BuzzerBeater Forums

The NT saga continues as we go into the season 70!

As usually, even BB seasons are related to the consolation tournaments for smaller NT teams - such as us. While big boys play at the World cup, the rest of us battle for the home court advantage at the following area championships. The best team from a given area which did not get any trophies in the past 6 seasons, gets the main reward. European teams are in front of a particularly difficult task, since it is usually necessary to get at least to the finals of the tournament to get the reward. This is three or four steps higher than what we can realistically hope for, but, besides rating, it is the only thing to play for, so we must be ambitious.

As mentioned before, our quality is increasing at the moment, so I hope we will do better than the last time at consolation tournament. Getting to playoffs (final 32) is a realistic goal, while any further step will be a major achievement. Unfortunately, the draw was a bit unlucky with us, since "easy" games are scarce and we will need to do some real work in order to qualify to top 32. The schedule is:

Venezuela (A) - a difficult away match against a very decent south american team. Fortunately, by the time I opened a "Season 70" thread, we have already won this one, which was an important step towards the playoffs.

Iceland (H) - Iceland is a team on the rise (seems to be common with all nordic countries at the moment). Three seasons ago they were very close to 90th position at the world ratings (only true micronations are above that), while now they settled in positions 50-60, which is very similar to us. Since their team is still weaker than ours, and we play at home, this is a must-win game, but it will not be trivial.

Ghana (A) - probably the weakest opponent we will face. They have no players with >200k salary, and only 6 players with >100k salary, so another "must-win" game. Since we will play away, we will still need to be careful though.

Mexico (H) - Mexico won the home court advantage for the last america's championships in season 69, but didn't materialize the advantage. Getting a bronze at AC in S67, they surely hoped for more in S69, but they ended at 5th-6th place, without medal and without world cup qualification. Their team is strong, stronger than ours, but with HCA they are far from invincible. This will be another important match for us.

Bosnia and Hercegovina (A) - We played against Bosnia in the last consolation tournament. Also an away game, and we played CT against their TIE. We also won the tactical matchup, but were very far from success. So it is highly unlikely we can win this one. Surely we won't bomb them with CT this time...

Argentina (H) - Another, thrird, opponent from America. While Argentina seems a bit stronger than Venezuela, it is a bit weaker than Mexico, and this is the game, which we will likely need to win. Far from impossible, but also far from guaranteed.

Iran (A) - We also played against Iran, also away, in the last consolation tournament. We lost, but we are definitely not without hope this time. By this point, we will likely know how we stand, and what is needed to be done in order to get good result in this season. So we have some additional maneuvering space for this game.

Ireland (H) - Similarly to Iceland, the Ireland NT is not bad, but we will definitely be a favourite here. On the other hand, they may very well play CT against us, since it will be probably their last competitive game of the season, or this will be the game which could still get them into the playoffs.

As you can see, most games will be close and difficult. Some are 60-40 or 70-30, while others may be 30-70 or 40-60, but almost none is already decided. This is interesting for a neutral observer, while it is a bit annoying for the NT manager Still, I look forward for the challenge and to asses our progress

The game against Iceland went well, we have won convincingly and made another necessary step towards the playoffs (82067).

Game shapes of our outside players were excellent, however game shapes of our big men were very poor (also my fault, since I played Ahler with until then optimal minutes also for Thursday's cup match - the game started already at 7 am, which caught me off guard). I expected Iceland to be a bit aggressive with game day predictions, and since we could play inside tactics very well with available players, I didn't hesitate. The sum of tactical-, home court- and quality advantages then led to a quick lead, which finally materialized in the second quarter, when we were leading by 26 points. Although our guests managed to get back to 13 points difference in Q3, our win was never in question, and the final result 127-102 is within the range of the expected outcome.

Four of the five starters - Josefsson, Forsbratt, Häggin and Håkansson were almost equally efficient, scoring 20 to 23 points, while the fifth starter, Herman Hansson was offensively a bit less prominent, probably due to playing on a PG position. However, his +/- is the best among all players (+22), so obviously he was a huge asset for us.

I must say that I am really sad about the fate of Mats Josefsson, whom I just recently described as one of the most promising swedish players of all generations. But he was sold in the meantime. Although his new owner takes good care of his minutes, he cannot train him further, which is a real loss for us. Josefsson will still be a team member, but his role will be limited, while he could become a team leader within a season or two. Another such player is also Patrik Skogstedt (23), who was also the best player among many generations. He will be trained with a new chinese owner, and we'll see how it goes. It is very difficult if not impossible to give any directions to chinese managers. Although they can in some cases obviously train very good and very dedicated, they sometimes produce a bit chaotic players, who do not fit well in just any team, but are built for the specific purpose of their club. Actually now our two best 23 year olds are trained in China, I really hope they will give it their best.

So long story short, try to have a long-term vision with your trainees and NT players. Usually a player is best trained if he is with one manager from age 18 (or 19) until 30+. Especially for swedish teams, I strongly recommend not selling your trainees at any point. With Utopia it is a bit different, since most of us have Utopia teams in 4th division (and soon it will be 5th division), where finances cannot support NT caliber players above the age of 25 or so. Still, try to plan in advance and try to find a domestic buyer from swedish leagues if you can.

Although I considered Ghana to be this year's weakest opponent, an away game again proved to be much more difficult than expected. We won, but the difference of 18 points was not superb (82093).

While the roster of Ghana is not remarkable, they had good results this season, with two wins against Senegal and Georgia. A lot of this seems due to the higher attitude. Actually they seem to be on an autopilot, playing constantly with normal attitude, inside isolation and 3-2 zone tactics, but after just two games I estimated the double prediction is not worth the risk, since merely getting a win was the main priority.

Anyhow, the win was still convincing, and was solidified already in the second quarter. Kristian Forsbratt was offensively the best player in our roster, scoring 42 points while also providing 9 assists. Generally our outside players contributed to most of our scoring, and only 26 out of 132 points were achieved from players on PF and C positions (with Kalle Håkansson scoring more than half of them - 14)

Next week we face Mexico, a well respected BB country, where small things like GS and tactics will matter even more. It is a home game, so our aim is naturally to win. If we do, we can even raise our hopes from merely qualifying to the playoffs, to actually getting to the later rounds, since a better score than just 5-3 will be on the table. If not, then we are back to hoping for a bare playoff qualification.

Last edited by Deschamps at 11/11/2025 7:07:43 AM

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