I just finished another disappointing season at D2 Wisconsin Parkside and I am looking for some insight into why my team isn't very good. 

I have not run a lot of press teams so my first question would be, is the main reason my team struggles because I am running a press with 10 players? 

- Any other insight would be greatly appreciated. 

www.whatifsports.com/hd/TeamProfile/Ratings.aspx

Defense and rebounding.

I really think 70 is the number to shoot for on def. Couple that with 70 ath and you got yourself s o me good defenders.

Hi julius! I think the question really should be why I don't win more, not why my team isn't very good. As you know I run Press on all my 4 teams and am primarily a Press coach. Simply I love Uptempo/Pressure basketball both in this game and when I coached in Real Life.

To answer your first question. No. It is a myth that you can't run the Press with 10 players and that you have to run it with a minimum of 11-12 players. The only reason I run it with 11 is because I can't Redshirt 2 guys. My 11th man normally gets about 6-7 cleanup minutes a game over the course of a season.

Here is some additional insight. Your ratings are all excellent in every category for a Pressing team except for average at the low post. Your A/D/PE are much better than my teams who consistently win 25 games a season. Your IQ's are excellent, especially for a young team. All but 2 of your losses were against teams with better RPI or SOS. You scheduled some of those losses upfront.

Other than scheduling this team was capable of winning 20 or so games with a couple of adjustments.

1) You WAY underutilized your PE's You didn't shoot near enough 3's. You had 7 players with high enough PE's to have distros from 0 to +2.You should have AVERAGED 20-25 3'S a game. This category could have been devastating. Probably worth 5-7 points a game more.

2) You ran way too much Slowdown. Slowdown is somewhat of an equalizer. You had outstanding team core depth in everything but LP, but you somewhat take away that depth advantage by playing so much  slowdown.

3) With your IQ's and depth would have run more Fast Paced too utilize these advantages. 

You have a very nice team coming back. GL next year. Site mail me if you need anything else.

julius, sorry. I answered this under my 2nd ID. I thought I was answering as coachvegas44. LOL!

I appreciate the response... very good tips!

With the staminas of the 10 guys on that roster, there is no way he could have run uptempo successfully. I understand what coachcali is saying about neutralizing the advantages of the press, but even at normal tempo if your bigs had any early foul trouble your front court would be absolutely gassed. I think running slowdown with that team was the right idea. As for other ideas for your Parkside team, I only have one season of D2 under my belt and wouldn't be the best guy to ask.

I think you had the correct tempo as well given the very tough conference you were in, the 10-man roster with a very thin front court (both in terms of numbers and their staminas), the inferior REB, and only having 2 seniors. 

I checked the pbp of your last 2 games and there's a fair amount of time that your frontcourt is either tired or very tired.  That exasperates your REB issues, leads to more fouls, and just general inefficiencies all the way around.  Sometimes your opponent was getting gassed as well, but I think you did well to make the NT all things considered. 

I'd be curious as to what the point margin is between you and your opponent from 1H to the 2H.  I have a feeling there's an appreciable swing against you in the 2H due to mostly those frontcourt issues (imo).

I run Flex/FCP at DI Creighton.  I agree with the majority here.  You didn't have enough depth to run uptempo, 6 upperclassmen and 6 underclassmen, and you underclassmen weren't suited for the press.  Slowdown was ideal.  Also flex you don't need LP men as much, but you need to shot and distro the 3 a lot more.  You should be averaging in the flex with that team around 20 3pt per game.  You def. ratings aren't good enough to run press uptempo.  You have 3 guys with good def. ratings and that's it.  FCP requires Ath, Def, then SP to be effective with good IQ's, which you have.   If run FCP uptempo with 10 guys than you need STA in the mid 70's - mid 80's.  Hope this helps a little.  I'm not the greatest coach, but I listen when real good coaches help me.  So whatever it's worth.

your defense could be a bit better, particularly its your ath/spd/def in your players at the 1-3 who really determine how effective your press is. but i think that is good enough to do better than your team did. your rebounding is killing you, that rebounding margin is tough to overcome. with the traditional press team running 3 guards or a guardy sf (based on the 1-3 being so important defensively), its critical you focus on rebounding at the 4 and 5. 

with the players you actually have, its your offense that should be improved. qunsenberry should have been scoring substantially more points. the same probably goes for ruley, albeit not to the same extent. quinsenberry (or whatever) should have been 5-10ppg higher. the poster who said with that spd/per in your flex system, from your top guards, you should be shooting more 3s, was absolutely right. i see it mostly as a problem in your top two guys, however.

i also agree slowdown doesnt make sense. i didnt check your game plans at all but if you ran slowdown, it should have only been against top 10 nationally type opponents. i absolutely disagree you should have run uptempo though. it makes no sense to me - only 10 men deep, running press, you dont have great stamina and you dont have a FT based offense. to me, uptempo is a terrible choice in the position you were in, and im not even the staunch uptempo hater i once was. 

whoops, i started typing that at 9am and then i had work to do... none of the anti-uptempo comments had come through. but anyway, i absolutely agree with those folks.

if you werent running fairly fresh for everyone that was probably a big mistake (seeing jdno's comment about the tiredness of your bigs makes me wonder)

Posted by coachcali on 10/13/2013 11:02:00 PM (view original):
Hi julius! I think the question really should be why I don't win more, not why my team isn't very good. As you know I run Press on all my 4 teams and am primarily a Press coach. Simply I love Uptempo/Pressure basketball both in this game and when I coached in Real Life.

To answer your first question. No. It is a myth that you can't run the Press with 10 players and that you have to run it with a minimum of 11-12 players. The only reason I run it with 11 is because I can't Redshirt 2 guys. My 11th man normally gets about 6-7 cleanup minutes a game over the course of a season.

Here is some additional insight. Your ratings are all excellent in every category for a Pressing team except for average at the low post. Your A/D/PE are much better than my teams who consistently win 25 games a season. Your IQ's are excellent, especially for a young team. All but 2 of your losses were against teams with better RPI or SOS. You scheduled some of those losses upfront.

Other than scheduling this team was capable of winning 20 or so games with a couple of adjustments.

1) You WAY underutilized your PE's You didn't shoot near enough 3's. You had 7 players with high enough PE's to have distros from 0 to +2.You should have AVERAGED 20-25 3'S a game. This category could have been devastating. Probably worth 5-7 points a game more.

2) You ran way too much Slowdown. Slowdown is somewhat of an equalizer. You had outstanding team core depth in everything but LP, but you somewhat take away that depth advantage by playing so much  slowdown.

3) With your IQ's and depth would have run more Fast Paced too utilize these advantages. 

You have a very nice team coming back. GL next year. Site mail me if you need anything else.

Totally disagree re the notion that he should've run uptempo. He runs fcp, 10 deep and some issues in the front court. IMHO, uptempo would've exacerbated his problems.

I think the biggest issue here came with distro -- you ran essentially a very balanced distro, when the skill sets of your players really dictated that some should've been scoring more and some should've been scoring less. Because of this, your offense just didn't run at anywhere near peak efficiency. There were other issues, but to me that's the one that jumps off the page.

Also worth nothing that you appear to be playing in an extremely tough conference.