Hi all, 

I just played a less superior team and I thought I matched up correctly, but clearly I didn't as I lost the game. I'd love to hear your advise as to why I lost and possibly what I could have done. 

Suggestions are appreciated!

I assume you're talking about your game in Iba against Presbyterian. I'm far from an expert but the first thing that strikes me is that you didn't do much to defend their leading scorer (Norrell) and he put up 17 against you. Their starting PF only averages 5.1 PPG, yet you let Shaffer, who has 80 defense, defend him instead of putting him at C and having him guard Norrell. Shaffer's speed even matches up with Norrell's well so he could have potentially shut him down.

Then I see that you played a balanced defense. Considering 3 of their top 4 scorers are frontcourt guys (and the other guy is a SG who only averages about 7 PPG) I would have definitely gone inside with maybe a -3 defense. They also only have 3 guards on their entire roster-- if you had run an uptempo offense you could have tired them out quickly, especially since none of them has great stamina. So you could have taken much better advantage of that as well.

I would also probably start Mathes at SG, but that's just me. Better ATH, SPD, passing, and DEF, with only 4 less perimeter. BH is the only thing Jones has him on but to me everything else overcomes that. Mathes also knows your offense a LOT better.

But that's just my two cents.

prez do you mind taking a look at my recent loss to Mt. St. Matthews? thanks!

Hey Prez - great stuff - much appreciated!

PJ- I assume you mean Mt. St. Joseph. I should note again that I am really not a guru by any means. I haven't been playing this game forever and my biggest accomplishment is a PI Final 4 appearance last year in DII. I've just been doing my best to learn the game and figure out the formula to success; I think I'm making a lot of progress but I know I have a long way to go.

That said, like I said of the problem above, you should have considered defending Mercier a lot better. You've got a C in Manzano who's a pretty bad defender, and a PF in Malin who's a fairly decent defender (or at least markedly better than Manzano). On their side, they've got a C in Mercier who clearly has the biggest distro on their frontcourt and is the top scorer on their team, and a PF in Kerley who's fairly useless and only averages 5.2 PPG, even with his anomalous 8 points in this contest. To me, this seems like an obvious situation to switch it up-- put your good defending PF at C to cover their top scorer, and stick Manzano (the bad defender) against their PF who couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. I might have even double-teamed Mercier in this game; their PF has very low distro and rarely gets the ball anyway, and when he does get the ball he only shoots barely 40% from the floor, so I'd feel much better knowing I was doing everything I could to shut down the player who gets the ball most often and scores most often in the paint for them.

I think that was probably what did you in, since you allowed Mercier to put up 14 against you and even a couple fewer scores from him would have won you the game. You probably did the right thing by playing a balanced defense, since they seem to get their scoring equally from the perimeter and the post. I will say that it's not a complete surprise you lost this game; your team has a much higher average overall rating, but a lot of that's due to stuff like work ethic and stamina points. So really I could have seen this game going either way no matter what.

Longtime vets, feel free to correct me on any of this or add anything you think I'm missing.

thanks prez

question - would swapping my PF and C to match up my better defender with his better scorer have any effect in a zone defense? I always thought of that as a M2M tactic

Why not? If your PF is playing in the center's zone, he will cover their center, and vice versa.

Posted by pjbrankin on 8/2/2010 12:13:00 AM (view original):
question - would swapping my PF and C to match up my better defender with his better scorer have any effect in a zone defense? I always thought of that as a M2M tactic

You're correct. It would have no impact in a zone, since the zone takes the averages of the defenders. It's not one guy to a specific area.