I'm a second year owner of Cal Tech in the IBA world. I had a fairly strong initial season, taking a team to the NT that hadn't been in a while and had, what I thought was a good recruiting session, picking up mostly juco guys projected for Div II. My overall rating is 13th in all of Div III (though i acknowledge I'd be lower if just ranked on Spd and Ath) and I've been favored in 11 of my 12 games and was pre-season top 20, yet i'm 6-6 against an average schedule of mostly SIMs. I've lost games to teams I was favored to beat by 21 and 34 points.

The outcomes of my games seem quite arbitrary (a little bit of that is ok IMO). I understand upsets happen, but this is happening at an alarming pace. I do game plan each game, but must be doing something very wrong. Can't see continuing if there is going to be this much arbitrariness (if that's a word). Is anyone else experiencing this? Any ideas?

I'm sure someone will come along and give you more detailed suggestions but I took a quick glance while at work and have a couple thoughts.

I would move your two starting post players to the bench. Muncie has much better athleticism and rebounding than Farmer and is a better C.

Lewellen is really bad and should be swapped out for someone else. His athleticism and defense are way too low to be a good starter. I would consider starting Steed at PF and also having him as your top backup at SF. I would then put Gurganus as your first PF sub. I know both of them have worse defensive IQ than Lewellen but it's worth the trade off to move him down the bench.

One of the downsides of playing "plus" defense is poor defensive rebounding. The changes I suggested above should help your rebounding quite a bit.

Hopefully that helps and I hope you stick with the game. Feel free to PM me with any questions that aren't specific to d3 recruiting. Haven't played d3 in quite a while.

Took another look and wanted to amend one of my suggestions. I would play Steed exclusively at PF and have Gurganus get some minutes at SF off the bench. The reason is that Gurganus is your best passer and Steed is really bad at it. Also, Gurganus has better speed than Steed. Gurganus will get more use out of his skills at SF imo. Don't worry about his Perimeter being low. Just set his 3 pt tendency at -2 so he's not taking 3s.

Also, don't pay attention to the listed position. It's only the ratings that matter and you have a few players that could play multiple positions.

You're taking way too many 3s. Set everyone to -2 except Wickman. I'd prob set him to -1 or 0.

McFall has decent Ath/Spd/Def but 49 pass is really poor for a PG. Davin could potentially be the better choice there if you need some better PG play.

Wickman is SLOW for a SG and has poor BH. He's more of a SF in my mind. I might go with Dav at PG and McFall at SG. Long could be backup PG.

Start Muncie at C and Farmer at PF. They are your two best Post defenders and Reb. Try to maximize their minutes.

You could have a line up like this

PG - Davin
SG - McFall
SF- Wickman
PF- Farmer
C- Muncie

Put Horton as backup SF and PF. Make sure he gets a lot of minutes too. Since your other backup bigs are poor, he might help you with some Reb and Def there but has nice ball skills for a SF too.

Lewellan is bad. Bury him in your lineup.

Thank you both very much. I have been dialing back the 3's a bit, but I'm surprised you'd recommend curtailing it so much. I've always viewed 35% from 3 like >50% from 2. I am going to back it off further though as I really agree with the other suggestions, so trust you on this.

I read on these forums that Spd and Ath were really important, but I did so (relatively) well last year with slow unathletic guys last year that I allowed myself to be blinded by high LP numbers with Lewellan (now buried).

Im going to mix and match with McFall at SG and Wickman at SF. Agree with more minutes at 3 for Gurganus and will spread Steed between SF and PF.

Thanks again. Hopefully I can salvage the season.

Yeah take a look at other top teams, they probably won't have mediocre shooters taking 3s. Probably have just a couple guys taking all their 3s.

One thing to think about is that you're more likely to draw fouls taking 2s. And since fouling is totally unrealistic and can be exploited in HD, it makes a lot of sense (at least to me) to take 2s to induce fouling versus chucking up 3s that have a low chance of going in.

And yes, SPD and ATH are important. But you play M2M. Speed helps a lot more in press than in M2M where you need Def moreso. Lewellen has 10 Def. He's probably getting destroyed on the defensive end and you might not notice it right away.

You could get away with lack of other attributes like Per/BH/Pass if you have SUPERIOR ath/spd/def but yours are just average, to be honest. If you had guards with 60 ath, 80 spd, he'd probably score for you without good per/bh. Yours are just a tad low unfortunately. But I think with some tweaks and changes, you will be okay. You have enough there to work with.

I didn't consider the fouling aspect - that makes some sense to me.

Recruiting question - all else equal, do you prefer the kid with higher Spd/Ath or higher skill (Per/BH/P)?

It's about the makeup of your team. You've got to create synergy out there. That question can only be answered based off what the rest of your team looks like (in theory). But now I will generalize.

D2 Generalizing - I'll take the SPD/ATH guy UNLESS he's just filthy with BH/P. Then that's a guy I am willing to sacrifice on the defensive end, in order to run my offense. I value BH/P, absolutely, but as long as I have a couple of guys that can run the point, the rest of my guys I'd rather focus on ath/spd/def. But I don't want anyone that is TERRIBLE at really anything.

D2 Examples

Evan Towles is my back up PG. He's not a stud athletically speaking, but he's a pretty solid pg and I am happy to have him run things next season.
David Ryder this guy I'm not thrilled with, as you can see by the rest of my roster his athleticism is far lower than I'd want. If I could go back I'm not sure I would sign him, but he will be an okay guy to come off the bench. He can distribute and is solid offensively
Paul Brzozowski is similar to towles, he will end up with pretty darn good BH/P, but his ath/def isn't great, but he's not TERRIBLE at anything, while doing a couple of things very well.

Now here are some of the stud guards.

Nick Hunt
Christopher Sheeley
Bryan Riggio

I wouldn't give away any of these guys for someone in that first group - but I HAVE to have two true point guards to go with these guys. If I don't have two PG's I am comfortable enough that's what I am recruiting for. I'm looking for someone out of that first group. Well, Hunt is a legit PG and Ryder kind of sucks - but hopefully you catch my drift.

There are plenty of d2 recruits that have similar ath/def, but much lower bh/p. For me, I'm not willing to take ATH/SPD/DEF and terrible B/P. I would much rather have a guard be good at ath/spd/def/bh/p than have a guard who is has great ath/spd/def and terrible bh/p. But the key there is GOOD, not AVERAGE.

I threw a couple of tangents in there, and frankly almost deleted this, but hopefully there's something worth taking away in there. It's a fun game, give it a go. A lot of these gents are really solid people and make this game fun. I would suggest finding a patient mentor, and sending him or her a lot of PM's. That's what I did. I doubt I'd still be playing if it wasn't for him. Funny enough we are playing each other tonight in the final four!

Posted by Benis on 1/10/2017 2:08:00 PM (view original):
You're taking way too many 3s. Set everyone to -2 except Wickman. I'd prob set him to -1 or 0.

McFall has decent Ath/Spd/Def but 49 pass is really poor for a PG. Davin could potentially be the better choice there if you need some better PG play.

Wickman is SLOW for a SG and has poor BH. He's more of a SF in my mind. I might go with Dav at PG and McFall at SG. Long could be backup PG.

Start Muncie at C and Farmer at PF. They are your two best Post defenders and Reb. Try to maximize their minutes.

You could have a line up like this

PG - Davin
SG - McFall
SF- Wickman
PF- Farmer
C- Muncie

Put Horton as backup SF and PF. Make sure he gets a lot of minutes too. Since your other backup bigs are poor, he might help you with some Reb and Def there but has nice ball skills for a SF too.

Lewellan is bad. Bury him in your lineup.

This is really solid stuff. I'd really consider implementing everything Benis wrote.

FWIW I would probably go -1 with Davin and 0 with Wickman (especially if he's at SF).

If you haven't already done so I would read the pinned "How to win at D2 and D3" thread. That should give you a good idea on what level of ath/spd you should be targeting and how to think about building a balanced roster.

Ath/spd are very important because they enhance the other ratings. Some people have won at D3 just by recruiting ATH and DEF at the expense of everything else but I don't recommend going that way. However, you should absolutely try to get players with a certain level of ath/spd (the pinned thread explains this). The problem with players like Lewellen is that he will always be going against players who are more athletic which can affect his ability to get open (plus his biggest liability is defense). I am a decent perimeter shooter in real life but would be worthless in a college game because I have zero athleticism or speed and could never shake loose from my defender. That said, skills are still important and you should try to get players whose skills complement each other.

Defense is very important for every position and you should try not to start a major liability. Athleticism enhances a players defense and speed helps with forcing turnovers.

Posted by carlport on 1/10/2017 11:17:00 PM (view original):
I didn't consider the fouling aspect - that makes some sense to me.

Recruiting question - all else equal, do you prefer the kid with higher Spd/Ath or higher skill (Per/BH/P)?

This is hard to answer in absolute terms. It depends. Ignoring the Offense/Defense element for the moment...

Like thinair is talking about, having a good team makeup or synergy is more important than just spd/ath vs per/bh/pass.

Basically you need to look at your players and understand their strengths and weaknesses. All players should have a role and something their good at. It could be 3pt shooting, passing, rebounding, defense, etc. The great thing about D3 (IMHO) is that you need to take a bunch of flawed players and put them together in a way that you can take advantage of their strengths from a total team standpoint.

One of the biggest mistakes I see new coaches make is that they get a bunch of players that are basically all the same. They're average in ath/spd/reb/def and aren't GREAT at anything. For example, look at your guy Steed. He's in the 40s across the board. Not terrible but not great. A lot of new coaches will get 3 players like that and then don't know what to do with them. They're pretty much made for the same position and don't have clear defined roles on the team.

So when recruiting players, ask yourself what role do you want them to fill. You want to have a balanced team if possible. A PG with good ball skills, a SG that can score, a SF that is an elite ATH/DEF or is a guard that can score, bigs that are either elite rebounders or ATH/REB/BLK or scoring. If you have a team full of just athletic defenders then you won't be able to score. If you have just all Per shooting and LP scoring then you can't defend or rebound. Now - to be fair - I'd take a team with elite SOMETHING versus average in everything. But that team might not get very deep in the tourney.

You can have some combination of these types of players and there are many ways to win but you need to figure out what your team identity is going to be.

Thanks again for the solid advice. I did make most of the changes mentioned here or at least shaded in that direction and, lo and behold, went out and beat the #15 team (and conference leader).

Since you guys have been great, two more general questions:

1) Offensively - how do you typically treat tempo adjustments?
2) Defensively - what's your view on halftime adjustments? Seems like SIMs making a lot of adjustments (at least against me) and they seem to be having good effects for them.

In general I try to limit the number of decisions that the game makes on my behalf. A lot of times the sim makes stupid decisions and I generally trust my own judgment over that of the sim.

1. I go slow down and uptempo in the end of game situations but never at halftime. Since tempo impacts fatigue letting the sim change your fatigue at halftime will change your substitution patterns.

2. I almost never change my positioning at halftime for the above reasons. I trust my judgment and instincts over the sim. When I was starting out I often allowed the sim to change my positioning but I came to see that as a mistake. I could see the argument for doing this when you're learning if you're really not sure about your game plan or want to see how your team plays on a different setting. But in general I think it's a bad idea.

Agree with not adjusting at half.

I can usually tell what the other team is going to do. Sims are very predictable on # of 3 pointers and most humans stick to same type of pattern (more 3s vs 2-3 than M2M) so I'm usually not too surprised by # of 3s that are shot against me... but it can happen I suppose.

Also, I believe it adjusts only by 3s and doesn't take into account anything else. Maybe I'm trying to get more rebounding by going minus. Maybe I'm worried about fouling so I want to only go -2 even though the other team never shoots 3s. If it adjusts to -4 at half, it could really screw me in fouling, for example.

Posted by Benis on 1/11/2017 5:51:00 PM (view original):
Agree with not adjusting at half.

I can usually tell what the other team is going to do. Sims are very predictable on # of 3 pointers and most humans stick to same type of pattern (more 3s vs 2-3 than M2M) so I'm usually not too surprised by # of 3s that are shot against me... but it can happen I suppose.

Also, I believe it adjusts only by 3s and doesn't take into account anything else. Maybe I'm trying to get more rebounding by going minus. Maybe I'm worried about fouling so I want to only go -2 even though the other team never shoots 3s. If it adjusts to -4 at half, it could really screw me in fouling, for example.

This. This is exactly what seems to happen. I won't go as far to say that I've never done better from a halftime adjustment OR that I wouldn't have done better with a halftime adjustment. But I will say that the tide of the game has turned against me many more times than not when I've allowed the sim to adjust at halftime. I also won't go as far as to say that 3's are the only shots the sim considers to be perimeter shots, but I think it places an inordinant amount of value on 3's compared to Non-Paint 2 point shots and that can lead to a shift when it's absolutely the last thing that should be done.