anyone have any coaching tendencies that they do as a carryover of real life habits that make no sense in HD? for example, in the post season i give more time to backups when we are losing and the game is out of reach because i "punish" the starters for losing (and conversely leave in the starters as a "reward" for winning). 

I once benched an under-performing SR on the last home game of the season (Senior Night), after he had been starting all season.

Yep...just like my real life team....the more they *****, the more they sit!

I've been coaching at the DIII level for three seasons and I'm about to move up to DII. I like to schedule DI teams for exhibition games, as happens in real life, but apparently no one else in this game does that for exhibitions (at least, not that I've seen). Also, this past season, I allowed a couple of seniors a starting spot for their final home game, but I'm probably going to nix doing that ever again because we lost.

Some things I can't change, even for a game. HD is most fun for me when I'm playing it like a coach, not an accountant.
Whiny blackmail letters sit, and if I get two, they're probably booted. Freshmen generally don't tell me how many minutes they should get. I realize that sometimes that's the games way of saying I should play a person more, but I don't actually care what the game thinks....:)
I also don't make promises I won't keep in recruiting.
And I graduate my players, meaning I sacrifice some development for study hall minutes. Not suicidally, but about what I'd demand in real life.
Div 3's great for doing this, because you can still be pretty good and actually role play as well.

Posted by ppk700 on 8/26/2014 5:03:00 PM (view original):
I've been coaching at the DIII level for three seasons and I'm about to move up to DII. I like to schedule DI teams for exhibition games, as happens in real life, but apparently no one else in this game does that for exhibitions (at least, not that I've seen). Also, this past season, I allowed a couple of seniors a starting spot for their final home game, but I'm probably going to nix doing that ever again because we lost.

I do this too at the d2 level.  One D1 team I think we could possibly beat and one lowly D3 team to see how much we can win by

I used to schedule road games close to the hometowns of my seniors but I haven't done it for a while.

i will get angry, yell, and throw things, but roughly that is the extent of my real life acting. in game i just do what is best for the game. i used to do what i thought made the most sense, but as that often translates poorly into HD success, i sort of gave that up. i think it actually is significantly better now than when i started, on that front. bigs can actually score (not quite as well as guards, but still, its at least remotely reasonable now), things like passing and speed in your bigs aren't 100% **** useless, it no longer makes sense to get a low ath/def ultra high spd guard on press teams, lp actually helps guards, a great passing pg actually makes your other guys get better looks, etc...

i do think the ath/def priority is too high now, bigs scoring is still a little off, having both high lp and per offers way too little benefit over just the one, and a variety of other things. but i think its actually way better than it was, and a coach who understands basketball can apply real life understanding better than they used to. its a shame those guys do stupid things like the destruction of d1 recruit generation, because i think the sim engine changes over the years have actually been pretty solid, but it gets over shadowed by the things they royally screw up.

Posted by tcplotts on 8/27/2014 4:05:00 AM (view original):
Some things I can't change, even for a game. HD is most fun for me when I'm playing it like a coach, not an accountant.
Whiny blackmail letters sit, and if I get two, they're probably booted. Freshmen generally don't tell me how many minutes they should get. I realize that sometimes that's the games way of saying I should play a person more, but I don't actually care what the game thinks....:)
I also don't make promises I won't keep in recruiting.
And I graduate my players, meaning I sacrifice some development for study hall minutes. Not suicidally, but about what I'd demand in real life.
Div 3's great for doing this, because you can still be pretty good and actually role play as well.

I'm sorry, but pumping unnecessary minutes into a players study hall is just flat out a terrible idea.  I would strongly suggest cutting this practice out, real life or not.  I had a grand total of 3 study hall minutes for my entire team during the second semester of this previous season, which I have now cut down to 0 minutes after grades came out.

Posted by bro_lunardi on 8/27/2014 8:17:00 PM (view original):

Posted by tcplotts on 8/27/2014 4:05:00 AM (view original):
Some things I can't change, even for a game. HD is most fun for me when I'm playing it like a coach, not an accountant.
Whiny blackmail letters sit, and if I get two, they're probably booted. Freshmen generally don't tell me how many minutes they should get. I realize that sometimes that's the games way of saying I should play a person more, but I don't actually care what the game thinks....:)
I also don't make promises I won't keep in recruiting.
And I graduate my players, meaning I sacrifice some development for study hall minutes. Not suicidally, but about what I'd demand in real life.
Div 3's great for doing this, because you can still be pretty good and actually role play as well.

I'm sorry, but pumping unnecessary minutes into a players study hall is just flat out a terrible idea.  I would strongly suggest cutting this practice out, real life or not.  I had a grand total of 3 study hall minutes for my entire team during the second semester of this previous season, which I have now cut down to 0 minutes after grades came out.

Agreed.

Posted by therewas47 on 8/27/2014 8:41:00 AM (view original):

Posted by ppk700 on 8/26/2014 5:03:00 PM (view original):
I've been coaching at the DIII level for three seasons and I'm about to move up to DII. I like to schedule DI teams for exhibition games, as happens in real life, but apparently no one else in this game does that for exhibitions (at least, not that I've seen). Also, this past season, I allowed a couple of seniors a starting spot for their final home game, but I'm probably going to nix doing that ever again because we lost.

I do this too at the d2 level.  One D1 team I think we could possibly beat and one lowly D3 team to see how much we can win by

I ONLY schedule exhibition opponents from other divisions. Whatever division I'm at in a particular world, I schedule one team from each of the other divisions. My reason? I can't play them any other time, but I CAN play others in my own division in non-conference. Why do in exhibition what I can already do in real games? That's just my preference though - other people can certainly feel free to do whatever pleases them.

Posted by bistiza on 8/30/2014 4:06:00 PM (view original):

Posted by therewas47 on 8/27/2014 8:41:00 AM (view original):

Posted by ppk700 on 8/26/2014 5:03:00 PM (view original):
I've been coaching at the DIII level for three seasons and I'm about to move up to DII. I like to schedule DI teams for exhibition games, as happens in real life, but apparently no one else in this game does that for exhibitions (at least, not that I've seen). Also, this past season, I allowed a couple of seniors a starting spot for their final home game, but I'm probably going to nix doing that ever again because we lost.

I do this too at the d2 level.  One D1 team I think we could possibly beat and one lowly D3 team to see how much we can win by

I ONLY schedule exhibition opponents from other divisions. Whatever division I'm at in a particular world, I schedule one team from each of the other divisions. My reason? I can't play them any other time, but I CAN play others in my own division in non-conference. Why do in exhibition what I can already do in real games? That's just my preference though - other people can certainly feel free to do whatever pleases them.

I either try to schedule a division up or a good team from my own division, because I'm curious about how my team will look in action and I want a sense against a stout opponent

Posted by bro_lunardi on 8/27/2014 8:17:00 PM (view original):

Posted by tcplotts on 8/27/2014 4:05:00 AM (view original):
Some things I can't change, even for a game. HD is most fun for me when I'm playing it like a coach, not an accountant.
Whiny blackmail letters sit, and if I get two, they're probably booted. Freshmen generally don't tell me how many minutes they should get. I realize that sometimes that's the games way of saying I should play a person more, but I don't actually care what the game thinks....:)
I also don't make promises I won't keep in recruiting.
And I graduate my players, meaning I sacrifice some development for study hall minutes. Not suicidally, but about what I'd demand in real life.
Div 3's great for doing this, because you can still be pretty good and actually role play as well.

I'm sorry, but pumping unnecessary minutes into a players study hall is just flat out a terrible idea.  I would strongly suggest cutting this practice out, real life or not.  I had a grand total of 3 study hall minutes for my entire team during the second semester of this previous season, which I have now cut down to 0 minutes after grades came out.

If your primary (or sole) goal is to maximize your wins according to the rules of this game, then yes, which I already conceded in my post.
If you're coaching your players like you would try to coach them IRL, then not so terrible (which was sort of the theme of the OP).

In Div 3, you have enough wiggle room to "role play" and still win plenty of games. Obviously if you aspire to create a USA South juggernaut or something, then you'd have to resort to being a pure gameplayer.

Now one thing I also do now as I'm learning to recruit is to avoid players that *need* study hall time in large amounts unless I think the returns outweigh the loss of further development; like ineligibles, for example. And just as in real life, if my players are doing fine in school, then I'm not consigning them to study hell because they don't need it.

Always wanted to run Fastbreak-FCP, til I discovered that Fastbreak is a pretty dismal offense in this game

That's because you don't know how to run it.