To be clear, up front - I am.

I expected a lot more out of my Methodist team this season.  In fact, I thought this would be one of the better starting lineups I've ever fielded, with a bunch of moderately-talented but high-IQ seniors coming off the bench for support.  Admittedly, I haven't gotten the development I'd hoped for from Bassler, his WE has really held him back.  He won't come all that close to capping out in PER and Pass.  That means I don't really have a strong second option shooting from outside, or even a dominant 2nd scorer.  I also have fairly mediocre rebounding.  Those are the weaknesses.  Allen as my primary scorer, however, feels like a real strength, even as a sophomore.  And the rest of the team are defensively very solid.  I did not expect 6 losses in regulation play and a 2nd-round bump out of the CT.  Should I have?  Am I missing something?  Is there something very wrong with my team setup?  Did I just get unlucky?

Usually, I pride myself on getting very nearly as much as possible out of the players I have.  I'm not the best recruiter - not even a good recruiter, honestly - but I do think I usually build teams, set up lineups, and gameplan better than most.  That seems to not be the case here.  I'm wondering if I have a big blind spot somewhere, or if they're really just not very good.

That is one tough conference. All legitimate losses. I'd kill for my D2 teams to have that ball handling.

I do think you got unlucky in spots. Having your main scorer lower in iQ due to being a sophomore is unfortunate. My only thoughts are:

I think George is a legit 2nd option for scoring. I'd just make sure he's at -2. Even 15 3's is too much. Give him more distro. I also wonder about your depth chart. A lot of your games you are having stamina issues. Are you at least 3 deep at every position? Your team stam isn't great, but it shouldn't be as bad as it seems in games. George is tired every game which seems odd to me.

Quick observations:

Killer conference with great coaches. You should make a nice NT run.
Your team composition right now seems more suited to a FB/Press. Love your speed (strong even at d-2) and BH/PER. I don't think you're leveraging this like you might. Plus you are (could be) 12 deep.
Seems like your backcourt defense could be stronger running m2m.
As you mentioned, Rebounding isn't great (and I get it, something has to give at d-2/d-3).

I'm no expert, but your team is shooting a ton of 3pt shots... I wonder if you'd do better with less 3pt shots. Might do better to only really let the 90 PE guy shoot the 3s... 

Especially since you don't seem to have the rebounding to make up for the missed shots. I've done this on a few squads, even when guys had 60-70 Perimeter, and I see better FG%...

I'm surprised you're having fatigue issues with 70+ stamina on almost every player. Weird. 

 You have 4 big men who are a combined 6/31 from 3-land.  That's only  one attempt/game. But a missed 3 replaced by a successful 2 is a swing of 5 points.  In your 5 point loss to Dominican, your big men missed 2 outside shots.

I'd set all the PF and C at -2; Johnson, Everman,  and Kent at -1; everyone else at 0

i agree with al, except id probably have everman at 0, hes got enough per, and his ft is awful, better to chuck up a 3.

i think the offensive distro is probably what could use the most work. you have one player who is a million times better than everyone else, and hes only taking 14 ppg. 20 is the bare minimum for him.

next, you needed to find the players of your mediocre middle pack who were actually better than the others, and give them more of a role. bassler may have sucked on growing, but hes still 77 spd, 64 per, 67 bh. thats solid from behind the arc, with 60 ath and a c+ to go with it. tawney is 60/69/73, with 57 ath and b- to boot as well. both of those guys are solid, i would have had them, and i guess probably george, as your next tier of 3, and had those guys try to take on a pretty solid load. george's load was probably about fine, the other two are probably better IMO. larmon i definitely would 0 out, all his ppg could move to those guards and that would be great. some of those other guys you have down the chart are fine, for filler, but you want to give as much scoring as guys can handle, to the guys up the chart, and leave what's left for the rest. its hard because there are so many so similar in their mediocrity, where offense is concerned.

really, that is the core problem... offense is obviously really important, you need to have some guys who are great, so they can carry most of the load, and your offense will be mostly great. you could afford to lose all the offensive talent off like 3 of your mediocre guys and it really would make your team not even 0.1 points per game worse. just no value in having all those guys who can take some load if you need them to, when you really don't want any of them to be taking much load.

i think you've got it pretty well in your OP. that, and rebounding.. all about diminishing returns. got to make sure you get those 2 scorers per line, 2 rebounders, a pg, and then as much defense as you can... you have one guy with solid passing, and really that's it. i look at teams having 4 abilities, at a high level. offense - you have only 1 great player. defense - you have plenty. rebounding - only 2 good players. guard skills - hard to say exactly because not having great passing is fine for a sg, but your passing affects team fg% and stuff now so its pretty darn important, and you are weak there too. i would rate this team as just decent in 3/4 of those areas. got to spread that talent around, to areas where its needed. the overall talent level of the team, when you add player by player, ignoring roles, is way higher than the actual talent level of the team, when you look at abilities, and that is always going to lead to disappointment. so - yes, you should be disappointed - but no, not a ton you could do other than going back in time and rearranging that talent, although i do think you could have alleviated it a bit by concentrating the offense in the best guys you had. i'd definitely try that for the NT, it almost definitely can't hurt you, although it may not help as much as i'd hope, because you are taking the scoring away from guys who are only slightly more mediocre than some of the ones you are giving it to.

good luck!

with what gil said above, depending on the type of potential these interchangably decent players had and have you might have been able to craft some of them into different roles if you were trying to teamplan around a certain concept - not saying you did or didn't, but not everyone does (at least so specifically) and throwing this out as a nugget of possible advice is all. 

HEY!  what the......!!!#@!

I finally get the better of ol dasher in a couple of games,  and now he's enlisted the entire freaking westwing of the hall of fame to help him?

I think your team is just fine the way it is dasher.    Also, I'd like to bring my team over sometime so we can see what those rings look like.   narcoticos rings are still in our trophy case, but im guessing the rings have changed a bit in the last 50 years  since weve won.