Posted by crazyivan on 3/12/2011 10:35:00 PM (view original):
rebounds - we don't need no stinking rebounds.

rollins national d2 rankings
offensive ranks
4th in scoring, 91.7/game.
1st in assists, 20.5/game.
1st in steals, 13.7/game.

defensive ranks
1st in turnovers, 24.9/game.

so, we'll give the opposition their +7 rebounding differential.

mr. established d3 (dahsdebater) - i'll tell my athletic director to expect your call - we'll hold you a spot in our exhibition season.

You're actually lucky we're not in the same world, 'cause Rochester would kick your ***.  And we're not even in the top 15 in Knight D3.

Ivan, you were given a perfectly rational reason for the loss and it's right there in the box score.  You went +3 and flat out got out-rebounded. By playing him +3 with what is essentially a 4 guard lineup, he was able to control the middle. simmie had better shooters all around than you and a big rebounding advantage (nearly 20 points subtracting the walkons). In general, I'd say you were lucky it was a sim or you might have lost one of those other games on an 3-4-5 inside matchup. I mean, come on, you only had one starter on the floor with any rebounding and he's only a 62. I'm frankly surprised you get more than 20 boards per game with that team. Petway actually had 5 rebounds, with 2 rebounding playing PF, he must have had the ball fall in his hands.

I also noticed that in your second game you fouled 3 of his guys out, that's great, but with that +3 and his big inside advantage, your guards were fouling like crazy to get back to the scorers and instead you had 3 guys foul out. That will make a big differance.

I wouldn't put too much into those national rankings either. They are pretty much meaningless unless you are playing in a full conference. When you play nearly 2/3 of your schedule vs. sims and new coachs, you are going to get some pretty gaudy stats with even an average team. With SOS of 161, your team was playing alot of patsies and lost to all the top 100 teams you played (which is what probably brought your SOS below 200 and rpi below 100 ironicly enough).

A final note to consider, PR-C actually had more improvement throughout the season than Rollins with their starting SF improving 65 pts. You played them early and those improvements meant you weren't playing the same team a month later. You take away both your walkons and PR-C is actually 6 OVR better than Rollins (which was close to the improvement differential). That being said, you did well with a 0, which is how you should play a sim generally, +3 actually played to his strengths.

Like you said, you have a decent team for a C+ prestige, but you have to realize that in itself tells you that it is pretty average and upsets will occur. If you don't like my analysis, I'm afraid I can't play you, I'm not in Smith sadly.

Posted by crazyivan on 3/12/2011 9:02:00 PM (view original):
overall team rating does mean nothing - especially with 2 walkons and a jr with a very low WE. that tends to drag down the overall team rating. but look at the avg core ratings (for fb/fcp) - ath, spd, de, bh & pa...60, 54, 59, 46 & 44 - for a c+ d2 team, that ain't bad...take out the walkons & the low WE jr and add 5+ to those averages.
yes, maybe i overthought the conf championship game - but how many of you have beaten the same team (sim or human) 3 times in a season?
still, go ahead and schedule rollins next season - at least the exhibitions, while i still have an upperclass to compete.

Most decent human coaches have no problem beating the same sim team 3 times in a season...  And the same human-coached team isn't all that hard if you have more talent than they do...  I've gone 16-0 and won the CT twice at Rochester and I'm not even a good coach.  A really good coach in as weak a conference as the Knight Upstate would do that every other season or more.

What I'm seeing in this thread is interesting.  A lot of vets are discouraging the + defense, which I think is fine, although I don't consider +3 an extreme defense as some have suggested.  I actually play +3 or  +2 quite often, and have done ok for myself with it, maybe it just goes to show that there are many ways to win.

What I find, maybe a little ironic, is that we get lots of threads with complaining about the 3 point %s being too high, and then we get a thread like this one, where most seem to discourage the + defenses??

after winning two games and playing a SIM - which means the opponent is not going to change his game plan, I think its extreme to move to +3 ... maybe +1 to fight the threes, but reb would be a worry

against a human coach different thinking would be needed - might go +3 if one thought the opponent likely would commit to tons to threes - even then I'd lean towrd +2 or +1

what he said.

Posted by hitman1979 on 3/13/2011 11:15:00 AM (view original):
What I'm seeing in this thread is interesting.  A lot of vets are discouraging the + defense, which I think is fine, although I don't consider +3 an extreme defense as some have suggested.  I actually play +3 or  +2 quite often, and have done ok for myself with it, maybe it just goes to show that there are many ways to win.

What I find, maybe a little ironic, is that we get lots of threads with complaining about the 3 point %s being too high, and then we get a thread like this one, where most seem to discourage the + defenses??

Ivan - your +3 defense call was correct.   (Tempo not so).  Many of these "experts" adding their opinion have still not adjusted to the mentality of this new engine.  A +3 defense is BY NO MEANS extreme in this engine.   My DII team uses it often.    Too many coaches are slow to react to HD engine changes.  This is a perfect example.

thanks for the positive and constructive (negative) comments. i've been listening to the 'experts' over the years and have tried to take their comments to heart. i played +2 and +3 a few times this season and was burned only in the conference championship game - once again, i accept that my gameplan was flawed.
when the experts tell you that uptempo is the only way to play fb, i listened - but still went normal tempo in games we were the underdog.

so criticize my gameplan - but stop criticizing my team. i recruit players that will sign with a c+ team - and have been burned in recruiting battles. why do you think i had 2 walk-ons? i spent over 14k on 1 recruit last season and lost out to a d2 sim team - even after having a full letter grade advantage (c+ to d+). and a couple of seasons before that, spent over 13k on a recruit less than 400 miles away to human coached team - c- (me) to c+ (them) even after spending almost 6k more than him. yes, i ******* to admin - and their response was 'that was one of the closest recruiting battles we've ever had'.
so 2 seasons - out of 4 - getting the short end of the recruiting stick resulted in this seasons rollins team. we went 15-1 in conference, the best rollins has done in 20 seasons.
i'm proud of our record and the national statistical rankings we achieved.
we played the teams on our schedule. we challenged better opponents, but as in real life - they usually won't play more than 1 or 2 c+ teams a season. they don't want to risk their rpi's, either.

as to the d3 geniuses out there, it's really sad that you talk trash when only two or three teams in your conference stay year after year. the rest leave for better teams (higher rated d3 and d2 teams). but with new d3 coaches to fill your conference schedule year in and year out, it's easy to be the big fish in a very, very small pond.

really hard to take you bashing d3 coaches seriously when your only D3 team went backwards in prestige. 

Posted by mullycj on 3/13/2011 4:51:00 PM (view original):

Posted by hitman1979 on 3/13/2011 11:15:00 AM (view original):
What I'm seeing in this thread is interesting.  A lot of vets are discouraging the + defense, which I think is fine, although I don't consider +3 an extreme defense as some have suggested.  I actually play +3 or  +2 quite often, and have done ok for myself with it, maybe it just goes to show that there are many ways to win.

What I find, maybe a little ironic, is that we get lots of threads with complaining about the 3 point %s being too high, and then we get a thread like this one, where most seem to discourage the + defenses??

Ivan - your +3 defense call was correct.   (Tempo not so).  Many of these "experts" adding their opinion have still not adjusted to the mentality of this new engine.  A +3 defense is BY NO MEANS extreme in this engine.   My DII team uses it often.    Too many coaches are slow to react to HD engine changes.  This is a perfect example.

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with you on this one, mully. If you look at his team it has no rebounding as it is, pulling them away from the ball just gave the sim (who was just as good inside as out (677-1724 attempts, 257-792 makes means over 525 of their makes were not from three) a bigger rebounding advantage AND caused (IMHO)  his guys to foul out because they didn't have position to guard the inside guys (like you might expect). PR-C might warrent a +1, but the further the defended out, the more problems PR-C could cause. I'm not saying it is an extreme defense, but with the personell involved, it invited an upset.

And Ivan, you can't realisticly say with one hand that you have had problems and don't have the personell then complain when people point that out. It sucks that you lost some of those battles, but it happens to all of us. Mully liked the move, I didn't care for it, either way they are opinions and that is what you asked for. Don't get ****** when someone points out the obvious flaws in your team when you yourself admit they are of a certain quality and limited due to prestige and circumstances.

I've never seen any relevance with +/- defense and rebounding in this current engine. At least not enough to make it a consideration when choosing defenses.

Posted by crazyivan on 3/13/2011 8:54:00 PM (view original):
thanks for the positive and constructive (negative) comments. i've been listening to the 'experts' over the years and have tried to take their comments to heart. i played +2 and +3 a few times this season and was burned only in the conference championship game - once again, i accept that my gameplan was flawed.
when the experts tell you that uptempo is the only way to play fb, i listened - but still went normal tempo in games we were the underdog.

so criticize my gameplan - but stop criticizing my team. i recruit players that will sign with a c+ team - and have been burned in recruiting battles. why do you think i had 2 walk-ons? i spent over 14k on 1 recruit last season and lost out to a d2 sim team - even after having a full letter grade advantage (c+ to d+). and a couple of seasons before that, spent over 13k on a recruit less than 400 miles away to human coached team - c- (me) to c+ (them) even after spending almost 6k more than him. yes, i ******* to admin - and their response was 'that was one of the closest recruiting battles we've ever had'.
so 2 seasons - out of 4 - getting the short end of the recruiting stick resulted in this seasons rollins team. we went 15-1 in conference, the best rollins has done in 20 seasons.
i'm proud of our record and the national statistical rankings we achieved.
we played the teams on our schedule. we challenged better opponents, but as in real life - they usually won't play more than 1 or 2 c+ teams a season. they don't want to risk their rpi's, either.

as to the d3 geniuses out there, it's really sad that you talk trash when only two or three teams in your conference stay year after year. the rest leave for better teams (higher rated d3 and d2 teams). but with new d3 coaches to fill your conference schedule year in and year out, it's easy to be the big fish in a very, very small pond.

when you are battling up a division, you are at a prestige advantage, not an advantage - in this case, multiple letter grades. even though prestige is not that important in d2/d3, that could have been your issue.

Posted by mullycj on 3/14/2011 6:52:00 AM (view original):
I've never seen any relevance with +/- defense and rebounding in this current engine. At least not enough to make it a consideration when choosing defenses.

I have, especially when using anything +3 and above.

In any event, I wasn't suggesting above that a +3 in and of itself is an extreme measure to use...I have used it with great effectiveness from time to time.  I just believe that in this particular matchup, it was extreme.

billyg, he is a D2 team.  So he did have the prestige advantage he thought he did...