Normally because of promises my depth chart is pretty mixed between High/Low IQ and High/Low stamina between the bench and starting lineup.

If you’re going all out to win though, does it matter if your 90+ stamina guys start or come off the bench? Should you start all your upperclassmen because of IQ? Should you save some of your better players for the bench to try and balance out your second unit? Does it matter?

Every roster is different. In big games, I don't want my freshman to start. But in games you KNOW you'll win, start some Frosh and Sophs. It'll help them develop.

I value my bench in press way more than the other two defenses. It's nice to have one or two quality bench players, that should actually be starters. If you bring studs off the bench, make sure the guys that are replacing them in the starting lineup can defend and hold their own as a quality player.

At Kentucky, I’ve been playing around with having my best player, a true 6th man who can play all positions, placed in the second slot at all of them. He gets a few more minutes when he starts, but maybe the bigger issue is that he isn’t consistently on the floor in the final minutes coming off the bench. Because this game lacks multiple depth charts, AI is going to try to bring your starters in if it can. It’s not a bad approach to getting young players development time, but I don’t see it as the optimal way to try to win tough games, even with FB/press.

Posted by Baums_away on 7/11/2021 3:31:00 PM (view original):
Normally because of promises my depth chart is pretty mixed between High/Low IQ and High/Low stamina between the bench and starting lineup.

If you’re going all out to win though, does it matter if your 90+ stamina guys start or come off the bench? Should you start all your upperclassmen because of IQ? Should you save some of your better players for the bench to try and balance out your second unit? Does it matter?

fb/press is a bit of a special case. the normal answer is 'of course it matters', but that doesn't mean there is a universal answer as to when to start or not. its definitely situational, primarily around the offensive flow / rotation for the team.

the normal reason folks point to is getting the better player more time. of course, the better player doesn't always have better stamina, but on average the older more developed guys have better stamina too - i'm guessing most of your 90 stamina guys are those quality upperclassmen. generally extra minutes for a good player over a young one are fairly valuable.

the main thing i like to look at though is the rotation. getting the offensive rotation right is so important, trying to compete offensively for 40 minutes... having 5 scorers on a team, with all starting, can be a total disaster. because the top 2-3 scorers on a line carry most of the load, it very often makes sense to hold back some offensive talent, to spread it around - this sometimes also allows you to improve the defense, rebounding, or non-scoring guard skills (bh/pass) on your starting line, for very little cost (on scoring), which can be a *huge* win/win. if you can start your best 5 players and still have a strong backup line offense, then by all means, but that is the main question IMO. you get a similar but less systemic issue, when it comes to your backup pg in particular (having good bh/pass/iq at that 1 spot is just so valuable).

stamina has special considerations though. it sort of all depends what you are trying to achieve, sometimes it makes sense to start the 90 stamina guys, sometimes not. if you have 3 key guards, all of similar qualities (which is rare, but for a simple example), and 2 have 90 stamina and one is 75, i'd almost always start one of the 90s and the 75, to get a good, natural, fatigue-based 3 man rotation going (as opposed to target minutes). the same thing comes up for bigs all the time. one of the biggest intangibles that impacts how good a team is, is how the stamina of the players does or does not fit together jigsaw-puzzle-like, and to what extent the team can leverage its top 7-8 players as opposed to its top 10 (for m2m and zone - press is usually always 10+ for the good teams). it can be brutal for example when you have 3 82 stamina starters at the 1-3 and a 4th guard/wing you desperately want to play.

fb/fcp (and even to a significant extent, straight press) is different because there are (almost) no 3 man rotations, at least not on good programs like your UAB of a couple seasons ago. i will still prioritize a 3rd guy though at times, and there are still similar considerations such as that, but i tend to most heavily want to start my high stamina guys in fb/fcp because of the heavy fatigue. the higher stamina guys can tolerate it better, including the circumstances where players stay in a while and get fairly fatigued (long times between sub opportunities, foul trouble, end game scenarios). a fairly fresh guy with 90 stamina is ok to keep playing, and that is most likely to happen to the starter. a 70 stamina guy on fairly fresh, you'd like him to sub out if possible, because he could get to severe levels of fatigue soon - that would be most likely to happen to the starter, too.

bottom line though - offensive flow tends to trump everything, and that is the part which is totally case-by-case for each team.

I tend to find a little more value in the overall minutes approach, but offensive flow (having a few scorers on the floor at all times) is certainly necessary to think about. Bonus if I can mix up scoring *type* like score from different places on the floor from start to bench. But the jigsaw puzzle is definitely a good way to put it. Once my FB/press team is mature, I try to have 7 guards (pg-sf) and 5 bigs (PF-C). If it’s a straight 10-man rotation with 2 clear backups at the end, then it’s straightforward, I try to match stamina up at each position to minimize exposure to the weakest players.

Ideally I’m in a place where I have a top 7-8 - 4-5 guards and 3 bigs - to really focus minutes on, and those have been some of my best teams. Not coincidentally, that plays really well with a 4-4-4 kind of class structure. I’ve been hoping to get a team set up to try a 5-1-5-1 approach where the single player classes are the 6th man SF types, but haven’t been able to get that arranged yet.