http://www.whatifsports.com/hd/TeamProfile/Ratings.aspx?tid=6439. Trying to take next step to get to next level. Which is FF, NC game. I love posting on forums to get everybody's opinion to get better at this game. What do I need to do with this team to get there. Last season we went to S16, want to get further.  Thanks

If you can get to the S16, you can win it all.  It's that simple.  Once you're getting that far, it's pretty safe to stay you're putting together a worthy collection of players.  At that point, you gameplan the best you can, look for any edge you can exploit, and cross your fingers that the bad luck happens to the guys in the other color uniforms.

I would recommend getting a player that can dribble and pass.

Lockett has gained ten points of passing as a senior? That seems like a lot for a guard this late in his career. It looks like next year you have just about no passing at all. That could be a nightmare against good press teams. How much of a priority do you place on passing. Looks like you may want to focus a little more on passing to help get you to that next level

Posted by milwood on 4/16/2015 12:02:00 PM (view original):
Lockett has gained ten points of passing as a senior? That seems like a lot for a guard this late in his career. It looks like next year you have just about no passing at all. That could be a nightmare against good press teams. How much of a priority do you place on passing. Looks like you may want to focus a little more on passing to help get you to that next level

Locket was a JUCO, so I've only had him for 2 years. I don't place a lot on passing in my FB team. I know I should, but I look more to BH, PER, SP, FT for off. then Ath, def, for defense. I try to get about half of my recruits JUCO's with my off and def set they already know.

Now that I've looked at your team - my earlier comment was a general one - it does look like you'll need more passing and ball handling to get past the second round on a regular basis.

Posted by terps21234 on 4/16/2015 12:33:00 PM (view original):

Posted by milwood on 4/16/2015 12:02:00 PM (view original):
Lockett has gained ten points of passing as a senior? That seems like a lot for a guard this late in his career. It looks like next year you have just about no passing at all. That could be a nightmare against good press teams. How much of a priority do you place on passing. Looks like you may want to focus a little more on passing to help get you to that next level

Locket was a JUCO, so I've only had him for 2 years. I don't place a lot on passing in my FB team. I know I should, but I look more to BH, PER, SP, FT for off. then Ath, def, for defense. I try to get about half of my recruits JUCO's with my off and def set they already know.

if half of your recruits are JUCOs, you are REALLY going to struggle to make it to the next level. an occasional juco will end as good as a freshman, but that is a rare exception. usually JUCOs are for teams trying to get their **** together - not teams trying to compete for final 4s and championships.

i didn't realize you did this, i thought about replying earlier but i was busy. it does explain a lot. the overall talent level is too low for the level of competition you are aspiring to - and the JUCOs are probably a big part of that!

you really need to balance your team out a bit more, as well. passing in your PG and to a lesser extent, your team as a whole, is substantially important to your offensive efficiency. its probably the biggest reason why your offensive efficiency is not that great, for the ratings and SOS you have on your team right now. you have good defense. a title team would want to be more like 68/68 than your 60/66 but you are in good shape there. if you want to run small, thats fine, but you need to make rebounding a higher priority in the bigs you do have, then. you have enough offensive with all those per ratings, but it would be better if some of those players were a little better offensively and some of the others were a little worse offensively and a little better in other areas, so they could help shore up your passing and rebounding weaknesses.

Usually I tend to think that coaches are TOO worried about ball handling and passing, to the extent that they'll bypass really good players with slightly lesser BH and Pass in order to sign a lesser player with better BH and Pass.  In other words, I think some coaches place TOO much emphasis on BH/Pass.  But these guys here are right, your teams BH/Pass ratings are atrocious.  Horrible.

For you to take that next step, you're going to probably have to scrap your current recruiting mindset of signing a bunch of JuCos and start signing four year guys that can fully develop (i.e., max out) as players.  Gill's post above is right on the money about JuCos.  I rarely recruit them but when I do it's because of an emergency to cover up a mistake that I made in the previous seasons.

i agree with emy, you can take lower bh and/or pass for other qualities, in an individual. with seble's change to make passing and IQ affect team-wide offensive efficiency (team mates get each other better looks if they have good pass/iq), its pretty dangerous to neglect passing at a team wide level, and at the PG spot in particular. you can always take tradeoffs in individuals - but you can't made those same tradeoffs for every player on the team! or even for an entire back court or front court, doing that will generally kill you (like the passing is sinking your team wide fg% and 3pt% right now).

Thank you all. This has enlightened me a lot. I do value Pass a lot in other offenses, I just thought with FB that I wanted to run and gun, so I valued SP more and either Per or high FT. I miss understood JUCOS, I thought I would get them since I would only recruit ones that knew my Off and DEF already and their IQ would be high coming in and I could start them right away.  This will make me rethink a lot of strategies. Thank you again

Posted by terps21234 on 4/16/2015 5:09:00 PM (view original):
Thank you all. This has enlightened me a lot. I do value Pass a lot in other offenses, I just thought with FB that I wanted to run and gun, so I valued SP more and either Per or high FT. I miss understood JUCOS, I thought I would get them since I would only recruit ones that knew my Off and DEF already and their IQ would be high coming in and I could start them right away.  This will make me rethink a lot of strategies. Thank you again

you can start them right away, its just that their ratings are almost always inferior to good freshmen recruits who are now upperclassmen. one JUCO here and there, as great ones come along, or to plug gaps, is totally fine. but if you recruit a bunch, you are always going to have better teams in your world because their upperclassmen were freshman recruits and yours weren't. 

passing is quite important in fastbreak. the biggest downside of fastbreak is either fatigue or the extra turnovers, and having crap bh/pass or crap depth is going to make the key weaknesses of fb much more damaging. so, you have to be careful with that. besides, passing is the single most important rating for a point guard in any system, unless you really really need your pg to be a key per scorer for you, and then maybe per can give passing a run for its money. but generally its passing.

A couple of comments, though mostly they pertain to D3 and not D2, which is what terps' was asking about with his team link (though maybe he was asking in general)...I haven't played D2 in many years, so it's not clear to me how much of this is applicable to D2...and of course D1 is a totally different animal...anyhow:

1. If you can get a truly top JUCO, then I think it's worth it.  Lots of times I've salivated over getting specific JUCO's because they have higher starting values than an incoming freshmen and can have alluring potentials to go along with it.  Also, it is possible to R/S JUCOs, and that can be a powerful incentive to get a top JUCO.  Furthermore, from a recruiting budget standpoint, it can work in your favor to cycle through players faster, but this is a very tertiary consideration unless you are taking over a SIM team that's lacking talent across the board and maybe putting band aids on the situation is fine and in 2 yrs when the JUCO(s) graduates your team prestige will be higher and you can target more freshmen.

2. I'd say over the last ~9 mths or so mfnmyers has done an excellent job of winning NT titles at the D3 level with his Dickinson FB/FCP teams (he's in multiple worlds and the only team he coaches is D3 Dickinson, and I think all run FB/FCP by now).  If you've seen his teams, then you know I'm not exaggerating when I say he shows practically zero regard for competent BH and P ratings.  It's not uncommon for those category ratings to be around 20, which even for D3 is horrendous.  However, he totally sells out for ATH/SP/DEF (and even ST to a large extent).  And I don't think he even bothers to use FSS either, at least not until after signings.  It's a unique strategy, one that I wish I had time to try with a new team (or try with my existing D3 teams, even my FB/FCP one).  There are some seasons he struggles a bit when his team transitions from an upperclass-laden team to an underclass-laden team.  But his win rate at getting NT titles has been pretty impressive over this recent time frame...and again it's with a total disregard to BH and P.  It's all about ATH/SP/DEF.  Wash, rinse, repeat. 

interesting points jdno. fb/fcp is a unique animal - its an edge case within the game, for sure. so, the rules aren't quite the same as elsewhere. i don't think that disregard of bh/pass would work so well in ordinary situations. 

Posted by jdno2 on 4/16/2015 5:52:00 PM (view original):
A couple of comments, though mostly they pertain to D3 and not D2, which is what terps' was asking about with his team link (though maybe he was asking in general)...I haven't played D2 in many years, so it's not clear to me how much of this is applicable to D2...and of course D1 is a totally different animal...anyhow:

1. If you can get a truly top JUCO, then I think it's worth it.  Lots of times I've salivated over getting specific JUCO's because they have higher starting values than an incoming freshmen and can have alluring potentials to go along with it.  Also, it is possible to R/S JUCOs, and that can be a powerful incentive to get a top JUCO.  Furthermore, from a recruiting budget standpoint, it can work in your favor to cycle through players faster, but this is a very tertiary consideration unless you are taking over a SIM team that's lacking talent across the board and maybe putting band aids on the situation is fine and in 2 yrs when the JUCO(s) graduates your team prestige will be higher and you can target more freshmen.

2. I'd say over the last ~9 mths or so mfnmyers has done an excellent job of winning NT titles at the D3 level with his Dickinson FB/FCP teams (he's in multiple worlds and the only team he coaches is D3 Dickinson, and I think all run FB/FCP by now).  If you've seen his teams, then you know I'm not exaggerating when I say he shows practically zero regard for competent BH and P ratings.  It's not uncommon for those category ratings to be around 20, which even for D3 is horrendous.  However, he totally sells out for ATH/SP/DEF (and even ST to a large extent).  And I don't think he even bothers to use FSS either, at least not until after signings.  It's a unique strategy, one that I wish I had time to try with a new team (or try with my existing D3 teams, even my FB/FCP one).  There are some seasons he struggles a bit when his team transitions from an upperclass-laden team to an underclass-laden team.  But his win rate at getting NT titles has been pretty impressive over this recent time frame...and again it's with a total disregard to BH and P.  It's all about ATH/SP/DEF.  Wash, rinse, repeat. 

Point number 2 is why a lot of coaches were complaining when the FCP was too powerful (and I think it was finally admitted to being too strong.  Any vets can confirm this, that they castrated the press top bring it more in line with the other two defenses)?  Anyway, what the "argument" boiled down to was coaches complaining that teams full of track stars were consistently beating the hell out of teams full of basketball players.  What you described in point number 2 is exactly what many coaches tried to do, recruit for Ath, Spd, Def (if they could get it), and perhaps Stam and damn all the other categories.  Then, wash, rinse, repeat, hang another championship banner.

Personally, I hated to face those teams because I felt like they were somehow exploiting a flaw in the way the game was written, but eventually I figured out how to beat them on a semi-regular basis.  I should also point out that this was happening in D2/D3 and almost never in D1.  I think the changes that were finally made have brought the defenses more in line with each other, although I still think the zone lags a little behind the other two (even in spite of the D2 title recently won by a D2 team running zone.  That's superb coach more than anything else.  I know of the coach, don't know him well, but I do know he rarely posts on these forums, seems to be very quiet altogether, but is a VERY good under the radar type coach).

A lot of things to consider. Thanks to all and I already targeted some key players for next season. Out of 4 open spots I'm looking at 3 fresh and only 1 Juco unless another wows me.