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Post by Sonic on Apr 12, 2009 14:07:41 GMT
Nice wins there Stu. The system sounds familiar. I swear it sounds like your playing FM.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Apr 16, 2009 3:04:53 GMT
So much for feeling like I was getting a handle on this game.
Next match up I was on the road to Tennessee Tech and got absolutely fucking destroyed 94-65. This after I trailed 43-41 at the half.
And with Center Derrick Hughes who I played at Power Forward already out, I lost Joey Strohm to a thigh strain, so now I have no decent Forwards at all. So that's nice.
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Post by Moo on Apr 16, 2009 7:53:14 GMT
Thigh strain? Too many minutes of the court?
Having no background to the game, it does make it hard to see how you can correctly structure your squad to cover for injuries like this. Because of the very limited squad size, even if you have the best rep'd team, you still have to be careful, but with a cack rep you need to grab what you can. I tried to get a "best five" starting troupe and then try to get flex backups but found it very difficult at Maine. I have every sympathy for you with this, s1ut.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Apr 17, 2009 2:24:06 GMT
I think he played too many minutes, yeah. When Hughes got suspended I was down to Strohm and Wilson at the 4 spot and Wilson just isn't ready. He's a freshman, so he could work out eventually, but right now he's a liability. So I ended up trying to play Dahntay West at both the 3 and the 4, to spell BJ Gilchrist and Strohm, but then Gilchrist went cold and that forked that.
So that would be a very long winded "yes."
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Apr 17, 2009 3:06:44 GMT
The good news is that after the lopsided loss to Tennessee Tech and then another loss, a close one, to SE Missouri State, we finally got back to winning ways with an expected win over Tennessee-Martin thanks to Center Emmanuel King who scored 17 points and grabbed nine rebounds to come within one rebound of being our first player to get a double-double this season. BJ Gilchrist second-top scored with 16 in his first decent game in ages. We then had a bit of a stroll past Austin Peay, 73-60 - a scoreline that would have been even more impressive had Brian Reese remembered how to shoot. He still won player of the game, but his 15 points came with just a 5 of 18 record in shooting for the game. Then came a road trip to Murray State - that would be conference leading Murray State Racers and that would also be probably the game that addicted me to this DDS:CB. I'd been watching them and their Point Guard Jeremy Sweetwyne in particular. Sweetwyne was expected to be the All Conference Point Guard at the end of the season as he lead everyone at his position in most statistical categories at this point. However, despite Sweetwyne's apparent quality at running the game from the Point, my scouts had told me that Murray didn't allow much offensive freedom for their players. With this in mind I began training the zone defences a bit more leading into the game and then sent my boys out in a zone designed to put the ball in the hands of Murray's best player and then double team him and see what he could do. "What he could do" early on was turn the ball over as his first stint on the field saw he throw the ball to us five times before he was yanked to sit on the bench. Unfortunately, my own offensive players couldn't find any space and the Racers were caning me on the rebounds - as a result, the score was only 8-5 in favour of Murray with eight minutes played. After that, both sides found their stride a bit and the scoring picked up. Especially nice for me was seeing sixth-string Guard Emmett Slater come off the bench and sink some shots sending the teams to the break with the score at 34-32 Murray. The second half is usually pretty tough for me as the AI makes adjustments on both defence and offence and I don't always find a way to respond while I'm learning the game. That was the case here as early on it became clear that Murray had found a way past my zone defence and although Sweetwyne was still really struggling with it, the Racers were just moving the ball to the other Guard, who was usually uncovered thanks to the double-team on Sweetwyne and that Guard, most often Cedric James, started to land buckets. When I pushed out of zone onto man-to-man on defence, the Racers simply started to go low under the posts to Center Charlie Bolton and none of my defenders could handle him. Before long we'd fallen behind from 2 at the break to 9 with six minutes to play and our defence still hadn't found a way to shut down the tweaks the Racers had made. Our offence was sputtering too, as Brian Reese worked himself open a bunch, but then couldn't find his three point range and was hitting on barely a third of them. Not sure what to do I called a Time Out to kill Murray's momentum swing shuffled the pack to put Strohm back out with West at Forward, throw Emmanuel King back at Center, despite the fact that he hadn't once stopped his opposite number Bolton and then put Reese at Point Guard (his natural position, although he plays almost exclusively at Shooting Guard), and then put Randy Massey out at the other Guard spot. I cranked the offensive freedom off the chart and told the guys to just play fast and see what happens. I "showed concern" to the whole team and that seemed to work as Massey landed a three and then Reese followed suit after the Racers threw a wayward pass out of bounds. When a Racer bucket was answered with yet another three pointer we were suddenly only a couple of points down and the gap stayed that way for about four minutes, as it looked like we were going to get agonisingly close, but get no cigars. Then Emmanuel King threw down a slam dunk and was fouled in the process earning an extra shot to close the gap from four to one. I switched our defence to a full court press, tightly marking the Racers under their own basket and Reese stole an inbound pass, then flipped the ball to Strohm who dropped in a shoot and was himself fouled. Landing the free throw gave us a two point lead with a minute left. The Racers called timeout and I switched our defence around, ignoring Sweetwyne now, as he was almost exclusively a passer. I moved the double team onto the shooting guard position, with tight defending to try to limit the chances of Murray being able to land a long shot and... it didn't work as they swung the ball to Sweetwyne who flipped it immediately back to Arthur Dely who landed a three to put Murray back in front by one. Ok then, call a full timeout and bring the team together. I praised Brian Reese and picked a play designed to get him the ball. We threw the ball in, worked it around the perimeter, then quickly inside to Dahntay West, out to Reese and...... boom! The slightly unnecessary three went in and we were back in front by two. Murray pushed the ball in and called an immediate timeout, as in basketball a timeout moves the ball to the halfway line, without consuming time. I switched the defence around again in favour of my best rebounders as Forward and Center and crossed my fingers... Murray flipped the ball back into play, moved it around a couple of times through Sweetwyne then down to Forward Derek Sawyer who was 4-for-4 at the time and..... clunk. His one and only miss of the day and when we make one of our free throws when the Racers intentionally foul us, somehow we've beaten the best team in the conference. The lead changes hands 13 times and our biggest lead is four points as we win by three. I was tasked with not finishing bottom of the conference and winning ten games this year. I'm almost there.
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Post by Sonic on Apr 17, 2009 4:45:23 GMT
That was fun to read. I'd have liked to have been a fan of the winning team watching that game.
:thumb:
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Post by Moo on Apr 17, 2009 9:03:09 GMT
Excellent game report, s1utster. :thumb:
So you've finally decided to like this game now? Despite its annoyances?
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Apr 17, 2009 11:46:40 GMT
Definitely not. Maybe. Sort of. :moop:
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Post by Moo on Apr 17, 2009 12:06:30 GMT
I see.
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Post by Sonic on Apr 17, 2009 13:30:23 GMT
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Apr 17, 2009 23:25:57 GMT
Another cracking game follows as we notice that visitors Samford are weak defending inside. Attacking this isn't a strength of ours, but we go to it anyway and while we get off to a slow start and trail at the half, in the third the strategy starts to bear fruit as slowly more and more Samford defenders get into foul trouble. As Samford have to lay off the defence a bit Forward Joey Strohm goes nuts throwing in 23 points as he's a very impressive 8 of 9 for field goals and 7 of 7 from the free throw line, adding in 8 rebounds. Meanwhile, Guard Brian Reese scores a second-best 21 points and fills out his stat sheet with 6 rebounds, 5 assists and 4 blocks. While the end of the game isn't exactly comfortable, much of Samford's starting lineup can't really get involved due to the foul trouble, and so we do hold on 83-77 for our 10th win of the season. We have a four game win streak going...
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Post by Sonic on Apr 18, 2009 0:53:12 GMT
Nice win. And table position.
:thumb:
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Apr 19, 2009 17:55:12 GMT
So two weird things happened this weekend. Firstly I was on a course on Saturday and a yank bloke there was wearing a cap with a logo which I thought was vaguely familiar and then he was standing in front of me in the lunch queue and I noticed that on the back of his cap it said "Gamecocks." Turns out he went to this school although when he asked me how I had heard about the Gamecocks I had to lie and say on ESPN, rather than via a computer game where I make lots of cock jokes. Then on looking for more images for the thread, I bumped into this, which is a genuine, non-photoshopped image. The guy on the bottom isn't even trying to pretend he's not looking.
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Post by Sonic on Apr 20, 2009 1:43:25 GMT
:cab: That's hilarious Stu :thumb: Oj, and so is the guy too
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Post by Moo on Apr 20, 2009 8:00:56 GMT
You should have told him about your nerdiness, stu, it'll come out eventually.
And you shouldn't poke fun at the Minge Inspectors, they do a very important job.
(Love the pic though, nice find. :thumb: )
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Post by Sonic on Apr 20, 2009 10:11:47 GMT
I'm putting in a nomination for N*E*R*D's Lap dance as the official song of the Gamecocks.
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Post by Moo on Apr 20, 2009 10:54:32 GMT
Nice nomination, Snoic.
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Post by Sonic on Apr 20, 2009 13:04:42 GMT
It happened to be on when I was reading Stu's last update
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Post by hornet on Apr 20, 2009 15:00:33 GMT
Turns out he went to this school although when he asked me how I had heard about the Gamecocks I had to lie and say on ESPN, rather than via a computer game where I make lots of cock jokes. Divots: Maintaining A Thin Veneer Of Cool Since 1999.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Apr 20, 2009 15:09:07 GMT
I'm wondering now if I can tap up my new contact to get me one of those signs. Then I could put it on my office wall and when people mess something up at work I can just point at the sign.
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Post by Sonic on Apr 20, 2009 16:02:54 GMT
That or just call them a turkey. No, I know, your right. The sign is better.
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Post by Moo on Apr 21, 2009 8:18:04 GMT
s1ut - you know it makes sense. And, it would make us not smite you for an hour.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Apr 24, 2009 20:18:38 GMT
One of the more bizarre games of Cockball this week as we host the Tennessee State something or others and after almost five minutes of play the score is... nil nil.
The visitors can't complete more than a couple of passes in a row without throwing the ball to us, or out of bounds and then at the other end we can't do anything but clang the ball against the rim of the basket. One particularly stellar moment comes from Center Mack Felton who misses a shot, grabs his own rebound and misses it again, grabs the rebound again, slips his marker and goes up for the slam dunk and somehow misses that too.
The woeful shooting continues on and on, with some baskets accidentally going in to put us ahead 8-7 after ten minutes. I then decide to change everyone about and finally the baskets start to go in as Eddie "Lenny" Henry plays better than Terrence "Eddie" Murphy at the 1 Guard and starts setting people up for points.
As a result, we lead by a whopping 14 at the break.
Then in the second half there's more of the same aimless shooting that started the first half and Tennessee start to close in, but Joey Strohm finally wakes up and puts in enough baskets that we aren't in real trouble and end up winning by seven.
The best indicator of how rubbish everyone was is that Brian Reese wins the player of the game for an impressive four-of-eighteen shooting.
Still, the win balances our record at 11-11 and up next we have the conference leading Murrary Mints again, who are 12-10. If we beat them, we can go top. I knew this sport was easy.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Apr 26, 2009 17:10:13 GMT
I should pay more attention.
Our next game is not against the Murray Mints, it's the Morehead State Eagles, but I did at least get their record right, as they're 12-10.
For a while early on it's pretty clear that they're going to be 13-10 as they start off fast and run out to a 10 point lead as we struggle to find a way to get open shots. I start shuffling my players around and it's clear that Terrence Murphy is going to be the best option at Point Guard this week as Eddie Henry is getting no change at all from his marker.
Slowly Murphy starts to rack up some assists, working open shots for Dhantay West and Joey Strohm and we begin to reel in the gap until with 00:00 on the clock to end the first half Brian Reese has his first decent moment of the game, sinking a three to send us to the break at 28-28.
Then a miracle happens. For most of the season I've spent 90% of the time we focus on half-court defence (defence in our own end), on the man-to-man defence, with the other 10% split between the 2-3 and 3-2 zones and our players are just starting to get comfy with the zone here, so I put us out in a strange hybrid defence.
Essentially, the defend is a plain 2-3 zone (two under the basket, three at the edge of the key), but we also have double cover on the Morehead Point Guard, who's their best player. This means that when he gets the ball he gets two men on him straight away, then he passes it away and we fall back into a zone. This means the Point Guard is suddenly open, so he gets the ball back and is immediately closed down by two men again.
Morehead can't figure this out for the whole of the second half and they can score only 19 points in the second, meaning that against the second best team we've face, we put in our best performance for points allowed, finishing 63-47.
Murphy wins his first MVP award and we're 12-11...
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Fuzzy
Spider Monkey
stop chewing!
Posts: 918
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Post by Fuzzy on Apr 26, 2009 18:47:20 GMT
If attribute masking is this good with your own players, I can't wait to see a what happens when you start recruiting Another Croatiaâ„¢ ?
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