How does switching defense affect preferences if I play one defense the first part of the year and then switch? Do I have to play the same D all year to get “very good”? Or is there a percentage that gets me “very good”?

The more, the better. I don’t know where the cutoff is from good to very good. I do know playing HCP/zone results in both getting “good” results for preference. I also know that as with all the preferences, two “very goods” are not necessarily equivalent. There is a range of value within each category, which means each modifying factor is unique. So maybe 20 starts with press, for example, will be enough to get the “very good” preference - but you’re not getting as much value from that modifier as a team who logs all 26 starts with press.

I think - but I’m not sure - that preferences stop at the end of the conference schedule, when the first recruiting session stops. I’d be interested to see if others have thoughts on that, I don’t recall that coming up.

For anyone interested I played the first exhibition game with man and second with zone. After those games man is Very Good and zone is Neutral. Both games had about the same number of possessions (with the zone game having two more actually). I'll update if anything changes.

It will change. Small sample size

Yeah, one more game with zone and now Zone is the Very Good and Man is Neutral.

I’ve never noticed exhibition games even affecting, so that was news to me. I wonder if there is a one game lag where after two games, the second game hadn’t been counted yet, and now after 4, only the first 3 games are counting? Doesn’t make sense to me, apart from that. I suspect when you get to 4-5 games of each, they’ll both appear as “good.”

One more game playing man. Now man to man is back to very good and zone is neutral. Probably not that consequential, but interesting to me.

So for anyone interested I have a full picture with some interesting results. The last row is the head-scratcher:

Defense Pref (Very Good)	Games played	Total Games Man	Total Games Zone
Man	1 Exhibition game	1	0
Zone	1 noncon game	1	2
Man	3 noncon	3	2
Zone	9 noncon	5	6
Man	after 13 conference games	10	15

I found it interesting that both didn't go to Good, but kept switching back and forth between Neutral and Very Good.

So, how this played out practically. I tried to get back to a man preference towards the end of the season for recruiting purposes. But I am switching to zone (only practicing zone). Even though I had played more games with zone, I had player 3 straight with man when it switched that final time. Another possible factor is that I had late game defense switch to man since my upperclassmen (better players who will play more of the late minutes) knew man better. Perhaps it is about possessions or minutes. I'm not sure.

Anyway, this does not give definitive answers (especially since I had multiple games with both defenses played) and only applies when a team switches O/D, but it did impact my recruiting. You could theoretically game the system (especially in a sacrificial year) and gain Very Good preferences in two offenses and two defenses just not at the same time. In turn, putting up visits to different recruits at different times based on which VG pref you have is an option.

For what it is worth I played 1/2 court press / Zone and the results are good for both d’s.