Ok, looked around and didn't find anything on this and I am sure one of the experts out there would know. In order to run the Half court Press/Man to man, I would need to work on the press IQ and the man-to-man? Has anyone had success with this defense combo? I would like to run it against teams that slow it down to protect against a short bench.

Pete

Yes you need to practice both.

Yes some people have had success doing it.

No, it isn't an optimal choice.

Thanks for the help. 

When I first started, I wanted to practice press a little and run press/m2m in end of game situations.  I became convinced that, although some have success with press/m2m, that it was better to choose one or the other due to the way the engine treats team IQ.   The extra time in team practice to bring IQs takes away from time that could be spent on individual practice.  At D3, that's a tough tradeoff.  

I see more reason to go with a press/zone system (based on other coaches' success as well as my experience with it).  I have a D3 team running press/zone and it has had decent success.  The tradeoffs there are that zone creates no turnovers, but your players get less fatigued.  So, run the combo and generate more turnovers, but with less fatigue and foul trouble than a pure press.  The problem is the team practice, you can accept a little lower overall IQs and still get good results, but it is tricky to figure out how much lower is ok.  

Based on this current engine, I think the benefits of running press/m2m are significantly less, than running press/zone; and either combo may be a little less optimal (as TJ says), than just picking a single defensive system and building your team to fit it.

i agree with these guys. first, to note, i still can't decide if half court press is even worth running, if you had the IQ for free. the negatives seem more tangible to me than the positives - you can see a fatigue hit, while the turnovers created is on the order of 1 per game, as best i can tell (one study i did, i came up with .5 per game). so, given that, there is absolutely no way i can see it being worthwhile (from a success standpoint, if you just want the fun of trying it, have at it) at lower divisions. individual practice minutes are at a premium there. at high d1, players start with such high ratings, you can spare those minutes, but anywhere else its totally not worth it, as best i can tell. i have to confess, i did throw in the half court press at d1 tark where i just won the title running hcp/zone, but i don't think hcp helped us. i just did it out of frustration. i practice zone and press there so i can play whichever suits the team, so i had the IQ sitting around for free, and 90% of the time, i've opted not to run the halfcourt with zone. the success in those 6 games in the NT will make me take a closer look at hcp, but i have in the past and even in those 6 games, it didn't seem to help. just a coincidence, i think, but it does make me wonder if hcp maybe has some illogical and unexpected effects outside of turnover creation...