Hey all,

If anyone has time and feel like helping, can someone look at my game today vs St. John Fisher and tell me what I did wrong to lose by 10 at home to such an inferior team?  I love the game, but it's rather disheartening to keep losing to to bad teams.

Thanks.

At quick glance, I can't see any glaring errors on your part.  Sometimes, the 'random number gods' are just against us.  

I just lost a NT game where the free throw difference was 36-3

YOur team is very young, which can make them unpredictable.  

You also have some low DEF ratings for some of your players.  While your defensive shooting % is a very good 42.8%, it's come against a weak schedule. 

In case you haven't read it already, read this.  It's a guide on how to build successful teams at D2 and D3.

Second, I notice you run zone.  Here's a really good thread on zone defense.  

Third, you need to scale back your 3-pt shooting a bit, in my opinion.  In the game you asked about, you had a guy (Keen) shoot five 3's and his PER rating is 40.  Personally, I would not have Keen or Kincannon shooting any 3's...set both to (-2). 

Thanks for the input. I'm not sure why my guards did nothing in that game, they were all set to have the bulk of plays run for them, yet they barely did anything. And the defense ratings/IQs of the opposing team's guards were not that high. Conversely, as you mentioned, my bigs were shooting 3's and I had them all set for low play distribution.

Suggestions:

• New coaches should not practice more than 1 defense (and no one should ever practice more than 1 offense).  If you play triangle & zone, then set team practice to between 20-25 in each and 0 in all other team practice categories.
• You said, "my bigs were shooting 3's and I had them all set for low play distribution",  the way to fix that is to go to the "Player Game Plan" tab and set them all to -2 under the "3pt" setting.  Set Hitchens, Beller & Tenney to 0 and everyone else to -2 (and save to all defenses and adjust from there for each game).
• Williams, Keen & Monn (off the bench) are going to be your most efficient scorers, make sure they get about half your distribution between them,
• A number of coaches bemoan this, but the primary 2 attributes are ATH & DEF.  Beller & Williams need to start on that team, but their defensive ratings are not helping you.  I cannot tell how much potential they have in ATH & DEF, but make sure you are practicing them 15+ Conditioning & 12+ DEF until they max out in both.

In the St. John Fisher game, against a Sim AI coached M2M defense, you need to try to score in the paint.   That 2-14 stat from 3 point land just killed you.   Baker is a good defender for D3, but Hicks has a target on him in M2M that screams "Give your PFs HUGE distribution!"   Good Luck.

Thanks for all the helpful information. It is much appreciated.

I agree with rogelio's advice on 0 for Tenny, Beller, and Hitchens and -2 for everyone else for 3pt shooting in player game plan.

I also agree you should only be practising Triangle and Zone at 20-25 and everything else at 0.

This is how I would have set your lineups:

PG - Tenney, Hitchens, Clark, Schuetz
SG - Beller, Hitchens, Clark, Schuetz
SF - Kincannon, Schuetz, Monn, Schank
PF- Keen, Schank, Duncan, Monn
C- Williams, Schank, Duncan, Monn

This is how I would have set the distribution in that game:

Recommended Distribution
Brent Tenney	7	Darrin Clark	5
Robert Beller	10	Abel Hitchens	9
Harold Kincannon	4	Lloyd Schuetz	10
Thomas Keen	11	Willian Schank	3
William Williams	13	Nelson Duncan	7

And Monn at 5 distribution

And I would have played 3-2 Zone at +1 for normal defense and 3-2 at +2 when winning late.

(All this for the game against St. John Fisher )

hughes, without putting some blanks in for those backups the engine picks randomly which will play where if both enter at same time (as often happens).

Whatever happens, just don't get discouraged. It takes time, a lot of time, to get HD down. The fun of the game is in the learning. I learn new stuff every season. It took me about 10 seasons of experience across my various teams to just get to a point where I felt my teams could compete. So you're ahead of where I was already. And there's always a coach willing to help

Many thanks, everyone. I actually played St. John Fisher again last night and thanks to the good advice on lineups/distros/etc, I was able to win this time. Also, the links to info on building a team and the zone defense were great reads and full of good information. 

Posted by dacj501 on 6/8/2014 2:20:00 PM (view original):
hughes, without putting some blanks in for those backups the engine picks randomly which will play where if both enter at same time (as often happens).

So you are saying if Hitchens and Clark come in at the same time, the SIM randomly decides who to put at PG and who to put at SG?  And if so... how do fix that?

SInce you all have been so helpful, could someone look at my game today vs Ithaca and give suggestions on what I could have done differently? Thanks.

Ignore the spread.  Utica was very likely to lose that game against a team with better team IQs and a couple good scoring threats. Things to think about:

• Doubleteams - Davis & Kirby - Davis' high passing & decent BH for a SF make it difficult to really like doubleteaming, but it's worth thinking about.  Those very high LP numbers would tempt me to set both to "If Leading Scorer", but there's no guarantee that would help much.
• Attacking a 2-3 - notice that Beller shot 50% from 3.  He's a liability on defense, but that efficiency tells me that you should have bumped him up to at least +1 and given more distro.  You shoot over a 2-3...if you can.  If 3 point shooters will shoot better than 40%, then let them jack it up!
• +/- in a 2-3 - Set to 0, that defense is already pretty strong on the interior.   Where you got beat is 1-3 and that makes sense when you play a negative 2-3.  Your guys might have done better at 0, maybe.
• One very sneak trick playing zone (but still totally legitimate) - leave the team set to 2-3 all day, wake up 30 minutes before the sim and switch to 3-2 (and play that at -3 or so) and doubleteam Davis & Kirby.  Hope that your human opponent never adjusted the offensive settings against a 3-2!

Had you done any or all of those, I'd still think your team was an underdog on the road.   So, don't worry about it.

Thanks rogelio