I just recently went to a D- prestige Florida Atlantic team in DIV 1. I am trying to build this team up. I had recruited a bunch of guys with an average of 45 for a defensive rating, but with decetn ATH/SPD. I also love to run the full court press. Is this low defensive rating going to be a factor?

If so should I recruit guys with obviously high ATH/SPD, but higher defense? I even took a center with 71 ATH, 31 SPD, 80 REB, but his DEF is 21. LOL that sucks.

I mostly play the press and will tell you the most important thing is SP/ATH meaning high def ratings but low SP/ATH will allow the press to get killed...however, low defensive rated players will be exposed as well. Another important factor about the press is IQ...the higher the IQ the more effective it will be...

With a D- program, that's probably a trade off that you had to make. I've had a few sub-50 DEF guys while running a FCP in D1 and had some success with it. I wouldn't want an entire team of those guys, obviously, but its something you can get away with in the Sun Belt, especially if their Spd/Ath are good for their position.

SPD/ATH is of most importance in the press, and you can certainly sacrifice defence somewhat in DI. It's all relative though. I was in the Big 12, and actually got away with a 30 DEF player once, but I wouldn't recommend it (he was 90+ in both SPD and ATH AND redshirted so he was A+ in FCP).

With a D- prestige, you can make DEF exceptions, but I wouldn't do it team wide. Try and not have subpar defensive players playing next to one another, and make sure you recruit SPD/ATH. I hope your C is high potential SPD.

Also, try and make sure any recruit you get that is subpar in defence knows the press coming in. You might not get consistent results with your team, but if this is how you need to recruit scoring and rebounding, then it should work out for you in the long run. Remember to set your requirements higher as your prestige moves up.

to be an elite team, defense matters. but to try to move up the ranks of d1, it is really not that important at all (for the press). mostly, you are going to want crappy (>50-60 or so) defensive players, as the ones with high def will have lower stats elsewhere to compensate, or else they will be too good for you to target with such low prestige. speed is king at the 1-3. good luck!

And that's my main complaint with this game. A team full of track stars with bad defensive ratings should not be able to successfully shut teams down on a consistent basis, yet they do.

Defense (def): like rebounding, defense refers to a player's defensivefundamentals and their desire to play defense. Again, knowledge of the fundamentals and having the desire are great, but you also need the athleticism and speed to be a great defender.

This is WIS' definition of what the Def rating means (taken from one of the developer chats). When players with average or worse, mediocre, defensive ratings are shutting down top notch scorers, then we've got a problem. Those players should be getting eaten alive, but they don't. They should be giving up easy baskets or committing a TON of fouls, but they don't. It's not right.

Conversely, on my D2 teams, I tend to recruit highly rated defensive players (I run M2M on all my D2 teams) and with my prestige, which is normally an A or A+, I still get the fast, athletic players (for the most part). But guess what tends to happen to my highly rated defensive players? Yep, they get torn apart by average or slightly better than average offensive players. Not every game, mind you, but alot more often than they should. I have become convinced through my seasons playing here, that this game is skewed waaaay more towards the offensive side of the game than the defensive.

Does the defensive rating matter? Yes, it does, but in my opinion, not nearly as much as it should.

I have a PG on my UCLA team in Tark (Alfredo Costa) who began the year with a 99 rating in SPD, ATH, DEF, and STAM. He also began the year with an A+ in his defensive IQ (I run M2M here also). He finished the season at 100 in SPD, ATH, and STAM, 99 in DEF, and of course, still had the A+ rating for DEF IQ.

Now according to WIS' own definitions, this guy should have been as close to a perfect defensive player as there is in this game. Guess how many times he fouled out? Three. Guess how many times he ended up with four fouls? Three more times. So in 20% of my teams games, he ended up with 4 or more fouls. Sound right to you? Nope, because the defensive rating doesn't matter ENOUGH.

Probably didn't make up the whole difference, but did you see if he was comitting offensive fouls?

Or intentionally fouling late?

To add to that, fouls, or a lack there of do not dictate good or bad defense. Lots of good defenders fould a lot, because they are agressive.

Also, in how many of those games were you playing a + defense?

emy, how did he do vs opposing team's PGs defensively? I guess it'd be hard to know unless you broke it down minute by minute and see how many points they scored on what kind of shooting, and also negated the times that the other team's PG got a steal and broke free on a layup. I have always wanted to have a breakdown like this to see if my shutdown defenders were really shutdown defenders, but I have never taken the time to do it and I really only notice outliers (when the other team has someone score 20 points on 7 of 9 shooting, I make sure to check who he was scoring on to some degree).

He's averaging more than thirty minutes a game and less than two fouls a game, that really isn't that bad. YOu mentioned the six games he had allot of fouls, but he also had six games with no fouls and eleven more with only one. In 57% of his games, he had one or less fouls. And in more than three out of four games, he didn't get more than two fouls.

All valid points guys.

emy, i couldn't agree more that the defense rating is way underpowered. however, i will disagree that this is an offense oriented game. i can't tell you how many times i've thought or said, man, my defense is going to win me this <insert important game and/or championship>. but its about 10 times more than i say, wow, my offense is going to lead us to greatness here. i am all about lock down defense. i think its less volatile, as it relies more equally on all the players. where as, adding offensive studs is subject to severe diminishing returns.