So this is only my 2nd season in division 1 and I'm, of course, struggling. I was curious if some of you vets could look at my team and see if I'm heading in the right direction. Starting with an awful team and D- prestige I know its going to take time to get my prestige up to recruit better but I want to know how I'm doing with my prestige.

I'm currently 2-6 but with a pretty above average schedule. What am I missing to compete? Just need a few more years to keep rebuilding and keep moving up in recruits?

I just want to see if I'm doing well with my situation

Thanks all.

seems to me that you've played a bit harder schedule -- SOS 67 -- than you can compete with, and you've lost the ones you should've and won the few you should've...though should've beaten UNO as well. And it looks like you scheduled almost as hard for next season, and 5 of the 8 games are on the road. I just don't see you moving up the prestige ladder like that. Hate to say it, but the best thing you can do (imo) is schedule 10 really crappy SIM teams or teams you feel pretty confident you can beat. Get a 17-9 record or something like that and work your prestige up gradually. A D-prestige currently AND playing a challenging schedule will unfortunately get you nowhere in HD.

And you have just 4 upperclassmen, it's tough to win like that anytime, but esp. with the SIM upperclassmen you've been dealt.

Your guards in general could have better BH/PA skills imo, though Huang is solid, and as a group they've had a fairly high number of TO's.

All of your starters -- except for Ringgold -- are laying a ton of bricks, but your backups are doing fine on FG%. I'm guessing this is from simply being overmatched in most games by other team's starters. Not sure what to do about this tbh.

Oh, and I'd also go slowdown all year except against the bad SIM teams. You just don't have the quality and depth needed to even go normal imo.

GL....

Thanks jdno. I'm trying to schedule a tough schedule since my conference has 7 SIMs. Although Im not guarenteed a berth because the other 2 human teams in conference are better than me.

I honestly think my SF's are pretty good for low level D1.

Yeah, I think Im just being outmatched by the teams Ive been playing.

Thanks for the insight.

Your gonna have to recruit a little better. With the low prestige its crucial. I would take 2 walkons a season and use the extra cash to get a little better talent.

jdno has it right.

You're turning it over too much at this point. Unclear on the reason since I can't see things like distro but my guess is that you've got too much distro on a few players. In addition to jdno's point about the overmatched starters, that will also result in really low fg pct and drive up turnovers.

You've faced a lot of pressing defenses and its hurting you because pretty much your whole team has bad bh/pass. Anytime you face any sort of press you should try to focus the ball on guys with good bh/pass. But you don't have any. So they're either turning it over or they're forcing a shot up against a doubleteam and their FG% is lower as a result.

I definitely agree that you should go slowdown except for one point which is my only disagreement with jdno: with as bad as your team is in bh/pass, I wouldn't go slowdown vs a press. The last thing you want your team doing is working the ball around the perimeter for 35 seconds against a defense doubleteaming you. That's a recipe for disaster in my opinion.

westcoast, I admire your desire to play a challenging schedule given the SIM-filled conference you're in. I just wonder if that's putting the cart before the horse at this stage of the game. Your first few seasons I'd focus primarily on working the prestige up by having winning seasons. Getting bashed in during NC play and winding up 3-7 to start the season can be tough. With the way HD is setup currently, you're better off just playing the Sisters of the Poor and going 10-0 vs. "manning up". It's not as much fun this way probably and feels like the easy way out, but get that prestige up to C-/C range (and recruit better talent as much as possible along the way as brian said) if possible and then start worrying about post-season implications when scheduling. Just my $0.02

cheez, that's an interesting insight about the slowdown vs. the press. Is the sim engine really this detailed to account for higher chance of turnovers when handling the ball longer during a slowdown? It makes sense I suppose what you're saying, esp. in RL, I just wonder if Tarek really coded it up with this realism in mind w/r/t tempo. I thought the consensus was the turnover ratio stays the same across all 3 tempo selections.

jdno - i know that's the consensus but the anecdotal evidence from my teams suggests the opposite. I didn't do a long, detailed test or anything but I've noticed that going normal tempo seems to be the best bet in terms of turnovers for my teams in general. And when I've had bad passing teams in rebuild situations and tried to go slowdown vs pressing teams...its been a complete disaster. Much worse than going normal tempo.

thanks cheez, I may have to experiment a little w/that.

I don't want to get into a big long stats post because those threads decline pretty quickly into garbage but I semi-routinely keep stats on my teams including turnover rate and scoring efficiency. Against the press my turnover rate over time has been lowest using "normal" tempo and my scoring efficiency has been highest using "normal" tempo. Not a huge sample size but enough to make me believe.

My theory is this: the engine doesn't track each ball movement but that it weighs a bunch of factors into a "likelihood of turnover" and that tempo is a factor in two ways:

1) because it affects the length of a possession and 2) because I believe there's an over-the-top correction to turnover rate that is based solely on tempo, regardless of possession length.

First on possession length, I could see it working something like this: the engine looks at the total length of a possession and divides that by some average number of ball movements (either passes or dribbles) required to acheive that possession length. This means that the longer my possession goes, the more ball movements my team has to make. Also, I think the engine looks at who I have on the floor (bh/pass/ath/spd/off iq) and the players on the floor for the defense (ath/spd/def/def iq) and calculates a "probability of turnover per ball movement" for each possession.

Once I have that probability per ball movement and the number of movements required I know the odds of a turnover in any possession and its pretty easy to use a random number generator to tell me whether or not one occurred in any given possession. And honestly, I don't think that would be all that complicated from a coding perspective though I'm not a programmer.

If I have a crappy bh/pass team, and the odds of a turnover per movement is say 15%, the probability of a not having a turnover in a "3 movement" possession (uptempo) would be just over 60%, in a "6 movement" possession it would be just over 40% and in a "9 movement" (slowdown) possession it would be just over 20%.

That might tempt you to go uptempo but I also think tempo (aside from length of possession) is a factor. I think its well-documented that uptempo, on its own, causes an increase in turnover rate (i.e. aside from possession length). And as well, lowers your offensive efficiency due to poor shot selection.

I could be waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay off but this is my going-in assumption.

So what level of success would be necessary to get from a d+ prestige to a c- or c?

Totally makes sense from a RL perspective cheez. Thx

a_b, I'd guess a 20-win season + a Conf. Championship may be enough...definitely winning the CT would do it, too

Quote: Originally Posted By cheeznsweet on 12/08/2009
My theory is this: the engine doesn't track each ball movement but that it weighs a bunch of factors into a "likelihood of turnover" and that tempo is a factor in two ways:

1) because it affects the length of a possession and 2) because I believe there's an over-the-top correction to turnover rate that is based solely on tempo, regardless of possession length.

First on possession length, I could see it working something like this: the engine looks at the total length of a possession and divides that by some average number of ball movements (either passes or dribbles) required to acheive that possession length. This means that the longer my possession goes, the more ball movements my team has to make. Also, I think the engine looks at who I have on the floor (bh/pass/ath/spd/off iq) and the players on the floor for the defense (ath/spd/def/def iq) and calculates a "probability of turnover per ball movement" for each possession.

Once I have that probability per ball movement and the number of movements required I know the odds of a turnover in any possession and its pretty easy to use a random number generator to tell me whether or not one occurred in any given possession. And honestly, I don't think that would be all that complicated from a coding perspective though I'm not a programmer.

If I have a crappy bh/pass team, and the odds of a turnover per movement is say 15%, the probability of a not having a turnover in a "3 movement" possession (uptempo) would be just over 60%, in a "6 movement" possession it would be just over 40% and in a "9 movement" (slowdown) possession it would be just over 20%.

I really haven't noticed anything that would make me believe the # of movements cause a higher TO%. If anything, I may tend to lean the other way that slowdown may even be a lower %.

Quote: Originally Posted By oldwarrior on 12/09/2009

Quote: Originally Posted By cheeznsweet on 12/08/2009

My theory is this: the engine doesn't track each ball movement but that it weighs a bunch of factors into a "likelihood of turnover" and that tempo is a factor in two ways:

1) because it affects the length of a possession and 2) because I believe there's an over-the-top correction to turnover rate that is based solely on tempo, regardless of possession length.

First on possession length, I could see it working something like this: the engine looks at the total length of a possession and divides that by some average number of ball movements (either passes or dribbles) required to acheive that possession length. This means that the longer my possession goes, the more ball movements my team has to make. Also, I think the engine looks at who I have on the floor (bh/pass/ath/spd/off iq) and the players on the floor for the defense (ath/spd/def/def iq) and calculates a "probability of turnover per ball movement" for each possession.

Once I have that probability per ball movement and the number of movements required I know the odds of a turnover in any possession and its pretty easy to use a random number generator to tell me whether or not one occurred in any given possession. And honestly, I don't think that would be all that complicated from a coding perspective though I'm not a programmer.

If I have a crappy bh/pass team, and the odds of a turnover per movement is say 15%, the probability of a not having a turnover in a "3 movement" possession (uptempo) would be just over 60%, in a "6 movement" possession it would be just over 40% and in a "9 movement" (slowdown) possession it would be just over 20%.

I really haven't noticed anything that would make me believe the # of movements cause a higher TO%. If anything, I may tend to lean the other way that slowdown may even be a lower %.

I'm talking specifically against the press and the constant dt's. For sure its not that way against other defenses.