So, I have the most underperforming team of my entire HD career playing in Wooden. I thought i’d share it here to get some insight from others on why we are so bad. I know this team isn’t elite, heck I didn’t even think they would be great, but I didn’t expect to play way below .500 in conf play and miss the NT. At this rate, we might miss the PT too.

I know we need more outside shooting and I am sure many are going to focus on the fact that I play two defenses. But my track record at this school speaks for itself and I have been playing both defenses nearly the entire time. I just made it to the national championship a few seasons ago with this group, so I don’t think that is the issue. I practice press so that I am prepared for seasons when I have good depth and I practice zone for seasons like this one where I am thin (especially on the perimeter this season). It does not hurt my IQ IMO. All of my sophomores are at B+ on offense and zone (which I am primarily playing this season) except one who isn’t a real soph (Pulido was an ineligible). I feel like that is at least competitive with what single defense teams would expect. Let me know if you think otherwise.

besides that, any other ideas why we suck so bad? Thank god Fresno St. and Hawaii are in the conf or I might have gone 1-15 in conf play despite being top 10 in the world in team ATH and DEF ratings. Also we have 2 elite shot-blockers which I would have thought would have helped my zone defense.

https://www.whatifsports.com/hd/TeamProfile/Ratings.aspx?tid=3532

I have 3 players in the top 50 on the draft big board and am going to miss the postseason. Talk about frustration.

Was looking at this earlier. No idea man. Like seriously no idea.

I’ve spent some time checking stuff out and I’m still mostly at a loss. I would consider this a 1 in 100 streak of bad luck. That does happen, statistically, a couple times when you have 283 seasons. Also, all of your talented players except Ray are young and therefore have bad IQ. You have 1 elite upperclassman.

Thanks for looking cub. I really respect your opinion and ability as a coach.

Yea, I do think being young has something to do with it. I start 3 Sophomores, 1 freshman and 1 senior. But still, I feel like at this point in the season my IQ’s should be caught up enough to be competitive. Last night I lost by 15 at home to a decent Cal team. I should not be losing by 15 at home to anyone.

and it is not like I forgot how to play the game all of the sudden. My other teams are doing well. I would argue this Washington team is significantly more talented than my Texas Tech team in Knight, yet that squad has an RPI of 4.

I haven't looked in crazy detail.. but one thing I noticed is lack of 3pt shooting.

Against Washington State, they went 2-3 zone -5 and you only shot 4-12 from 3. Absolutely no way you should only make 4 3s against someone playing 2-3 zone -5. Goldbold needs to take more shots I think. Teams are going to pack the paint and it'll be hard to go inside. Your 2nd best outside shooter has only taken 15 3s all season, that's not enough to keep teams honest. Having only 1 reliable outside shooter sucks. Teams can go heavy minus and then just double Goldbold.

Sent a sitemail saying something similar to Benis....I really think your perimeter game is hurting you.

Maybe trust McDonald and Floyd Smith a little more?

Thanks Crab and Benis. I have been really pushing McDonald’s practice minutes to get his PER to a respectable level. Outside shooting is definitely an issue with this team. I didn’t think it would cost us this many games though. I have quite a bit of distribution (usually between 17 and 20) on Godbold and he is usually set at +1 or +2, but it seems like he sometimes doesn’t get as many looks as I’d like, perhaps because of double teams.

We are also a terrible free throw shooting team. I would think we are one of the worst in the nation at 61%.

i have a few thoughts on this. sort of as a general rule, i find the answers to these questions usually entail both the team seeming better than they are and some coaching stuff. this one is firmly in that camp IMO - just sort of saying like, i know (insert anything) isn't enough to explain the performance by itself. but taken together, i think so - and probably sure, a bit of it is bad luck - but i actually don't think that is the main culprit. starting with the perceptions stuff.

- number one, this just is not a very good offensive team. godbold is perfectly good but generally speaking a guy with B IQ leading the team scoring wise is a bad sign (i know hes b+ now but assuming lot of that conf play was done at a b). there is no elite lp scoring on the team and after the 1st guard, there isn't even a second solid per scorer. plus you appear to be running your starting guards on beyond fairly fresh fatigue setting because of the lack of depth - which frankly if you are running zone with this team, is probably a good thing - but the consequence is, your already weak per scoring gets even weaker. godbold with A iq could tolerate that much better than he can now, in offensive efficiency terms. also, the pass/iq coming from your back court, especially pg, is pretty important in getting your team better looks. given the fatigue issues, lower iq, and not so great bh/pass at the 1-2, you aren't doing great there either - not bad by any means, but normally i'd be hoping for that to help bail me out with offense like yours - but no luck. then the one-sided nature of your offense (few 3s) makes you vulnerable to the opponent playing a minus. so kinda rough all around, and the singular major bright spot is dampened by the circumstances (fatigue).

- number two - that schedule - man that is a bad schedule. 6 home games in non conference when playing in a conference that tough? its brutal! scheduling remains a good 20% of the success of a team like yours, and probably more for your specific situation this season - and that is not a category that is helping you right now. you do have 2 top 100 rpi wins from non conf which is better than nothing, but with a team like yours, you should be doing significantly better than that. your contribution to RPI from those non conf opponents, which is half of your total rpi in that period, is garbage - those teams are like, barely .500. your opponents opponents component, 25%, is awful because those are sims - which is always the case with sims - but usually people get better sims which at least present some positives to offset that negative. the 25% of rpi that is your w/l, going into a tough conf... having a mere 8.6 wins from your 9 sims, which should basically be guaranteed wins, is downright criminal. you should have 12.6 - a 47% higher mark than you achieved. and all this should be viewed with the understanding that sim-filled schedules ,even in the best of cases, are almost always meaningfully sub-optimal.

coaching stuff...

1) well i guess scheduling is kind of a coaching thing but that has nothing to do with the team this year (you set it last year for starters), expectations IMO should be based on the facts on hand at the start of the season, and if im looking at your team and your schedule to start the season, i'm not thinking the NT bid is safe. a team like yours, middling team in a tough conference, really needs to pad their resume, and you should be doing the work to find appropriate humans when you have such an important scheduling situation (good records, solid shot at top 100 rpi, but weak talent - all on the road - look for the best humans in weak confs), even if you usually don't.

2) your offense basically seems like its going to suck no matter what you do and i kind of think the normal approach of consolidating time to your better guys just isn't getting you the dividends, in part because those better guys just aren't that amazing, and in part because your best player is young and playing fatigued.

i don't really see much help for you in that way there. however, there's a simple rule in this game that applies here - if you aren't going to score very well, you'd better be winning the possession battle! that first lost to USC (i only peeked around), i mean man, that 3-2 +3 makes sense there but you just got wrecked on possessions. i think you need to be playing the possession game personally, and that means pressing. your starting defense from the 1-3 is quite good, and really your starting reb from the 3-5 is too - you could be winning significant on possessions, but you don't seem to be winning at all, in conf. i would still run slowdown, you definitely have a crappy bench, but i think this would work much better (everyone on fairly fresh) than the current scheme of focusing minutes which isn't really helping your offense much. i think if you can't help your offense much regardless - at least help your TO generation and rebounding by running press.

littler stuff:

- spillman is by a decent margin your best of the spillman, pulido, markert trio - but hes playing significantly less than pulido. i think if you go zone, smith has to be your backup 1, which i think you already did, but also basically has to play the 2, and you have to be getting spillman sf minutes where he hurts you less than any of those 3 crap guys hurt you in any position. in press, this is harder, because you can't exactly do what you want rotation wise. still, he should be doing as much as possible, it feels to me, among the trio. perhaps in slowdown press hes your backup sg with none of the trio listed at the 1 and markert as backup sf?

- i am fairly confused about the starting bigs. first off, with your team, i simply don't think you can afford to play nearly this much 3-2. you cant score well and you are playing the worst possessions set that exists - sometimes i guess - but your team as a zone team, i'm expecting to be cheating inside at every turn, making those strong pac 10 teams beat me from the line, and giving myself a bit of a rebounding edge - at least compared to the brutal 3-2! so, in a 2-3, the big stack is sort of really significantly negative, because of the importance of a strong def/blk/ath/iq 5 - but you don't play it much, and defensively, it doesn't matter who is where. but still, in the 3-2, it still seems clearly wrong. rebounding has always mattered a little more at the 5, smoke em if you got em, and you do... plus offensively, due to his ath/lp based scoring compared to per/spd, ray feels like more natural scoring wise at the 5. im sort of confused about the arrangement because i guess i see no benefit to the way it is, even if the range of negatives diminishes with the 3-2? i also just don't get the 3-2 fixation when you have a SF who can swing well, like you even ran a 3-2 -5 one game - why? you are paying a significant rebounding penalty to play that 3-2 there, against a team who doesn't even take per shots - i guess it seems weird to me.

- mccathern is being significantly under utilized offensively and has been all year. wait a sec, i missed his reb was so low. so he plays sf behind smith? ok thats good, somehow i had him as a pf in my head. the stuff mostly still applies about that bad trio, should be spillman playing - but obviously mccathern is above those 3. so, i would still try for spillman over pulido - especially in press. honestly i would have even tried some mccathern at the 2 and spillman at the 3 in zone. if you do go zone, i would probably consider that in a 2-3 zone. cant hurt? perhaps even in the press. regardless, hes not even close to doing enough offensively.

- despite the risk of DTs and stuff, for how many minutes hes playing, godbold has definitely not been shooting enough.



in summary - it feels to me like mccarthern, spillman, and gallaway, and really even a bit of graham who is one of your better mid level scorers (at PF only), could all play a little more, and satisfy your slowdown press requirements. this would help you on possessions *substantially* compared to the 3-2 zone and i think it would make you a lot more competitive in conference play. and at least go 2-3 if you stay zone... with some more time to those 3 and probably knock a minutes rating down (if you are doing minutes) on bodbold while upping his distro, because i think efficiency wise, you are losing out there. definitely fix the big starters. there's no helping your non conference schedule with coaching this year but that is just incredibly damaging, and especially for medium quality teams in strong conferences - that is precisely the circumstance in which calibrated scheduling is most important.

i think all of those things in totality... sort of get you from A to B. im sure im flubbing some stuff here and don't know this team that well so im sure my opinions right now are far from perfect (even my own teams i have to experiment and observe to get them right), but i do think there's clearly some room for adjustment. hopefully that helps! i know you are a good coach and so i tried to be as candid as possible - but hopefully not too much!

I'm actually a little surprised you're so confused about this team. DI holds no enticement for me because I play the game for the fun of having my own dynasty and constantly battling for top recruits would just **** me off too much. But my brother had a good run in DI (#1 seed with low DI team!) and has had teams EXACTLY like this and we've pored over them together many times.

Basically the thing is, you have a few good top end players and a bunch of role players.

I don't have any elaborate advice because I think you should use the KISS principle.

Godbold and to a much lesser extent Ray are your scorers so just accept it and give them huge distribution. Yes, it goes against the grain and it isn't a strategy that could take you all the way probably (brother got to NT Finals one year riding a scorer like yours) but I'm 90% sure your record would be much better if you did this. For reference, my brother had one Godbold level scorer who he rode to 3000 pts for his career and 3xPOY. Other coaches would message him and say "even with a double team I still couldn't stop him!"

By the same token you should just be overloading your offense and make Floyd Smith your PG for the 90 pass. Rather than see his 70 Reb as going to waste, double down and put Kaler at the 3 and have a great rebounding starting lineup.

EDIT: after talking to my brother he gave me his input and said that PG is the prime scoring spot so he would have Godbold at the point and Smith at 2. He joked that you should try to double Godbold's ppg from16 to 32 since the philosophy with a player like that is "if you've got him, use him"

EDIT2: my brother suggested I clarify that Godbold and Ray are not on the same level in terms of scoring.

Posted by marl_karx on 6/2/2020 12:12:00 PM (view original):
I'm actually a little surprised you're so confused about this team. DI holds no enticement for me because I play the game for the fun of having my own dynasty and constantly battling for top recruits would just **** me off too much. But my brother had a good run in DI (#1 seed with low DI team!) and has had teams EXACTLY like this and we've pored over them together many times.

Basically the thing is, you have a few good top end players and a bunch of role players.

I don't have any elaborate advice because I think you should use the KISS principle.

Godbold and Ray are your scorers so just accept it and give them huge distribution. Yes, it goes against the grain and it isn't a strategy that could take you all the way probably (brother got to NT Finals one year riding a scorer like yours) but I'm 90% sure your record would be much better if you did this. For reference, my brother had one Godbold level scorer who he rode to 3000 pts for his career and 3xPOY. Other coaches would message him and say "even with a double team I still couldn't stop him!"

By the same token you should just be overloading your offense and make Floyd Smith your PG for the 90 pass. Rather than see his 70 Reb as going to waste, double down and put Kaler at the 3 and have a great rebounding starting lineup.

I had a team with only 2 real scorers (and I had a #1 SF recruit who was slow and unathletic but elite lp/per who have me 8-10 PPG consistently) both of whom were totally elite and has 98+ stamina. I played slowdown and had them score 20 ppg, so combined the 2 guys had about 60% of my points and my top 3 had 75% of my points. One was a 100 ath/sp 60 lp 90 bh guy, and the other was 100 ath 80 sp 100 per 85 bh guy. Because they were at the 1/2 and they had 90 and 85 pass, coaches never doubled both of them. Road them to the title.

Posted by cubcub113 on 6/2/2020 12:39:00 PM (view original):

Posted by marl_karx on 6/2/2020 12:12:00 PM (view original):
I'm actually a little surprised you're so confused about this team. DI holds no enticement for me because I play the game for the fun of having my own dynasty and constantly battling for top recruits would just **** me off too much. But my brother had a good run in DI (#1 seed with low DI team!) and has had teams EXACTLY like this and we've pored over them together many times.

Basically the thing is, you have a few good top end players and a bunch of role players.

I don't have any elaborate advice because I think you should use the KISS principle.

Godbold and Ray are your scorers so just accept it and give them huge distribution. Yes, it goes against the grain and it isn't a strategy that could take you all the way probably (brother got to NT Finals one year riding a scorer like yours) but I'm 90% sure your record would be much better if you did this. For reference, my brother had one Godbold level scorer who he rode to 3000 pts for his career and 3xPOY. Other coaches would message him and say "even with a double team I still couldn't stop him!"

By the same token you should just be overloading your offense and make Floyd Smith your PG for the 90 pass. Rather than see his 70 Reb as going to waste, double down and put Kaler at the 3 and have a great rebounding starting lineup.

I had a team with only 2 real scorers (and I had a #1 SF recruit who was slow and unathletic but elite lp/per who have me 8-10 PPG consistently) both of whom were totally elite and has 98+ stamina. I played slowdown and had them score 20 ppg, so combined the 2 guys had about 60% of my points and my top 3 had 75% of my points. One was a 100 ath/sp 60 lp 90 bh guy, and the other was 100 ath 80 sp 100 per 85 bh guy. Because they were at the 1/2 and they had 90 and 85 pass, coaches never doubled both of them. Road them to the title.

7.0.3

i could definitely approve of an approach like this for the team in question with a slowdown 2-3 zone. i do think that fatigue issue at pg needs to be resolved even if its just beefing up the pg rotation with that weird sf with 70s bh/pass before giving the soph pg the keys to the kingdom.

I would give him the keys to the kingdom now because a) 14-12 b) hard to believe he stays

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Gillispie, I am going to dig into your feedback and ask some follow up questions and/or talk about my rationale on a few things. At this point I hope to just learn more about how to better handle future situations vs. saving the season the this team. It is amazing that I have had even the marginal success I have had in this game with such very little understanding on how to maximize talent/ratings. I feel like I can really take it to the next level if i can wrap my head around a few things.

Posted by drichar138 on 6/2/2020 2:00:00 PM (view original):
Thanks for the feedback guys.

Gillispie, I am going to dig into your feedback and ask some follow up questions and/or talk about my rationale on a few things. At this point I hope to just learn more about how to better handle future situations vs. saving the season the this team. It is amazing that I have had even the marginal success I have had in this game with such very little understanding on how to maximize talent/ratings. I feel like I can really take it to the next level if i can wrap my head around a few things.

thats a good approach - i would give the CT the old college try with a slowdown press, but still, its definitely about perspective for the future. i did have a possibly obvious but possibly important typo i happened to catch scrolling down the page - i meant to say, with your team running zone, i'd be cheating inside and making those good pac 10 teams beat me from the 3pt line (where luck is a real factor and where not everyone has enough talent to make you pay). not from the line. that makes no sense. in this sports simulation game where psychology doesn't exist and FTs are the most efficient form of scoring, my goal is never to make the opponent beat me from the line!

if you have some questions down the road, feel free to sitemail me, just be warned i am absolutely atrocious at following up on sitemail. perhaps posting here is better. for whatever reason, sitemails feel like work, i guess i feel obligated to actually give a well educated answer and at one point i spent *so* many hours answering sitemails i had to start ignoring them to preserve my sanity (i'm good with an 80/20 split, 80% of my time on the forums and sitemails and any other forms of chatting/emailing coaches, 20% playing the game - but at once point it was over 95% and sitemail alone was approaching 5 hours a week steady, and so i soured on sitemails a bit. i feel obligated to answer, which ruins it for me most of the time, makes it work, although i enjoy the occasional deep dives into teams).