BuzzerBeater Forums

G’day Aussie fans, welcome to Season 58!
Big season for us, having earned a place in the World Cup for the first time in a long time I’m looking forward to testing ourselves out against some of the world’s strongest teams.
Obviously the competition is going to be a LOT tougher, but if the community keeps looking after the team the way we have been, with good game shape and consistent training, we’ll give ourselves the best chance.
We started the ore-season ranked 10th, the highest in my time as manager, and managed to sneak up to 9th despite our opening scrimmage loss last week.
The plan is to continue to play in as many scrimmages as we can to fine tune the team and hopefully pick up some World Cup wins!
I hope any Aussie managers who love the game can enjoy the ride this season with the team and we can produce some tight games for the community.

Let’s get some wins!

Deano

They say if you want to be the best you have to take on the best so to help us warm up we took on the World's number one ranked team, China, in a scrimmage this morning.
With 16 seconds to go we were up by 3 but unfortunately they nailed a long bomb and despite a shot on the buzzer we couldn't reclaim the lead.
We then stuck right with them through over time until the final minute when a turnover proved costly, with the margin blowing out due to foul shots in the closing stages, going down 145-133.
Taking the Asian Cup champs and World Number 1s to overtime shows our progress is continuing and while it would have been nice to get the win, ultimately we were just one shot away from avoiding that overtime altogether.

Beau Davidson continued to shine for us, leading our scoring with 32, while our starting big men owned the paint with 29 boards between them and Dey dished out 9 assists.
Things are coming together, but we're not a finished product just yet.
Managers may have noticed their players going on and off the roster over the last week. I'm trying to keep close tabs on players who aren't far off the mark in case they get a pop that puts them in contention. Feel free to help me out by sending me any skill updates your guy gets each Friday - once the games start I won't be able to scout without hurting our team enthusiasm.

I'll be doing my best to secure another good workout for us on Monday - stay tuned and look after your players' minutes, competition for spots is going to be super tough this season!

The World Cup run didn't go to plan this season, but it was pleasing for our Aussie side to be back on the main stage.
We just missed the second round on points diff after slipping up in our first game and having to crawl back, with two wins in competitive games. It was disappointing to fall short of that first goal once we had made it that far, but we did hit some nice milestones along the way.
Reaching as high as a ranking of 8th in the world at one stage this season was some solid growth following a few seasons floating between 15 and 20.
The most pleasing thing coming out of this season is the fact that we only really have the one player, Grunter, that is unlikely to be in the mix next season. Grunter has been a lynch pin for the side for more than 10 seasons and will take some replacing, but the squad is strong and healthy as we look ahead to the next Asian Cup and hopefully back to back appearances at the World Cup.

Scouting has been ongoing over the past month and I'm trying to give some minutes to some guys that are likely to be needed to take on larger roles next season.
Bring on Season 59!

Beau Davidson has really come to the fore this season, and we've had three players make an appearance on our top-10 boards so far. Duffield first popped up in 10th in assists before being replaced by Houghton, though he should slide back in there soon enough, while Grunter now sits in our top-10 most games played and our top-10 most points scored. With probably two games to go he needs 35 more to make 1,500 career points, which is huge. We've also seen the appearance of a young big in MacQuaid, who is shaping up to be an absolute weapon over the next 10 seasons, while Cull has broken the ceiling for us in terms of how high we can push the TSPs in a National player.

Things are looking bright.
Thanks to all of the managers for the way you have been working with me to develop your players to create the depth it takes to compete with the big boys, I'm sorry we couldn't go deep in this WC, but with the squad the way it is hopefully we find ourselves back in the hunt in Season 60.