I'm only two games into the regular season in DIII playing a Press defense for the first time. 26 fouls in our first game (easy win) and then 24 fouls in this game : http://www.whatifsports.com/hd/GameResults/BoxScore.aspx?gid=7749427

I think we could have won that last game, but the fouls killed us. Seriously,  3 fouls in the first minute of the second half??? 

How do you experienced Press guys reduce the fouls?

Defense ratings are very important when running the press. Also if you don't have good speed/athleticism, you will be called for more fouls. 
Also you ran uptempo, which means more possessions, and therefore more fouls.

I'm not sure defense ratings play as big a role with fouls in the press as some people think they do, at least at the D3 level. 

Two seasons ago, I picked up a team with three SIM players all with defense ratings in the teens. Long story short, since the team already had six scholarships open, I opted not to cut any of them, but used it as an educational opportunity to see just what sort of an effect the low defense ratings had. here's what I had at season's end: 

Player A -- defense rating of 15/press IQ of A-...played 22.9 mpg as a PG, fouled out of 6 of 26 regular season games, never played less than 15 minutes and finished fourth in the conference with 1.5 steals per game. 
Player B -- defense rating of 15/press IQ of A+...played 21.8 mpg in the post, fouled out 2 of 26 regular season games, never played less than 15 minutes.
Player C -- defense rating of 20/press IQ of A...played 16.4 mph off the bench, split between PF and C, never fouled out. 

Collectively, they accounted for 30.55 percent of the minutes played that season and picked up 32.54 percent of the fouls whistled against my team (which overall averaged a 40 on defense, so the other 9 guys averaged around 47 each for defensive rating. Two of the three came back this season. We're 24 games in and they (the PG, still with a def. of 15 and the PF/C whose defense is now at 21) are playing 19.75 percent of the minutes and drawing 22.09 percent of the fouls thus far. Neither has fouled out this season. 

Bottom line, if you were to just look at their stats compared to the rest of the team, knowing nothing of their ratings, you'd be hard-pressed to know that their defense ratings are abysmal. There's just not that much separation, statistically, from what the rest of the team, rated considerably higher in defense, is doing. That said, I would never voluntarily run a press with defense numbers like what these players have, but my experience with this team does have me thinking I spent many seasons over-valuing the importance of the defense rating relative to its role in controlling fouls in the press. Ath, Spd and press IQ are all considerably more important IMO. 

Posted by mizzou77 on 1/2/2012 12:44:00 PM (view original):
against the #261 SOS.
Don't draw too many conclusions from these numbers.

That's this year's SOS, not last season's.

But for the sake of debate on the subject, let me throw out this question --  why should schedule strength matter to the assertion I'm making? 

The defense ratings of my players are constant regardless of opponent.  A 15 defender is a 15 defender regardless of whether I'm facing the No. 1 team or the No. 383 team. Because of that,  the negative impact to fouling caused within the engine by a low defense rating should manifest itself regardless of level of opposition. That the data from 50+ games shows such a minor deviation between a player with a "bad" defense rating and the level of fouling by the average/above average defenders elsewhere on the team suggests something else is driving the engine to call fouls and assign them to players.

If anything, suggesting that strength of schedule would skew the data more dramatically supports my position that things like speed and athleticism -- skill areas that "good" teams possess in droves -- plays the bigger role in fouling within the press.

If you have data you wish to post, by all means do so, because I was rather stunned to see the data I refer to in my original post.

I think def rating affects FG% much more than fouls.  I don't think that changes in press.  I think IQ/ath/spd affect fouls significantly more, all of which can be affected by stam.

Posted by rednu on 1/2/2012 2:17:00 PM (view original):

Posted by mizzou77 on 1/2/2012 12:44:00 PM (view original):
against the #261 SOS.
Don't draw too many conclusions from these numbers.

That's this year's SOS, not last season's.

But for the sake of debate on the subject, let me throw out this question --  why should schedule strength matter to the assertion I'm making? 

The defense ratings of my players are constant regardless of opponent.  A 15 defender is a 15 defender regardless of whether I'm facing the No. 1 team or the No. 383 team. Because of that,  the negative impact to fouling caused within the engine by a low defense rating should manifest itself regardless of level of opposition. That the data from 50+ games shows such a minor deviation between a player with a "bad" defense rating and the level of fouling by the average/above average defenders elsewhere on the team suggests something else is driving the engine to call fouls and assign them to players.

If anything, suggesting that strength of schedule would skew the data more dramatically supports my position that things like speed and athleticism -- skill areas that "good" teams possess in droves -- plays the bigger role in fouling within the press.

If you have data you wish to post, by all means do so, because I was rather stunned to see the data I refer to in my original post.

That's this year's SOS, not last season's.
Last season's SOS was probably worse... it was sim scheduled.

why should schedule strength matter to the assertion I'm making
Because it matters in everything... I repeat, everything.

My point is...simpy don't put too much faith in any asumptions made against a 261SOS.
I'm not saying your wrong... not trying to argue.
However, if you think your player should foul a slow, untalented sloth, playing on the #383 RPI team.... just as much as he would foul a human coached excellant guard, purposely attacking him repeatedly....then, good luck I guess. 

 

But look at what you're saying mizzou -- "if you think your player should foul a slow, untalented sloth..."   Slow is SPEED, not DEFENSE. My contention was never that speed isn't a factor, and that's spelled out quite clearly in what you've copied above.

My position was that the defense rating is perceived by some as more significant to the overall process of determining fouls in the press than it, in actuality, really is.

The defense rating is a constant for the individual player in the sense that It stays the same regardless of whoever the opponent is on that given day. My player isn't a default of 15, turning into a 5 because I'm playing the #1 team in the country or inflating to a 30 because I'm playing the #383 wretch of the world. It's a 15 because that's what it is for that player on that game day, period. The variables in the equation that change based upon the quality my opponent are THEIR speed, THEIR athleticism, etc. If a player fouls more against good teams than he does bad, it indicates the difference in opponent controls the frequency of fouls. By definition, that rules out the defense rating as a primary cause because the defense rating is the constant -- it is the "controlled" variable in the experiment. 

My purpose for sharing what I did was because I, like many, held the defense rating as having high priority in foul incidence, so given the opportunity (because I'd never voluntarily recruit players with teen defensive ratings) I tracked their performance and was surprised at how small the deviation from team average was. I offered that data here, as is, for general consumption. Maybe two seasons isn't enough to draw a definitive conclusion from, but I think its substantive enough to carry merit when speaking of general trends. I definitely don't think it's something that you simply dismiss with a one sentence drive-by of the team's SOS sans evidence to the contrary, and that is what your original post and even parts of this second one appear to be. 

If I've taken the tone or intent of those lines wrong, I apologize. Either way, I'll drop the matter here unless someone brings something new to the discussion. 

Mizzou is right about SOS. Against an extremely weak SOS, a player with 40 per can shoot 38% beyond the arc, while a big with 40 ath 60 reb can grab 8 boards a game. Does that mean per doesn't matter in 3pt, or that ath/reb doesn't matter for bigs? Similarly, you are not going to see the separation between players with 60 def v. players with15 def in the press, when your opponents are 10-15 points behind in ath/spd, which is what happens when your schedule has an SOS in the 250+ range. 

Edit: Or to think about it this way. Suppose Lebron and I were both given a chance to play two pickup games each. Game 1 is against a 5 year old, game 2 is against Kobe. I'm pretty sure both Lebron and I are going to win 11-0 against the 5 year old, while Kobe will destroy me 11-0 and give Lebron a run for his money. Against a 5 year old, you can be pretty mediocre and still dominate, while against Kobe, you have to be one of the best in the game to have a chance. This is the same thing here. Against extremely weak competition, your best player and your worst player are going to play similarly, putting up stats on the board, shooting high %, grabbing boards, stealing the ball, and not fouling much. Against a top SOS, that's when you see separation. 

And if you look at what you have posted:

"Collectively, they accounted for 30.55 percent of the minutes played that season and picked up 32.54 percent of the fouls whistled against my team (which overall averaged a 40 on defense, so the other 9 guys averaged around 47 each for defensive rating. Two of the three came back this season. We're 24 games in and they (the PG, still with a def. of 15 and the PF/C whose defense is now at 21) are playing 19.75 percent of the minutes and drawing 22.09 percent of the fouls thus far. "

The players with def in the teens are committing more fouls than their share of minutes played. Without looking at your individual players ath/spd, it seems to me that def is the culprit. 

And your guard with 15 def, he's fouling like crazy. 2.1 fouls in 15.7mpg this season, 3.2 in 22.7 last season:


http://whatifsports.com/hd/PlayerProfile/Stats.aspx?tid=6682&pid=1911564

But without looking at it, couldn't that easily be as much a product of inferior ath/spd than low def?

The ratings from both teams work together to form the results.  Without constants in every other rating, I think it's impossible to determine the effect of def.  My personal feeling, based on watching the craziness of Wooden D3, is that def is nearly as big a factor in fouling as ath/spd/IQ.  It is, however, the biggest factor in Opp FG%.  Again, that's just from observations.  I don't know any way that any of us can know for sure without going through each individual matchup and accounting for ath/spd/IQ differences, and then factoring in stam.

I didn't mean for my original comment to come off quite as dismissive as it did.
I simply don't want new coaches, or Rednu either for that matter, to look at the above example and believe that DEF rating means nothing in the FCP...
I have ran press with several teams long before it became the rage. I have lived through the neutering of it... and still run it with a team or two today.
I have tons of data on the press. I have probably studied it's effects and just what drives it more than anything in HD.
My posts were only trying to say... you must look closely at all the variables involved before making any conclusions in HD.

In this case... the conclusions were being drawn against very poor competition..... 2 complete seasons of very poor competition.
I have a team that runs press against a top-10 SOS every single season.
My results tell me DEF does matter.
They also tell me if you score more points than everyone else... it doesn't matter how many fouls you commit

Yeah.  My point (nor do I believe rednu's point) is certainly not that def doesn't matter.  I think def is HUGE in the press give how it works in HD.  I just don't think it has as much to do with fouling as those other attributes.

I'm seeing the press back in vogue as it is. In Wooden D3, fully 2/3rds of the teams I'm playing run press. In Knight D2, 7 of the 8 elite 8 teams were press teams. It doesn't answer your question, but a lot of fouls should be the drawback to running press. I have teams running man that are faster, more athletic, with good bh/pass and I still average 16 turnovers. Against the elite teams, I average 18-24. There has to be a tradeoff somewhere. I'm personally already not pleased that the press is back.