Yeah, I'm very frustrated about a round 2 loss in the D2 tourney and in my mind think I have every right to be ... My team, S. Arkansas (#3 seed - 686 team rating) played Georgia College (Sim coached #11 seed - 586 team rating) ... GA College was a respectable 34 RPI, 66 SoS - S. Ark a better 9 RPI, 29 SoS ... Game result we lose 81-70, not a full court heave at the buzzer, no dramatic injury to a star, etc. - a pretty good whipping.

Now I feel my in game coaching to be not the greatest overall, but this game seemed like a formality ... S.Ark was better in every category except stamina (-2) ... Ga. Coll.'s best player would be the #8 best man on the S.Ark roster.

I'm wondering if a voice in the crowd can offer any insight as to what happened other than what to me seems to be a massive SIM glitch - which sucks if true ... I've played a fair number of seasons thru HD, but dont consider myself an expert by any means ... IF you care to check out the box score and offer an opinion, I'm grateful for input.

THANKS!
https://www.whatifsports.com/hd/GameResults/BoxScore.aspx?gid=21821161&tab=boxscore

Simai is going to shoot alot of 3's. My default is to play +2 vs Sim. His 3's and your TOs seem to be the difference.

the kinda obvious facts in this one are that the sim team pressed, and that your team was significantly fatigued. this had a very substantial impact on the situation.

now, on to the less obvious parts. why were you so fatigued running 12 men? i am looking at palmer. dude has 77 stamina, 0 fouls. how did he play 13 minutes? you running target minutes over there?

in general, running target minutes in the NT as or against a press, is pretty dubious. or perhaps extremely dubious. however, it does seem like you had some good rationale behind this approach, assuming that is what you were doing - namely, balancing your offense throughout the duration of the game, i assume. however, there is a *significant* cost to running minutes into higher fatigue / foul scenarios. target minutes does not respond to fatigue and deals with foul trouble extremely poorly. there are perhaps justifications for running target minutes in the NT, i have played target minutes in a couple successful NTs myself (which to me means ending with a win), but i do not think i ever played target minutes in every game of a NT, i think i was going target minutes some games and fatigue some games. i do not think i have ever run a target minutes game in the NT against a press team, at least not intentionally (excluding times i realized i forgot to set a post season setup some time after my season was already over).

if you are able to get good value out of minutes, that's great - most coaches ignore it completely, which is a generally fine approach (and the approach i recommend to newer coaches). minutes can bring real value in terms of juggling regular season obligations, and i think it is also at times, optimal in the NT. so if you are doing well with it, i would encourage you to keep it in your toolbox, it has real value. however, if you want to run minutes at a really high level, you absolutely need to be adjusting game over game based on the conditions on the ground, and probably, ready to switch out of minutes into fatigue, when called for. in general, if you are always running minutes, you should go run fatigue a while and get good at it, because it is the main line depth chart setup.

Running a -2 against sims is always asking for an upset because everyone is set at 0 3 point frequency. Should usually run between 0 and +2 depending on their per ratings and your own 3PA.

Billy already mentioned you might be running target minutes and thats definitely not the way to go so read what he wrote on that if you were doing target minutes.

Also imo yea you were better but no by much I think you are looking at overall rating too much when comparing players like when you say their best player would be the 8th best on your roster. I definitely think there's players on GA college way better than just 8th best on your team. As well as the rpi/sos being inflated yes you should've won this game most of the time but imo this team isn't really anything more than a 1st round-s16 talent

I also think you didn't run the best lineup you couldve not just for this game but overall. I wouldn't want to start Levesque or Garcia. Even Hajek I see much better combination of a starter roster that don't involve any of those 3 starting. Like Tomas Marino Shaffer would probably given you a much better group

I agree with the consensus that your team was better, but it was not significantly better. Your ATH/DEF is just okay. While it was an upset, I don’t see it as huge upset.

Bad sim, I would say you had a 70% chance to win. That being said, it isn't too surprising. You lost to Delta St. and Alabam Huntsville who are much weaker than Georgia College.

Looks like you're running target minutes. I would not do that. Tomasczewski specifically was far too tired. Garcia too. Explains why they TO so much and they are terrible defenders anyways.

Posted by cubcub113 on 2/16/2023 8:09:00 PM (view original):
Bad sim, I would say you had a 70% chance to win. That being said, it isn't too surprising. You lost to Delta St. and Alabam Huntsville who are much weaker than Georgia College.

Looks like you're running target minutes. I would not do that. Tomasczewski specifically was far too tired. Garcia too. Explains why they TO so much and they are terrible defenders anyways.

I agree with this with a slight caveat (which i bet Cub agrees with I just want to highlight). You should NEVER use target minutes... in the post season. I think there are multiple acceptable use cases in the regular season. The two most common ones being, 1) minute(s) promises you need to meet that dont align perfectly with your teams stamina and depth chart 2) you have a very deep team and you want to share the minutes somewhat evenly across the group. But once the CT starts (or even a few games before), you should always flip back to fatigue.

I somewhat disagree with the comments on what is the best chalk defense verse a sim. Personally, I prefer to play slightly under (95% of my games against simmy are -1), because generally SIMAI lets alot of bad shooters take 3 which i want to encourage. I generally play -1, but against this team I think -2 was a perfectly acceptable choice if you doubled the one good shooter. Like Cub said, I think this was a bad (but not entirely unreasonable) sim enhanced by likely a bad setting either in the fatigue/minutes setting or in the depth chart (which can cause a similar looking problem).

Posted by gillispie on 2/16/2023 2:02:00 PM (view original):
the kinda obvious facts in this one are that the sim team pressed, and that your team was significantly fatigued. this had a very substantial impact on the situation.

now, on to the less obvious parts. why were you so fatigued running 12 men? i am looking at palmer. dude has 77 stamina, 0 fouls. how did he play 13 minutes? you running target minutes over there?

in general, running target minutes in the NT as or against a press, is pretty dubious. or perhaps extremely dubious. however, it does seem like you had some good rationale behind this approach, assuming that is what you were doing - namely, balancing your offense throughout the duration of the game, i assume. however, there is a *significant* cost to running minutes into higher fatigue / foul scenarios. target minutes does not respond to fatigue and deals with foul trouble extremely poorly. there are perhaps justifications for running target minutes in the NT, i have played target minutes in a couple successful NTs myself (which to me means ending with a win), but i do not think i ever played target minutes in every game of a NT, i think i was going target minutes some games and fatigue some games. i do not think i have ever run a target minutes game in the NT against a press team, at least not intentionally (excluding times i realized i forgot to set a post season setup some time after my season was already over).

if you are able to get good value out of minutes, that's great - most coaches ignore it completely, which is a generally fine approach (and the approach i recommend to newer coaches). minutes can bring real value in terms of juggling regular season obligations, and i think it is also at times, optimal in the NT. so if you are doing well with it, i would encourage you to keep it in your toolbox, it has real value. however, if you want to run minutes at a really high level, you absolutely need to be adjusting game over game based on the conditions on the ground, and probably, ready to switch out of minutes into fatigue, when called for. in general, if you are always running minutes, you should go run fatigue a while and get good at it, because it is the main line depth chart setup.

I’m guessing that he had Palmer on target minutes so that he could bring Tomaszewski in off the bench and getter matchups against his opponents second string. Palmer started every game but only averaged 12mpg, while Tomaszewski came off the bench the entire season and averaged 26mpg (highest on the team). Interesting strategy, but not one I would deploy. Especially in the NT.

Posted by R0pey on 2/16/2023 2:24:00 PM (view original):
Running a -2 against sims is always asking for an upset because everyone is set at 0 3 point frequency. Should usually run between 0 and +2 depending on their per ratings and your own 3PA.

Billy already mentioned you might be running target minutes and thats definitely not the way to go so read what he wrote on that if you were doing target minutes.

Also imo yea you were better but no by much I think you are looking at overall rating too much when comparing players like when you say their best player would be the 8th best on your roster. I definitely think there's players on GA college way better than just 8th best on your team. As well as the rpi/sos being inflated yes you should've won this game most of the time but imo this team isn't really anything more than a 1st round-s16 talent

I also think you didn't run the best lineup you couldve not just for this game but overall. I wouldn't want to start Levesque or Garcia. Even Hajek I see much better combination of a starter roster that don't involve any of those 3 starting. Like Tomas Marino Shaffer would probably given you a much better group

Tldr: you shouldve won that game majority of the time but you gameplanned poorly with the -2 that leads to upsets against sims as well as a few other errors. Again yea you shouldve won majority of the time, I've seen bigger upsets in the tournament tho

Mmm, I’m not so sure about that. I set my 3pt defense based of the frequency my opponent takes 3PA. Looking at Georgia College’s numbers for the season, I would have game planned for a -1 DEF.

For the season, they only took around 30% of their FGA from behind the line and made 34% of them. But for this game, they took over 40% of their shots from behind the line and made 42% of them. Maybe the -2 made that much more of a difference than a -1 would have. They certainly took a higher percentage of uncontested shots from outside and got lucky with them.

They also shot 88% from the free throw line. Those two factors there probably accounted for 8-9 points over the course of the game.

I’ll go with bad/unlucky sim as the answer.

Gonna disagree with a few coaches here. Target minutes itself isn't the problem here. I run target minutes exclusively and have had success. Coaches that struggle with target minutes typically make the mistake of setting the target minutes they want a player to play, not what they should play.

As for Palmer, you undershot his ideal target minutes and shouldn't have been starting.

I agree with others that your positioning was not ideal, either.

Posted by tecwrg on 2/16/2023 10:37:00 PM (view original):

Posted by R0pey on 2/16/2023 2:24:00 PM (view original):
Running a -2 against sims is always asking for an upset because everyone is set at 0 3 point frequency. Should usually run between 0 and +2 depending on their per ratings and your own 3PA.

Billy already mentioned you might be running target minutes and thats definitely not the way to go so read what he wrote on that if you were doing target minutes.

Also imo yea you were better but no by much I think you are looking at overall rating too much when comparing players like when you say their best player would be the 8th best on your roster. I definitely think there's players on GA college way better than just 8th best on your team. As well as the rpi/sos being inflated yes you should've won this game most of the time but imo this team isn't really anything more than a 1st round-s16 talent

I also think you didn't run the best lineup you couldve not just for this game but overall. I wouldn't want to start Levesque or Garcia. Even Hajek I see much better combination of a starter roster that don't involve any of those 3 starting. Like Tomas Marino Shaffer would probably given you a much better group

Tldr: you shouldve won that game majority of the time but you gameplanned poorly with the -2 that leads to upsets against sims as well as a few other errors. Again yea you shouldve won majority of the time, I've seen bigger upsets in the tournament tho

Mmm, I’m not so sure about that. I set my 3pt defense based of the frequency my opponent takes 3PA. Looking at Georgia College’s numbers for the season, I would have game planned for a -1 DEF.

For the season, they only took around 30% of their FGA from behind the line and made 34% of them. But for this game, they took over 40% of their shots from behind the line and made 42% of them. Maybe the -2 made that much more of a difference than a -1 would have. They certainly took a higher percentage of uncontested shots from outside and got lucky with them.

They also shot 88% from the free throw line. Those two factors there probably accounted for 8-9 points over the course of the game.

I’ll go with bad/unlucky sim as the answer.

"They certainly took a higher percentage of uncontested shots from outside and got lucky with them."

you got really close to understanding the reasoning here.

running - against sims opens you up to whacky simulations like this one where sims with 0 3 point frequency settings for all players will win on lucky 3 point shooting against a - defense. gameplanning sims is not the same as humans. i would've run a +1 on this sim team

Posted by rudyrude9 on 2/16/2023 1:51:00 PM (view original):
Simai is going to shoot alot of 3's. My default is to play +2 vs Sim. His 3's and your TOs seem to be the difference.

TY for the information, I appreciate your input

Posted by gillispie on 2/16/2023 2:02:00 PM (view original):
the kinda obvious facts in this one are that the sim team pressed, and that your team was significantly fatigued. this had a very substantial impact on the situation.

now, on to the less obvious parts. why were you so fatigued running 12 men? i am looking at palmer. dude has 77 stamina, 0 fouls. how did he play 13 minutes? you running target minutes over there?

in general, running target minutes in the NT as or against a press, is pretty dubious. or perhaps extremely dubious. however, it does seem like you had some good rationale behind this approach, assuming that is what you were doing - namely, balancing your offense throughout the duration of the game, i assume. however, there is a *significant* cost to running minutes into higher fatigue / foul scenarios. target minutes does not respond to fatigue and deals with foul trouble extremely poorly. there are perhaps justifications for running target minutes in the NT, i have played target minutes in a couple successful NTs myself (which to me means ending with a win), but i do not think i ever played target minutes in every game of a NT, i think i was going target minutes some games and fatigue some games. i do not think i have ever run a target minutes game in the NT against a press team, at least not intentionally (excluding times i realized i forgot to set a post season setup some time after my season was already over).

if you are able to get good value out of minutes, that's great - most coaches ignore it completely, which is a generally fine approach (and the approach i recommend to newer coaches). minutes can bring real value in terms of juggling regular season obligations, and i think it is also at times, optimal in the NT. so if you are doing well with it, i would encourage you to keep it in your toolbox, it has real value. however, if you want to run minutes at a really high level, you absolutely need to be adjusting game over game based on the conditions on the ground, and probably, ready to switch out of minutes into fatigue, when called for. in general, if you are always running minutes, you should go run fatigue a while and get good at it, because it is the main line depth chart setup.

TY for the input, even though I have some experience in the game, its obvious I've not gotten into the game as much as I likely should ... Yes to target minutes, mainly to fulfill recruiting promises.

Posted by R0pey on 2/16/2023 2:24:00 PM (view original):
Running a -2 against sims is always asking for an upset because everyone is set at 0 3 point frequency. Should usually run between 0 and +2 depending on their per ratings and your own 3PA.

Billy already mentioned you might be running target minutes and thats definitely not the way to go so read what he wrote on that if you were doing target minutes.

Also imo yea you were better but no by much I think you are looking at overall rating too much when comparing players like when you say their best player would be the 8th best on your roster. I definitely think there's players on GA college way better than just 8th best on your team. As well as the rpi/sos being inflated yes you should've won this game most of the time but imo this team isn't really anything more than a 1st round-s16 talent

I also think you didn't run the best lineup you couldve not just for this game but overall. I wouldn't want to start Levesque or Garcia. Even Hajek I see much better combination of a starter roster that don't involve any of those 3 starting. Like Tomas Marino Shaffer would probably given you a much better group

Tldr: you shouldve won that game majority of the time but you gameplanned poorly with the -2 that leads to upsets against sims as well as a few other errors. Again yea you shouldve won majority of the time, I've seen bigger upsets in the tournament tho

Appreciate your taking time to comment.

I had run -2 against SIMs with little PE talent or history in the past with great success - guess I was unaware they adapted more than it seemed ... Starters answer is I was trying to shake up the lineup a bit to always have some scoring on the floor - obviously backfired in this case.

In Smith D2, I was over all and sometimes specifically pretty well situated (I thought) ... #2 Overall, #22 SP, #7LP, #13 PE, #1 P - other non Top25 numbers were not far away outside of DE. ... Took this team over and previous coach didn't have a great Preseason schedule setup, so RPI was likely a bit higher than it should have been.

Im still trying to learn!

Posted by strikeout26 on 2/16/2023 3:35:00 PM (view original):
I agree with the consensus that your team was better, but it was not significantly better. Your ATH/DEF is just okay. While it was an upset, I don’t see it as huge upset.

Appreciate your stopping to contribute information.

I wasn't apoplectic upset, just surprised really ... I didn't see a 49 DE team shutting down the #3 FG% in this world D2 - also forced over 25% more TO's than we'd had in any one game all season (over 75% above our average TO's).

Its a live & leant game!