I have somewhat accepted that I am never going to be a great gameplanner - I don't have the numbers sense, time to comb through patterns, PBP, ratings and box scores.  But I think I can become a better gameplanner (with some help).

Anyone care to share some of their top game planning tricks or tips?  Things they always look at?  Things you never look at?  Keys to beating certain defenses?  Ways to stop certain players with certain ratings?  Exploiting matchups, IQs?

There are a lot of common sense and well known theories out there, and I welcome those.  But I'd be interested in hearing some of the more off the wall or unique methods as well.

Your help, advice and opinions are appreciated.

Same here, jj.  I've been collecting posts and FAQ tips, but I'm still trying to get a handle on things. 

Someone posted a very detailed and somewhat complex analysis of play distribution a few weeks ago.  I can't say I understood it all, but I did save it to a word doc to re-read until it soaked in.  Anyone remember where that was?  Forum search isn't real helpful.

Here's a post by oldresorter that's also pretty interesting:  Oldresorter on Gameplanning. 

I tend to gameplan in a similar way to OR,  getting a gauge on whether my opponent is an outside or inside-oriented team, who their best scorers are, and whether I should play slow down or faster.   But for a program like mine that doesn't win much, it's really hard to tell if I'm getting it right because my successses are so few I don't have a good baseline.  I suppose that will come over time, once I get better players and start to win a few.  My worst nightmare is to one day find out that I could have been winning all along if I'd just gameplanned better :(

 

For me, it is all about matchups.  I move players around constantly to try to exploit any weak defenders I see in the opponent's lineup, and I give a player a large distro share if I perceive that he should be able to school the guy guarding him.  I also try to have a couple of defensive stoppers on every team to match up with the opponent's major scoring threats.  I try not to fall into any discernible patterns, to make me harder to gameplan against.

It really doesn't take too long to scan the opposing team's stats and roster to figure out who to stop and where to attack.  (Which is a key point, because that leaves me plenty of time to send in support tickets about changing player facial expressions when their work ethics are dropping.)

Davis, what kind of distro do you give a guy who is a lightning fast guard with high DEF but who has really low PER and LP?   I recruited this kid to be my defensive stopper and I'm just wondering if he will be able to score much even after I get his Motion IQ up to workable level.

Benny Lowe

(Sorry if I've shown him before on the board, but no one's really answered my question yet.  I'm about to find out during exhibition, I just want a reality check from more experienced coaches)

When that guy is a jr or sr if his bh and pass move up considerably he will be a competent scorer if hes set at -2 on the 3's

Does he have high speed potential?  'Cause if you're calling 68 speed "lightning fast" at D2 you've been recruiting the wrong players.

Posted by dahsdebater on 2/2/2011 1:30:00 PM (view original):
Does he have high speed potential?  'Cause if you're calling 68 speed "lightning fast" at D2 you've been recruiting the wrong players.

You're right, I *have* been recruiting the wrong kinds of players.  That's why I'm excited about Lowe.  Compare him to my existing players.  My fastest existing player is Harris at 85.  Barnett has 77.  After that it drops dramatically.

Lowe's SPD potential is "average", which (according to various posts I've read here) should translate to between 6 and 20 points improvement overall when he tops out.  Since he's starting right away and will continue to play plenty of minutes,  I would expect his improvement to lean towards the high side. That puts him at about 80-85 before he's done, and that's plenty fast compared to the rest of my team.  Combine it with his ATH and DEF and he's actually a good prospect.

All that is off point, though.  I'll set his 3pt to -2 and his play distr to 0 at least for his freshman year and see how he does.

How much he plays doesn't impact his final speed rating.  There is a hard cap which is the maximum level a recruit can attain in each skill.  Any guard with average potential in speed should pretty much always be at or within 1 or 2 of that potential by the beginning of his junior year regardless of starting and even playing time unless his WE is very low.  So the fact that he's playing won't make his final speed higher.  If his cap is 75 he'll go to 75.  If it's 85 he'll get there.

I don't think that guy will ever fulfill his potential with a 13 WE.  If you're looking to recruit the right type of players, I'd avoid anybody with such a low WE.

I get all the criticism.  I'm still learning the game, but honestly sometimes you guys either misinterpret my comments (could be me) or wander off into areas unrelated.  I thought I'd outdone myself by signing Lowe, in view of the crappy recruiting classes I've been used to getting.

* Is there a way to tell Hard Cap?  My cite on potential is taken from posts on this board.  Do I ignore half the stuff posted here and figure it out for myself or collect all the data and learn from experience?

* Given the key areas where Lowe already has high ratings, I didn't care about WE (which will also increase a bit with time and PT).  Honestly, the main areas I'm going to work him on are BH and PER.  "Merely" routine improvement in other areas will still make him the best player I've signed in my 3 seasons. 

* Caveat: I hope to sign even better players in the future, but at D+ prestige it's going to take time and some gambling with pulldowns.  Meanwhile I'm going to take some pride in getting Lowe to come to BFE western Texas at a cruddy-prestige D2 school that's a cumulative 6-48 since I took over.  I have to start somewhere to turn that around.

Posted by ethan66 on 2/2/2011 11:55:00 AM (view original):
Davis, what kind of distro do you give a guy who is a lightning fast guard with high DEF but who has really low PER and LP?   I recruited this kid to be my defensive stopper and I'm just wondering if he will be able to score much even after I get his Motion IQ up to workable level.

Benny Lowe

(Sorry if I've shown him before on the board, but no one's really answered my question yet.  I'm about to find out during exhibition, I just want a reality check from more experienced coaches)

I can't say what kind of distro I give him, because it would vary based on the opponent.  But if I have a guard who has large advantages in SPD and ATH against the player who will be guarding him (and the player doesn't have a sterling DE rating), then sure, I'd be willing to give a pretty decent share of the distro to him.

As a side note, I think PE is slightly over-emphasized on guards and slightly under-emphasized on bigs by many coaches.  I can't say I've done any kind of analysis to make sure I'm right on this, but that's my impression.  I usually avoid bigs with wretched PE ratings (talking low single-digits here); just anecdotally, it seems like big men with awful PE ratings suffer against zone defenses.  On the other hand, a high PE rating doesn't guarantee that a guard will be able to get off his shot; he also has to have SPD, ATH, and BH to be the complete package on offense.  If the PE is low, there will still be games where he can do big damage (especially at the D3 level).

Disclaimer: A lot of my ideas are based on "here's what I'd do if I wrote the sim," so most of them are probably incorrect. 

Posted by ethan66 on 2/2/2011 1:56:00 PM (view original):

Posted by dahsdebater on 2/2/2011 1:30:00 PM (view original):
Does he have high speed potential?  'Cause if you're calling 68 speed "lightning fast" at D2 you've been recruiting the wrong players.

You're right, I *have* been recruiting the wrong kinds of players.  That's why I'm excited about Lowe.  Compare him to my existing players.  My fastest existing player is Harris at 85.  Barnett has 77.  After that it drops dramatically.

Lowe's SPD potential is "average", which (according to various posts I've read here) should translate to between 6 and 20 points improvement overall when he tops out.  Since he's starting right away and will continue to play plenty of minutes,  I would expect his improvement to lean towards the high side. That puts him at about 80-85 before he's done, and that's plenty fast compared to the rest of my team.  Combine it with his ATH and DEF and he's actually a good prospect.

All that is off point, though.  I'll set his 3pt to -2 and his play distr to 0 at least for his freshman year and see how he does.

ethan, you are misinterpreting the way potential works a bit. you are correct that average potential should translate to between 6 and 20 points of improvement, but that is 6-20 points till the hard cap is hit (when the assistant sends that annoying email to you). you can't affect that hard cap in any way. so starting him or not, his work ethic, all that, has exactly 0 impact on a player's hard cap.

where playing time, work ethic, etc comes into play is in answering the question, will this player reach his hard caps? how close will he get? so if you have a player with tons of room of improvement all over, starting him is definitely going to make him a better player. so is better work ethic. 

does that make sense? so in your above example, Lowe's spd potential is avg, 6-20 points of improvement. say its 10 - there exists the potential for 10 points of improvement. nothing you can do can change that, but starting a guy will get him those 10 points faster. or maybe it will get him closer to reaching his cap. with 10 points he is probably going to get there either way, but hopefully you get the idea.

Posted by ethan66 on 2/2/2011 2:22:00 PM (view original):
I get all the criticism.  I'm still learning the game, but honestly sometimes you guys either misinterpret my comments (could be me) or wander off into areas unrelated.  I thought I'd outdone myself by signing Lowe, in view of the crappy recruiting classes I've been used to getting.

* Is there a way to tell Hard Cap?  My cite on potential is taken from posts on this board.  Do I ignore half the stuff posted here and figure it out for myself or collect all the data and learn from experience?

* Given the key areas where Lowe already has high ratings, I didn't care about WE (which will also increase a bit with time and PT).  Honestly, the main areas I'm going to work him on are BH and PER.  "Merely" routine improvement in other areas will still make him the best player I've signed in my 3 seasons. 

* Caveat: I hope to sign even better players in the future, but at D+ prestige it's going to take time and some gambling with pulldowns.  Meanwhile I'm going to take some pride in getting Lowe to come to BFE western Texas at a cruddy-prestige D2 school that's a cumulative 6-48 since I took over.  I have to start somewhere to turn that around.

in response to your first bullet point there - in general, its great to read the boards, not to ignore anything. but you have to take it in carefully. not only is there incorrect information, but you need to be smart about how you interpret what you read. its very easy to read something unclear, either from a coach or from CS, and take it differently than intended. or, the writer may just have a different perspective than you, and what he said may be true in his situation, but not yours. so reading the board is great to get ideas and information, but you still need to work to figure it out yourself, to verify what you've read, to understand it, and to incorporate it into your own system.

anyway, in this case, i think it is just an example of a little confusion (as explained in the above post).

to answer your question, is there a way to tell the hard cap? no. you only get the range.

Thanks, Davis and Gillispie1.  That clears some things up.  I get the hard  cap limit (better now than I did anyway). 

I've been in sitemail touch with a few of you guys on this board, and I've been getting very good advice that's already helped me figure out how to turn my program around.  Now that I've done a pulldown and understand it better, I was hoping to read some discussion on gameplanning - my next big gap in understanding, which was why I welcomed jjboogie's OP.

Setting distro is issue #1.  I sort of understand it I think.  Gauging player fatigue versus PT settings I think I get, too.  The one glaring gap still beyond my comprehension is the special circumstances settings for late game-winning and late game-losing.  I was applying my real-world knowledge and it doesn't always work.   In one game my first season, I had 4 of my 5 starters foul out in a 2OT game, mainly because I'd set things to "foul late if behind < 10".  I filed a ticket (on the urging of several posters here) and did away with that.   The Sim wasn't substituting (thus my starters fouled out), and it had the same guys doing the fouling. 

The disparity between real world basketball and HD is the gap I think every coach has to bridge.

i disagree that you cannot tell the hard cap-- maybe not the exact number, but you can tell which part of the range of 6-20 the guy will be in based on Scouting Evaluation info from your AC. I don't remember the exact email wordings, but aren't there high-average and low-average potentials? I think Iguana or someone has posted an extensive list of the email wordings and their approximate meaning in the numbers.

And there are definitely emails for low-hi, med-hi, and hi-hi potential, telling you if the guy will get 21-25, 26-30ish, and 30+. These are important.