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Yesterday we managed to achieve an important win against Mexico (82147)

The game saw some swings from one side to the other, with both teams playing the same tactics. Most of the first half was very even, however just at the end, the first gap opened. In the last three minutes, Mexicans outplayed us with a score 10-2, and got a +9 advantage for the half-time break.

We managed to catch them in Q3, getting to 71-70, but again fell off in the final minutes of the quarter, which ended in 79-72. It only took us 3 minutes into Q4 to finally equalize the score to 84, and then three more to take the lead with 92-90. Afterwards we managed to hold the lead for a few minutes, with our highest lead being +4.

One minute to go, Mexicans equalized to 102, but fortunately Sören Häggin quickly responded for 104-102. Good defending, and another two points from Kalle Håkansson got us to 106-102 with 31 seconds to go. Our nerves got a bit stressed, when guests scored a three pointer for 106-105 19 seconds to go, but it got a bit easier, when Lasse Lundell hit both free throws for a three point lead. Timeout didn't help Mexicans, who failed to score another three pointer, and then it was just additional series of our free throws, which confirmed a well deserved win.

Our starting five scored 95 out of 112 points, so obviously our problems and weaknesses emerged when backups were on the court. This is also evident from the +/- statistics, ranging from +8 to +16 for starters, and from -1 to -9 for backups.

To be honest, I am not completely happy with the performance. Seeing higher attitude, knowing we also had a home court advantage, I expected the game to be smoother for us. But if I look it from another perspective: According to ranking, a win against Mexico (ranked 21st) is the equalized second best opponent Sweden had ever won against. The last win against country with such high ranking happened in a very distant season 34 (against Hong Kong, also ranked 21st), and the only time Sweden had won against higher ranked team was in even more distant season 20 against Argentina (13th). So looking from such perspective, this is definitely a good achievement, signaling good times for the NT.

With a score 4-0 we are now in a very good position, almost guaranteed of a playoff spot, while we can still very much hope for a home court advantage in the first round of the playoff (so finishing top 16). Although this will still be very difficult, probably requireing a 7-1 score. On the other hand, we had already improved our 3-5 score from two seasons ago.

Next week we face Bosnia, a game where our chances of winning are very slim. Still, going into the game without any burden can lead to positive surprises, so we'll see how it goes.

The fifh game got us the first (competitive) defeat of the season. However, the game against Bosnia (82173) was surprisingly even, and a huge contrast against our last game two seasons ago.

Bosnians went into the game with higher enthusiasm and home court advantage, not to menton much higher quality of their squad. In addition, our wrong all-in double (or triple) prediction should have put the final nail in our coffin. But it seems that trying to avoid being read, their base offense was (to say at least) suboptimal tactics, which almost cost them a win. It is probably a bit quick to say, that we would have won without the double prediction, but we would definitely be even closer.

The statistics of the game show that we were inferior with FG%, and also strongly inferior with rebounding, especially the latter probably mostly due to their HCA and higher ent. We won quite many shooting fouls, which kept us in the somewhat close proximity, although their win was never really threatened.

After our initial lead (highest 16-10), the score turned before the end of Q1, and had risen to their 10+ advantage by the half-time (highest 56-41, by the end of Q2 56-45). Third quarter saw their lead rise even further, to 20+ (highest 78-56), but we were surprisingly resilient to their attacks, and started to close the gap in the last quarter. We got to 98-104 with two minutes to the end, but then ran out of energy for the final minute or so.

In any case, a good demonstration of our improvement in the past two seasons, and a positive surprise for sure. It was a game, which I marked as surely lost, but now I am even a bit dissapointed I went so aggresively into the predictions. Maybe with their RnG tactics they would still be more convincing, even with our GDP, so our only hope would be to let them make a mistake (leave predictions empty and hope that they play something suboptimal). But random in BB is also very strong, so making strong conclusions from one single game is not a very wise thing to do.

In any case, now we await the home game against Argentina, where a win can already get us a playoff spot. We are now 19th in the tournament table, which means we can still hope for a top 16 position, but it looks like we are gonna need to win all three remaining games. 7-1 score could theoretically also lead to a top 8 position, but our points difference seems to increase too slowly, and in our upcoming games there seems to be none where we might hope for a significant boost in PD. All speculations aside, we go from game to game and try to acheve the most possible in every single Monday.

Hoping for a good GS

Yesterday we achieved a convincing win over Argentina (82207). Although we were suffering from very bad game shapes in our team (more about this later), everything else went strongly in our favour, so the victory was never in question.

After initial few minutes, when both teams were still probing each other, we finally stepped up and got ourselves a convincing lead of several points, which led to 22-14 after Q1. In the second quarter we continued with the dominance, first beaking the 10 point barrier with 29-18, and afterwards also touching the 20 points difference (51-31). With a solid lead of 53-35 we could be very optimistic during the half-time break.

Our optimism was proven to have a solid ground when we continued with the dominance, increasing our advantage to 20+ points, and the game was more or less decided by the beginning of the second half. Last quarter saw us increasing the lead even to 30+ points difference, but with some stepping of the gas in the final two minutes, the difference settled in +27 for Sweden.

The match turned out to be almost boring, and retrospectively I regret not playing with "Take it Easy" attitude. However, even normal doesn't hurt us much and knowing that Argentina had 2 losses already prior our match, and also has to play against Greece away in the last regular game, this was their game-to-win, if they wanted to secure a playoff spot. So playing at least normally, or even CT was reasonable to assume. Also, their GS was much stronger than ours, so a closed game was expected. But their TIE, our HCA, and our luck with the tactical outcome made the game very straightforward, even if our GS was really bad.

Here I must emphasize, that having NT players in GS 7 in the middle of the season is not acceptable. GS 8 happens a lot, it is a matter of luck to get a player to 9. But 7 is always a result of (really) bad minutes or injury. And I don't want to point fingers, since I know every owner of NT players has done a lot for the development of the NT team. Injuries happen, bad minutes happen, no individual is to blame here. But yesterday we had more than half (9 out of 17) players at 7 or below. 3 were at 8, 5 at 9. With so many players it comes down to statistics, and overall stats were really bad, since we could barely put together a 10 man squad for the game. This is a reminder for all of us that we need to contribute to community also on a weekly, GS related basis, otherwise, the NT project cannot be successfull. For example, the roster of Slovenian NT has 16 players, 10 were on 9, 3 on 8, and 3 on 7 - and this is considered a somewhat OK GS week. I don't want to be too harsh, but when it comes to the NT where differences are small, GS is king. And having good GS benefits all of us, not just the NT.

So next week we play against Iran, which is a bit weird opponent, they seem to be on autopilot, but have decent roster, and playing away is hard. Afterwards Ireland, when getting a win at a home game should be a must-do. We are currently 16th, getting two wins would guarantee a top16 spot, but top 8 is probably out of the picture.

Best regards