In today's game (marquis matchup between top 10 teams) my team was down 13 with 3:29 left to play when 4 of my starters were left on the bench for the rest of the game.  Granted, it's tough to come back from that but should the engine call it quits?  If you look at my play-by-play the engine has several opportunities to sub but doesn't.  If it's a fatigue issue, the engine never calls timeout.  It inserted 2 freshmen to close the game. What gives? 
http://www.whatifsports.com/hd/GameResults/BoxScore.aspx?gid=6449611

In Team Game Plan, do you have a checkmark next to "When losing and the game is out of reach, give more time to backups"?

I do.  So, is 13 down with 3:29 left "out of reach?"  That seems a little bit early to throw in the towel to me. 

Well technically you could have been down 40 with 3:29 left to play and the game wouldn't have been mathematically "out of reach." But there's got to come a point where that setting has got to kick in. Down 13 with that amount of time to play, the odds you were actually going to win were extremely slim. Maybe the game could have waited a bit longer or until a few more points had been scored, but in reality a win at that point would have required a comeback of epic proportions, especially since you only scored 61 points all game. Basically you would have had to score about an additional 21% of your total actual game score with only 8.7% of the game left to play, and even that's assuming you'd be able to hold the other team completely scoreless for the rest of the game. Most real coaches wouldn't expect a miracle there.

My advice, for what it's worth, is to just uncheck that box if you would rather have your top guys duke it out 'till the end no matter what.

Unchecked. But I've played HD for years and have seen these kinds of comebacks posted fairly frequently.  In the previous engine the sim would put in the best PER players in the end-game situation like that.  That would have been superior to what happened. With 3:29 left and plenty of fouls and timeouts to give, there's no reason to throw in the towl, especially with tempo adjustments. What's the point of adjusting tempo to "up" but pulling the players who could do something?   Granted, the odds are against me but why not TRY? Every real life coach would. 

I've submitted a ticket just to get their clarification on when it's "out of reach" in the new engine. 

That might not even be what happened.  You had two guys come out at 4:14 and two at 3:29.  By the time they would have been ready to come back in, assuming your settings are fresh or fairly fresh, it would have been a 13-point game with 2:00 left or so.  That's much more out of reach.  I'm not disagreeing with you that it is possible to come back from that, but for all practical purposes, the game is over at that point. 

My guess is that the Sim looks at time left on the clock and estimates number of possessions remaining.  I would need 5 possessions to make up the scoring gap, and given that my opponent would have possessions, 5x2 = 10.  That looks like 35 x 10 = 350 seconds, or 5 minutes 49 seconds.  The Sim said "there's not that much time left."  However, the Sim moved me to uptempo,  which greatly reduces the time of my possessions.  Let's say my average possession time is 10 seconds. 
5 x 10 = 50, or less than a minute.  Even if my opponents' possessions were 35 seconds long each, that would take us to 3 minutes 45 seconds.... still not enough time.  However, I still had fouls to give to shorten possessions and there is a good chance of a turnover as well.  The opponent wasn't playing hold-the-ball, either, he was playing slowdown.  That gets us down to much less than 3 minutes 29 seconds.  Given that I was now at +2 for 3-pointers, that would greatly increase the probability of cutting the lead.

Bottom line: Like real life, no way you yank your starters with 3:29 left to play and down 13 with plenty of fouls and TOs to give.  

CS response on "out of reach": Basically the engine calculates the losing team's scoring rate (points per minute) and then if tripling that scoring rate for the remainder of the game still isn't enough points to tie or lead the game, then it's considered out of reach.

Makes sense to me.  I think there was a good chance your starters were pulled to rest at the 3:29 mark, and just never game back in since you were going to lose say at the 2:30 mark.

Posted by cthomas22255 on 12/13/2010 2:50:00 PM (view original):
CS response on "out of reach": Basically the engine calculates the losing team's scoring rate (points per minute) and then if tripling that scoring rate for the remainder of the game still isn't enough points to tie or lead the game, then it's considered out of reach.

Not sure I am thrilled to hear this is how it is done...so if a team has mediocre stamina and runs slowdown for the bulk of the game (and the system gets its 'scoring rate' figured), then has its team settings to switch to uptempo at a certain point (say maybe when you are down 13 with 3 and a half to go?) the new tempo may just generate enough action to overcome the deficit...but probably not with your best players on the pine.

Of course, I usually leave that box unchecked so the starters would play more (*but it sounds like you had it unchecked too...)

Posted by isack24 on 12/12/2010 9:24:00 PM (view original):
That might not even be what happened.  You had two guys come out at 4:14 and two at 3:29.  By the time they would have been ready to come back in, assuming your settings are fresh or fairly fresh, it would have been a 13-point game with 2:00 left or so.  That's much more out of reach.  I'm not disagreeing with you that it is possible to come back from that, but for all practical purposes, the game is over at that point. 

Anything is possible - remember this Reggie Miller action?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYnQAa4B4no

If he doesn't have that play scrubs box when we are getting whooped button checked, his starters should get their ***** off the bench and try to win the game -  that's why we play, right coach Herm?