Quick warning. This post falls into two dreadful categories: (1) too long to read and (2) too obscure to matter.  Proceed at your own risk.

Quick background.  I just completed a season in Allen where I didn't have all 12 of my players set to 'Fairly Fresh'.  First time in 30 seasons I tweaked the settings.  My lack of a quality bench was obvious, so I choose to ride my top 7 players harder than I normally would so I set them at 'Getting Tired' and ran a slowdown offense most of the time in order to maximize minutes.  For the season, I ran uptempo in 10 games and slowdown in 22.  In reality, the combo of slowdown and 'Getting Tired' meant that I really only ran my starting five harder than normal since they all averged between 26-29 minutes a game and there wasn't much left for any of the bench.

I know that the fatigue penalty doesn't really take impact at 'Getting Tired'.  But in looking at the season's worth of results, I'm not sure that there is a penalty at all.  I had a dream season in terms of results and I really can't imagine how the numbers could have been any better.  But theoretically they should, right?  There should be some type of fatigue penalty but looking at the numbers, I really don't see it.

It is worth noting that my starting five is a very good bunch for a D3 team.  It's not a truly excellent group of starters, but for season 50 in Allen, I feel pretty safe saying that I had one of the top 10 best starting lineups.  I would expect it to produce good numbers.  But even with those expectations, I would not have expected the numbers they did post ... even if I had kept them at 'Fairly Fresh' like I would most seasons.

My team stats are listed here but here are some cherry-picked numbers that seem a bit much no matter what context, but especially since I wasn't playing the team at 'Fairly Fresh'.

Three point shooting.
My guards shot 45.1% and 46.5% from three point land.  That's kind of silly in any context.  (I should note that my SF only hit 34.4%, but he also only has a 45 PER rating.)

Low post shooting
My three forwards/centers shot 55.5%, 57.9%, and 58.3% from the inside.  Again, these numbers seem plain silly.

Block shots
Despite playing slowdown in most games, my center led D3 in blocks with 2.2 per game and my powerfoward was just behind him at 1.9.


I wouldn't have expected any of these numbers in any context.  Maybe one player hitting close to 45% from threes and one player shooting 55% from twos.  But not all five players. To have the best shotblocker by numbers in D3 when I'm slowing the pace down, really seems odd.  And when I say I wouldn't expect these, I mean regardless of fatigue.  So do be doing this why also allowing these guys to play at 'Getting Tired' seems all the more unusual.

I'm probably a year late to discovering this, but is there any difference at all in the play between 'Fairly Fresh' and 'Getting Tired'?  I can't see any with my team.  And if there is a difference, I can't imagine what numbers these guys would have been putting up.

Ppl who set their whole team to fairly fresh is inefficiently using their fatigue setting. The decrease in performance is not linear so performance between fairly fresh and getting tired is pretty small. I have always set my studs to getting tired on my team. 

There is very minimal difference in performance between fairly fresh and getting tired, particularly if you're not pressing.  The big danger in the press is that fatigue can go up quickly and if there isn't a break for substitutions guys sometimes go even 2 steps tireder than the substitution settings would generally allow for.  In a zone you really don't need to worry about that, and I regularly use getting tired for my zone teams.  Looking at your lineup, those shooting numbers aren't much better than I would anticipate.  It's a very offensively efficient team.  And the shot blocking is easy to explain.  Zone defenses lead to the most blocked shots, and there aren't that many top programs playing zone.  You put guys with solid athleticism and defense and 90+ SB in a zone and then give them huge minutes they should block upwards of 2 shots per game.

Zone example - this guy is blocking 1.2 shots per game against a very tough non-con schedule.  His SB is decidedly mediocre.

Posted by tianyi7886 on 8/5/2011 2:06:00 PM (view original):
Ppl who set their whole team to fairly fresh is inefficiently using their fatigue setting. The decrease in performance is not linear so performance between fairly fresh and getting tired is pretty small. I have always set my studs to getting tired on my team. 

Thats a pretty broad statement that is innacurate for many rosters.

Your findings support what I have been told by Cust Support in the past.  Namely, that you don't notice a whole lot of performance drop until a player is "Tired."  I know a lot of good coaches that use Fairly Fresh, but unless you 1) have a minutes promise to keep or 2) have a pretty equal starter and backup, I think Getting Tired is the way to go.

I use Fairly Fresh/ Getting Tired settings to affect my lineup combinations. I want certain subs to come on the floor ahead or behind others.