Gingut the chance he's been waiting for all his life! Not a great debut for Gingut (shooting only 2-9) but he managed a decent game rating (18.5). Hopefully he puts in some better performances worthy of his skillset in the next few games.

It's been a long road dedicated to training him specifically at the cost of being competitive, so it's a great feeling being rewarded for the efforts. Still a long way to go!

To my one of my old tormentors and nemisis.

Congrats on a job well done with Gingut.

For those who dont know Zazz was my other tormentor

Malaysia close but no W

Whilst you could argue that the absence of Australia's starting five from the final quarter made the final 101-84 score-line look better for Malaysia than it might have, the fact remains that Malaysia were the first team in the competition to really challenge Australia on both ends of the floor, rather than just on offence like Kazakhstan.

Nonetheless, Australia were able to maintain both the winning streak and the free Taco streak* alive. Kosta Perisic was the man of the hour with big statistical numbers across the board. Whilst the overall field goal percentage wasn't the best, and not a single three ball was made, what counts is that we won and won convincingly.

3 points: Kosta Perisic (23 points, 10-18 FG, 14 rebounds, 4 assists, 4 blocks)
2 points: Dylan Scoggins (16 points, 8-15 FG, 15 rebounds)
1 point: Will Williams (9 points, 5 rebounds, 5 assists, opposing SF's shot 1-9 for the game)

*The Taco streak is us scoring more than 100 points whilst limiting our opponents to less than 100 points, which we have done in every game of this tournament to date.

6-0 record with Nippon failing to challenge

(35441)

I thought this game would be closer than it was, but Japan aka Nippon just weren't at the level I thought that a world number 16 would be at in this game. 112-75 in our favour was the outcome, with both Will Williams and Luka Cicvaric dominating in the Princeton offence. Matsumoto was the only player on the opposing side to play well, and even he failed to shoot above 40% FG's.

A great display at the free throw line from our team too, scoring a perfect 100% on all 22 attempts we were given.

3 points: Will Williams (26 points, 8-15 FG, 2-3 3PT, 8-8 FT, opposing SF's shot 2-11 for the game)
2 points: Luka Cicvaric (22 points, 10-13 FG, 2-5 3PT)
1 point: Gordie Waldron (17 points, 6-11 FG)

The 6-0 record in the first stage is good and all, but it was really more of a qualifying round for the Asian Championship proper, as everything is now reset for the second group stage; two groups of six teams with the top two in each group advancing. Our opponents for the next stage are:

Philippines
Taiwan
Singapore
Hong Kong
Kazakhstan

Taiwan won this Championship in season 29, Hong Kong made the final in season 27 and the semi-final in seasons 29 and 31, and the Philippines also have a semi-final berth in season 27 to their name. Singapore is also ranked 30th in the world at this point in time. Dodging China however does give us a good chance of winning the group, especially with HCA on our side this season.

Last edited by Jay (OTT) at 1/7/2016 11:48:14 AM

LOL 4 of the current 18 man Aussie squad have been trained at some point by myself.

Whats Iwens record for the number of former trainees in an Aussie Squad?


And with luck the "Composter" might be good enough to make his debut next season

Apologies for the lack of updates in the second phase onwards. Long story short, we managed to top our stage two group easily enough despite a narrow loss to Hong Kong during it. My game plan was to TIE everything since we only needed top two to advance and with HCA to counteract the negatives of less effort, I felt that we could easily make it through unless our opponents slammed us with good GDP calls. I'm pretty good at dodging GDP calls, so we made it with a 4-1 record.

Winning stage two on points difference also gave us a better semi-final draw in the form of a rematch with Malaysia. With us beating them easily enough back in stage one, a play-off normal is something I felt I had to risk to maximise our chances of going on to win the grand final. As it turns out, Malaysia wasn't that big of a threat to us and the team ran out 97-74 winners.

For points purposes I'll give 2 points each to Keith Anderson, Poluta'u Brar and Will Williams. I'll have to go back and score the five stage two games soon, but right now I'm thinking about the final in 40 minutes time.

We're playing Taiwan after they scored the upset win over China. This does benefit us greatly as they had to use more effort to make the final, but with them only losing to us in stage two because of a bad GDP call, dodging GDP again is going to be crucial to our success in this game. The following link will lead you to the game in about 40 minutes time if you wish to watch it.

(36333)

Last edited by Jay (OTT) at 2/15/2016 3:18:11 AM

Probably should get a thread going and pasted up the top (red tagged) in the Australian National Team forum (Supporters access required).

Use of tactics and selection lineup would be an interesting discussion given that Civaric and McMillan shot 2 out of 10 at Centre and got beaten in rebounds 18 to 5

Based on the result of the stage two game (36017), I came to two conclusions;

1. Taiwan was stronger on paper than us, but...
2. With us having better enthusiasm and HCA, the Taiwan manager would feel compelled to GDP.

So, knowing that he or she would GDP, I chose an offence that I felt gave me the best chance of avoiding that GDP. Likewise, the defensive tactics were based around what Taiwan had been running and what their line-up was.

EDIT: Made this post very vague so as to not make my way of thinking too obvious to other NT managers who might be reading this.

Last edited by Jay (OTT) at 12/18/2016 8:24:38 AM