Hey all,

I guess I’m going to find out this season, but I have a pretty decent D2 team, except I just graduated 2 point guards so the starting PG now is a junior who hasn’t played much previously and has 63BH and 58 passing. Okay scorer. Can probably get him to 70-75 in BH and P by tourney time but it’s gonna be tough for awhile.

Question is, how systemic are overall offensive issues with a PG like that if I otherwise have a pretty elite scoring SG, SF, and C? Would doing anything like running a slowdown offense potentially help for awhile? Or am I gonna be in for a tougher time?

Thanks for great advice here as always!

I wouldn't worry too much at D2. High 50s/60s BH/P for distributing guards at D2 is fine for competitive clubs. It's not elite level, but if the rest of the club is there, it shouldn't be the thing that keeps you out of the running. The reason to play slowdown in this situation, IMO, is if the guy you're talking about is your only decent option - IE, the next guy on the chart would be much, much worse, say in the 40s, and less than solid B IQ, and you have to limit his exposure. Even if that's true, I'd probably want that to be true for more than one spot on the depth chart before I make the slowdown choice my default.

That's great, thanks for this insight. That's very good to know. Was hoping it wouldn't cause the overall efficiency of the offense to go down, although that might have been a realistic feature. You're def right, I'm going to have to run slowdown for half or 3/4 of the season till the Freshman backup gets up to speed.

it does have a small impact on overall offensive efficiency, but its not major i agree with shoe there. you have hits in 2 small areas. first, more turnovers, which will just eat into your overall FGA and things like that. second, a slightly lower team fg% - this is based on the passing skill and iq of your team, weighted towards pg.

none of the above will sink you, and if you have a good team (i didn't check them specifically) from the 2-5 in terms of, having solid passing/iq, and having scorers who are good about not committing too many turnovers, you might not even notice it. even if you were to look!

What you will notice though is the relative gap against an opponent that has significantly superior PG play. I think that factor is being undersold here.

Awesome, thanks to you all! Interesting insight. This all makes sense and I'm curious to see how the season shakes out against a variety of teams and seeing how it does from the beginning of the season to the end as those stats improve a lot (and I forgot to mention he's fairly slow. Tourney time he might be close to 70Ath 68Spd and 70 BH&P and A IQs (D2).

I think the team is deep enough all around to both make an ok run with some luck and to get beat easily without it, but as you said MK I definitely don't like my chances going against top teams with a big PG advantage. And my relative disadvantage in coaching skill, ha!

If anyone's curious here's the team (he's Corey Cole).

https://www.whatifsports.com/hd/TeamProfile/Ratings.aspx?tid=3922

Since you run Man to Man, if your opponent in the tournament has an insane PG would you put your best defender (Stutz by far) on them? If so then the other guard spot is obviously your weak link and would be between Stevens and Cole. I'd say Johnson, Gayton and Hobson are locked in as your other starters.

EDIT: My interest is piqued because your team feels *very* similar to mine this year

Posted by marl_karx on 5/21/2023 8:09:00 PM (view original):
Since you run Man to Man, if your opponent in the tournament has an insane PG would you put your best defender (Stutz by far) on them? If so then the other guard spot is obviously your weak link and would be between Stevens and Cole. I'd say Johnson, Gayton and Hobson are locked in as your other starters.

EDIT: My interest is piqued because your team feels *very* similar to mine this year

It would be situational, but I would tend toward doubling an elite scoring guard in that hypothetical, rather than slotting a sub-par distributor to get a lock-down man matchup on him, with this team. There really is no other half-way decent distributing option, and they really would be giving significant offensive efficiency with the other options getting all the minutes at pg. Cole is obviously not ideal defensively, but 70 ath/speed with A level IQ will keep him in the game.

My last D2 championship featured a starting PG with mid-60s BH/P and mid-50s defense. His only elite offensive weapon (other than 90+ stamina) was A- FT shooting, which turned out to be valuable in the tournament, but other than that, probably looked like a weak link. You can coach around that if the rest of your team is there.

I was wondering about that MK, and in retrospect would have been fun to test in a couple exhibition games, but was assuming that running a 52 and 48 passing 1 and 2 guards would be rough overall. But I am curious how rough it would be. I'm tempted to see the difference with a team I might play twice in conference play, but this team needs all the seeding it can get to get lucky.

And that's good to know about doubling to offset Cole's defensive weakness Shoe - I can probably get his defense to 52-55 by tourney time. And it's good to know that it's at least possible to win a championship with a PG like that. I will let ya'll know how it goes at the end of the season, when I inevitably get bounced in the Sweet 16!