I considered going uptempo in this game to offset my opponent’s slowdown.

A couple games later, I noticed Johnson C Smith lost its first game... the coach played uptempo. The next game, Johnson C Smith’s opponent went uptempo, and it went to overtime.

I have a fairly decent understanding of looking at factors to play uptempo, normal, or slowdown. In this specific simulation, though, how do y’all think the box score would have been impacted had I gone uptempo? In comparison.

Because they go 11-12 deep, I think that’s a little better play for Seattle and Kingsville than for your squad. In general I usually only play uptempo if I am sure I 1) have the better team by a significant margin, AND 2) have enough stamina and ballhandling to cover the fatigue and turnover hits I might take by trying to increase possessions, OR 3) less commonly, I am confident I will be able to exploit an opponents weak stamina somewhere important and get them into foul trouble. In most situations, I think normal tempo is optimal.

Thank you, Shoe!

I would have gone uptempo in that game, no question. They're running a 9 man rotation. You go uptempo, their guys get tired, start to lose effectiveness, more likely to commit fouls. Especially since I play a fullcourt press. Not sure how effective it would have been with your man to man, but a less than 10 man rotation is something that I love to try to exploit with uptempo.

If it were me, I would hesitate to go uptempo with your team. Your best player, Gunter, only has 71 stamina even though you have generally decent stamina overall.

Good comments to think about! I think had I gone uptempo I still would have lost. My guys turned the ball over like a hot potato.

a 10 on 9 man on man match is not a terribly huge tempo advantage. its ok to try to run uptempo to tire them out, but you certainly shouldn't feel like it was mandatory. if you had good 12 m2m depth and they were say 9 press, then it would be roughly mandatory (perhaps some weird edge cases aside).

it does depend on the 9 men you are facing too, and how the coach has them organized. you can look at other similar tempo games and see if they get tired out, and if they respond well to foul trouble. you can catch coaches in foul trouble sooner than you should in some cases - with dcy as the opposing coach (that is emy), its pretty unlikely that is going to be the case - but its a good thing to keep in mind and to look into when you are on the fence about uptempo.

he's also a quality 82 stamina on his 9 players - which makes tiring them out with m2m pretty damn difficult. you'll probably need luck in terms of getting them to get into foul trouble before you could punish them. this means in a roughly even fight, its not really something you'll be able to count on. if his team was much better than yours, and you'd only win when getting lucky, it would be more compelling 'well maybe i'll get lucky and tire him out, and if not, i was screwed anyway'. but most of the time, you won't be tiring them out.

so then that means you are mostly back to the standard calculation - who is favored , how do starters vs backups stack up? roughly the fatigue impact is going to be fairly similar - you are deeper - he has better stamina.

hmm - it looks like you are actually perhaps more than 10 deep? not sure why you only play 10 - i assumed the last 2 were terrible - but xie is not. the other is. so are you really 11 deep? kinda unclear to me. but still - you are facing a 9 deep, 82 stamina slowdown motion m2m team, and you run m2m without fb. you just can't really force the fatigue issue.

well - i haven't looked too much - but it looks like you might have felt you had pretty small odds of winning. if that is true, uptempo was probably the right move. if you had a better team, if this was a fairer matchup, i very well might not have.

Thanks Gillespie! Good comment to learn from. Xie is a good player. I’m redshirting him to save for next season. He’s maxed out in everything.

The previous coach built this team with 3 rebounding bigs in one class and without a true passer.

Posted by craigaltonw on 10/27/2020 10:07:00 PM (view original):
Thanks Gillespie! Good comment to learn from. Xie is a good player. I’m redshirting him to save for next season. He’s maxed out in everything.

The previous coach built this team with 3 rebounding bigs in one class and without a true passer.

ahhh ok that makes sense, good move!