Dual champion’s blueprint to winning Supercoach BBL14

G’day Supercoaches,

Last year I shared with you my 55 secrets to claiming Supercoach Glory, where I outlined how we should aim to average 55 points PSI (per score involvement) if we want to be successful at BBL Supercoach.

Unfortunately, I could only average 52.5 points PSI last season and ended up languishing in 321st position by season’s end.

The shorter season meant a slightly higher average was needed and I would have had to average 57.5 points PSI to score more than the winner.

Subscribe to our premium content for BBL14! Get access to additional articles throughout the pre-season and every round of the tournament. Gain eligibility to our major unlimited league prize money, our Whatsapp community with team news for every game, team feedback, and contributor trade and skipper plans every week and plenty more. SUBSCRIBE NOW

Embed from Getty Images

However, I didn’t maximise my score involvements, and if I did, the 55 points PSI would have stood strong again.

Like a cricket team coming up with the right mix of batters and bowlers there is a partnership to this game, and we need to balance the right combination of score involvements and points PSI to be successful.

People often ask me what the maximum score involvements is that we have in a season, however, this answer is dependent on the fixture each season.

This year’s fixture means that the maximum possible scoring involvements is 168, which I will explain how I got to later.

However, it will be almost impossible to reach 168 score involvements this year, even if we did follow the fixture to pick players from the right teams at the right time. 

It is inevitable that some of the players we select will get dropped, injured, selected for national duty, we may choose to bring in a non-playing player to help with looping, or, the weather may just let us down and wash out games.

Embed from Getty Images

The first draft of a starting team that I always do each season is a team that would let me achieve maximum score involvements if I chose to head down that path.

Once I am happy with that team, I then tweak it to include players from teams that won’t enable me to achieve maximum scoring involvements or to include a non-playing player for looping flexibility.

Next, I compare the two teams to see if my second team is better after I factor in the reduction in scoring involvements. I use the 55 figure to compare the two teams, so if my team has four players that don’t fit the mould to maximise scoring involvements, I know that I am losing at least four score involvements, or potentially (4 x 55) 220 points.

All of my preseason drafts will get compared with each other until I am comfortable with a team, the score involvements it could achieve, and if that team can make up for the potential lost points.

BBL14 has delivered us an interesting fixture that is front end loaded with teams on the double, so like every other year, let’s work out what would be the maximum score involvements that we could aim for to help us plan our approach to the season.

Looking for the best rate on your home loan? Paddy and his team at Mortgage Choice SCW can get you the best rate possible. It’s a super easy process, so flick them a message. Better yet, save $129 by mentioning SC Playbook for a FREE CONSULT!

Three teams have two double game rounds and the other five have just the one double each. Therefore, it makes sense that if we want to maximise score involvements, we are going to need to load up our starting teams with players from those three teams – Renegades, Stars and Strikers.

However, the quirk of the fixture means that there are a couple of things to consider.

Firstly, after Round 1, every team will still have at least one double to come, so it won’t be possible to keep our focus on trading out players who do not have any doubles to come.

So our Round 2 trades will involve trading out players who still have doubles to come, so that gives us some flexibility in Round 1 to start three players from teams who do not have two doubles during the season.

However, things are not that simple, and the Scorchers will be the first team to play their only double, so we are going to be limited to having three Scorchers players in our squad by Round 2, so that after that we can trade out players who have already had their double.

From then on, the navigating becomes simple. We just need to make sure that the players we trade out do not have any doubles to come, and the players we trade in still have a double to come.

Embed from Getty Images

So maximising score involvements this year looks like this:

Round 1 starting side – all 17 players come from Renegades, Stars, Strikers and Scorchers.  We do not want the combination of players from any two sides to add up to more than 11 and the maximum number of Scorchers we can start is three.

Round 2 – We can trade out any combination of players except for Strikers and our trade in targets are either Strikers, who will have two doubles to come, or Scorchers to make sure we have up to three in our team to trade out after this round.

Round 3 – We need to trade out our Scorchers and trade in players from any other team. It won’t matter which teams as they all have one double to come. We just need to make sure that we don’t leave ourselves with too many bye players in a given round or that we are going to have more than 11 players on the double in a given round.

Round 4 – We can start trading out any Heat, Stars and Sixes players in our squads. Our trade ins can be any combination of Strikers, Renegades, Hurricanes and Thunder players.

Round 5 – We can continue to trade out any combination of our Heat, Stars and Sixers along with our Strikers and Renegades who had their final double in Round 4. Our trade in focus will be down to just Hurricanes and Thunder players.

Round 6 – Same approach as Round 5

Round 7 – We can trade out anyone except for our Hurricanes and we want to focus on bringing more Hurricanes in.

Round 8 – Same approach as Round 7.

Round 9 – Do what you like as there are no doubles this round. Your focus will be on closing off PODs or opening up PODs depending on what your final round goal is.

Following the above structure will mean that we can achieve the maximum possible 54 Double Game Round players for the season.

Due to having nine rounds and having 11 players score for our team each round, this means that we will still have 45 Single Game Round scores for the season – assuming the new flex position is dropping out a score of a single game player.

With three rounds not having any teams on the double, we will need to field three SGR captains for the season.

So, if every player we select plays both games of their scheduled doubles, our maximum possible score involvements for the season is 168, which factors in our three trades per round plus our two boosts available.

54 (DGR players) x 2 + 45 (SGR players) + 3 (SGR captains) + 6 (DGR captains) x 2 = 168

I will be setting my scoring target bar for this year to 168 x 55 PSI = 9,240 points.  The less scoring involvements I have the higher my points PSI will need to be.

As I navigate the season, I will be trying to keep my scoring involvements within about 10% of that figure because an average points PSI above 60 would be very hard to achieve, so I will be aiming for my team to have at least 150 score involvements by season’s end.