Hello all,
     I am at Gardner-Webb in Tark. Over the last 3 seasons I am 42-6 during the regular season in the conference and I have lost the conference tourney each year, failing to reach the finals two out of the three. I don't think I am some spectacular coach or anything as I know I have been beating up on sims trying to reach a major conference. However, my question is- how do you suggest adjusting your gameplan for the post season vs. the regular season. I generally keep the same gameplan or might alter it slightly if I was trying to get a younger player more playing time during the regular season.

I feel like I am really doing something wrong in the post-season. Anyone care to share their opinion?

I'm no great coach by any means but looking at your CT game that you lost.. i glanced at  it for about 3 mins and saw 1 main thing that stood out (to me anyway)


I likely would have had Powell and J. Boyd at the sg2/sf2 respectively.. i think u had bonanno and holleman
I would have had D. Boyd as your primary scorer and taking a bunch of shots (probably 20% of the shots) ..  I would have had hendrix/story the 2nd/3rd options taking around 12-13% each  and would have had powell (who saw very few mins) as your scoring option off the bench taking around 12% along with boyd (again no minutes for a SR player?).

As far as gameplanning in general.  I typically only change vs human coaches and i'll usually only adjust the +/- Settings or check to make sure i have a good defender lined up vs their top scoring option.

Yes. I forgot to change Powell and J. Boyd back to 2nd string on the depth chart. (I had been trying to get my younger players minutes) However, my distribution was very close to what you suggested. Keep in mind, I beat that same team by 17 points (home) and 6 points (away) with the same lineup and distribution during the regular season.

I'm not trying to ignore your advice, I truly do appreciate it. However, my focus here is the variation between regular season results and the conference tourney over the last 3 seasons. It seems to be a trend to me now. Against the team that knocks me out of the CT in each season, my combined record against that school in each corresponding regular season is 4-0 with 3 of those games being on the road.

Your PG Story lost you that game TBH from what I see, You outdid Missouri St. on many different categories but FT's. Argubaly the best FT shooter on your team went 0-4. This was a bad beat loss, You defense also did not show up at all for some reason. If this happened in real life ESPN would be on the upset bandwagon. I dont see anything crazy you could have done to prevent this loss besides maybe going uptempo to force more posessions?

You have the better team and you probably should of won, looking generally at statistics and not score you should have won this game. Unfortunatly you came up short at the FT line with one of your best at the line and your defense decided to take the night off.

Edit: I know I'm new to the game but sometimes when I feel a team cant beat me possession for possesion i'll run uptempo and force more out of them.

The engine for the postseason is the same one as is used during the regular season, so the same stuff matters the same amount.  I tend to dig a little deeper while gameplanning in the postseason, but that's just because each individual game is more important.

I know that supposedly the engine doesn't change, but it's getting hard to believe that SOMETHING is not different. I've got an .875 winning percentage in the last 3 during the regular season and a .500 (3-3) winning percentage in the CT over the last 3. Hell, I've only been to the CT finals once in the last 3 seasons. Is this really just variance in the engine? 

A six game sample doesn't tell you anything.  A ten game sample doesn't tell you anything.  You need more data than that.

Look at it this way: Would WIS staff want to maintain two subtly different gameplay engines for the same game, or would they be out of their freaking minds to do that?  (Hint: They'd be out of their freaking minds to do that.)

Short answer: Yes, it's really just variance.

Posted by noleaniml on 10/1/2014 9:23:00 AM (view original):
I know that supposedly the engine doesn't change, but it's getting hard to believe that SOMETHING is not different. I've got an .875 winning percentage in the last 3 during the regular season and a .500 (3-3) winning percentage in the CT over the last 3. Hell, I've only been to the CT finals once in the last 3 seasons. Is this really just variance in the engine? 

I have seen that it is hard to compete in the CT consistently. In my GLIAC D2 conference my team in its history has 11 CT championships, the most is 17 but out of those 11 there has only been 2 repeats and 1 three peat and all of that has been in the last 15 seasons basically. All other titles are scattered. To consistently win the CT as it appears right now is easier said than done.

Nobody found it interesting that Louisville's PG led all rebounders with 8? It happens on rare occasion, but had wondered what factors are behind a guard getting that many rebounds.

In addition, Louisville's guards outrebounded their front court/low post players by a 17-14 margin.