Congrats to oldman, who won the D1 Phelan National Championship last night with Georgia Tech. The team certainly had the talent to win the NT (813 overall rating) and oldman is a legendary coach, but the eyebrow-raising aspect of this title is that he did it running an uptempo full-court press, with only one player having a defensive IQ above B. The defensive IQ breakdown of his roster:

B+: 1 player
B: 3 players
B-: 3 players
C+: 3 players
C: 2 players

I've seen this sort of thing in ages past, when the press was still believed to be "magic", but nothing to this degree in more recent times. Thoughts? Is this just a bit of a fluke, considering it was a really great team with a great coach, or is maybe the press stronger than people think? Or do IQ's maybe not carry as much weight as they should?

The press may still be magic - I've had my best NT runs with teams playing press.

This could be interesting. Would like more substance though, scores, matchups, etc.

this is/was certainly eyebrow raising.  i've always hated the jekyll and hyde nature of the press when i've had it at lower levels to the point that i have switched away from it on several occasions.  i've never tried running it at high D1 though....but this certainly gives me some reason to consider it.

That team has a walkon. The overall rating is 845 for the other 11 players. They could have played any defense they wanted to and beat most teams.

Posted by zags27 on 6/14/2013 3:43:00 PM (view original):
That team has a walkon. The overall rating is 845 for the other 11 players. They could have played any defense they wanted to and beat most teams.

On the same basis, their last 3 games in the NT were against teams with 876, 826 and 849 overall ratings. It's not like they had a big mismatch on overall rating or anything.