So I am my third actual attempt on becoming the greatest Filipino Basketball coach... but I don’t think it is to come to fruition. I suck! Haha
I have started off as an inexperienced first time coach, having started off at three small schools: Cal Baptist, Delaware, and Long Beach State. While I don’t actually Suck... I am frustrated with my rather pedestrian 14-13 season and being eliminated in the first or second round of the conference championship in all 10 total season. Only once did I manage to have an amazing winning streak and making it to the NCAA finals (which didn’t raise our teams prestige at all)...

My big question is... strategy. I am aware that in all programs I normally have a bunch of 2s and 3s for overall player. Occasionally a 3.5 or 4. Most of my players are between a 1-4 on defense and maybe a little better at scoring. What is the best strategy with lower rated teams?

If I have my C and PF with 1 for scoring or outside scoring, I can eliminate 5Out... none of my guards are great at the post or at driving and cutting... my center cannot pass more than a 3 in most cases... so that normally leaves me with a triangle but for some reason, all the schools I have gone to would rather start off with all their strategy knowledge focusing and being proficient at(what I think) is a poor strategy for that player based on their stats. I try and switch things around but this just leads my team to not have any proficiency with the strategy I am assigning until a few seasons later. Is this just what I need to accept??? Or if my team is all experienced in 5 out even though, I have all my big men as piss poor outside shooters the way to go?

I also mentioned defense earlier, I tend to think zone is the best way to go when my players all have less than 3/4 for defense, but I’m still giving up 80 pmts a night if I’m lucky... should I just stick with man to man or just hope that my team will improve on their zone down the road years later?

I always like to focus on a solid crashing the boards and rebounding and average tempo and not too much pressing (seeing as how my team defense is worse than a wet paper bag)... is this a correct thought? How would you change?

I really want to like this game but have been terribly crusted after the first week of playing it! Please somebody help me improve my play just enough so that I can finally enjoy playing this game instead of being stuck at 5 seasons of 500% basketball every day! Haha

Best strategies for off and def and when to use each formation, would be very much appreciated!

As a relatively new DDSCB player, I'd suggest creating your coach with higher ratings and you try a few associations coaching much higher prestige programs. You're more likely to be successful and gain a better feel on how to recruit and some options to employ running your teams. Then once you've had some success and gained confidence, create an association where you will be coaching a lower prestige program where the challenge will be much greater.

Definitely start out no lower than Atlantic Ten level and make yourself good. Also, choose 1-100 on the skill levels so you can discern improvement (or not). Keep recruiting on NORMAL until you develop skill there.

One of the hardest things to learn in this game is how good the other teams are because the 'overall basketball ratings' are misleading and you don't get to see the best teams unless you are playing in a Power Five conference. Blocking out scouting on teams you don't play makes this game unnecessarily hard to learn, IMO.

Personally I think the game does a good job selecting Offense/Defense on start up for your team, not that there are not other options that would be successful. If I want to change my teams strategy I do it slowly over the first year, I stay with what my team has experience in the first year in only one or two of the offenses and one defense so they play better and have fewer turnovers and then I practice the second or third offense and second defense in what I actually want to use at a low level early but don't use it and as the season goes I adjust accordingly by looking at what my guys are proficient at in about January . If I'm not doing well then I may increase my wanted strategy and start using it or stick with what the game gave me until late in the season. Near the end of the season (last week or so) I bump my new strategy up to 100% practice as I'm not going anywhere then switch over the next year to my strategy fully. At least my first year will have a little success with some experience in what my players are doing which will help with recruiting and happy players the next year. Also recruiting to my new Strategy for the next year full tilt.
I do it this way when I take a new job and want to change strategies from what the previous coach had going, I just do it slowly over time to give my guys time to become more proficient at what I want to do rather than just make a total switch with no player experience in what I want to do or your team will preform poorly with lots of turnovers.

What I've learned over the past few weeks is that everyone here has differing strategies on what makes a good program. Though basically everything can be solved with good recruiting. Me personally, I like to run one offense and one defense and put 10 in each of the zone offenses. If I'm playing with a low prestige program where I will have a lot of guys that are bad at defense then I exclusively run zone. Either 1-3-1, Box and 1, or 3-2. And I try to pick up 1-4 that can shoot the 3 ball and a rebounding passer as my 5. I like to run Princeton at low prestige schools because you get a lot of 4 year guys and typically recruits need time to develop. I like a pace of 6 as my default go to.

Alternatively, you can go the opposite route and run something like Motion, try to recruit athletic, defense, and outside shooting for your 1-3 and athletic defense rebounding for your 2 bigs. And press constantly against the weak prestige schools you will face.

The latter doesn't work well against tournament teams. I've had tons of success with running a bunch of three point shooters and playing a zone really well at lower prestige. I do like to manually coach games in gamecast, and when I do that I go to the coaching options and select look for 3s. Your team will shoot a lot of 3s which if you recruited toward that you should be quite good at it.

I've said this before but it takes a while. When I started I would not keep a given association for long. I would learn some things then end it and start a new olne. Eventually I had figured things out enough to go with an association for a long time.

I try to stay old, which might help playing in a lower conference. Always having players coming into their senior year. Having 7 seniors in a weak conference, basically means you need to win the conference tournament and a National tournament game or 2 for it to be worth while. Because the next year you're gonna have a bunch of first year guys having to play lots of minutes

A couple things to think about

I play very slow offense 2 at like 40% each (Depending what you've recruited) turnovers and missed shots obviously occur more in lower conferences, so I like to have a couple players (overall rating irrelevant) with high ball handling and passing. If they suck at scoring/inside shooting and 3 point shooting it doesn't matter too much as their are long possessions and less shots taken. 7 games into the season and my PG averages 1.2 PPG and plays around 24 mins per game. With this on defense I run a 2-3 zone or something which creates open 3's for the opposition but most teams will be lucky to shoot 30% from 3 in the lower conferences. Added to the defense is my defensive rebounding is very high and I'll always try to have 2 high rebounding (wings) SF/PF with decent rebounding stats plus a big in the middle of the zone collecting rebounds. Offensive boards are coach killing (especially in low scoring games)


Or an alternative, is running 1 offense at a high tempo trying to master the offense scheme. High tempo in a lower conference will provide plenty of turnovers but that's the reason for the high tempo. Being really good at a fast pace with one offense allows for plenty of easy buckets. Recruiting high athletic players and banking on their offense also turning the ball over gives you easy buckets on transition as well. 20+ turnovers for both teams running up and down the floor, you can end up with 10-0 runs in no time depending how well the recruits match the one offense you try to run