Need some help. My Stephen F. Austin team in Naismith is 7-6. We've lost to some tough teams, but I have two losses to SIMMY that we should have won. Any advice would be appreciated.

Link to my team:

https://www.whatifsports.com/hd/TeamProfile/Ratings.aspx?tid=2508

You basically have three players, some youngsters and non D1 players. Depth is the reason.

For one thing, you should have let me have Castonguay, he sucks.

I kid.

I suspect lack of a shutdown guard off the bench is hurting you. Playing man, your guard defense is awfully thin. If you’re not double teaming your opponents leading perimeter scorers (if leading scorer), you might think about that, especially against sims. I’m not sure your team is built for uptempo, either, unless your opponent is very weak. Team speed and ballhandling are pretty low for D1 to be thinking uptempo.

One thing you can try - if you haven’t already done this, I haven’t examined your pbps - is play Messick as your #2 at both guard positions, and set Wilcoxen to tired. Graves is seeing way too many minutes, he should be the last guy off the bench, IMO. You don’t need his perimeter that badly. Not a big difference between him and Folk, but Folk has better defensive cores, so he’d be my #3 guard at both positions, with Graves as #4. But essentially, I think you want your top 3 guards on the floor as much as possible, especially Wilcoxen. If you can get him 30mpg, awesome. It will reduce his effectiveness some, but if it keeps folk and graves off the floor, it’s a win for you.

I had an atrocious recruiting class a few seasons ago, losing a ton of coin flips on good players and ended up with poor guard depth. I learned the lesson that season of taking a walk-on instead of going for borderline d1 guys. I agree, shoe; this team isn't uptempo. I just set the tempo back to normal for my last game and I'm thinking I might try some slow down. I like to run n' gun normally, but this team just isn't strong enough. We can score it, but no defense off the bench and my good guys flame out too quickly. Thanks!

Definetly go slowdown all games. Max your three studs minutes and stamina... Shorten your bench.

Play slowdown, shorten your bench.. Those 3 Sr. starters need to be on the floor as much as possible. They should be set at getting tired ... possibly even tired, they're that much better than the reserves. Avoid playing those poor defenders.

I like to get people to explain how they're thinking and then I can offer advice if they're on the right right track. It usually helps.

Why do you think you should have won those games? What were you seeing?

Thanks for the advice everyone. I made some of the changes with tempo and depth chart, and I've reeled off 5 in a row, including beating the #22 team in the country.