BuzzerBeater Forums

Hey all - I promise you we're not all this quiet normally.

Welcome to all of the new teams!

How is everyone feeling about their team?

Kinda hawd fo me taw tauk rit nahs. Stills recovahin fum da las hid you gabe me. Ask me tomarrahs. Dis whys ebbybody played u nawmal las seesin.

I feel like teaching a lesson to everyone in here. Focus on training because I am going to beat the hell out of you.

:)

Departures and New Comers
Welcome to Season 58 in the esteemed USA III.11 League where last season, I proved time and again that my predictions are trash and I don't really know what I'm doing. Undeterred, I'm pressing forward with vim and vigor to make even more of an ass of myself. Last season, we saw Gremlins promote after defeating Philly Dribble in three games. They've moved on to USA II.2 and saw their country rank improve to 51. Best of luck and good riddance to them and their Temple of Doom that housed Penalver, Chan Kiew, and Dwayne Nava. (Don't worry, they lost their first game of the season)

The Relegators
Following Season 57 we saw War Birds (#274) and Seattle SuperSonicz (#346) relegate from the Big 8, while the Great 8 lost pintipv (#302), Dallas Bomskwad (#449), and Weather Society (#507). Best of luck to them in their respective IV leagues.

New comer Tachenko struggled in II.2 last season and were auto-relegated to us. Manager kokka brings with them a 177 country rank and a monster Center in Richard Mason who went off in his first game of the season with 27 points and 21 rebounds to pair with his 15.0 rating.

The Promotees
In the Great 8 we have 3 new comers from IV leagues with 2 percent (#299) losing in the finals of IV.44 but had an undefeated regular season. Is This Heaven? (no) (#494) were crowned champions of IV.62 were also undefeated, and Hustlas (#271) came out on top in IV.7. In the Big 8 we have The Lone Wolf (#463), champions of IV.16 and Carolina Rebels (#389) the finals winner in IV.3.

Last edited by Baine at 08/01/2022 12:05:38

Looks to me that this season could be much more difficult, staying out of relegation for mid-tier at best teams like Da Bellys will be much harder. We'll see how things shake out, but I could be in full rebuild early on. Hoping to continue training my guards and survive another season, but just not confident. Either way will be fun. Welcome new teams, you'll enjoy Baine's posts and the banter it creates each week.

Season 58 Information and Predictions
Alrighty, well, last season I predicted that Gremlins would win the championship before the season started, but my playoff team predictions were garbage so I feel like I can't really claim a solid win on that prediction. But I do feel like I did the prediction a little early as transfers were still happening (though there still are 11 players currently transfer listed) there have been a total of 15 departures and 4 arrivals since the end of last season. I suppose managers are still combing the transfer list for potential players to bring in, but I think after one game things should be pretty much set.

So, these predictions are based on current salary statistics for the league, with total salary being the most highly weighted, followed by Top 6-10 salaries, and then Top 5, Top 8, and Top 10, and average salary rankings are weighted equally. Total those ranking position points up and divide by the number of categories gathered gives me my ranking system. Not very scientific, but someone has to be the idiot putting these things out! Without further ado!

Current League Leaders in Salary
1. Tachenko - $430,356 - 14 rostered players and none listed for sale. The aforementioned Richard Mason brings in $187k followed by 7'3" PF/C Gordon Pullen at $90 k to make up over 50% of their roster salary scale. Tachenko manager kokka sold off just over $150k of salary last year.
2. Rip City Revival - $375,005 - 15 rostered players with five players 20 and under listed for sale. If they do sell all 5, they would slide into 3rd on this list. Last season's MVP, Nikky Nay Nay increased his weekly salary to $105, and 35 year old Elio Pagnini is a new arrival for Jbogoroff's team with a $60k salary
3. Linndale - $355,435 - 15 rostered players with three listed for sale, including the respectable Thomas Lagorce. If these three sell, this would drop Speedtraps group off the top three, and they would be replaced, most likely with Phil_Wings' Philly Dribble. Last season's mid-season pickup of Kyle Knowles proved beneficial.

In the division, teams average $257k in salary with nine teams averaging less than $250k.

Current League Leaders in Starting 5
These might not be the actual starting 5 numbers, but actually just the highest 5 paid player salary totals from each team, but we'll call it starting 5 because it sounds better that way!
1. Tachenko - $375,617 - that's 82% of kokka's total rostered salary!
2. Rip City Revival - $282,867 - 75% of Jbogoroff's total salaries
3. Lion Rebels - $240,186 - 80% of team's total salaries

Overall, the 16 teams average $184k for top 5 paid players with only 5 teams averaging more than $209k and two teams averaging less than $100k.

Current League Leaders in Assumed Top Bench Players (Top 6-10)
1. Linndale - $92,398 ($18.4k per player)
2. Hustlas - $82,503 ($16.5k per player)
3. San Dominica Warriors - $80,951 ($16.1k per player)

From my own experience last year, I think a quality 6-10 group can make/break a team's outcome for a season. It was my biggest failing and most obvious flaw, one I probably haven't learned enough from yet! Teams average $55k in this grouping of salaries with four teams averaging more thank $80k and 5 teams averaging less than $40k.

Season 58 Final Ranking Predictions
As I mentioned, I gave the highest weight to total salaries, the second tier weight to 6-10 salaries, and then the base weight rating to top 5, top 8, top 10, and average salary rankings, totaled those up and then divided by 6 to get these rankings. We'll see if I learned my lesson from ranking predictions from last season!

16. Is This Heaven? (no): Div IV.62's champs from Season 57 haven't done anything to upgrade their team upon promotion and their salary total doesn't match the current salary floor of $131k. Manager IOWA's star center is on England's U21 team, but his team high salary of $22k isn't going to match up well against the likes of Tachenko, Ashkickers, etc.

15. The Lone Wolf: lonewolf8's squad has a 71% win rate over more than 400 matches, but their team's salary barely breaches the salary floor. They appear to be evenly distributed with 7 players making more than $10k per week, but there is no standout star. Isaac Livingston, a 26 year old American who stands 7'1" had a good rebounding night in game one, but they're gonna need more than rebounds to stay out of relegation this season.

14. Carolina Rebels: Manager Daisy Merollin (great moniker) has done a decent job training up Center Dewayne Allen who looks to lead this team in the paint. A decent supporting cast should net them some wins, but overall, I think it's going to be difficult for Carolina to compete (plus, I hate them since they're the 'fake' Rebels).

13. Mighty Moose Rockets: Hutch44 has been on a selling spree, finally selling Walenty Kofan today ($108k salary) and they've been consistently listing stud Jean-Louis Fleurent who has appeared in every all star game since season 51, and is the Season 54 III.11 MVP. They still should be able to compete with the likes of David Charles and Giorgio Chiodarelli, but the problem is they don't have much of anything else after that. They have made 1.45 million in transfers over the last month, and if they can successfully sell Fleurent, they'll be well primed to start over - the only question is trainee or superstar? Either way, looks like a fight to stay out of relegation for Hutch44 and dem boys.

12. Żubr Białystok: whitestok's got a couple of great trainees, but I think they need one more season to be super impactful. 10 of their 13 players make up 95% of their roster. They sold Center Huang Yuyao after last season and PG Sam Dickens. They have brought in Center Clark Riggins at $54k and have a solid top 5. They made the play offs last season and I wouldn't be surprised if I'm wrong with this prediction. I do think they'll struggle with bench play.

11. Miami Cleo: packer_22 had a valiant effort last season to avoid relegation and their top 4 salaried players are all 25 years old with Marko Maurin and Damon Santana leading the way as key factors for them. Bench play could be problematic for them as they drop off significantly after their top 6. But they should be able to the win the games they should win and maybe pull off an upset here or there to avoid relegation.

10. San Dominica Warriors: The middle seven teams on this list are all going to be fairly well matched up with tactics and effort being key factors in which one of these teams beat the others with all 7 teams being within $80k in total salary of each other.San Dom's strength will be their bench play - while they rank 14th in top 5 total salary, their 3rd place ranking in 6-10 should help them out. Coach Stephenson did bring in Miguel Tercero, a Spanish 24-year old SF to supplement his roster. They have a solid, evenly distributed core group and should be troublesome for most teams.

Season 58 Final Ranking Predictions - Part 2
9. 2 percent: Manager Ray has a stud center in David Wilmink and then some decent background players to fill out the starting five and bench play. They'll be an interesting team to matchup against as long as he's in the starting line up, but somewhat bizarelly didn't play in their first matchup of the season.

8. The Beer Bellys: thatguy is always leaking self-confidence, but proved me right last season by making the playoffs. He's again stuck in the middle, but as long as his pint glass is half-full, he'll be happy. He brought in 35-year old SF Duilio Angius ($37k) and 31-year old C Pavel Kalinov ($20k) to supplement his roster and as what appears to be replacements for Daniel Anguiano and Florian Allain, both spot improvements. Key player Juan Gilberto Segovia will be bothersome, but their starting 5 should win them several games and their bench play shouldn't be bad.

7. The Ashkickers: Tylormade's squad as made the playoffs 3 years running, so I should know better than to think they're going to finish the season 7th just based on their history. They haven't made any real moves excepting selling a 19-year old MVP potential rookie. They've got a very balanced solid core at the top 6 which seems to make up for any inconsistiences from their bench. PG Lorenzo Rojas from Paraguay will be problematic. I really did think they had what it took to knock out Gremlins in last season's semi-finals, but I was wrong once again!

6. Hustlas: Manager Reece has been around the block, taking ownership of Hustlas back in season 17 in V.34 and having previously taken a trip through USA III.15, 13, 3, 8, 2 with their most recent stint in season 53. Recent addition Josef Talman (C - $76k) joins other relatively recent add-ons Fang Congie (PG - $14k) and Davor Žic (C - $17k). Five players have a salary of $25k+ with 6-10 have more than $14k. Though they're a promotee, they've done this rodeo before and appear well tooled for the task.

5. Lion Rebels: My team is far too reliant on Terry Armstead and my trainees haven't taken off quite as well as I wanted...probably another year before Kurt Brown starts to resemble what I hoped he would be. My 6-10 ranking is pretty low, so I don't know that I'll be as good as this prediction is. I will be surprised if I don't make the playoffs, but after last season, I'm kind of expecting to not make them. Time will tell!

4. Philly Dribble: I did not imagine that I would come into this season with Phil_Wings seeming to be the best team getting beat in the finals and then NOT be listed as #1 in my rankings/predictions. But here we are. They're going to be trouble, but Rip City retooled and Tachenko staring down from the other side, not to mention Linndale...the top 4 teams are going to be fun to watch this season. I don't know that Phil_Wings' team is the worst of the 4, but this is where they end up on my preseason list. No transfers so far, so it looks like they're just going to rely on their own training improvements and hammer at it again.

Season 58 Final Ranking Predictions - Part 3
3. Linndale: Again, three of Speedtraps 15 rostered players are up for sale, with Thomas Lagorce the highest rated being listed for $650k. All told, they could shed nearly $90k in salary, but I would guess, there'd be some form of replacement with at least one player. Still, even if they drop all of that salary, they'd still rank 8th in total salary and would be right in the middle of that pack of 7 competing for a playoff spot.

2. Tachenko: A bit of a surprise here and it would take some work, but I could see it with their backcourt being somewhat of a liability (although, not much of one). They will be tough to score on with their two tower tandem down low and Juan Ramón Buendía coming off the bench. I wouldn't be surprised if they win it all, but we don't know kokka's intentions after fighting to stay in II.2 (making the playoffs two seasons ago!) - I'd imagine it would be nice to take it "easy" for a season, much like Rip City last season.

1. Rip City Revival: speaking of the devil, Jbogoroff's team has been retooled a little bit bringing in Frane Matkovic (35 PF - $19k), Elio Pagnini (35 PF/C - $60k) and selling off 31-year old Utopian PG Thomas Paine ($12k). While they do have five players listed at the moment, I'm guessing they're looking to add one or two more mid-level players for more depth. They're going to be a problem for teams this season.

Conference Standings
Big 8
1. Rip City Revival
2. Linndale
3. Philly Dribble
4. Lion Rebels
5. San Dominica Warriors
6. Mighty Moose Rockets
7. Carolina Rebels
8. The Lone Wolf

Great 8
1. Tachenko
2. Hustlas
3. The Ashkickers
4. The Beer Bellys
5. 2 percent
6. Miami Cleo
7. Żubr Białystok
8. Is This Heaven?

Playoff/Relegation Predictions
Great 8 Playoffs
The Beer Bellys vs. Tachenko
The Ashkickers vs. Hustlas

Great 8 Semi-Final Matchup
The Ashkickers vs. Tachenko

Big 8 Playoffs
Lion Rebels vs. Rip City Revival
Philly Dribble vs. Linndale

Big 8 Semi-Final Matchup
Philly Dribble vs. Rip City Revival

Relegation Matchups
San Dominica Warriors over Żubr Białystok in three
2 percent over Carolina Rebels in two
Miami Cleo over Mighty Moose Rockets in three (two if they complete their fire sale)

Season 58 Championship
Rip City Revival over Tachenko in three (mostly because I'm unsure of kokka's intentions, but believe a season of "rest" would be appreciated).

There you have it - can't wait to find out how wrong I am! Final programming note: almost all of my quips and schticks are tongue in cheek meant to have a little fun.

Day 1 (Saturday 30 July 2022) : Performances by (https://www.buzzer-manager.com)

Night results
Mighty Moose Rockets 89 - Linndale 115
Carolina Rebels 62 - Lion Rebels 111
San Dominica Warriors 81 - Rip City Revival 102
Philly Dribble 108 - The Lone Wolf 84
Tachenko 96 - 2 percent 77
Hustlas 102 - Is This Heaven? 84
The Ashkickers 106 - The Beer Bellys 103
Miami Cleo 93 - Żubr Białystok 85

Best collective performance of the evening
Points : 115 : Linndale
Rebounds : 60 : Linndale
Assists : 31 : Hustlas
Steals : 8 : San Dominica Warriors, Lion Rebels, Rip City Revival
Block Shots : 10 : Tachenko

Personal best performances of the evening
Points : 50 : K. Brown (Lion Rebels)
Rebounds : 21 : R. Mason (Tachenko)
Assists : 8 : M. Pinho (Is This Heaven?)
Steals : 4 : J. Brown (Linndale), K. Brown (Lion Rebels)
Block Shots : 4 : L. Shunhao (Philly Dribble)

Top 5 of the evening
Point Guard : C. Kallay (Tachenko) (27 Points, 0 Rebounds, 7 Assists, 0 Steals, 1 Block Shots) : Efficiency : 25
Shooting Guard : N. Neochoritis (Rip City Revival) (25 Points, 3 Rebounds, 3 Assists, 2 Steals, 2 Block Shots) : Efficiency : 29
Small Forward : K. Brown (Lion Rebels) (50 Points, 12 Rebounds, 4 Assists, 4 Steals, 2 Block Shots) : Efficiency : 54
Power Forward : H. Griffin (2 percent) (24 Points, 10 Rebounds, 2 Assists, 3 Steals, 0 Block Shots) : Efficiency : 28
Center : R. Mason (Tachenko) (27 Points, 21 Rebounds, 6 Assists, 0 Steals, 2 Block Shots) : Efficiency : 42

MVP of the evening
K. Brown (Lion Rebels) (50 Points, 12 Rebounds, 4 Assists, 4 Steals, 2 Block Shots) : Efficiency : 54

The bad performance of the evening
B. Buijtels (Carolina Rebels) (5 Points, 2 Rebounds, 2 Assists, 1 Steals, 0 Block Shots) : Efficiency : -8

All kinds of statistics
The player who forgot to remove his mittens : B. George (Carolina Rebels), N. Samuk (Hustlas) : 5 Turnovers

Player targeted by the referees : J. Segovia (The Beer Bellys) : 6 Personnal Fouls

The iron-man : G. Locus (Miami Cleo), D. Charles (Mighty Moose Rockets), T. Plummer (Carolina Rebels), B. George (Carolina Rebels), K. Brown (Lion Rebels), Y. Delagnès (Żubr Białystok), S. Hatch (Żubr Białystok), H. Griffin (2 percent), A. Salinas (2 percent) : 48 Minutes

The shooter : K. Brown (Lion Rebels) : 6 Three points

The best performer : R. Mason (Tachenko), T. Armstead (Lion Rebels), N. Neochoritis (Rip City Revival) : Rating : 15.0

The worst performer : A. Salinas (2 percent) : Rating : 3.5

Good luck in game two tonight to everyone but Coach Stephenson!

Tonight's Potential Highlight Matchups
Should be a good battle between Rip City on the road against Philly with a face off between guards Miguel Velasco (25 pts on 58% shooting, including 4-6 from three) and Nikky Nay Nay (25 pts on 66% shooting, including 2-5 from three.

The other game I've got my eye on is The Beer Bellys on the road against Miami Cleo after thatguy suffered a heart breaking 3 point loss to The Ashkickers Saturday night. Will they be able to temper Damon Santana (39 pts on 34 shots) with Juan Segovia (27 pts on 21 shots)?