I’d offer suggestions for improvements if it was clear what the desired outcome was. What are these “improvements” being suggested for? What is wrong with the competition as it is? It is hardly a serious competition – 3 days at the end of the season. It’s a bit of a piss-up for some students and they get to hook up with one of the slutty Welsh birds. Trying to suggest “improvements” as if we’re discussing a serious tournament is pointless. “England” should win at a canter every single year, without any adjustments. Making this a bigger event is hardly a priority for basketball development in the UK. Trying to fix something that is not broken isn’t worth the hot air that’s being wasted.

There have been a lot of criticisms of the English selection process, but IMO they are all nonsense. The selection process is perfectly suitable. The implication that Newby has behaved inappropriately is ridiculous. The suggesred improvements are unworkable and, like hydraulic hairbrushes and left-handed pencils, are “solutions” to problems that don’t exist – in every case they would make the process worse.

Yes this is the way things are, well done for pointing that out. Is this how we want things to carry on though? Why not try and plan to move in the right direction instead of laying blanket criticism over everything.

Second, the comparisons with the USA are pie in the sky. As you said, Andrew, scouting is not a problem for them. USA basketball also has an essentially unlimited budget and deals with pro players with a single defined season. The university students we are talking about have a lot of demands on them – academics, national league basketball etc – especially at this time of year, and not much money. It's clear that most of these home nation teams, if not all, will be missing some strong players because they are not available. How on earth would they realistically make it to training sessions throughout the year? And the EBL is going to restructure the season to accommodate tryouts for a 3-day tournament for 12 players?? Stop eating those brownies.

As for paying to play, I agree this is undesirable for "national" team players, but it's important to realise that player contributions are commonplace in the other home nations, and in small countries everywhere. The English teams' budgets are far, far bigger than the other three – so much so that the competition should be a farce every time – I'm told, fairly reliably, that the English team's budget a couple of years back was between 50-100 times greater than the Scottish team's. The fact that even "England"'s players will have to pay maybe shows how unrealistic some of the more expensive suggestions above are.

First point I’d like to make with Newby Head Coach and Powesland picking the team and 9 of their players in the squad surely that means there are 9 guys whoth coach will know the most about, how they play the little details of their game who they can trust etc, surely an important thing for a team that wants to win.

Noone is questioning the Northern Ireland team, 9 players from the University of Ulster that Coach Deirdre Brennan is also in charge of, then the England Woman’s team 4 players from Leeds Carnegie have made the squad and the coach is Louise Waghorn not associated with Leeds Carnegie Basketball.

This is not an attack at you Sam you said yourself from Coach Newby’s reply justified the selection, I do agree however the selection process could be looked at, probably for all 5 Home Nations if we ever want Team GB to progress in World Basketball.

I like Coach K’s system with the US team, but of course it’s a little easier to scout NBA players then BUCS players. They pick about 35 players and invite them to a camp and then wittle them down to a 15 man squad I think, if England did that, you could get everyone together, see how they play together and then have a better idea of your best 12 players.

This could be combined with the system they currently use with the much younger kids, In Yorkshire the last Sunday of the month is left for APC all the best kids at various years get together and are put through their paces by some of the best coaches in Yorkshire, everyone then knows when and where it is, and the peope picking the squads have seen everyone interested and good enough to play, and can then make a educated decision on who should play, this could be done for the Home Nations aswell an the EBL could help with the scehdule making sure the dates are left to ensure the best players can go.

Something else that I was made aware of that shows the bad planning of the England College team, I was told by one of the players playing that he had to pay to play for England, I had never heard this before as I am in my first year involved in England Basketball at any level, I was astonsihed, a player has to pay to be part of his countries team, and with this player this made him not want to pay, you are in part buying your own medals, surely this has to change, for all we know this could also be a part of why certain players are missing.

The last point I wanted to make was about the nationalties issue, as a coach of Leeds Carnegie U15′s I know Adrian and Mike and they are really nice guys and noone doubts their talent but they shouldn’t be playing for England in an International competiton, the Home Nations should be made up of players eligeble to play for Team GB only, this can only be taking places away from talented British players in all the team competing, if Team GB/EnglandBasketball or BasketballScotland etc want to progress in the International stakes this needs to change ASAP.

Sorry for the massive post just wanted to get my points across.

The ‘scouting network’ idea is ridiculous. Why would any coach base his selections on scouting reports from randoms around the country when he knows a lot of the players already and can see others at 2 trials? Trying to select a team by committee is nonsense, and never works.

I thought Newby’s reply was excellent – detailed and diplomatic. Mine would have been “My team won the championship. I know how my players can perform, and I know most of the other good players because I coach against them. Shut the feck up.”

@John, a scouting network I think is definitely one of the best options..

@Christian Though it may be hard to find someone who has the time to analyse games, I do think it is possible. Retired coaches who only coach have a lot of time on their hands. On the same basis if you had a coaching team, it wouldn’t have to be down to one sole individual. Maybe the English Unis team should find sponsorship to employ people to get on that full time (perhaps unrealistic, but I think if someone really wanted to it could be done.

@Craig definitely agree with you about selecting English players. Kinda ironic that the England Universities starting 5 is likely to have at least 3 non-English players in it. Like you say, it is so hard to quantify without knowing who was at the trials, but even looking at the list of reserves-I would choose Bud Johnston over any of the selected guards.