When I first started playing I asked some questions on the board and got really helpful answers. I’ve got a decent number of seasons under my belt now but there are always things I don’t know about the game. I started jotting them down and figured I would ask when I got to 5. May do it again down the road. Feel free to answer one or all or link me to some useful reading. I generally try searching but can’t always find what I am looking for.

1. Do you ever use the double double-team? Ie a team has more than 50% scoring from 2 guys.
2. What is your intentional foul setting? There was a bit of discussion on this last week but not a definitive “this is what I used”.
3. If minutes are a recruiting multiplier for those that have a “want to play” tag, is it important I offer these before HV/CVs or is it retrospectively applied?
4. I exclusively use “fairly fresh” fatigue and “normal” foul settings. Besides making sure a freshman gets enough minutes, is there any other way you utilize these settings for your benefit?
5. I see conflicting responses if promises are considered in the CT. Seems there is agreement that NT promises are not considered but what is the consensus about CT?

Posted by texashick on 6/5/2020 7:06:00 AM (view original):
When I first started playing I asked some questions on the board and got really helpful answers. I’ve got a decent number of seasons under my belt now but there are always things I don’t know about the game. I started jotting them down and figured I would ask when I got to 5. May do it again down the road. Feel free to answer one or all or link me to some useful reading. I generally try searching but can’t always find what I am looking for.

1. Do you ever use the double double-team? Ie a team has more than 50% scoring from 2 guys.
2. What is your intentional foul setting? There was a bit of discussion on this last week but not a definitive “this is what I used”.
3. If minutes are a recruiting multiplier for those that have a “want to play” tag, is it important I offer these before HV/CVs or is it retrospectively applied?
4. I exclusively use “fairly fresh” fatigue and “normal” foul settings. Besides making sure a freshman gets enough minutes, is there any other way you utilize these settings for your benefit?
5. I see conflicting responses if promises are considered in the CT. Seems there is agreement that NT promises are not considered but what is the consensus about CT?

glad to see a new-sh face asking such good questions!

1) yes, i am mostly a press guy but im convinced double team is generally good for opponents scoring a good bit - like i basically DT most guys 17-18ppg ballpark and up for standard tempo (so perhaps out of 75 points total or something - so i guess that means if a guy is low to mid 20% of scoring - hes a good candidate). really the amount of offense is probably more important than amount of shots, and it depends on the situation whether ill DT a guy at 15 or 17 or 18... for example in m2m with a lockdown defender, i'm less likely to double a guy, and more likely in the opposite case.

2) i think i do like down 5 with 1m but im not actually sure i have a consistent policy

3) yes, my understanding is you can do it all in the same cycle, but to be safe if you do that, do the minutes first. it is definitely not retroactive. basically think of a recruiting cycle as taking your effort, multiplying by all the stuff (preferences, prestige), and then that effort adds to your total. it is never considered again - you only have the total. the game never goes back and adjusts how much effort an already-complete action does.

4) basically run every single player on aggressive (they might have renamed this to leave in longer or something) until you have a *really* good reason to do otherwise (i cant recall ever having one). in real life, the last 5 minutes matter more per-minute than the rest of the game, by far, due to human emotions and such. that was completely non-existent for much of HD - now there is 'feedback' which kinda rounds out severe statistical deviations, and by doing so, it can slightly emphasize the last part of the game - but its an extremely mild effect compared to real life, and it can cut both ways - the last 5m can be less important.

the other part of your question is quite complicated. fairly fresh, using the fatigue settings, is the right place for coaches to start. unfortunately, the way the game subs makes getting tired subbing decently inefficient, but there are other ways coaches can increase the minutes their players get - through micro managing the depth chart, and in some cases even, through the minutes settings. and occasionally just with straight getting tired settings - even on backup players (that is sort of one of my little tricks that i am fond of - don't use it to often - but when i do, its a good one). minutes is not trivial and learning it will cost you games for sure, i generally would not worry about it until you are making the NT every year safely, and you are ready to start finding ways to push past like, s16s and stuff, into final fours - at the earliest. its definitely not a terrible idea to just pretend minutes doesn't exist and never look that way, either.

5) i believe fairly strongly that most of this has been established - there's kind of 3 cases. 1) the CT when a player never complained - in this case, skipping the CT cannot hurt you, and this is for sure. 2) the CT when a player is complaining - in this case, starting the player in the CT can help bail you out, and im virtually positive on this one, too. 3) the CT when a player complained, but isn't complaining anymore - in this case, i believe you are good to skip the CT, but i'd probably play it safe in this case (if you have enough minutes built up, you can definitely cut back some - starts, i'd play it safe). promises have been tweaked a couple times over the past decade or so, and its relatively hard to build a high degree of confidence for this edge case, so i just play it safe.

Very helpful information right out of the gate! Thank you. One point of clarification due to a poorly worded question on my end. Do you ever set TWO players to “always” double team? I generally follow what you have written for the teams best player but let’s say they have two guys that are each accounting for 25+% of the distribution and 16+ppg. Also let’s say to make the discussion a bit easier the rest of the distribution is largely spread out among the rest of the team. Do you ever double BOTH players in a man or zone? This would be a very uncommon strategy in RL and would lead to many easy buckets but some times this game doesn’t function exactly the same.

Posted by texashick on 6/5/2020 8:20:00 AM (view original):
Very helpful information right out of the gate! Thank you. One point of clarification due to a poorly worded question on my end. Do you ever set TWO players to “always” double team? I generally follow what you have written for the teams best player but let’s say they have two guys that are each accounting for 25+% of the distribution and 16+ppg. Also let’s say to make the discussion a bit easier the rest of the distribution is largely spread out among the rest of the team. Do you ever double BOTH players in a man or zone? This would be a very uncommon strategy in RL and would lead to many easy buckets but some times this game doesn’t function exactly the same.

I may have doubled two guys a couple times over the course of my HD career. I will typically skew my +/- defensive settings one way or the other as opposed to multiple double teams. For example, if my opponent has a high level post player and a high level wing I may do a -2 defense to account for the big and then double the wing.

I "always double" two guys on occasion.

I reasonably often double the top scorer, double the best best scorer and put a "when leading scorer" on the second option in the starting unit.

Setting to double in a press is pointless, right?

Posted by Baums_away on 6/5/2020 12:13:00 PM (view original):
Setting to double in a press is pointless, right?

Correct

And if I run M2M i double team at least one player every game. There's never a game that I don't. But sometimes I'll double two players.

If I'm unsure of what I want to do with double teams and its giving me a headache, I'll set 3 players to "if leading scorer" and hope for the best

You can also use doubleteams to help out a subpar defender on your team. Keep the other players' passing rating in mind too...doubling an elite passer is asking for a headache.