I am experiencing consistent 20+ point blowouts against teams where I'm either a 2 or so point underdog or a 3 to 5 point favorite, what can I change to improve results.  I have left offense and defense on the ones where the players have the highest IQ.  Thanks for your help.

I think rebounding is a problem, due to the 3 guards you're starting.
I'd go:
PG- Sanchez
SG- Richards
SF- Williams
PF- Bearce
C- Smith

This will put your 3 best rebounders on the floor together and take advantage of the great speed from both guards. 
You're also playing at the '0' defense setting every game.  Experiment with +1 or -1 and see if you get better results.

Finally, you have  players logging major minutes and playing exhausted in the 2nd half. I suspect you're using the 'target minutes' setting.  Switch to the 'fatigue' setting and let those players rest.

Thanks I will try that

I think I would use this depth chart with your team:

PG - Richards, Costales, Sabb, Case
SG - Sanches, Costales, Sabb, Case
SF - Abbott, Williams, Constales, Sanabria
PF - Bearce, Williams, Skaggs, Sanabria
C - Smith, Skaggs, Williams, Sanabria

For Distribution, I would give Bearce the highest number, then I would give the next gruop (Richards, Abbott, and Sanches) a number that was 2/3 to 1/2 of Bearce's distribution.  I would give Smith less distribution than the group (again by 2/3 to 1/2).  For your backups, I would give Costales a similar number to Richards,Abbot, Sanches .. all the others I would set lower than Smith.

For + or - shooting, I would give +2 to Abbott and Costales, +1 to Richards and Sanches, -1 to Bearce, Williams, Sabb, and -2 to everyone else.  (You can adjust everyone down 1 if you don't like to shoot 3's)

(PS, alblack is a much better coach than me, so listen to him ... I am just telling you how I would likely set up the team if I had them)

As far as what defense + or - to play, I would recommend that you look at your opponent's games and see what SIMs who play your style of Defense (and also other human coaches) played against them.  A SIM always starts the game at 0, but look at the 2nd half start as that will have a halftime adjustment.  Look at how the team performed in the second half and that can tell you the team made the correct adjustment.

Since your team plays man-to-man, I would stay between +2 to -2 for most games.  For example, I would likely play a +1 against John Jay, but I would play a -1 against Brooklyn.

It seems that there is a general agrement to adjust defensive and offensive tweaks like +1 or -1 for every team.  Do you think leaving it consistent for every team would result in similar results over the course of a full season, or if you do recommend tweaking for every game what opponent stats do you look at to make determinations.  Thanks again, this has been very helpful in learning more about HD

For halftime adjustments, look at the relative strength of the teams. Ask yourself, "Would I be happy if we trailed by 5 against this team?" If so, set your adjustments accordingly.

For guards, if you set them at +2 for 3-pt. shooting, they'll throw it up from there almost every time.  I have a few guards set at '0' and they attempt about 50% of their shots from afar.  So, it depends on what you're looking for.

Posted by girt25 on 11/14/2010 11:43:00 PM (view original):

Posted by hughesjr on 11/14/2010 11:19:00 PM (view original):
As far as what defense + or - to play, I would recommend that you look at your opponent's games and see what SIMs who play your style of Defense (and also other human coaches) played against them.  A SIM always starts the game at 0, but look at the 2nd half start as that will have a halftime adjustment.  Look at how the team performed in the second half and that can tell you the team made the correct adjustment.

Since your team plays man-to-man, I would stay between +2 to -2 for most games.  For example, I would likely play a +1 against John Jay, but I would play a -1 against Brooklyn.

Totally disagreed re: patterning after sim adjustment, for a multitude of reasons. This theory assumes that the adjustment that the sim makes is "correct" which is very often far from the truth. Also, a smart coach will gameplan differently vs. a sim rather than a human because they know exactly what is coming, so to assume that a gamplan will be the same as it was vs. a sim is also quite a leap.

If anything, I might do just the opposite and see what human-coached teams have done who ran your defense against them and were successful with it. But even that comes with a big, fat asterisk because small sample sizes like that can be incredibly misleading.

I clearly said look at what the SIM team did AND look at the outcome to see if it was the correct adjustment.

Sometimes it is the wrong adjustment, sometimes it is the correct adjustment.  Obviously if the SIM team adjusted and the other team killed them from that point it was incorrect :)

The thing I was trying to point out is that a SIM team will always be set to make an adjustment, where as many human coaches never make adjustments.

Again, I am not saying now (nor have I ever said) that my way is the right way or the wrong way ... just telling him what I do.

He can look at my teams and decide if what I do makes sense or if I am full of sh1t.

Hughes, it's just too tiny a sample size to be able to take any truly relevant information from it, and too many other things are able to impact it. I would never recommend it as a sound gameplanning strategy.