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Thanks Ubiond for the support we are on a tough situation we hope we can surpass those challenges for the upcoming weeks.

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The Philippines didn't get here by chance. The punched and counter-punched their way into the second round, getting up after being knocked down akin to Manny Pacquiao's moxie in the boxing ring. Although they lost to regional powerhouse China last week, the overarching theme of this season's campaign is that of grit and perseverance. An 18-point loss isn't going to take away anything from the Filipinos, not their confidence, not their pride, in fact, they had more than enough in the tank today even as their more experienced counterpart delivered the hard lessons post 79-61 defeat.

In hindsight, both teams took the same number of attempts but a well-organized Australian offense is not to be trifled with as their opponents have learned today. Their ten dunks made it seem like an all-star game but it highlighted a particular area where the Philippines was most often languid this game. José Frink had five of the unguarded freebies as opposed to just one made fadeaway in five attempts over Filipino center, Fitz Rojo. The Filipinos can undoubtedly defend when called upon. When you hold the Aussies to 25% shooting in contested shots, you're doing something right, the only drawback is that they could also shut you down on the other end.

Still the Philippines were within earshot, down by eight at the buzzer to start the final quarter. But as soon as they trim the lead to single digits the glaring defensive lapses ensued. Seemingly running out of gas due to poor conditioning and a noticeable lack of effort, this opened the door for the Aussies to cruise to a 10-21 burst with five minutes remaining to fend off another furious comeback by the Filipinos.

Cadeo Ngô tormented his match-up on defense particularly shadowing Victor Gotardo around the court, thirteen of his shots were taken with Ngô in proximity, making it an exhausting cat versus mouse night for the young Filipino guard.

Benedict Lagare was not as unlucky with his match-up. He signed his stat sheet with 14 points, seven rebounds, five assists and two notable defensive stops including a block and a steal. He was able to hang tough on defense, giving up only 2 points against four different players.

Their next big test is against Hong Kong which will at least give this squad time to assess how far they have grown and how much further they have to go. For most of them, this is their baptism of fire, their rite of passage and it starts today.

Scores:
Australia
Nguyên 20, Fink 14, Gibbins 12, Rose 10, Ngô 6, Bort 6, Ellard 4, Hongjing 3, MacBride 2, San 2, Rucker DNP-CD Omu DNP-CD

Philippines
Gotardo 17, Lagare 14, Montemayor 11, Macalinag 8, Salinas 6, Rojo 2, Rios 2, Flandez 1, Gayoles 0, Catolico 0, Guardia DNP-CD

Quarters:
11-19; 28-40; 43-51; 61-79

Last edited by Pro_Shot 🇵🇭 at 6/13/2018 4:06:53 PM

Thanks LordWoody we just got lucky 😄😄😄

Yeah unfortunately we suffered a bad loss to Australia. They deserved the fair victory and even if we managed to beat Hong Kong we are still in the mix since hk VS aus will decide our fate also.
Let's see which will be the truth....

While we are waiting for our official PR by pro shot, I will share my thoughts on the matches so far.
We managed to win against Hong Kong in a thrilling final quarter. Our choice was to push the ball in order to improve our scoring rating without forgetting our defensive side which was brilliant thanks to our more effort too. Something bad instead happened on the offensive and it can be addressed also in Mondays match against uae.
We are able to produce many points from our pg or sf and of course our big man too are capable, but we're experiencing pure panic on our shooting guard role.
The reason to me is quite a mystery since ratings are quite good, Ocampo matchup rating against uae was really high and off the bench leocadio did fine. But Ocampo and before him Salinas too produced very low scoring %.
And that wasted our difference point a bit, because they took many shots unfortunately. Trying to imagine a flow, against uae our pg gotardo and gayoles took the majority of our shots, so they were less incline to allow our offense to flow better. Maybe Ocampo received bad shots selections or even was more incline to pass the ball rather than shooting identifying not a good matchup. But again not 1 out of 10 against a 4 outside Def.
He is 1/19 in his last two matches, a terrible scoring rate unfortunately and we desperately need points in order to reach the semifinal.

Top three against hk and uae:
1- defense: we are keeping our opponents always lower than 70 or 80 points. That would be amazing if on the offensive we can do a better job
2- rebounding: our big men are doing a great job overall. Even in bad days in shooting like manikan on Monday, he locked is opponent down. And all the rebounding we are getting are more shots from us and less shots for them.
3- bench: we have a well rounded team in which between bench and starters the difference is really light. We are going down against top teams because they have better starters (and it can be easily proved by the fact we are playing with 2 20yo in starters - Rios and Salinas - with one training season less than 21yo) but often our bench has positive plus minus and great impact on the match.

Flop three:
- ocampo: mentioned above. He is our Pick the brick winner trophy in the last days but I am confident he can be back on target. No blame on him, since it is the game engine who's fucking without a reason.
- gotardo and patient: gotardo loves to shoot. But there are better shooters. And so? Gotardo shoots anyway. 😂
- foul trouble: against uae we helped them a lot with silly fouls. Guardia 5 fouls, lagare 5 fouls.. We allowed 33 free throws. A huge number compare to our 14.

I am really angry about today's match because we wasted three great quarters with this fucking garbage time.
I posted again a suggestion to put it as optional since in U21/NT especially many times it happens that standings and medals are decided by difference points.
Like this time, and to waste a so good advantage because of this shitty and nonsense garbage is something which really makes me pissed of. It's not a complaint Asia-related, since other teams had garbage and our position cannot be addressed (only) to garbage losing points but it is a matter of logical sense vs idiotic game engine behavior.
That said, Australia took a huge risk by doing tie against HK. We needed AUS to win or to lose in a short range, instead they lose badly and we cannot manage to cross the 40 points in DP falling short a bit in the 4th quarter.
Now the situation is really painful, since we're second but not so ahead of Australia and quite too far away from Hong Kong.
So basically we lost only one match and we should finish 3rd if nothing strange happens.
Today I saw a bit of Philippines vs Australia and the huge fight, that reminded me a topic I kept hidden: fairness.
Against Australia there was a mutual tie agreement confirmed twice by australian coach who then decided to go Normal cheating his word. Nothing illegal, nothing would have changed (we needed a tie because we had Hong Kong the week after), but in a "no winning" game cheating your word is something I simply don't get.
Bad blood between Australia and Philippines, it seems so. I hope to have my revenge on the court, also because of today's brawl, revenge on BB, maybe revenge for GILAS too in the future!

This season was for me to learn a bit how ASia championship is all about. So I apologize if I made some mistakes or if the results will not be the one expected but as I said it is a longshot. I am working for the future and basically this roster was extremely weak (our current 20yo in a 5 on 5 match against the 21yo probably would win, that says much).
Few notes:
- we lack some managers to cooperate with us. Too many are still training multiple roles, which is really slow for U21 porpouses. Single role training with a good trainer level is the basis to produce world-caliber players. If you have the will to cooperate just contact us via BB Mail or via Discord, I would be extremely glad to provide training plans and so on. Just to provide you an example, my 18yo filipino Serg Cargado did 12 pops this season and there are still 2 weeks left. He crossed the 70 TSP at 18 yo.
- big men and primary skills: having all multi skilled big men is useless if we do not have the centerpiece. HK had a 1.5M DMI center, China two of them, Australia 2 too, without mentioning Taiwan. Our best big man reaches 800k DMI, rather a half of the others. That's because we have very good skillset all around but we lack primaries. Same goes on the backcourt, our 20yo have more OD than the 21yo, which is something pretty weird this season and will be pretty good the next one What I am trying to say is that we need to differentiate the trainings a bit.
- write me, I'm loving my days as your coach, I love my staff, I'm learning some filipino words (like Pepe @Gengi) and I would like to slowly introduce myself in your BB Life if you want. Next season i will begin to run some fantasy games if you like. But I'm always open for suggestion or whatever!

Thanks a lot for everything guys. Fingers crossed for next week!

Ill chime in here as the Australian u21 coach. Ive been coach now for 10+ seasons, cant remember exactly how many. But you guys have always been my 2nd team. The main reason was the fun rivalry with coach morwood. So if we dont win the asain champs i always prefer you guys do.

Whinging on forums about managers is a dog act and i wont get involved. Mutual TIEs are sent by poor managers that cant play the BB game and need to try and control both teams. Its like saying we cant beat you, so can you not try too hard? We are allowed to play whatever tactics we want. Please dont try and control our team to benefit you, becsuse it is not what is best for us.

Good luck and i hope to see a Philippines v Aus final, as i always do!

Whitewind
Aus u21 manager