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Two more wins! MVP voting:

NT = (https://strawpoll.com/polls/poy9Wk10DgJ)
U21 = (https://strawpoll.com/polls/ajnEO1l00ZW)

Thanks to testudo for the polls - please vote, it pleases our imaginary players no end.

(68728)
England 124 Saudi Arabia 76

Very short review of this one (stop cheering, my posts aren't that long!) as it was one of England's more comfortable wins, despite Saudi Arabia holding the lead for 10 seconds in the 1st quarter. A glance at the teams ratings show the two teams defences about equal, but our offence was much better, a fact borne out by the statistics with us shooting 51% from the field compared to Saudi Arabia's 31%.

Kemp top scored with 25, led the team with 13 rebounds and also led the team in 3 pters and FTs. As a team England commited only 2 turnovers, an outstanding effort.

(68419)
England u21s 92 Georgia u21s 76

What a game this one was, with both coaches making inspired defensive choices, arrows matching our 3-2 against Georgia's patient offence, and Georgia choosing the 2-3 against our look inside.

The first quarter was exceedingly tight, England twice having a 4 pt lead but in general there was more often just 2 points in the game. Our points were fairly evenly spread but after one quarter Lekishvili had 15 of Georgia's 19 pts.

The second went much the same way until with 6:42 left in the half we increased the lead to 6 for the first time with a Clarke jumper. We then did not score for the next 3:07 as Georgia scored 10 to give them a 4 point lead. By half time their lead had increased to five, causing a fair bit of concern amongst the England fans, though at least two did confidently state we would go on to win. By the way one of them wasn't me, and neither was the other one.

Slowly in the third we tried to chip away at the their lead, never allowing them to increase it, and keeping them under pressure. Bunce eventually gave us the lead for the final time with 5:18 left in the third, a jumper to give us a 54-52 lead.

We increased this to 8 by the end of the third and finally had 12 comfortable minutes as we ran out 16 point champions.

Clarke was our top scorer with 23, Bunce had 22 (including 10 FTs) and 5 assists, and MacLachlan played well defensively contributing 6 blocks.

Accusations of stat padding were heard from somewhere as Boddie got a double double after a strong fourth quarter. Asked for a comment later he said "Big Boddies have a lot of gravity, so rebounds just come to me."

Comfortable wins in both games. Limited minutes for the starters means fewer stand-out performances, but I'm sure you can find a couple of players to vote for in the latest polls:

MT MVP: (https://strawpoll.com/polls/BJnX8777Onv)
U21 MVP: (https://strawpoll.com/polls/QrgebPPPLZp)

Am I late? No. In fact, like Gandalf, I've arrived exactly at the time I meant to.

(68421)
Switzerland u21 62 England u21 84

(68759)
Cyprus 74 England 111

Just one review to cover both games as they were similar games. The seniors gave up the first points but by 5 minutes in they'd established a 10 point lead, which just increased throughout the game. While the juniors scored the first 12 pts in their game and led by 27 at half time, and by 33 after the 3rd quarter, before giving up some of their lead during garbage time in the 4th.

As we've come to expect now Boddie was dominant for the u21s with 23 pts and 24 rebs (5th highest ever by an England u21 player), either of which would be noteworthy contributions. Even more he added 5 blocks in an excellent performance on both sides. Boddie is now 4 behind legend Jeremy "Big Mac" MacAusland who is 3rd all time in the u21 career rebounding rankings, and only 18 behind leader Robbie Cook.

Much more difficult to pick the outstanding performances for the senior team with 6 players contributing 12 or more points and the highest scorer only hitting 16. Kemp led the starters with 6 assists, Catty had 5, and Banuelos, the twitter star, added 5 from the bench.

We've reached a significant stage of the u21 season so I'm going to mention the standings this week, which is why I'm doing this on tuesday instead of monday (you see? there was a plan all along? i'm not just winging this!).

We're in 3rd on points difference behind Israel and Greece, two very strong BB nations and a game ahead of Ukraine who llost to Scotland this week, and who we play next week. Since that means Israel and Greece play each other on monday, that makes next week the most important week of the tournament so far.

The standings for the senior NT team are somewhat different as there are no groups, and the top 32 qualify for the next stage. Points difference can make a huge difference here as multiple teams will finish with the same record.

We're currently 9th, there are 15 unbeaten teams (4-0) and 16 teams on 3-1. The Czech Republic are 32nd at the moment with a 2-2 record. For reference a 5-3 record is usually enough to qualify but home court in the knock out rounds are a huge advantage so the higher we finish the better.

Two more wins for both teams. With tougher games approaching, let's see if we can maintain these great results!

MVP voting here. As Gully pointed out on Discord, it was tough to narrow it down to three for the NT.
Easier for the U21, but there the difficulty is picking who had the very best performance.

NT: (https://strawpoll.com/polls/bVg8oGP3rnY)

U21: (https://strawpoll.com/polls/GPgV6DW18ga)

(68427)
Ukraine u21 60 England u21 73

Battle of the defences here in the lowest scoring game of the season so far. Ukraine's 3-2 D causing us to miss 12 3pters, while our mtm D caused Ukraine to miss a whopping 23 3pters in total. By far the worst part of the game shooting wise came form 7:05 left in the second Q when England took a 35-29 lead, we didn't score again until there was 7:42 left in the 3rd when James managed to hit one FT. Fortunately Ukraine had themselves only scored 6 pts so that one FT gave us the lead.

As you might expect, seeing we were tied at the half, it was a close first two quarters, though England did score the first 8 pts, and had an 8 pt lead again after a minute in the 2nd before Ukraine fought back.

Once we got the scoring again though in the 3rd we caught fire, leading by 16 at the end of the 3rd, pulling away to lead by 25 at one point, before the stupidity of garbage time showed itself again as we allowed the lead to almost halve to 13.

Debate over the MVP this week as Allison and Boddie both got double doubles, but Boddie's 5 blocks gave him the edge for me.

In the standings we're now in a qualification spot, though by no means are we favourites to qualify, Israel and Greece are still the big two in the group. Israel beat Greece to retain top spot, which allowed us to go 2nd, while Greece drop to 3rd.

Next week sees the top 2, Israel and us, play each other, while Greece(3rd) will play Ukraine(4th).

MVP voting here. As Gully pointed out on Discord, it was tough to narrow it down to three for the NT.
Easier for the U21, but there the difficulty is picking who had the very best performance.

So tough it seems that you didn't include the player I initially chose lol.

(68808)
England 132 Nigeria 102

This game was over as a contest quite quickly, with such a disparity between the two teams that England simply did everything better than Nigeria, understandable given the number of clubs in the two nations. This is something that can quite easily happen in NT games, and for us as a small but not a micro nation, it can go both ways.

Nigeria did actually shoot quite well inside, but England dominated the boards and shot well from 3 pt range (almost 44% from 16 attempts.) My MVP vote finally went to Kemp who led the starters in scoring with 18 and added 4 assists. His deputy Farmer also scored well with 15 and he also passed well, adding 6 assists, as we gave Nigeria's SFs a torrid time.

England are now one of 11 unbeaten teams. We lie 8th in the table, but it should be noted that two teams we have remaining on the schedule are 2nd and 4th right now with PDs 55 and 58 better than ours.

Another win for the NT, by an impressive 80pts! Plenty of counting stats for the players, vote for an MVP here:

(https://strawpoll.com/polls/NoZr3PEJry3)

The U21's suffered their first defeat of the campaign vs Israel. There were two fantastic performances despite the result, so pick your favourite here:

(https://strawpoll.com/polls/7MZ0ABw68yo)

(68431)
England u21 90 Israel u21 111

This was a game Israel would be expected to win with their much higher ranking and their standing in the BB world, especially at u21 level, and so arrows's tactical choices for the game were an understandable risk. He expected motion so went with a 1-3-1 defence, and made a double guess, which he was right to do, but unfortunately Israel did the unexpected and went with Look Inside, which looked problematic for us. Fortunately Israel chose a 2-3 defence which appeared in our favour as we played motion.

At half time, with the score 43-41 in favour of the Israelis, both managers were probably regretting their defensive choices, however understandable they were. The first half had been a tight tense affair, Israel's biggest lead had only been 6, and we'd had the lead briefly also. Boddie appeared exposed and was almost completely unable to rebound but we'd defended well as a team thus far, and scored enough to stay in the game.

We led again in the 3rd, two Clarke FTs giving us a 59-57 lead, a Duncan reverse layup tied us at 61. James with a 3 brought us within 3 with just over a minute to go in the 3rd but those were our last points of the quarter which ended with us 7 down.

With just over 9 minutes to go in the game a Clarke jump shot gave us hope, bringing us within 4 but from then on the Israeli machine seemed to finally start going and they outscored us the rest of the way 32-15.

An expected loss which leaves us with the equivalent of a playoff with Greece next monday. Israel are now certain to qualify, so well done to them.

(68831)
Azerbaijan 76 England 156

Not our record victory (yes I checked) but a very impressive performance as we beat the Azeri by 80. Obviously an expected win but still praiseworthy. Certainly not every day you see a player play 27 minutes and end up +78 in the box score.

Everything in the pregame choices looked good for England with js8 getting a double prediction right, using a full court press, not often seen at the top level, and Azerbaijan chose a 2-3 which was unfortunate for them as we used an outside offence.

Six England players managed double figure points, with Kemp top scoring with 34, Thomas grabbed 17 rebounds, and 7 players managed 4 or more assists as we moved with ball with speed and accuracy (only 6 TOs).

The 80 point win has moved us up to 4th in the rankings, a very impressive feat by js, who deserves only praise for his job this season. So one might wonder why 8 people disapprove of him so far giving him an approval rating of 64%. Disgruntled fans of some other manager perhaps? Maybe you'll be bold enough to give your opinions on here on why js8 is doing such a bad job in your opinion.