One thing to remember gentlemen is not to make the game any more difficult than it needs to be. You want a "veteran" coach to give you some inside info? Here it comes, pay very close attention now, this is good stuff that I'm about to tell you. Ready? You give more distro to your better players. Voila!! You're now a successful HD coach. Fellas, a lot of the time that's what it boils down to, something as simple as that. Some people may think I'm being sarcastic, nope far from it.
It's exceedingly rare that you'll find the perfect player in D2 or D3. You can look for them and you might sign a really, really great program-changer, but for the most part, recruit solidly, use common sense, and you'll do just fine. Far too often I see coaches giving advice that makes me just shake my head in disbelief. For example, a player doesn't have to be 80+ Per to let him shoot from deep. Very often I'll set my guards three point settings at 0 even if their Per rating is in the high 40's or low 50's. I almost "never" set that at a +2 either. Setting it at 0 will have your guy taking plenty of threes, especially if he doesn't have any low post skills to boot. My low post guys are almost always at a -2, even if they have decent perimeter ratings. I don't need bigs chucking up threes, that's what my guards and small forwards are for. Another one that kills me is hearing that coaches have passed up a stud PG because his BH/Pass ratings weren't projected to be in the mid 80's or some other nonsense. I've done just fine at the D2 level with guys playing the point who had BH/Pass ratings in the low to mid 60's. Hell, even the 50's in a pinch. You take the best players you can get and you make them work, easy and simple as that.
This game isn't checkers, but it ain't rocket science either. Best players, more distro. Common sense. Wash, rinse, repeat. Win.
By the way, none of that is or was meant to be directed at anyone specifically. I can see how someone might think I was taking a shot at Hughes, but that certainly wasn't my intention. Hughes is a fine coach in his own right and has different ways of analyzing players and settings than I do. To each their own. I just feel that, in general, far too many people tend to over think this game.
4/13/2015 5:18 AM (edited)