BuzzerBeater Forums

Thanks Woody, but given you'll likely have the home court now Hongkong just might get replaced by another scary young team! Looking forward to next season (if I get another crack at it) trying to take you on in the Asian Cup.

"Have confidence!"

*Blown out*

"No confidence!"

Yep, it ended up a bit like that. It would have been nice to go at least one more step, but I’d probably be saying the same thing if we’d been knocked out in the second round as well. You’re always a chance, just sometimes you’re a smaller chance.

The scouting process for season 53 has begun. A number of players have gone on and off the roster in the last few days and it is looking like there will have to be some tough choices made at the start of the season around who is in the initial squad.
We have a scrimmage against England coming up that will hopefully give a little more information about who fits where and with a bit of luck we can take them on again next week to try some other things.
If anyone has an Aussie player you'd like me to have a look at over these next two weeks feel free to drop their name here and I'll do what I can.

I also just want to say thanks to the Aussie community for giving me a crack at managing this side over these past two seasons. It's been challenging but fun and I'll definitely be nominating again, we'll just have to see how the election pans out. Regardless, even if I don't get put up for the gig again whoever comes in should have plenty of information at their disposal and a good, solid list to start with.

Our last game of Season 52 wrapped up tonight with a loss in a Scrimmage to Sweiz. It was an odd game in some respects but the key idea was again to try some slight variations and see how it panned out.

Overall we made some good progress in Season 52. Making the knock-out stages of the Consolation Cup was a good start, but ultimately the aim is to push for the World Cup in two seasons time and, if not, to go at least one round deeper if we do find ourselves back in the Consolation Cup in Season 54.

The MVP race was a tight one this season and in the end only 1 vote separated the top-3 players.

McFlynn: 1, 0, 3, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 3, 2, 0, 0, 3, 2 = 16 votes
Grunter: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 3, 3, 0, 1, 3, 0, 0, 2, 3 = 15 votes (huge charge at the end of the season)
Hongjing: 3, 1, 0, 0, 0, 3, 0, 1, 3, 0, 0, 2, 1, 0, 1 = 15 votes
Dawes: 0, 0, 1, 0, 3, 0, 1, 2, 0, 0, 0, 3, 3, 0, 0 = 13 votes (stiff due to lack of game time late)
Duffield: = 7 votes
Matuszkiewicz = 5 votes
Payne = 4 votes
Helo = 4 votes
Unzi = 3 votes
Omu = 2 votes
Davidson = 2 votes
Laga-aia = 2 votes
Gibbins = 1 vote
Sage = 1 vote

Congratulations to Whitewind, our legendary Under-21 manager, for training both McFlynn and Grunter - our top two players of season 52. Ultimately it came down to consistency, with their steady game shape a huge factor.
McFlynn was our leading scorer with 218 and rebounder for the season, earning yet another spot in the All-time top-10 list for rebounds.
One point behind McFlynn was Hongjing with 217 to go along with his huge season of 76 assists, the second highest of all time for Australia and the fourth season in a row where he has gone past 60.
These two have been core members of the unit for the last 5 seasons together but with both now into their 30s the time is now to continue to build around them before they start to drop away.