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Dear members of the belgian BB community,

I'm already close to my 4th month as U21 belgian head coach. I wanted to communicate earlier about the team but it was difficult for me to find the appropriate time. Now, i can start with this post.

Already 4 months have past and lots of things happen to us (with a lucky star somewhere upon my head ... ^^) !

Season 68 :

First of all, i wanted to say a huge thank you to all coaches that provided belgian players to the team last season. Giodeb (Tirmarche "Walkshoot" & Missotten) - Pmikel (Van Riet) - Ewie (Boerkamp) - MrCh (Mansuy & Van Beurden) - JordiBall (Van bossche) - Guiguits (Ibrahim & Baele) - Arnaud P (Darmon) ...

It was an amazing season for the U21 team to be honest ! I started with a new team to learn and make it mine. A lot of dicussion with Joe about the team and the expectation were not high at all. I had the feeling that reaching the second round of the EC would be already a huge thing.

First round : We had must wins against Malta, Crna Gora and Moldova (those ones were mandatory with our team to win). Huge wins against Latvia and Ukraine by ONE POINT in each game. I was sweating at the end of both of those ones Those wins and the fact that Czech Republic wins against Ukraine let us reach the second round !

Second round : At the beginning, it was a bonus round (after also discussion with Joe) with maybe one possible win. We were rip out by Italia and Spain and i was completly wrong against Bosnia (Inside PAM against RnG). Our main success was the W against Greece (not an easy one). Here is were magic may happens and also always listen to experienced coaches !! I needed to win by more than 15 points to go to the second chance game and it was very difficult to figure it out how to play against Estonia with the HCA. Joe said to me, please consider the fact that if i would be at the situation of the estonian coach, i would certainly play neutral. The end of the story is that the PAM was good and we win by more than 15 points to reach a final game against Chile. Now, we are playing the world cup in season 69 !

Season 69

I'll speak about my objectives since april and where we are considering our main goal "To be ready for the EC in S72" but also, for season 70.

I didn't had the oppurtunity to scout completly the S68 draft class but it is now the case for the S69 draft. With the help of Joe, we did find a group of trainer (thank you very much for them already (Ventola, Jordiball, Hoxiz, JackyD and all the others) and prospects to train for the S72 campaign ! It is now really exiting to prepare those players and to follow training plans. A lot of players need to be followed and it represents a lot of scouting efforts for me.

I had also the opportunity to follow players for the next european tournament so we will try again to do our best.

Final word concerning the S69 world cup, we are in a very diffcult group composed of : China - USA - France - Lituania - Spain - Uruguay and Algeria.

My main objective is achieved with the wins against Uruguay and Algeria. The other teams in this group are far more better than us .... we will see what happens ;)

Please be convinced of my commitment in our U21 team !

Best regards, Met vriendelijke groet, Bien à vous,

Melarius

Indeed, given what you have at hand, you're overachieving !

Good job !

First round of the WC is already done and we played a first consolation game yesterday evening. The results of the first round was very predictable. As i said, we were in a difficult group (Pool A) and we concluded it 2 - 5 with 5 straight losses against our opponents.

Belgium U21 81 - 101 Lietuva U21
United States U21 84 - 72 Belgium U21

Nothing to say about those two games, logical results. Loosing by 12 points against Team USA was already a good point for me

Belgium U21 67 - 79 China U21

The result could have been really better for us if i didn't take the risk to do a double PAM (outside and normal), i'm really unhappy with this choice and it was a mistake from me.

Belgium U21 69 - 88 España U21
Belgium U21 72 - 77 France U21

I thought we could have the opportunity to play against Spain and France with a greater enthusiasm, given that we were clearly the underdogs. I was a little surprised to see both teams playing with equal enthusiasm, but it was still important for them to qualify. A slight regret, but also an important point: we only lost by 5 points against France.

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First game of the second round

Bosna i Hercegovina U21 111 - 112 Belgium U21

Really really happy with this result, this game could have gone in both direction and i recover my lucky star for this one. It starts the consolation round on a good basis. We will try our best to finish well this WC.

It is also really good to see some 20 year old players already on the field, we are preparing the next EC with nice prospects.

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Wish you all a very nice day,

Melarius