I was always under the assumption that speed+perimeter+ball handling was the most/or close to the most important attribute for guards. After a disappointing season, based on other factors where I thought I had an excellent team, other coaches are now saying Athleticism+defense is the way to  go and defensive ratings have more value than they did before. I guess back in the day, you could rely on your  player's speed rating, with low defense at D-3. That doesn't appear to be the case anymore.

Other than the "you played in a tough conference" cliche, if someone could give some input regarding this year's team, which consists of mostly juniors and seniors. Did I use the right approach based on my team's ratings? Based on all available information, did we over achieve/under achieve? Any help would be greatly appreciated.


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Speed is still important for press, but you have a minutes-weighted backcourt def of like 25.  So short answer is yes, def is more important than it used to be, but you have completely neglected it.  Not particularly surprising that you gave up 47% and had the most FTA I've ever seen.  

What could you have done differently?  I don't know, those guard def ratings are awful.  I certainly wouldn't have gone uptempo against teams with good offensive guards.  

Well, you do play in a killer conference. 

From where I'm sitting, your low defense rating did you in. Speed opens a lot of doors in this game, but a low-30s defense is well down there. Combined with the fact your press IQs look like they may have been in the B+ range for a chunk of the season and that leads to your high foul count, the fact your opponents outscored you by 200+ points at the free throw line and averaged better than 30 foul shots a game and how they almost matched you in FG and 3-pt percentage. 

In a "normal" conference, this team dominates (thus your non-conference success). In an elite league where pretty much everyone is in the upper echelon for team athleticism and speed, they were able to exploit the defense rating. Your athleticism isn't bad, although for running a press it is a smidge below where I'd want it to be, but I don't think it's so low that it really crippled you. The defense number though definitely hurt. I didn't peek through all the losses, but I can definitely see, given the strength of the conference, how this team finished where it did in league play. 

Also, don't know when the starting point of your "what has changed since" title is, but if you're not aware, they dialed back the 3-point effectiveness a few months back, so if you're coming back into the game and your previous experience was, say, a year ago, be cognizant of the fact that high-perimeter players aren't knocking down the outside shot like they once did (the change was made to bring 3-pt percentages back in line with the "real world"...or so the explanation at the time went)

not trying to be a jerk, but the coaches in your conference, and some from other conferences, gave you feedback on CC why your team struggled at times....what do you expect to hear differently here?  those guys have gotten their teams to where they are because they know what they are doing.

they weren't wrong...just like rednu and isack are not wrong...it just seems like you dont want to hear what people are having to say and instead decided to take your ball and go home because you feel that they and the game apparently, are wrong.  you're not going to hear anything differently here.

After some bad back to back seasons, I think in a flex/fcp you need guards with 40+ ath to go with 60+ Spd. Def ratings should be around 45, but think that might be secondary to the ath/spd combo. As for your "bigs" should try for 20+ Spd to go with most ath you can get.

ath and speed are most important for fcp, followed by defense. You can neglect things like per/lp/bh/p and still be successful if you have superior ath/spd/def. 

Thanks for the help. I'm going to run man to man next season. How would you place athleticism, speed and defense on a scale of 1-10 in M2M. I need to come up with a strategy before recruiting.

Ath and def 8-10 spd 5-6

I agree with bow.  I just won the Wooden D3 NT (relatively convincingly) with 0 guards over 80 spd and only three over 70.  But I had 60 something ath and 62 def.  On the flip side of that, I have 58 ath/60 def to start this season, and I don't expect to be much better than a secon round team.  Literally no speed and no guard depth.  So while I think ath/def are the most important, I don't value 80 ath/50 spd in guards the same same as 50 ath/80 spd.  I think you have to have speed in your guards or you will get crushed by elite press teams.