Am I making life harder than it has to be by trying to run a M2M defense in the Ivy league in D1? It feels like the zone might have been a better bet. It would seem to require less ATH/SPEED, which is harder to come by when playing in the worst league in D1 not to mention being filled with Sims. Not sure if it's worth teaching the team a new defense next year, or just plowing ahead with the M2M.

I don't think its that big of an issue. You're pretty much going to run into ath/spd being important in any defense. In a conference with all sims, you should be able to dominate if you aim for 70+ def on most of your players, which should be doable. You can give up a little bit of ath on your guards, and a little bit of spd on your bigs. For example a guard with 35 (green) ath and 50 (green) def will end up being a pretty solid player at that level, assuming 80+ spd and decent ball skills (bh, pass).

You might have to make some sacrifices in non-core attributes, but you can pull it off. Win your conference tournaments, make some national tournaments, increase your prestige a bit, and then aim a little higher on your recruits.

M2M is definitely way "better" than zone for low d1. you can succeed with anything but zone would be more of a challenge, unless you know zone much better than man

Agreed with the above. M2M is way easier to manage if you're trying to just start the build in general. Zone has a lot more complexity. And as far as ratings go, it's not going to make a difference which set you run really. If you're struggling with M2M you'll struggle with zone as well. Just keep learning and improving.

I haven't looked at your profile, but I've always said that if you rush to D1 like the game is now pushing coaches to do, you're going to have a much longer struggle period. Than if you spend time at the lower levels learning the ins and outs of the game. That's my opinion. There's always exceptions. But generally the more experience you gain early on, the better you will understand the game