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Two games were played since my last update:

First, a game against Bosnia, who were clear favourites. We played them twice in the last three seasons, all games with their HCA, so we sort of knew what to expect, and the outcome of the game was more or less expected (83041). A loss by approx. 20 points, and while we never were destroyed, we constantly lagged behind. Kristian Forstbratt scored 41 points with a 16-25 FG, and 7-11 3FG, but other players lacked such efficiency. Additionaly, even with playing 2-3 zone, we had problems with rebounding, loosing 39-49, which effectively decided the game.

Yesterday we played against a low-ranked, but quite decent Belarus. Their approach to this game was a bit of mistery, and this was a game we couldn't afford to loose. Additionally, it was more or less clear, that we are still in contention for the decent 4th place in the group, but cannot achieve much more, so we went a bit safe into the game, and played with normal attitude. Luckily for us, Belarus did not attack us, and also missed the GDP, so by the end we won quite convincingly, by 20 points (83042). Could have become nasty if Belarus took some other decisions, though. A win by 20 points got us some boost in points difference, and now we are competing with, surprisingly, Wales and maybe Iceland for the fourth place in the group. Latvia lost a game against Wales, and they are now more or less out of the picture, although they were the 4th seed in the group.

I believe we are in good position to be fourth, since we only need a win against Wales for this. To be frank, Wales already won against Belarus, Latvia and Iceland, so they have to be treated seriously. I also hope we will be able to play equally against two very strong teams - Bulgaria and Poland. This will be a good test for us, where we stand, how much is still missing. Our PF/C positions lack depth, so we are clearly not there yet, but the gap is closing.



Last edited by Deschamps at 2/24/2026 6:44:34 AM

Two games against strong opponents are behind us - with two losses unfortunately.

For the game against Bulgaria (83046) there is not much to say. The GS of our players was not sufficient to try anything, and we could barely scrape together the starting five, while the backups were inadequately prepared for a game against a strong opponent. Even though Bulgarians play "motion" for an entire tournament (presumably to trick Poland, whom they will face in the final, decisive, match), our double right prediction was far from enough, since they decided to play with a higher attitude against us. This, in combination with better GS, better quality, and higher ent, resulted in an uneven match, where we were constantly behind. Not much, but enough that the game was far from being close. Kristian Forsbratt was once more the leading scorer among our players with 27 points.

The game against Poland was much closer, but since we lost in the final minute, also much more unfortunate (83051). I figured we can risk a bit before the final must-win game against Wales, and went into the game with a normal attitude, which would give us some advantage. But not much, more or less it only neutralized the advantage in enthusiasm of Poles.

The game went very well for us, since we were quite competititve. Both in Q1 and Q2 we were in the lead many times, but lacked some focus in the final minutes of both quarters, where Poles managed to get a slight advantage. Not too much, their lead 50-46 by half-time still kept us close, although we could have been in the lead without the bad endings of quarters.

It took us 7 minutes into the third quarter to get into the lead again, 61-60, and then, more noticeably, 72-66 with some seconds to go. Again, unfortunately, Poles scored a three pointer for 72-69 in final seconds, but nevertheless, we kept the lead before the final quarter. In the latter, our lead went as high as +8 with 6 minutes to go, but then a 7-0 for Poland brought the teams back together. Final minutes were tight, neither team got to more than +2, but Poland managed to get two offensive rebounds in their last attack, resulting in a decisive 2 pt scoreing for 105-103. Forsbratt, again our best scorer with 21 points, tried to equalize with a buzzerbeater, but unfortunately he missed.

To sum our tournament so far - we had two convincing wins, two convincing losses and two very close losses. One after overtime against Iceland, and the one from yesterday. With a bit more luck it could have been a 3-3 or even 4-2 instead of current 2-4. Either would look much nicer, but this is the way it is.

We now face Wales, against whom we play for the 4th place in the group - an achievement which is decent and would be difficult to improve at the current state. This is very evident also from the points differences at the moment - Bosnia +159, Bulgaria +153, Poland +116, then Wales -103, Island -81, Belarus -109, Latvia -118... and Sweden -17. So we sit somewhere in between, far behind the top three teams, and far ahead of the rest, although Latvia seems to have a really horrible tournament, since their quality is at the similar level as ours. Nevertheless, a win against Wales is a must, we would then secure a fourth place, but some bitterness will remain due to the loss against Iceland. Or if we at least won against Poland yesterday...

On Monday we played the last competitive game of the season. The match against Wales was a must-win game for us, and, although it wasn't easy, we concluded this season's EC with a win (83055).

Wales was one of the positive surprises of this EC, especially among micronations. They managed to get as many wins in this EC (3 wins) as they did in the last 13 european championships combined - so typically they finnish 0-7, and rarely 1-6. But the quality of the team progressed significantly, and even the game against us - with more or less the same ent, this needs to be said -was quite close.

To be fair, the GS of our key players was not good and our outside line was almost completely 2nd tier, but still, we have some depth, so even our second lineup should be more than enough to deal with a true micronation. Here we struggled in the first half, where the result was even for entire 24 minutes. In the third quarter we started pushing a bit, getting to +10 after 5 minutes, and getting to +16 at highest. Last quarter was therefore not super close, but still the opponent showed some quality and the EC games are becoming more and more unpredictable. With some easy going attidude you can loose to the teams from the bottom quartile, while you can push just a little bit, and become a threat to the best teams in Europe. Differences are small and every detail counts.

Related to details, I seriously encourage all owners of NT players to put even more effort into maintaining good GS. Here we have a lot of reserve. Especially in the first weeks, a good dose of minutes is very, very important. If player starts the season with bad minutes and looses GS in the first week, he can get into a negative spiral, which can last for an entire season, the competitive NT part at least. GS management alone would bring us much closer to the top three nations in the group, we were clearly behind in that aspect. .

So at the end we finnished 4th, which is more or less the maximum we could hope for. While we started the season very well, with a convincing win against Latvia, this achievement was very much degraded since Latvia continued horribly, and finnished with a score of 0-7. A season-low for us is definitely the loss against Iceland after OT. If we won this, I would call the season a success, now it is only a mediocre one. The games against Bosnia, Belarus and Bulgaria had a very expected outcome, while the game against Poland was an unfortunate loss - a game where just a bit of luck could entirely change the assesment of our season. The game against Wales was only to preserve our honour, which we did, but otherwise - a game to forget.

While we started the season as #43 in the world rankings, we finnish the season as #46, which is more or less in line with my qualitative assesment of the season. Next few seasons will be crucial for the NT, both in terms of results, and in terms of player development. Many young players are now in the most crucial development phase, they are either going to become great or average, and I sure hope the entire community will push the training to the maximum. Similarly with the results of the NT, I believe we are slowly accumulating the increase in quality, which should result in a more significant boost of the team's performance. This is more or less my responsibility, but as I said - GS management is a very crucial aspect, which should be addressed a bit more carefuly.

This does of course not mean that special thanks are not in place to all NT player owners, and all who train younglings. I see much enthusiasm from many experienced, and less experienced managers, and although some details are not perfect, I believe the community is now much more vibrant than it was several seasons ago. This alone will boost the levels of both NT's, I am sure of this.

Best regards and thank you!

Season 72 is almost finished, and I haven't done a single report

To be honest, the consolation tournament format is not very attractive and the motivation of most teams in questionable. In addition, our schedule for this season was very uninspiring. It was easy enough, that we could hope of qualifying to the playoffs, but definitely too hard to allow us to dream of something bigger. Here I am mostly referring to the strength of lower ranked teams, which were all better that their ranking suggested, meaning we had no easy matches, while some other teams did.

At the end, the score is very typical for us - 5 wins , three losses, which yielded 31st place in the regular part, and a not so tight loss in the playoffs against Romania. A few words about each game:

Ireland (away) Win 117-97 (84675). Ranked 90th, Ireland was definitely stronger than anticipated by ranking. Ultimately we won by 20, but if they had gone into the game with higher attitude (and us with lower), it might have been a devastating loss for us, so we could not affor to gamble here, this was a "must-win" game.

Netherlands (home): Loss 93-107 ((84715)). A game against a strong opponent, I really hoped HCA would hold us closer to them, but with our poor game shapes and lower ent, they proved to be a much better team in the game. Both teams played TIE, a good decision for us.

Morocco (away): Loss 77-100 ((84759)). Another game where the opponent was ranked (74th at the time) much lower than their realistic quality was. Currently they are already 49th, and have a very good team. I suspected playing in their court would mean very low chances for us, which proved to be right, so no regrets taking it easy that day.

Puerto Rico (home): Win 134-108 (84808). Probably the easiest of all games, but even here we didn't bring the match into a garbage time, although it was always clear we will win.

Argentina (away): Loss 88-107 (84854). They went with higher attitude against us, which eliminated all doubt of the eventual winner. But even with the same attitude, they would most likely win, since we are talking about the same quality team (or slightly better), but with a HCA the difference becomes noticeable.

After the Argentina match it was clear we needed three wins in three delicate games:

Austria (home): Win 109-97 ((84913)). I gambled a bit with TIE, since the next game was also predicted to be quite difficult, but luckily Austria also went TIE into the game. Their 2-3 zone against our Low post gave me some doubts, but ultimately the game was decided in the last quarter, where we won quite convincingly.

Tunisia (away): Win 82-80 ((84931)). A very difficult match, which was won with two free throws 3 s until the end. Luckily we went with normal attitude here (and TIE the game before), or it would have ended badly.

UAE (home): Win 111-96 ((84991)). The game was difficult mostly due to the correctly anticipated CT attack by UAE, which always makes you feel a bit uncomfortable. Luckily the quality prevailed at the end, but the first three quarters were very close.

As written above, we faced Romania in the round of 32. We had realistic chances, but again had much problems with the GS of PC/C players (while PG/SG/SF positions were in a very good GS). Naturally we went CT into the game, since even getting to top 16 would be a nice success for us, but Romanians played a bit too conservative with N. This meant they won convincingly (112-100 ( (85188)) against us, but it cost them for the next game against Slovenia, where they got eliminated much too early, given their #2 position in the round robin phase of the tournament.

Ultimately, the season was OK, but nothing to really remember it by. Some inside players are now almost matured, which means we will have more depth in the future, and I hope we will get a breakthrough

Last edited by Deschamps at 7/20/2026 8:20:55 AM