When I am playing against a full court press team. Should I have the Ball Handlers (BH) have a higher Play Distribution. Or ua PD more for shooting the ball after it gets cross half court. I am not sure how the sim works to break the press. 2 Ball handlers or 3 pg,sg,and sf. Or is it overall team ball handling or does it even really matter.

I don't adjust my play distribution against the press.

I try to play higher tempos and use a deeper lineup against the press, and I weight BH more at the 1-2-3 when evaluating players. I also worry less about shooting (since I want to attack down low to get foul trouble).

Posted by cubcub113 on 5/20/2021 1:39:00 AM (view original):
I don't adjust my play distribution against the press.

I try to play higher tempos and use a deeper lineup against the press, and I weight BH more at the 1-2-3 when evaluating players. I also worry less about shooting (since I want to attack down low to get foul trouble).

Cub, I just saw this in the process of trying to more research for an opponent running the press. Do you give your front court more distro against the press? And is it effective? Also, I typically play a slow pace motion because we are a weak rebounding team and it seems to lower the amount of rebounding opportunities to get beat on. Would you recommend upping the pace against the press or leaving it at slow?

Posted by shane182436 on 8/17/2021 8:56:00 PM (view original):

Posted by cubcub113 on 5/20/2021 1:39:00 AM (view original):
I don't adjust my play distribution against the press.

I try to play higher tempos and use a deeper lineup against the press, and I weight BH more at the 1-2-3 when evaluating players. I also worry less about shooting (since I want to attack down low to get foul trouble).

Cub, I just saw this in the process of trying to more research for an opponent running the press. Do you give your front court more distro against the press? And is it effective? Also, I typically play a slow pace motion because we are a weak rebounding team and it seems to lower the amount of rebounding opportunities to get beat on. Would you recommend upping the pace against the press or leaving it at slow?

How strong you are at rebounding shouldn't dictate your pace at all... you'll still get beat on the same ratio of rebounds. I look at STA and depth to decide whether to press.

Definitely don't give frontcourt more distro against the press...

Usually the worse I am at rebounding the faster I play because I'm great at ath/spd/sta since I don't see the point of having a slowdown team that sucks at rebounding.

Cub isn't wrong, but his tips are more steered towards teams that are on similar levels in talent. Like NT matchups and such.

In looking at the OPs team (I assume NW nazarene was the reason for the question?), your team has some glaring holes that will not allow you to match up well against elite press teams. And in game settings/changes won't help much until you can get your roster up to roughly equal talent with the teams you're facing.

II'm getting ready for work so I only looked briefly, but your highest SPD rating on the team is only a 68. Speed kills. Faster players can help when facing press. Your team ATH is 52 (although I think I saw a walk on or two in there). That needs to come up more as well to compete with opposing press teams that are elite. Until you have the athletes that can compete at a little higher level, you may see high TOs and lots of fouling out on defense.

So while cub may be right with his tips, I think there's other areas that the team needs to improve that will help your team perform better overall against the best of the best

I tend to like doggg’s advice a little better here, in general. It always depends on what you have, and what kind of press you’re talking about. A press is trying to beat you with turnovers. It can be vulnerable to fatigue and foul problems *if* you have the right kind of team, and *if* it is not, itself, the right kind of press team. But if you have a run of the mill mid level program and you’re looking at a strong press team and you’re trying to pull off an upset, trying to beat that press by going uptempo and causing foul trouble is very unlikely to work well for you.

Always be thinking about possessions. Emphasize distribution for your best ball handlers, especially if you run motion or fastbreak (if flex or triangle, pay a bit more attention to the scoring attributes, but in general be thinking more about efficiency, like how many points they score relative to % of offense, rather than their scoring attributes, particular against the press). For most teams facing a superior press opponent, slowing down is a better option than uptempo. The exceptions are when the press opponent is actually not that strong - ie, they are not 12 deep, and/or don’t have good stamina (rule of thumb, press teams should have at least 75 stamina with good balance, more if they aren’t 12 deep, and even more if they also run FB); and also when you have speed and ballhandling advantages to minimize your turnover exposure. If you have the better team, or have some specific advantage you have a reasonable expectation to exploit, that’s when it can make sense to run uptempo into a press.