What are the skills I should be looking for in recruits to thrive in this offense?

You will likely hear that you want to have Speed and Per for Flex offense but honestly I wouldn't really worry about that right now if you're just starting out. Just focus on getting better players, setting up a team structure (having a pass first PG, scoring SG (could be LP but I'd reco Per), defensive SF with some offense (either LP or PER) and two bigs that can defense, rebound and at least one with some LP.

I know this sounds very basic and simplistic and my buddy Gil will post very detailed advice on what attributes to go for and which offenses utilize it best but IMO, that's very confusing for a new person. Unless you're running Fastbreak, just ignore your offense set. Whether it's Triangle, Flex or Motion, they all work basically the same (again IMHO). If a guy is going to be a good scorer in in Flex, he will also be a good scorer for Motion.

Your defensive set, however, is a different story. That's really where you want to think about the players you're recruiting and that should dictate how you recruit.

Thanks. So then what do you look for in a zone def?

This is totally up to you but if you're starting out and are going to stay at D3, I'd change to Press. It's by far the most popular and most successful at D2/D3 (some would argue a bit overpowered). The disadvantage of press is that you need good stamina/depth. At the higher levels getting a deep and talented team is challenging but at D3, your talent pool is pretty huge since you can recruit from all divisions so it's not difficult to fill out a competitive team.

I only run Zone at one school right now and I've had mediocre results so perhaps I don't really know how to maximize it's effectiveness... but the main benefits of zone are
1. You can run a much shorter lineup because fatigue doesn't impact you as much as the other defenses. So you should be taking advantage of this by utilizing Redshirts and shooting the moon on great players in recruiting and intentionally taking walkons. This allows you to 'bank' the recruiting resources from the walkons - meaning you target 2 players with 4 openings instead of 4 players with 4 openings like you would with press
2. Zone fouls the least of all defenses. This helps again with the depth thing above but you can also slack SOME on athleticism. Ath is the biggest contributor to fouling so if you have a defense that doesn't induce fouling much, you could say you don't NEED it as much and could focus more on Speed - which helps zone defense
3. I believe 2-3 zone has the best 2pt% defense and has the flexibility to also play 3-2 which is the best 3pt %. So you can adapt a bit better to your opponent.

Now, one of the biggest disadvantages of zone is lack of takeaways. In press, you'll be generating tons of turnovers which create extra possessions so you don't need to worry about Rebounding as much to create extra possessions for your team. However, in zone, you MUST get those extra possessions via rebounding. For my press teams, I often slack on rebounding for my bigs and focus more on ath/def (or LP). I don't mind having bigs with 60 rebound as long as they're studs elsewhere. But in zone, this strategy is less viable because you will get crushed on the turnover differential.

In short, for zone focus on:
1. Shorter bench. Take walkons to help with recruiting.
2. Speed vs Ath
3. Rebounding
4. Blocking is most utilized by Zone

I'll add that some people try to offset the turnover disadvantage of zone by running a zone/press combo defense but I wouldn't really recommend that for noobs.

Zone is very complicated for a new person. I agree. I agree with almost everything benis is saying. There's so much to learn in HD. I'd focus on just getting better players period. After a few seasons pass, and you've gotten your feet wet, then it'll be time to really fine tune things and learn more about the sets

"Better players" means this..... all your guards should have a combo rating of +120 in ATH and SPD by the time they are maxed. Read the pinned thread on how to get better at D2/D3 to find the color chart if you haven't. It'll show you the potential development. Use minimum color growth as a guideline when recruiting (ex.. blue is 20-27. But 'expect' the minimum 20 when evaluating talent). Make sure all (or almost all) players are defensively competent. Maybe use 50 as a minimum for that. If you find one offensive stud that may have a 20 DEF, it's ok to sign him. Just don't get a whole team of them. And don't overlook Stamina as a useless rating. It's very important, especially if running press.

To be clear again, when I mention these guidelines numbers, I'm referring to when they are maxed. So for example, I say use 50 as a defensive minimum. Well if you see a 38 green defense, he's more than ok to recruit. Because his minimum will actually be 66 (because the green minimum growth is 28)

Also stay away from WE under 15 or so for now.

I think the ath/spd is a decent guide to start with but just try not to take it as gospel.

Here's an example. Marvin

This guy is much lower ath/spd that I usually go for but his potentials didn't really work out. But he's got some Reb and his Per/BH/Pass went way up. Look at his scoring, it's legit. he scored 12ppg on 46% 3pters on a national title team last season and this season he's putting up 21.5ppg on 46% 3pt shooting on the #1 team against #7 SOS. I can slide him into SG or SF depending on matchups which is super nice for flexibility.

Point being - his ath+spd is only 122 which is pretty damn low for a D2 team but guys like this can be useful and that's basically my only point here. You want to identify which ROLE the player is going to have on your team. If Marvin had poor ath/spd and no scoring or passing ability, he would be worthless. But because his per/bh/pass are elite, he's a great player to have to round out a team.

So the biggest takeaway is to not only get players with higher ratings like Top suggests, but you need to understand what role that player is going to have on your team. He should be GOOD at something.

Posted by Benis on 11/14/2020 10:38:00 AM (view original):
You will likely hear that you want to have Speed and Per for Flex offense but honestly I wouldn't really worry about that right now if you're just starting out. Just focus on getting better players, setting up a team structure (having a pass first PG, scoring SG (could be LP but I'd reco Per), defensive SF with some offense (either LP or PER) and two bigs that can defense, rebound and at least one with some LP.

I know this sounds very basic and simplistic and my buddy Gil will post very detailed advice on what attributes to go for and which offenses utilize it best but IMO, that's very confusing for a new person. Unless you're running Fastbreak, just ignore your offense set. Whether it's Triangle, Flex or Motion, they all work basically the same (again IMHO). If a guy is going to be a good scorer in in Flex, he will also be a good scorer for Motion.

Your defensive set, however, is a different story. That's really where you want to think about the players you're recruiting and that should dictate how you recruit.

i agree with this. i always think a good benchmark for coaches is 'can you maintain a+ prestige yet?'. if the answer is no, you are still in the early learning phase (which can take 6 months or several years - or more), and should not concern yourself much with details like the offensive differences (except fastbreak). once you've mastered the basics and have a solid handle on recruiting and team building, maintaining that a+ should be fairly straight forward and you can really start to focus on detailed optimizations and the title hunt.

it might like a high standard for the first major hurdle, but anyone is free to set baby steps to get there. for a pretty wide swath of high end coaches, maintaining an a+ is trivial. there's about 400 a+ teams right now, anyone in the top several hundred coaches all time could sit an a+ forever standing on their head, so it seems like a good mark for a coach to achieve as a stepping stone into those upper echelons.

Posted by Benis on 11/14/2020 12:51:00 PM (view original):
I think the ath/spd is a decent guide to start with but just try not to take it as gospel.

Here's an example. Marvin

This guy is much lower ath/spd that I usually go for but his potentials didn't really work out. But he's got some Reb and his Per/BH/Pass went way up. Look at his scoring, it's legit. he scored 12ppg on 46% 3pters on a national title team last season and this season he's putting up 21.5ppg on 46% 3pt shooting on the #1 team against #7 SOS. I can slide him into SG or SF depending on matchups which is super nice for flexibility.

Point being - his ath+spd is only 122 which is pretty damn low for a D2 team but guys like this can be useful and that's basically my only point here. You want to identify which ROLE the player is going to have on your team. If Marvin had poor ath/spd and no scoring or passing ability, he would be worthless. But because his per/bh/pass are elite, he's a great player to have to round out a team.

So the biggest takeaway is to not only get players with higher ratings like Top suggests, but you need to understand what role that player is going to have on your team. He should be GOOD at something.

I won't argue against that guy. 96 PER at D2/D3 makes any player useful in some way. There's always exceptions to every rule. I just feel like the 120+ for D3 is a good guideline to use to get accustomed to getting better players and hanging with the big boys.

In the same manner that I mentioned being able to take 1 player with low defense if he's a great scorer, the Marvin situation is somewhat similar of an exception. But instead of defense being lower than desired, the ATH/SPD for D2 may not be ideal on a consistent basis.

I try to give new coaches somewhere to start, and worry about exceptions later. It takes time to figure that out in my opinion. But help is help! Either way it's all good

Benis helped teach me the game. So we're on the same team here. This isn't a difference of opinion situation. Just many ways to win

Posted by topdogggbm on 11/14/2020 1:16:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Benis on 11/14/2020 12:51:00 PM (view original):
I think the ath/spd is a decent guide to start with but just try not to take it as gospel.

Here's an example. Marvin

This guy is much lower ath/spd that I usually go for but his potentials didn't really work out. But he's got some Reb and his Per/BH/Pass went way up. Look at his scoring, it's legit. he scored 12ppg on 46% 3pters on a national title team last season and this season he's putting up 21.5ppg on 46% 3pt shooting on the #1 team against #7 SOS. I can slide him into SG or SF depending on matchups which is super nice for flexibility.

Point being - his ath+spd is only 122 which is pretty damn low for a D2 team but guys like this can be useful and that's basically my only point here. You want to identify which ROLE the player is going to have on your team. If Marvin had poor ath/spd and no scoring or passing ability, he would be worthless. But because his per/bh/pass are elite, he's a great player to have to round out a team.

So the biggest takeaway is to not only get players with higher ratings like Top suggests, but you need to understand what role that player is going to have on your team. He should be GOOD at something.

I won't argue against that guy. 96 PER at D2/D3 makes any player useful in some way. There's always exceptions to every rule. I just feel like the 120+ for D3 is a good guideline to use to get accustomed to getting better players and hanging with the big boys.

In the same manner that I mentioned being able to take 1 player with low defense if he's a great scorer, the Marvin situation is somewhat similar of an exception. But instead of defense being lower than desired, the ATH/SPD for D2 may not be ideal on a consistent basis.

I try to give new coaches somewhere to start, and worry about exceptions later. It takes time to figure that out in my opinion. But help is help! Either way it's all good

Benis helped teach me the game. So we're on the same team here. This isn't a difference of opinion situation. Just many ways to win

Yep totally agree. I think your defense example is spot on. A general rule of thumb I follow is - he should contribute heavily offensively if he has no defense (and vice versa).

I think people sometimes misunderstand this point and they get a guy with 30 defense (which is bad) but say well he's got 70 per (which is okay but not great). I'm simplifying here but the point is, you gotta have GREAT to balance out the BAD.

Having been a coach of a team that plays a flex offense and you want good passing big men. Flex is a hybrid Triangle and Motion. You really want the skills of both offenses, but it hides some of the flaws that each of the other offenses have with needing the right personnel. However, the one skill you really need is passing for all positions. For big men, I target 40+ passing at minimum. Any more than that and you will have a lot of turnovers.

A Motion offense works best when you spread the offense around, and you want balance, however you can still thrive with 1 or 2 scorers as long as the remaining guys around them are pretty balanced. One bad player can totally disrupt the flow of the offense and make a huge difference toward everyone else.

A Triangle offense works best when your primary scoring is inside the line. It's not meant to be a 3 pt offense. It looks inside first, but if there is a good inside game it can open it up for a good 3 pt shooter.

A Flex offense works best when you have balance but it's a little more giving if you have a dominant inside or outside game, or you can go with balance offense. The flex works as a complete motion rotation where every rotation gives a possible inside or outside shot. PF and Cs who have decent Perimeter skills can help them thrive a bit more because due to the rotations they will have more 3 pt shots than a Triangle. But unlike a motion, they are not looking for a 3 pt shot first.

What skill best indicates a player will be a scorer?

Posted by Jimbaumbach1 on 11/14/2020 6:59:00 PM (view original):
What skill best indicates a player will be a scorer?

per is the lead for perimeter / 3 pt scorers, with bh and spd playing large parts as well. for 2pt scorers, its primarily lp, then some combo of ath, ft, per, spd. lower divisions i would focus on lp and ath, its really later that more matters.

3pt scoring is a tad more efficient than 2pt based scoring, and typically that has been especially true in the lower divisions. you should definitely try to make sure all of your teams have a couple strong 3pt shooters, it will get you pretty far.

Posted by gillispie1 on 11/14/2020 7:30:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Jimbaumbach1 on 11/14/2020 6:59:00 PM (view original):
What skill best indicates a player will be a scorer?

per is the lead for perimeter / 3 pt scorers, with bh and spd playing large parts as well. for 2pt scorers, its primarily lp, then some combo of ath, ft, per, spd. lower divisions i would focus on lp and ath, its really later that more matters.

3pt scoring is a tad more efficient than 2pt based scoring, and typically that has been especially true in the lower divisions. you should definitely try to make sure all of your teams have a couple strong 3pt shooters, it will get you pretty far.

Totally agree. I think the indirect necessity of perimeter shooting is beyond just the efficiency - it's keeps the other teams honest. I've had teams with no perimeter shooting and great LP scorers and didn't do that well because the other teams would go -5 on my a$$ and shut me down. If you can attempt 10ish 3pters a game then you can make sure they have to play defensive appropriately and you can beat them up inside (hopefully)

Thank you all