What a nightmare?! The first Round of this season proven to be a total disaster for our team as many of our choices underperformed. Only the two high valued players (HARPER and BANKSTON) of our team have performed according to expectations, while two others managed to marginally increase their value (WEIDEMANN and WATERMAN).

Anyway, we keep our positive thinking, and we prepare our comeback :)

After the end of the first Round, three Guards appear to be a must have and sooner or later we will bring them in our team: Mihalis LOUTZIS (9.3 CR), Bryce JONES (12.7 CR) and Malachi FLYNN (13.5 CR). All of them appeared to be capable to offer us points in many statistical categories while they seem to be the leaders of their team.

Looking back to our team now, we need to do changes that will bring immediate increase in our budget which will help us in the future endeavor in the game.

After examining a lot of different scenarios, we decided to invest on a coach that will stay for at least two Rounds, allowing us to reshape our team. For this reason, we replaced SPAHIJA with Dusan ALIMPIJEVIC (8.7 CR) hoping that he will win the next two matches with a wide margin. Besiktas lost the first game in Lithuania so for sure there is no space for another unexpected result.

Eventually from our team, we kept the 4 aforementioned names as we think they will increase further their budget. From the 3 stars of round 1 we managed to bring LOUTZIS in the place of GIBSON. LOUTZIS seems to be the physical leader of Panionios, playing the most minutes and contributing in scoring rebounds and assists. Although Panionios had a huge loss of over 20 points in Greek championship, LOUTZIS was once again productive. His status is clearly undervalued. Regarding the other guard of our team, MORRIS, we decided to give him a second chance as he played for almost all the match proving his importance for his team. we hope for a better scoring night for him. We removed GIBSON as we need to create space in our Guards and we needed some budget. Ideally, we would like to replace WEIDEMANN as his potential is limited but he is one of the few players playing in Turn 1.

We intervened heavily in the Forward position where we replaced SCOTT and MUTIC for Ronnie HARRELL (9.4 CR) and Rok RADOVIC (4.6 CR). SCOTT and MUTIC were selected as they were pretty expensive and there were not a lot of hopes for better performance in the future. SCOTT is playing for London Lions who proved to be weak team, scoring less than 60 points in the first round, while MUTIC was waived in order to make us able to obtain RADOVIC, the only interesting option in Forwards of that budget level.

HARRELL is essential for Aris playing for more than 25 minutes as there are not other alternatives in the forward positions. He is also a strong rebounder and has double digit PIR performances in these first games of the season for Aris. RADOVIC played in the first game for more than 20’ which make him an interesting option for a slight budget increase.

Further interventions will have to happen in Forwards position in the next Rounds. In our radar are players such as Justin SMITH (10.8 CR) playing for Hapoel or Yordan MINCHEV (9.7 CR) who is the main performer of the German team, even though its not one of the strongest in the tournament.

We considered the fourth substitution to be ZIZIC (10.6 CR) who was not convincing in his first game in Eurocup, while his performance was not way better in the Turkish Championship. Interesting options would be his teammate Ismael KAMAGATE (12 CR) who was way expensive for our budget, or Kevin KOKILA (8 CR) who seems to be in crazy form while in a super value. However, he plays in Turn 2 and his match up is quite difficult against BANKSTON.

Last thing: Always remember to trust yourselves instead of some random internet website right? Have fun

Signed: Mid-range Maven

Round 1

Rebuilding after a disastrous 1st Round

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