New here. Can’t figure out why I keep getting blown out all the time. I’ve read the new players guides. I feel like my team is at least decent. But I haven’t been in a game yet all season. Anyone willing to give me some tips?

Ditch the combo defense. Focus on one defense and build a team around that. I recommend press at d3.

Youre shooting WAY too many 3s. Shooting 24% from 3 as a team is beyond awful. Frankly you have zero capable 3pt shooters on RI and shouldnt be shooting any. You have a couple LP scorers, just pound it inside.

You got a guy with 12ath and 10 defense playing 11mpg. One of your starters has 20 defense. Definitely not gonna get it done with that - especially playing man.

I see on Drury you redshirted a guy with 23 ath and 19 defense. At d3 this is a stretch but at d2, this is a complete waste. You would need those both to be green potential and get SUPER lucky for this guy to be useful.

Check your box scores for potential fatigue issues. your Drury team is running ragged. If you have a guy in the game who is VERY tired, hes completely ineffective.

Drury has a couple good 3pt shooters. Let those two shoot and set the rest to -2.

Ha just realized that Drury team is in my conference. My buddy just dropped that team. Welcome

Thanks man that’s good stuff. I took Dury cause I thought they were really solid but I’m getting my *** kicked. How should I check for fatigue issues? I always look at the box score but didn’t think about checking for that.

The redshirted guy does have all greens but I didn’t realize how much of a long shot he would be still.

so would you say Ath and Def are the two most important ratings?

First, Don't take any losses too hard--they aren't with your players. You can't be responsible for the condition the team is in. This isn't *that* good (your ath/spd is very low to be a truly good D2 press team), but your team should be much better.

But the reason you guys suck is your players are insanely tired. Check the depth chart page. Are you running "target minutes?" If so, stop doing that and switch to fatigue. If you're already running fatigue you're letting your players get way too tired. Switch them to "fairly fresh" instead.

From 11:31 in second half in Drury vs. Michigan Teech (your worst loss):

Lineup	Drury	PG - Paul Stanford (tired) 7 pts. 1 ast. SG - Mathew Floyd (fresh) 1 ast. SF - Abel Williams (fairly fresh) 6 pts. 5 reb. 3 pf. PF - Andrew Wooton (tired) 10 pts. C - Raymond Balderas (tired) 12 pts. 6 reb.
Lineup	Michigan Tech.	PG - Russell Dubose (fresh) 6 pts. 1 ast. SG - Conrad Manzano (fresh) 6 pts. 2 ast. SF - Bill Vara (fresh) 8 pts. 3 stl. PF - Brian Pompey (fairly fresh) 3 reb. C - Scott Carter (fresh) 7 pts.

They have 4 fresh and 1 FF. You have 3 tired 1 FF 1 fresh. Not close.

Posted by jfreets15 on 3/30/2023 9:34:00 AM (view original):
Thanks man that’s good stuff. I took Dury cause I thought they were really solid but I’m getting my *** kicked. How should I check for fatigue issues? I always look at the box score but didn’t think about checking for that.

The redshirted guy does have all greens but I didn’t realize how much of a long shot he would be still.

so would you say Ath and Def are the two most important ratings?

Ath and def aren't necessarily the most important but it can be difficult to win without them being at least at a competent level. You can't focus only on ath/def but you also can't ignore it, its super important. A guard could be 100 per, 100 BH and 100 pass and I'd still hesitate to take him at d2 if his defense was under 30 - know what I mean?

But it's possible you can get away with a low ath/def guy if his offensive skills are elite. But you can probably only afford to have 1 or 2 guys like that, you usually don't want a whole team of guys like that (unless you're Arfy)

Posted by cubcub113 on 3/30/2023 9:43:00 AM (view original):
First, Don't take any losses too hard--they aren't with your players. You can't be responsible for the condition the team is in. This isn't *that* good (your ath/spd is very low to be a truly good D2 press team), but your team should be much better.

But the reason you guys suck is your players are insanely tired. Check the depth chart page. Are you running "target minutes?" If so, stop doing that and switch to fatigue. If you're already running fatigue you're letting your players get way too tired. Switch them to "fairly fresh" instead.

From 11:31 in second half in Drury vs. Michigan Teech (your worst loss):

Lineup	Drury	PG - Paul Stanford (tired) 7 pts. 1 ast. SG - Mathew Floyd (fresh) 1 ast. SF - Abel Williams (fairly fresh) 6 pts. 5 reb. 3 pf. PF - Andrew Wooton (tired) 10 pts. C - Raymond Balderas (tired) 12 pts. 6 reb.
Lineup	Michigan Tech.	PG - Russell Dubose (fresh) 6 pts. 1 ast. SG - Conrad Manzano (fresh) 6 pts. 2 ast. SF - Bill Vara (fresh) 8 pts. 3 stl. PF - Brian Pompey (fairly fresh) 3 reb. C - Scott Carter (fresh) 7 pts.

They have 4 fresh and 1 FF. You have 3 tired 1 FF 1 fresh. Not close.

Spot on point about target mins vs fatigue.

But I think the problem with Drury is that you have too may bigs and not enough depth at PG, SG and SF. Usually it's better to suck it up and play a guy out of position to avoid huge fatigue penalties like this. Try to go with a big lineup and slide a PF into the SF spot so you can move your SF to a guard spot. Not ideal but it's the better choice than being tired all the time.

Posted by jfreets15 on 3/30/2023 9:34:00 AM (view original):
Thanks man that’s good stuff. I took Dury cause I thought they were really solid but I’m getting my *** kicked. How should I check for fatigue issues? I always look at the box score but didn’t think about checking for that.

The redshirted guy does have all greens but I didn’t realize how much of a long shot he would be still.

so would you say Ath and Def are the two most important ratings?

in the box score, there is a link to play by play. its right above the name of the first team, right below the score bar thing at the top. you have to check the play by play for fatigue issues, the fatigue of your active lineup is printed every 4 minutes. so you don't have perfect granularity or information, but if you see a bunch of yellow, you are paying a big penalty - and if you see orange/red, its a huge penalty.

Combo zone/press is fun and can be effective in the right hands - but there's a bit more value at the high levels of D1 where you're recruiting elite players and often *want* to throw 10 or so minutes of team practice time somewhere (ie, the press) other than attribute development, to avoid early entry risk. Straight press is better at lower levels as a set-it-and-forget-it set; I typically don't recommend zone or combos for new players unless they have a mentor ready to walk them through day-to-day stuff, because there's a lot of nuance to how you recruit and how you gameplan.

Fatigue is probably your biggest problem, other than the obvious "I need to recruit my own players" thing, as these guys have already said. Make sure your depth chart is full, and you have coverage at each position going at least 3 deep. You can use target minutes if you have promises to keep, they are useful in those instances. Just be sure to keep the total team target well under 200 minutes. It usually works to set the guys with promises where you want them, then the rest of the starters at 14-18, their backups at 9-13, and any deep bench guys at 4-8. Then from the player game plan, you can set foul trouble for the starters (well anyone, really) to leave in longer. That prevents the sim from yanking guys after picking up 2 quick fouls and throwing the whole thing off, which is usually what fouls up target minutes in the first place. You can occasionally get burned by a quick foul out - but it's pretty rare. And it happens when set to fatigue too. It can sometimes hurt a little more with target minutes because the sim can do weird stuff to account for missing time. But usually it just ends up looking funnier.

I appreciate you guys. I’ve read every word. Did not realize fatigue would have that big of effect.

Does team positioning matter much? Like if I play -1 against a perimeter team is that going to greatly affect my def? Should I even be messing with that until I know what I’m doing more?

I feel like I want to switch to man D but my team IQ is terrible at it. Should I just make the switch and suck it up while they learn? Or wait until I recruit players with more man D IQ

Posted by jfreets15 on 3/30/2023 12:22:00 PM (view original):
I appreciate you guys. I’ve read every word. Did not realize fatigue would have that big of effect.

Does team positioning matter much? Like if I play -1 against a perimeter team is that going to greatly affect my def? Should I even be messing with that until I know what I’m doing more?

I feel like I want to switch to man D but my team IQ is terrible at it. Should I just make the switch and suck it up while they learn? Or wait until I recruit players with more man D IQ

Your team will do better this season if you switch to straight press, rather than switch to man. But the difference won't be that significant, and if, in the long term, you'd rather play man, and you want to recruit man players, then that's something to consider, especially if it's early enough in the season to sway the preference. If you're not going anywhere this season anyway, then play what you want.

Positioning is fairly important. -1 is usually pretty safe, but if your opponent is human and is really a bombs-away type, like shooting half their shots from beyond the arc, and hitting 40%, then yeah, if you're not going heavy + it's going to hurt you. If you're not playing straight press, it is usually a pretty good play to go -1 or -2, and hedge against those shooters by using the double team against any of their perimeter players who might pose a threat.

Posted by jfreets15 on 3/30/2023 12:22:00 PM (view original):
I appreciate you guys. I’ve read every word. Did not realize fatigue would have that big of effect.

Does team positioning matter much? Like if I play -1 against a perimeter team is that going to greatly affect my def? Should I even be messing with that until I know what I’m doing more?

I feel like I want to switch to man D but my team IQ is terrible at it. Should I just make the switch and suck it up while they learn? Or wait until I recruit players with more man D IQ

I personally think defensive positioning is pretty overrated compared to other things like tempo and offensive distribution. You could run 0 and be fine.

I ran +5 for an entire season once and it didn't really reduce my opponents 3pt %, just reduced # of their attempts.

Also a lot of people are deathly afraid of running -5 as they believe this will cause all your players to foul out. I think this is overblown and I will routinely run -5 against teams that don't shoot 3s.

But that's just me.

Posted by jfreets15 on 3/30/2023 12:22:00 PM (view original):
I appreciate you guys. I’ve read every word. Did not realize fatigue would have that big of effect.

Does team positioning matter much? Like if I play -1 against a perimeter team is that going to greatly affect my def? Should I even be messing with that until I know what I’m doing more?

I feel like I want to switch to man D but my team IQ is terrible at it. Should I just make the switch and suck it up while they learn? Or wait until I recruit players with more man D IQ

all freshman come in with basically garbage IQ in every set - the best freshman might have roughly the IQ an F freshman would get up to after 10 practices. so that side of it isn't that important. basically though, i would not switch to man with terrible IQs. i generally recommend practicing the new set for 1 season, playing the old set that you already have solid IQ in for that season, and then switching. this can shake out differently, like if you are starting 4 freshman anyway, just switch. occasionally i've practices a new set a season and a half before switching, but overall those are kinda details you don't need to worry about.

+/-, i would mostly just start by looking at their 3pta/fga. if they took 400 3pta on 1000 fga, that is 40%, which is a lot. there are of course deeper levels to the analysis but you can get pretty far doing something like, +2 for any team who takes a lot of 3s (somewhere in the 35-40% range, or higher). play a +1 for teams more in that 30-35% range, 0 for 25-30... teams who are signficantly under 25% you can gamble pretty hard on - settings. if a team takes 20% you could just play like a -2, but you could also gamble on a -5. in general, the heavy + settings (+3 to +5) are pretty crappy and i would just ignore them for now, but the heavy - settings can be quite useful, especially as an underdog. i shy away from heavy - settings when i am a big favorite running press, but like benis said, you really don't want to overly worry about fouls in your circumstance.