So this is in Knight D2, and this is the first season with all My players.

The good things I have going for me are fantastic scoring with 3 great shooters at 99 PE all seniors with two young guys at 84 (will be 99) and 76(still blue hopefully will be 99). Great inside scoring with LP a 97 senior , 95 junior, and 82 junior. Grote (love that name btw) and Nixon both find ways to score with what I am assuming is ATH. And Marti is my worst option but I bet he still could score if need be. I have great depth with 11 players ( 8 upperclassmen) that can play (excluding my RS) and a ST of 81. I also have the #6 durability rating in D2 but nobody really cares about that but I am fairly certain that Nixon and Oliver are never going to get hurt . I have a series of decent BH with 5 guys over 60, and good passing out of my two PG. I have pretty good DE, especially out of my starters, the overall team rating is hurt by Oram with 30 but he is still improving. Great IQ with 8 A's of some sort, 1 B-B+, and 2 B- -B.

The bad is I have average ATH. I have average SPD though all of my guards are pretty good. I don't have good overall REB though my two centers Zbinden, (love that name too, his first name is Boris) Grote are good and Todd and Marti aren't bad. Besides Zbinden I don't have good SB, maybe Grote counts at 74 but idk. My team passing needs work and I'm putting in a lot of minutes to anybody who still has room to grow.

I did a lot of my bad/good/great decisions based off of the team ratings rankings, looking at the top 25 in each category for D2 and seeing if my team was in it and if so where.

So I know I probably missed some major flaw in my analysis, but should I temper my expectations? Or do I have a decent chance to go somewhere in the NT? We are 8-4 with 2 OT losses and 1 close regulation game that combined deficit is a total of 6 points, all to good teams. I got blown out by CSU Domingez Hills, which is basically my team on steroids. I changed my lineup after my loss to Hawaii at Hilo, going with Nixon instead of Hoppe at the 3, I think I had to much shooting going on at one time with all 3 of my great shooters starting, I have won every game since and my FG%, and 3pt% have gone up, so I think that worked. I beat #4 RPI Shippinsburg U somehow, and I beat two other top 35 teams. I have a easy conference schedule with the only real challenge being Western Oregon who I finnaly beat in the conference tournament last season to go to the NT after being 0-11 against them. I will be at best 25-4 and at worst 22-7, with a decent SOS. I will hopefully get a decent Seed. My guess is sweet 16, maybe a little hopeful.

So there is all of it, what has been going through my crazy little mind, I have had a lot of time to think about this with the 30 inches of snow leaving me trapped inside my house for the past week. Anybody that has read all of that I applaud you for your determination and assume you have had as much spare time as I have this past week.

https://www.whatifsports.com/hd/TeamProfile/Ratings.aspx?tid=13367

Have you considered starting Oliver at SF and Todd and Grote at the post positions, and using your solid rebounding SFs to help make up the hole in the depth chart at PF?

I considered it, but putting Oliver at the 3 and Todd at the 4 would be sacrificing defense and passing for rebounding. Also, Oliver isn't really a 3. I guess it might be better to get that extra rebounding but idk.

I doubt you are making a huge run because you will play against faster and more athletical teams, but if I was you, I'd bomb away on uptempo. I'd set my 3pts shooting to +2 and let me three per players bomb away. Under 20 attempts, is not Central way of doing things. And I would hope to get 30 attempts. Second, why are you running so many -3 defensive sets? Carter would be +1 threes, and Oram would be 0.

I would go small ball.

But honestly, your offense is your only chance. And the defensive Knight teams will get to you if you do not go crazy on scoring. If you had better BH, I'd give you a chance to reach the Sweet Sixteen. I am seeing you as a first round lost or a second round if your offense click.

I guess I might try experimenting with my 3pt settings since my conference schedule isn't very strong, I was not getting great percentages early in the season 3pt wise so I tempered it a bit, but that might have been a factor of good opposing defense. I have been playing some -3 and similar settings to make up for some rebounding deficiencies, I have not played many good 3pt shooting teams as well so there wasn't a need to go positive, maybe I'm looking at that the wrong way. I will try upping my 3pt setting for my next game today and see how it goes.

It didn't really work that well for this game, I went 6-15 (40%) from 3, against a 3-2 zone team in -2 positioning. The game went to OT but we ended up winning by 8, overcoming a 8 point deficit at halftime. I had the big 3 at +1, Carter at 0, and Oram at -1. I'll move it up to +2, +1, and 0 like you said I should.

How far of a run are you thinking of?

If not already I'd put Spaulding @ +2 and Hoppe+Hedlund at +1 if not +2.  They have good LP, but since they are weak ath/def and the majority of your team is I'd try to hit as many 3's as possible.  Throw Carter at +1/+2 as well but he is a minor offensive weapon atm.

Make sure Oliver gets his distro his scoring is really good with that ath/lp/bh.

That being said with the roster I think it depends on the bracket, if its a tough bracket you won't get past the 2nd round.  If it isn't super hard you could make a S16 run if you hit enough threes, but it would be tough.

I hate Nixon at the SF.  I'd like to move Oliver to SF if you want to go big and put Todd at PF.  Zbiden is backup C and Nixon moves to backup PF.

Set Marti to 0 off the bench along with Nixon, Oram.  The only people off the bench shooting should be Hope and Todd heavy and Carter lightly, no one else should have any distro off the bench.

I am thinking sweet sixteen.

I'm just starting to move up the 3pt settings, I went 6-15 as I said earlier, I moved it up even more for this next game.

By that you mean on par with Spaulding, Hoppe, and Hedlund right?

I agree with that.

That seems to be what people are thinking I should do so I will try that.

You don't like Oram? I think that he has a good combo of SP/BH/PE, he is performing well with 57%FG and 45.5%FG3. Nixon is at 50%FG as well, so I don't think a reduction is needed. It's not hurting me if they are making a good percentage of shots right?

Monster : It could be your distro too. I don't know how you set up your distro but getting 15 threes up means a bad distro... Check out Lander..

https://www.whatifsports.com/hd/TeamProfile/Ratings.aspx?tid=6368

12 games in and he already has 327 attempts from three points shooting range.

I had a similar team one season and made the elite eight.

I saw a FB/PRESS team at Greensboro get over 600 threes in DIII...

It dépends on your distro for sure.

And you have a fun type of team. Shooting teams are always tough to build into a winner but even if you do not win, it's a fun team.

Posted by MonsterTurtl on 1/29/2016 7:16:00 PM (view original):
I am thinking sweet sixteen.

I'm just starting to move up the 3pt settings, I went 6-15 as I said earlier, I moved it up even more for this next game.

By that you mean on par with Spaulding, Hoppe, and Hedlund right?

I agree with that.

That seems to be what people are thinking I should do so I will try that.

You don't like Oram? I think that he has a good combo of SP/BH/PE, he is performing well with 57%FG and 45.5%FG3. Nixon is at 50%FG as well, so I don't think a reduction is needed. It's not hurting me if they are making a good percentage of shots right?

S16 is possible.

Since Olvier is a SF/PF you will have to give him a bigger distro to match with your guards since guards take more shots in the engine with the same distro.

Oram is too young.  They may not be hurting you but Hope and Todd should be able to do much more off the bench with a bigger distro their potential is better than "just not hurting"  They can't put up double digit points like Hope and Todd should be doing off the bench consistently.

Posted by zorzii on 1/29/2016 7:28:00 PM (view original):
Monster : It could be your distro too. I don't know how you set up your distro but getting 15 threes up means a bad distro... Check out Lander..

https://www.whatifsports.com/hd/TeamProfile/Ratings.aspx?tid=6368

12 games in and he already has 327 attempts from three points shooting range.

I had a similar team one season and made the elite eight.

I saw a FB/PRESS team at Greensboro get over 600 threes in DIII...

It dépends on your distro for sure.

And you have a fun type of team. Shooting teams are always tough to build into a winner but even if you do not win, it's a fun team.

I have distro set up with all of my six stud scorers at 3, and the rest at 1 or 0. I also have inside scoring that I would like to use, maybe that's the wrong strategy?... One thing that I think is hurting me is that it's a motion, man to man, I am not getting the same amount of shots that I would get in a fastbreak, Press setting.

Posted by the0nlyis on 1/29/2016 9:38:00 PM (view original):

Posted by MonsterTurtl on 1/29/2016 7:16:00 PM (view original):
I am thinking sweet sixteen.

I'm just starting to move up the 3pt settings, I went 6-15 as I said earlier, I moved it up even more for this next game.

By that you mean on par with Spaulding, Hoppe, and Hedlund right?

I agree with that.

That seems to be what people are thinking I should do so I will try that.

You don't like Oram? I think that he has a good combo of SP/BH/PE, he is performing well with 57%FG and 45.5%FG3. Nixon is at 50%FG as well, so I don't think a reduction is needed. It's not hurting me if they are making a good percentage of shots right?

S16 is possible.

Since Olvier is a SF/PF you will have to give him a bigger distro to match with your guards since guards take more shots in the engine with the same distro.

Oram is too young.  They may not be hurting you but Hope and Todd should be able to do much more off the bench with a bigger distro their potential is better than "just not hurting"  They can't put up double digit points like Hope and Todd should be doing off the bench consistently.

Ahh ok will do

He is a redshirt freshman, so he is the same class as Carter. Makes sense.

This game is more like it. Thx for the help guys.

https://www.whatifsports.com/hd/GameResults/BoxScore.aspx?gid=12813289

Got robbed on my seed, my record was better than a 9 seed. Should havd been like a 6, that will hurt.

Posted by MonsterTurtl on 2/7/2016 6:59:00 PM (view original):
Got robbed on my seed, my record was better than a 9 seed. Should havd been like a 6, that will hurt.

Never go by RPI.  The projection report is what determines your seeding.  You were 32 on the PR so you could have been an 8-seed instead of a 9...but definitely not a 6 seed.