Alright here is my DIII team John Jay. We are preseason #1. Undeserving, IMO and im sure more than mine. We have a very high voerall rating mainly cause of my guys WE and STM. But we do have high ratings compared to most teams also in most areas looking quickly at the team ratings.

But we lack ATH and DEF BIG TIME. I have probably the toughest schedule coming up, but they are all at home luckily.Anyways, how can I if possible maximize my team, and overcome my lack of ATH and DEF. Or am I eff'ed?

Would playing slow down help at all, or go uptempo? ANyadvice is appreciated.

Have Stengel take 8000 shots a game. Seriously, the dude is a beast. Joe morris is another major weapon offensively. If you have 2 very good scorers in a Triangle, you are OK - the offense you run is built for that. You should probably have a distro that leans very heavily toward those two - don't give the ball so much to the other un-athletic guys. 

You're going to run into foul trouble a lot, so uptempo might not be a good idea - but you also might have a STA advantage against your opponents. 

That being said, I might go slowdown, giving Stengel as much PT as possible, and let your solid yet unathletic bigs rebound most of his misses. That's just me - I think the fouls will pile up in an uptempo setting with so many poor defenders on your squad. 

Yeah we played the #4 ranked DIII team and lost in OT at their home for exh game #1, we had 40 fouls playing uptempo.

Appreciate the advice bbunch. Defintely some good things to consider.

That is a good team for DIII, but I think you may be right I'd be surprised to see that ranking hold up in Wooden.  You definitely have a punchers shot to win any and every game, though. 

You probably can't make the F4 with no athletic players and poor across-the-board defense, you're just going to suffer too much defensively.  That said, you have some scorers, so you can compete with a lot of teams.  I would definitely not run uptempo unless you play a team with very poor depth.  I probably wouldn't run a lot of slowdown either, there isn't THAT much dropoff from your starters to your backups, and it's not good for your offensive efficiency.  Honestly, I don't really think there's a lot you can do to compensate for bad defense across the board.  You made that bed and you'll have to sleep in it.  Probably won't end the season anywhere close to #1, but it's not a bad team.

My Methodist team in Tark just got pre-season ranked at #21, if we make the tournament I'll be thrilled.  Those pre-season rankings aren't particularly well done.

Oh trust me im expecting to be unranked within a few games. Im not putting any weight on it. But deep down there is a little flicker of excitement. I am just looking for a bit of help on at least trying to minimize the damage. I'll be happy with a simple NT appearance. I suck at recruiting badly when it come to DIII. I hate how little $$ you get and still having to use FSS.

My best run with that sort of team was a sweet 16 way back in season 20 something in Tark. I think I ran a triangle zone at the time.

wow. i have never a team that was so bad on defense relative to everything else. my thought was going to be, play your best defenders and maybe slow it down - but, you dont really have any. you sure as hell dont want to play uptempo, not if you dont want to average 30 fouls a game. i dont know about slowdown either, but it might increase volatility, giving you a chance. without a doubt, the best chance this team have of making a deep run is volatility. so maybe id slow it down and crank the 3. let stengel go wild. that way you have a shot at least. 

i would absolutely, positively, change the way i recruit, though. defense is so important (as an ability), and the new engine's biggest change was the paradigm shift AWAY from speed press dominance to ath/def dominance. so, i would definitely go for some more ath and def there.