I was answering a sitemail from someone about the prospects for his D3 team, and I thought his ATH and DEF ratings were too low for the team to be very successful.  Just to be sure I wasn't missing the boat on what it takes to succeed in D3, I looked at the Allen top ten ranked teams in D3 and stumbled onto this team, currently ranked #3:

http://whatifsports.com/hd/TeamProfile/Ratings.aspx?tid=7751

They are 22-1 against the 23rd most difficult schedule in the country, despite average ratings of 38 in ATH and 33 in DEF.  Note that the remaining nine teams in the top ten average about 54 and 56 in ATH and DEF, respectively.

I can see that he has some superb players in REB, but even with that I don't see how a team with these ATH and DEF ratings can succeed.  Anything else about this team stand out and explain their excellent performance so far this season?  And can they keep it up, or are they in for a rude awakening when the dance begins?

I'm still new to HD, but from my basketball knowledge I would say that you could be underestimating the effect of being such a good rebounding team, as with the extra 4.9 offensive rebounds they are getting more possessions than their opponents and that these offensive rebounds could be putback dunks or tip-ins being to why they are shooting well.  From the defensive rebounding side, with having 7.2 more rebounds than their opponents, they are also minimizing the possessions of the other teams, look at field goal attempts, 1310-1177, that is 56.9 fga for CSU and 51.17 for their opponents.

**big rebounding advantage means put-backs, more possessions for them and less for opponents.

other things i noticed are the high passing ratings which I believe in the game lead to better shots for teammates(so higher shooting %) and about 35% of their shots are 3's which they convert at a very good rate of 41.4%

Opponents are also shooting 2's very poorly and that could be to the high block ratings.

So adding them all together, said team is getting more possessions and through those possessions are scoring 3's compared to opponents who are getting less opertunities and when they do are settling for 2's which are getting altered because of high block ratings.

And I believe it all stems back to the really high rebounding ratings and solid passing rating all around, somewhat negating the big difference in ath/def


Now how HD takes that into account I have no idea,  but it looks as if you struggle with ath/spd/def you can make up for it with reb/block/pass ratings and from a statistical approach it makes sense

basically all the strong teams they beat are playing press, just like they are. they happen to be 12 deep with 80 stamina and strong press iq, that goes a long way in games where fatigue is generally a major factor. there was like a 39 rpi team they beat who didn't press, but all the top 35 rpi teams they did, did play press. i didnt look too carefully but im guessing those teams were suffering on the fatigue front.

I'd agree. He's got very good team stam, great rebounding, and the team passes very well. His distribution is very good as well. His best players are the ones taking the shots, as it should be.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if they were an early exit (Rd2, S16) from the tournament either. Because I'm figuring by then, they'll play a team with competitive rebounding, and just as a good ball handling and better ath/spd/d.