Ok.  I am 2/3 of the way through the season playing a 9 man rotation and have not been successful at all.  Anyone who has done it before willing to give me PM advice?  The team is not a world beater, but should be at least .500 I would think.  This is my 5th year coaching the team and turned a horrible program into a 4 year NT run but fell off a cliff this year due to a very bad recruiting season (missed all three).  Still think I could make a conference tourney run if I can figure out this 9 man rotation thing and keep tinkering but am not having any success.

Thanks.

http://www.whatifsports.com/hd/TeamProfile/Ratings.aspx?tid=13606
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Is it possible to be compettive in DIII playing only 8 or 9 guys?

In real life, teams obviously sometimes only play 6-8 deep all season. In HD, I've always played 10-11 deep, with no one playing more than 25 minutes a game, even with good stamina. This year, I'll be stuck playing with at most 9, with bad staminas to boot.

Is it possible to be competitive this way (i.e. compete for a tourney bid) or will I get blown out most games against deeper teams?

Trying to decide on a season long strategy before exhibition ends. Thanks

it will be tough to run the press with 8-9 at DIII now unless they are all high in STAM, so with bad STAM it could be tough to do effectively

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I've been successful with that strategy with slowdown or normal tempo zone teams.

I don't think it can really be done with press. Man to Man would be tricky as well, in my opinion.

It can be done with a 9 man rotation, easiery at D1 when you have better stamina guys, but only if you don't play press or fastbreak, and you run a lot of slowdown.

I took a DIII team, man2man, to the Sweet 16 a few seasons back. I played 9 players all season, only to have one of them miss the NT due to an injury. You can't go uptempo, though

It can totally be done - even with a press team (at least at D2). I agree with Al - you cannot run uptempo though. http://www.whatifsports.com/hd/TeamProfile/Schedule.aspx?tid=4007

Here is a road win against a decent team when we were without our 2nd best player and played only 9 guys AND the 9th guy only played 4 minutes.

http://www.whatifsports.com/hd/GameResults/BoxScore.aspx?gid=5742635

DIII-Naismith this past season, Salem St. finished ranked #21 overall and reached the 2nd round of the NT running an 8 or 9 man rotation on m2m/half-court press.

Of course, how that translates into the new engine, I have no clue. Hopefully poorly since it was my team that lost to them in the conference tournament finals

Ok, y'all convinced me to roll with 9 this year rather than sink the year by RS my best player, playing just 8, and hoping for better days next year.

Now to see how well my "thin" bench (by my standards) holds up.

I have a decent (not good, not bad) D III team right now and we've lost a couple games to teams that have run up-tempo and press but not really gone more than 8 or 9 deep.

They're often tired/very tired in the PBP, but I'm not sure the impact of that is as much as people are estimating (or at least not in my limited experience at D III where player don't have 80+ ratings. Things may be very different if a tired player is trying to guard a DI guy with a 99 Per and 99 BH).

EDIT -
Box Score #1. Opposing team played fastbreak offense and full court press and played only 7 players.

Box Score #2. Opposing team played fastbreak offense and full court press and played 7 guys 10+ minutes (with an 8th guy at 7 minutes and 3 mopups at 2, 2, 1).

Posted by dukenilnil1 on 6/21/2010 9:59:00 AM (view original):
Ok.  I am 2/3 of the way through the season playing a 9 man rotation and have not been successful at all.  Anyone who has done it before willing to give me PM advice?  The team is not a world beater, but should be at least .500 I would think.  This is my 5th year coaching the team and turned a horrible program into a 4 year NT run but fell off a cliff this year due to a very bad recruiting season (missed all three).  Still think I could make a conference tourney run if I can figure out this 9 man rotation thing and keep tinkering but am not having any success.

Thanks.

http://www.whatifsports.com/hd/TeamProfile/Ratings.aspx?tid=13606
*************************************************
Is it possible to be compettive in DIII playing only 8 or 9 guys?

In real life, teams obviously sometimes only play 6-8 deep all season. In HD, I've always played 10-11 deep, with no one playing more than 25 minutes a game, even with good stamina. This year, I'll be stuck playing with at most 9, with bad staminas to boot.

Is it possible to be competitive this way (i.e. compete for a tourney bid) or will I get blown out most games against deeper teams?

Trying to decide on a season long strategy before exhibition ends. Thanks

*bump* - See updated original post.  Thanks