if you run a full court press and a fast break offense and you are facing a team that is clearly better, is it feasible to run a slow down offense? seems very counter intuitive but when i am out-manned typically i slow the game down.

please advise and thanks!

fastbreak does not support slowdown. i think you can set the setting but if so it definitely does nothing (or maybe you can't even set it, i forget). it is the only offense that doesn't support all 3 tempos.

running slowdown with press is absolutely fine. its just slowing down your offense, it has no bearing on the press side. i get it seems counter intuitive but its just not a problem in HD.

On my FB/press teams, I basically consider normal tempo the slow down option. Those teams are designed to go uptempo; I argue a *good* FB/press team is only really optimized, because of maximized possessions, when going uptempo. But this is annoying when considering how much stronger slowdown is in the game engine, it seems (clearly to me, anyway) to give teams advantages in FG% and avoiding turnovers that uptempo just never gets. But when my teams are rolling, I’d rather take my chances with uptempo than normal. I choose normal when my team has deficiencies, like not enough stamina, speed, or ballhandling, or as you say, I’m up against a team that is just stronger up and down the roster. Otherwise it’s uptempo all day.

i'm on the other side of that fence, by about 8 miles. uptempo fb/fcp is trash. decent scheme for lower end teams though i suppose.

Posted by gillispie on 4/4/2021 12:07:00 AM (view original):
i'm on the other side of that fence, by about 8 miles. uptempo fb/fcp is trash. decent scheme for lower end teams though i suppose.

LOL

Posted by shoe3 on 4/4/2021 12:39:00 AM (view original):

Posted by gillispie on 4/4/2021 12:07:00 AM (view original):
i'm on the other side of that fence, by about 8 miles. uptempo fb/fcp is trash. decent scheme for lower end teams though i suppose.

LOL

there's almost nothing this community misunderstands worse than fb/fcp. all the slowdowns run into it... all the uptempos run with it... what are you guys doing! seriously.

good evidence right here. an otherwise knowledgeable coach who like so many, when it comes to fb/fcp, is without a clue.

Posted by gillispie on 4/4/2021 2:05:00 AM (view original):

Posted by shoe3 on 4/4/2021 12:39:00 AM (view original):

Posted by gillispie on 4/4/2021 12:07:00 AM (view original):
i'm on the other side of that fence, by about 8 miles. uptempo fb/fcp is trash. decent scheme for lower end teams though i suppose.

LOL

there's almost nothing this community misunderstands worse than fb/fcp. all the slowdowns run into it... all the uptempos run with it... what are you guys doing! seriously.

good evidence right here. an otherwise knowledgeable coach who like so many, when it comes to fb/fcp, is without a clue.

I appreciate the feedback very much but am confused by your sentence above....slowdowns run into it....uptempo run with it....

this is my first season in this particular world and the team I chose ran fab/fcp so I’m trying to figure out if I want to make the painful change

Nobagel - I had a FCP team in Phelan and decided to switch my O to FB awhile back. I thought - perfect alignment of attributes. I had some really stellar players, but I crashed and burned. What I learned is, if you’ve got a full stable of players with great stamina and good IQs, it can be very tough to beat. But how often does that happen in HD? I’d say if you’re going to give it a shot - make sure you go 12 deep and have great STAM on your team. Those are the 2 most important factors BY FAR if running FB/FCP together. If you strike out on your top recruits, better to sign some lower-end guys who can eventually get their STAM to 80 or better than to take walkons. Also, very important to set up your depth chart properly, especially at PG, SG and SF. It seems to tax the Stam of the 1-3 more than PF or C. You ideally would want 5 or even 6 different players available to play PG and SG, IMO.

Posted by gillispie on 4/4/2021 2:05:00 AM (view original):

Posted by shoe3 on 4/4/2021 12:39:00 AM (view original):

Posted by gillispie on 4/4/2021 12:07:00 AM (view original):
i'm on the other side of that fence, by about 8 miles. uptempo fb/fcp is trash. decent scheme for lower end teams though i suppose.

LOL

there's almost nothing this community misunderstands worse than fb/fcp. all the slowdowns run into it... all the uptempos run with it... what are you guys doing! seriously.

good evidence right here. an otherwise knowledgeable coach who like so many, when it comes to fb/fcp, is without a clue.

I’ve run quite a bit of FB/Press at the D2 level. Uptempo is *unquestionably* optimal for that set, when the team is strong and properly constructed, ie when it is 12 deep and position balanced, there is ample stamina everywhere, and when you have good speed and ballhandling. Extra points when you’re plus on the ath and defense, but that’s more for overall being the superior team, which you want in general if you’re going to run uptempo.

Tempo’s role in this game has been poorly understood, I agree with that, and it’s mostly because it’s been so poorly implemented. The function has been primarily for fatigue, which is a horrible, one-dimensional gameplay choice, and naturally biases toward slowdown (since slowdown comes with only positive fatigue outcomes, and the reverse is true for uptempo). A FB/Press team built for it is the one team best capable of taking advantage of the secondary benefit of running uptempo for good teams, which is increased possessions. So as long as you’ve got the speed and ballhandling to not turn it over a ton, and the stamina to handle the stress, uptempo lessens the likelihood of a worse team beating you.

I think what Gillispie is saying is that another deep team that goes uptempo will be happy to go uptempo vs a non-optimized FB/FCP team and try to run them out of the gym, while a weaker team lacking depth that runs slow down will want to run away from an uptempo FB/FCP team. Hopefully I got that right, LOL.

Posted by nobagel69 on 4/4/2021 8:48:00 AM (view original):

Posted by gillispie on 4/4/2021 2:05:00 AM (view original):

Posted by shoe3 on 4/4/2021 12:39:00 AM (view original):

Posted by gillispie on 4/4/2021 12:07:00 AM (view original):
i'm on the other side of that fence, by about 8 miles. uptempo fb/fcp is trash. decent scheme for lower end teams though i suppose.

LOL

there's almost nothing this community misunderstands worse than fb/fcp. all the slowdowns run into it... all the uptempos run with it... what are you guys doing! seriously.

good evidence right here. an otherwise knowledgeable coach who like so many, when it comes to fb/fcp, is without a clue.

I appreciate the feedback very much but am confused by your sentence above....slowdowns run into it....uptempo run with it....

this is my first season in this particular world and the team I chose ran fab/fcp so I’m trying to figure out if I want to make the painful change

what i mean is, there's two major problems i see with fb/fcp in the wild. people running slowdown against it - like when facing it - when they have reasonable depth themselves. the short teams who are probably running slowdown, of course they should continue. its not uncommon to see even 11-12 deep man and zone teams running slowdown into fb/fcp teams, which IMO, is a massive gift to the fb/fcp team.

the flip side is fb/fcp teams running uptempo into reasonably deep opponents. i don't even like to run uptempo with 85 stamina and a perfect 12 man rotation against a 9 deep man team. but some folks like to, and i think that is a gray area. but its fairly normal to see fb/fcp teams running uptempo into 12 deep presses, 11 deep m2m, etc, and its just awful.

its important to note that fb/fcp is in general a somewhat overpowered scheme for lower end teams. by focusing on stamina and depth and just mediocrity elsewhere, you can punch far above your weight. these teams should run normal tempo (against reasonable depth), but even running uptempo, they are still often in a pretty good spot - because their starting point (fb/fcp with depth) punches well above its weight already. so, im not saying uptempo fb/fcp teams can't be good. just that uptempo fb/fcp is trash compared to normal fb/fcp across the entire spectrum of competitive play (let's call that NT bound teams or so in d1 and whatever is similar in the much less populated d2/d3).

The most important thing to note in ALL of this, is that gil has a one track mind for D1. With that in mind, I'm not "against" what he is saying. I'm still on the fence and learning some things. But one thing I've clearly learned is that fb/press uptempo at D1 is much different that fb/press uptempo at the D2 level.

At D2, if I have a Man or Zone team and I'm up against a fp/press team that runs uptempo, I'm going to run slowdown 100% of the time. I've ruined the seasons of many teams that way. Fb/press teams that have had 80+ ATH/DEF/ST as a team average with 12 deep. Slowdown Man or Zone vs uptempo fb/press can be kryptonite! On the other hand, if I have the 80+ ATH/DEF/ST fb/press team, and I'm expecting Slowdown from a Man or Zone opponent, I always go normal.

Now at D1, it seems to me it's different. I'll have a great fb/press team and I see an 8 player Man or Zone team up next and my mouth starts to water! Then I proceed to get crushed and it's very irritating. I'm still working on finding out what works and doesn't work in D1. But it's very different with each division.

Factoring in which division one is talking about, is very important for this topic

How relevant is this debate over normal vs uptempo to teams running only fastbreak with man/zone D?

shoe - when it comes to matters of substance about the actual game (how to recruit, coach, etc) - you are doubtlessly one of the best posters on these boards. your information tends to be very good and you bring a non typical perspective which i think is fantastic.

this one though really misses the mark. you say fb/fcp is unquestionably better with uptempo, but that is tremendously wrong. the pace of fb/fcp normal tempo is so insanely high already, that it is virtually impossible to exceed the range where increased depth adds major value. 85 stamina with a perfect 12 man rotation is not at that point, that's the best i've had personally, and foul trouble and fatigue both remain serious issues at normal tempo.

meanwhile, the opponents range the spectrum. some will have substantial problems against a fb/fcp normal tempo, others have the depth and can handle the high pace fine. there's a messy middle there, but in short, the way things work out is pretty simple. the teams who already struggled facing fb/fcp normal tempo, they struggle more against uptempo, and both sides (yours and theirs) take a meaningful hit on matters of depth. maybe that tradeoff is worth it, maybe its not, and probably its situational.

on the other side, there's the teams who can handle facing fb/fcp normal tempo pretty well. there's a bunch of these, and what i always found is, if you are facing some 11 deep man team who can take your fb/fcp tempo like a champ, going uptempo is not on average causing them much trouble. a big part of the reason fb/fcp (and press by itself) are so powerful is because they possess the means to take advantage of all of the depth they have, while man and zone get vastly less value in that season from their 11th and 12th men. similarly but conversely, increasing the tempo on those reasonably deep man and zone teams is not going to hit them that hard, and for the really deep ones, it barely touched them. yet it always is a meaningful hit for the fb/fcp. in this case, the tradeoff is clear - its worse for the fb/fcp team - and the better the fb/fcp team, the more foul and fatigue trouble matters, and the more clearly worse it is (when you say its the really good fb/fcp teams you uptempo with, and the ones with deficiencies you run normal with, you have it 100% backwards).

fb/fcp is the ultimate high pace scheme, but that counter intuitively makes it the absolute least viable scheme to run uptempo with against quality NT teams (top 20 maybe, for d1 levels of competition), because the fb/fcp team is virtually always taking the bigger foul/fatigue hit against teams of depth. if one wants to use uptempo situationally, i think that's reasonable enough, but the expectation should be that most quality NT teams are going to have too much depth for uptempo to work out favorably. literally, there is no other combination in this game i would be less likely to run uptempo with in a NT game against a quality opponent.

even straight press has all the same issues, and for all the same reasons, i rarely run uptempo there - especially at the highest level! all the huge title favorite teams i've had have basically all been straight press, its always been my main line, and its like 100% normal tempo all NT. its more viable when you aren't a favorite, so concerned about foul and fatigue trouble. also, the man and zone teams with solid depth need to think about running higher tempo against press and especially fb/fcp teams, because the increased foul and fatigue trouble almost always favors you (there are other considerations - i'm not saying just to start running uptempo into these teams all the time - but at least to think about it!).

quick note for anyone who does try running the higher tempo into these press and fb/fcp teams - when things go bad for you, they tend to go REALLY bad. these are the times when foul/fatigue wise the press team gets lucky and has no trouble and then they are like insanely good, and then you might have gotten bit by it yourself, and you just get like 25 TOs and lose by 30 and its like OMG. but don't be too scared by those cases. you were going to lose all those games anyway at a lower tempo, when the depth-utilizing teams (press, fb/fcp) don't get hit by foul/fatigue they tend to be pretty OP.

i've had an agenda to address this tempo topic for a while... apologize for the length and its only shoe-directed because it happened to be that way. its really just a writeup of my thoughts on an imbalance i've been trying to address for the past couple months (the misunderstanding around press tempo and how it works for and against both sides)