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I would be willing to throw a game in the case where we could get a more favorable matchup in the follow games in a tournament. This sort of thing actually happened this last season with the NT and it worked out pretty well. The NT threw a game against Panama in order to play Chile in the next game and it was a success. We went on to beat Chile, Brazil and many other teams to get to the final and a big part of that was throwing the game against Panama. Besides that, I don't see a solid reason to throw a game.

How about early on in a the tournament against a favorite and specifically setting them up for a certain lineup or tactic? This may be even more important now with the GDP. If we "look" predictable it benefits us later.

My point is the importance of thinking big picture in a tournament.

PS...I believe I was the first U21/NT coach to "throw" a game back in Season 14.

Yeah, I was wondering if this was the same Jelme

I could see the U21 NT possibly doing like that for Worlds, but once again this will run through many other people, not just myself, so it would be more of a group decision. Luckily we won't have to worry about that until Worlds, but the ultimate goal is to place in Worlds for the first time in a few seasons, so whatever can get us to place, I would definitely look into.

Heres another question that is rather selfish. I've been gone for a couple season (maybe 5-6?). What has changed in the game engine that can be exploited and what has changed in the scenery of the national stage? We can be local with the Americas side.

Well although some people may disagree with me on this, I feel like LI has been pushed down a little bit and 2-3 defenses and SBing in general is a bit more effective. An example of this would be the B3 Tournament championship, (65653784), where the team that won, played 2-3 for defense and beat a stacked team when his own roster had one of the lowest salaries in the tournament. It is very impressive to me and proof that things are changing a bit in BB. I think teams with good Forward/Wing positions generally end up performing better than teams that just stack their bigs. The GE has also changed due to the GDP which many people do not have a lot of information yet but it will certainly help while face standard LI/M2m teams that do not play anything else. As for the national stage, I am only focused on the U21 NT so I do not watch the NT as much, but the U21 NT is a lot like it's been for the past few seasons, but a bunch of people on the offsite have been trying to create different type of players to see how they work into the U21 NT and how effective they can be (Patrick Connor and Joseph Hamel come to mind from last season, as well as Keith Irizarry this season).

I don't quite agree with you. I feel like last season, the USA NT probably has a much harder time to get to finals and may have not got there at all if the decision to throw the game against Panama wasn't made. There are certain cases where you could and should throw a game in my opinion.

I don't recall a single time where the U21 has ever thrown a game. We are always the best continental team, and it's stupid to throw a game during Worlds. In fact the U21 has not even lost a game during continentals in 10 seasons, or 18 months.

Sure the NT has a history of throwing a game during continentals to better align who they face in the semis. The US is not the world power at the NT level that it is at the U21 level(another discussion for another election).

So, no there is not any incident where we should ever throw a U21 game, which is all that needs to be known at this level.

The original question was asking about in what situations would we be willing to throw a game if at all. So although we probably will not come across this situation, the point is, that if we were to come across it, my approach would be to look at the bigger picture and do whatever is necessary in order for our U21 NT to succeed and get further in the tournament. Do I believe that we will come across it? Not particularly. However, I felt he has a right for an answer to his question, rather than saying that we won't have to worry about it because it probably won't happen.

We'll never throw a game during worlds, since it's win and advance, so there's no position jockeying there.

If, let's say, Canada has the best U21 BB has ever seen and winning our final game means we face them in the semis, than, yes, I would consider throwing that game so we don't have to face them until the meaningless finals. That's not going to happen ever, unless some of those farm team players have dual Canadian citizenship.

And the U21 has thrown a game oriolekid. I believe you were new at the time.

In what situations would you ignore go against popular opinion (on the offsite mostly) and go on your own?