NCAA March Madness EA Sports

[Young Drachma]

So I'm in my 11th season as a coach in EA NCAA March Madness '06. I spent the first 6 at Wyoming, 3 at Michigan (ugh..) and I'm in my 2nd season at Gonzaga, (Hoping we can get into the PAC-10 this season?) and coming off a national title last year.

Anyway...I coached Wyoming pretty well and got them into the PAC-10. For some reason when I left, the game still has them playing the same offense I used when I was there. It's a modified Grinnell offense, where..well, you shoot a lot of 3s.

I thought playing against them, five years after I left that with all the kids I'd recruited gone and stuff, that they'd be doing stuff different. Even though they did make the Elite 8 last season and have been to the Final four once since I left too.

Anyway, I just beat them 74-73, but they pretty much ran my offense to perfection. It was funny, I'm just glad I got out of there with a W.

Needless to say, we're not going back there next season as part of our non-conference schedule.

Of course, unless we end up in the conference.

[Groundhog]

I really wish this game was available out here in Australia...

[Blade6119]

So do you like the game darK?

[nilodor]

I think this game is very good. Once you have used the lockdown stick, you can't go back to another basketball game without it.

[CraigSca]

Wow, I haven't heard anything about it. After having been disappointed with every other version of this game, I just tossed this aside as a no-brainer "don't buy". It's really improved that much?

[Young Drachma]

I've read a lot of "meh" reviews about it. I mean, no doubt the game has problems. You can be more than one team in dynasty mode, there are some weird inconsistencies with game play (though sliders can fix that in time..at least, it has for me) and you can't create a school or export kids into the draft.

But the game is really entertaining and honestly, what I've done is simply turned off letting kids leave early to go pro (since they can't be exported to NBA Live, which I don't own anyway) and that makes it a lot more enjoyable.

If you don't train your players, they will diminish in ability, but given how erratic players in a lot of schools except for the best talents, I don't think this is nearly the big deal that some of the whiners have made it out to be.

I hope next year's version is much improved, but, like I said I don't think it's a bad game.

[CraigSca]

Thanks for the honest appraisal. I think I've just soured on the whole, "the first 25 games you play, you'll tweak the sliders to get it right" disease that seems inherent in EA games. I just don't have enough time to devote to that much gameplay before a game works for me.

I would LOVE a game where I can play a few games and improve to the point where I can win 20-25 games a year with a team like Maryland and yet still feel daunted when going to Chapel Hill or Durham. Usually, however, in game like this I usually can't find the happy medium - I'm either way too good and way too awful.

Thanks again.