I definitely love speed for guards in press too. The turnovers generated are awesome and it aides in scoring like you mention.

Back in 2.0, I used to go all out on speed and use low ath guards with great success. But with the changes to recruiting w/ 3.0 have created teams with massively higher athleticism than before which then causes low ath guards to foul much more than they had previously. I remember when mfnmyer's dickinson teams had high ath/def and sacrificed basically everything else- now ALL the top teams (slight exaggeration) have that level of athleticism. So I think the game really changed in that regard with the move to 3.0. I've definitely adapted my mindset in what attributes I look for on D2/D3 press teams.

Posted by Benis on 5/18/2020 5:26:00 PM (view original):
I definitely love speed for guards in press too. The turnovers generated are awesome and it aides in scoring like you mention.

Back in 2.0, I used to go all out on speed and use low ath guards with great success. But with the changes to recruiting w/ 3.0 have created teams with massively higher athleticism than before which then causes low ath guards to foul much more than they had previously. I remember when mfnmyer's dickinson teams had high ath/def and sacrificed basically everything else- now ALL the top teams (slight exaggeration) have that level of athleticism. So I think the game really changed in that regard with the move to 3.0. I've definitely adapted my mindset in what attributes I look for on D2/D3 press teams.

back in early 2.0, seble massively changed press, it was unreal how much he changed it. the amount my team dropped in goodness would be roughly the equivalent of one day being barely #1 in the country and the next barely being good enough to get an at large bid. it was insane! the ath/def went from not really even being cores, to huge, and also seble massively increased fatigue hit at the same time. i literally had a team go from so good i thought they'd be favored over the field come NT time, to borderline top 10. it was nuts.

anyway, i am not sure i've even adjusted to that yet - but i definitely have not adjusted to 3.0! i sort of coached kinda hard when i picked up uconn for a few seasons but it was man. i'll have to pay more attention, you raise an interesting point. i just kinda wanted to clarify, the massive shift i was talking about was a gargantuan one that greatly exceeded the impact of 2.0 or 3.0 releases itself, on the press. that is when i first went into partial retirement actually, i needed a break and trashing that elite team kinda put me over the edge.

this is an interesting team perhaps for what you are talking about. i have seen a bigger correlation between ath and fouls drawn than i expected, when i looked around last time following your comments. this year, we are starting 5 freshman, and have strong ath in general, but atrocious iq and foul rate. i think you had said you didn't see much correlation to either def or iq and i really think its a complex thing with a number of meaningful factors (ath, def, iq, spd, sta, not necessarily in that order, but perhaps). i think the first 3 are the big 3 with spd as a smaller effect, and depth being a huge effect but much harder to point to 1 thing for that, obviously about much more than an individual's sta rating.

https://www.whatifsports.com/hd/TeamProfile/Stats.aspx?tid=11854

reid has good ath but 3.8 fouls/game, down from the 4 he was carrying. ducan is a so who was better than 90/90 ath/def to start the year and hes still 2.7 fouls. fatigue also plays a major role on this team's fouling, but as a non-starter with not-incredibly-awful sta, i was a little surprised ducan was so bad. i blame iq, which i think is a huge factor in the fouling. the thing is, high iq guys who score a lot still draw a lot of fouls, if they have crap ath/def. so its not like having high iq gets rid of the problem. its more like any of low iq, low ath, or low d seem to be able to single handledly cause quite a significant amount of fouling, especially if you are scoring a lot. reid is only 4.5 ppg which is why i think hes a good example, he was 4.0 fouls with significantly better than our opponents ath, and at some point, its REALLY damn hard to increase your fouls/game because you have that hard cap at 5!

even travis, the best guard foul wise and with 90 ath/def, is 1.7 fouls playing 17mpg off the bench. thats pretty many for 7.5 ppg. hes got soph iq (non-qualifier on a 2.6, uhg), so that is what i blame. when you compare him to like, reid - the ratings aren't enough to justify that difference. random chance / small sample size, perhaps does - but i think a lot of it is the IQ. i think low IQ is really brutal for foul drawing in the press. not to diminish your point at all! your comments on ath are one of a few things ive read on the forums the past year i've been back that i felt forced to follow up on and then found value in doing so. i definitely appreciate ath's role on fouls more than i used to - so thank you for that! trying to return the favor re: iq's impact on fouls!

edit: one more thing - position has a huge impact on fouls. this is where the team fouls and the team situation starts making things real murky. reid and mcennis are very similar, both playing 19.0 minutes as a starter. mcennis has been on worse than fairly fresh to meet his promises, and scores a bit more - yet its 2.3 fouls instead of 3.8! he has about +20 spd which matters not too much, but he did start with like C- fb/pr iq instead of Fs for reid. i think this IQ difference is a good bit of their foul difference. but the other thing is, reid plays the 1, mcennis the 3. obviously at the 3, its more about ath/def than spd - but that sort of invalidates mcennis's speed advantage to some extent.

but anyway - the 1 and 2 are definitely more prone to foul trouble in the press, from their pressing activities. how these pressing fouls are distributed is what makes me largely question the validity of the individual foul stats. it would be nice to know the half court stats - i suspect those would be a lot more deterministic. so, definitely need to keep played position in mind when evaluating this fouling stuff!

also, i seriously question what role team fouls play. i think most fouls are 'earned', you know, unlike assists (total garbage), turnovers (half garbage). perhaps fouls are more like rebounding (25% garbage?). but i still can't imagine the individual stats can be taken to the bank, when virtually no individual stat in this game can be taken to the bank. ft shooting is pretty close... hehe.

I'm sure this is the guy I've talked about.. Alan miguel

But for those who haven't seen that post. He's an almost perfect case study. His ath and stamina were basically the same all 4 seasons and his IQ went way up and his defense went up some. But his foul rate stayed almost exactly the same all 4 seasons. So that was pretty eye opening when it happened.

Posted by Benis on 5/18/2020 9:33:00 PM (view original):
I'm sure this is the guy I've talked about.. Alan miguel

But for those who haven't seen that post. He's an almost perfect case study. His ath and stamina were basically the same all 4 seasons and his IQ went way up and his defense went up some. But his foul rate stayed almost exactly the same all 4 seasons. So that was pretty eye opening when it happened.

Confused about why you start him ngl.

Posted by Benis on 5/18/2020 9:33:00 PM (view original):
I'm sure this is the guy I've talked about.. Alan miguel

But for those who haven't seen that post. He's an almost perfect case study. His ath and stamina were basically the same all 4 seasons and his IQ went way up and his defense went up some. But his foul rate stayed almost exactly the same all 4 seasons. So that was pretty eye opening when it happened.

but if iq doesn't impact fouls, then why are those other guys i posted so incredibly awful at fouling despite solid ath? i think its pretty obvious from the larger body of evidence that IQ plays a meaningful role, which sort raises the question, what was going on in this situation?

its interesting how bad this guy was at 3s his senior year. he should have been really good, i'd think. i feel like i've asked this before, but it sure seems like the schedule had to be pretty tough to cause that junior to senior slump. now why he still was no better than fr/so year is a bit of a mystery, but i'd suggest it has to do with the team situation - almost certainly including the team fouls stuff i mentioned earlier. were you pressing? i'm guessing so, and i'm guessing a bunch of his fouls were from team fouls that were assigned to him for whatever reason - perhaps as a jr/sr the sim engine felt he was most deserving of those team fouls (or it just felt it made the stats look most realistic), even though he didn't directly cause them (nobody did). and perhaps as a fr/so, there were other guys to take the fall?

one can always hand-wave away a single player on a sample size argument, but i'm inclined to point to a nearly infinite number of solid ath guards who still committed many fouls while pressing, and instead suggest there is more going on than meets the eye. i definitely think the difference between individual stats and a player's contribution is part of the story. as always, sophisticated coaches should approach individual stats with extreme caution!!

i agree your guy is a perfect case study - but not of why ath is the driver of fouls! rather, why it is a logical fallacy to draw strong conclusions from an individual stat line like this (or even from many individual stat lines)! his spd, def, and iq improved significantly, while his fouls didn't. drawing the conclusion that ath must be responsible for all those fouls should make it *trivial* for you to find the contradiction. all you need is a couple high ath players who still fouled a lot, and those aren't hard to find (see reid in my post above - granted, not a perfect example, but there are many high ath fr guards who foul a lot). by your logic - those two players combine to prove that ath, spd, def, and iq have roughly no impact on fouling. so, i think it proves one of your assumptions must be wrong. in this case, i'm going to say its the assumption that individual stats reflect a player's real contributions to a team, which is demonstrably false in most situations in HD. perhaps for good measure, in part it is probably also the suggestion that one can look at an individual when assessing a complex scenario that involves a number of other players in a significant way.

hey benis, what makes ath more prevalent in 3.0 in your opinion? is it the reduction in population combined with the d2/d3 ability to recruit all of d1, that just basically results in those higher ath guys (and better guys) getting concentrated in a smaller number of teams than ever before? is there anything else?

Gil - I'm pulling together some more information that may be helpful. And may actually disprove my theory but that's okay. I'll post more stuff later today.

But before that - a couple points. I prefer to compare players by the same team/coach. For me, I can compare Miguel vs other guards I've had at Rockhurst and so many things will be consistent including scheduling, style of play, usage, etc. I'm really consistent (Lazy) with my gameplanning so I don't move players around much, I don't deviate from playing slowdown much (i'm a huge slowdown whore), I almost always have a negative defensive positioning and I'm not afraid to go -5 even with Press. So I think that helps us here when comparing different players. It's harder to compare Miguel to players that you have because our styles are probably very different and it adds some noise I think.

Also, I believe the athleticism and fouling thing is primarily for Point Guards as that is what I've seen the trend on fouling. The PG, in general, seems to foul at a higher rate than any other position in Press. So all my player comparisons will be point guards and my usage of those players will primarily be pass first point guards as that it my general style of play.

But I believe that ath/def ratings are higher at D2/D3 in 3.0 than 2.0. Teams are recruiting better players now due to fewer coaches and being able to recruit higher level talent. The talent pool they're pulling from now is HUGE compared to what it was before. So players are less developmental now and a lot will start off with high ratings - so teams are also much deeper/talented than before.

having a lot of that stuff similar helps, but you still have a lot of variation from season to season within a program, and more importantly, you have underlying issues about the disconnect between individual contributions and individual stats, which in the case of fouls relates to the way that team fouls are distributed to individuals. using your guy as an example, i'm guessing two things were primarily the cause of his lack of foul improvement. one is the SOS but im also thinking - i didn't look - but i'm guessing the guards around your PG were better as you built that program, and the team fouls got distributed in such a way that he got a bigger share due to the higher ratings of his peers. even if you recruit in a consistent manner, your arrangement of talents and iqs is not going to be the same and i believe this results in changes to the way team fouls are assigned. press has a lot of those team fouls and therefore i'd expect the effect to be significant.

bottom line - even if you were comparing two players where the team around them is identical - if you have individual stats which do not fundamentally reflect players' real contributions - you can't put something like this to bed just off of an analysis of individual stats. and that is the world we live in with HD. i think the individual stats offer good clues and are the appropriate starting point, but its just not a reliable way to compare the values of attributes for most things. at some point, you have to make the leap from clues from individual stats to team versus team comparisons. in this case that would be where you try to identify the impact of and ath vs def tradeoffs and such, or higher iq vs lower, and so forth - on a team level - looking to see how those ratings impact team wide performance. this complicates the situation because there are more factors, but it also removes the disconnect between real contributions and individual stats, which is an essential step, IMO.

"if you have individual stats which do not fundamentally reflect players' real contributions"

Let's unpack this one first. Why don't you think fouls are accounted for correctly? Has that been shared by admin before? I think in press or doubling situations, this could potentially be true. If the decision tree decides the other team's PG is taking the shot and then it calculates the defensive ratings of the two players guarding him (the PG and SG I would assume) then it could decide which of the two players would get the foul based upon ratings? Is that what you're thinking?