Fast Break Basketball: UC Riverside

[Godzilla Blitz]

Opening Moves

Well, I bought this game because of Marmel’s dynasty reports and the recommendations of others here, and thought I would record my progress in a mini-dynasty. I know diddly about basketball, so it won’t be long before I get canned, that’s for sure.

I create Godzilla Blitz in the game, make him 22-years old, and give him a head coacing job with UC Riverside, a bottom feeder team in the lowly Big West Conference. In a move that is certain to shorten this dynasty even more, I start the game at the hardest level, meaning that I only get 100 points to divvy up over my four initial skill areas. I have no clue what to do with all these points, so I do the following:

My Skill Set
Recruiting: 27
Scouting: 23
Offense: 25
Defense: 25.

I’m guessing that these skills will go up if I win lots.

I use real life prestige, but opt for the soccer-like league promotions/relegations option. Sounds like fun.

[Godzilla Blitz]

May 2003
Overview

I take a look at my team and its conference. It looks like Utah State (prestige 84) is the team to beat in the Big West. It also looks like UC Riverside is a team that will get beat. Get a load of this:

UC Riverside
Prestige: 2
2003/04 Goal: Avoid Last Place

Not knowing what I’m supposed to do, I click on the “sim one month” button and wait for someone to tell me something. After a while I realize that I just missed the entire staff hiring period. Oops. I reload the game and try again. Apparently I’ve got to hire three people: a scout, a recruiter, and an assistant coach. I have no luck at all in landing an assistant coach, which is a bummer, because each time I go back to the pool of coaches, there is less and less talent. After a half dozen guys reject me, I land a pretty crappy guy.

2003/04 Staff Hiring
Recruiter: Johnny Belt (48 years old) Skill: 34
Scout: Mickey Marvel (41 years old) Skill: 35
Asst. Coach: Bernie Abrego (47 years old) Offense: 37. Defense: 23

Ugh. That assistant coach is ugly.

[Godzilla Blitz]

June 2003

2003/04 Schedule
Next I take it I’m supposed to schedule games against non-conference opponents. Not knowing what strategy to follow, I pick lots of games against lousy teams. I figure we can’t beat anything better. I end up with this:

UC Riverside 2003 Season Schedule

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11/17/03 Sacramento State
11/22/03 Birmingham Southern
11/27/03 Savannah State
12/02/03 at Albany
12/07/03 at Eastern Kentucky
12/12/03 at Colgate
12/17/03 Morris Brown
12/22/03 at Chicago State
12/27/03 Long Beach State
12/30/03 at Saint Mary's
01/03/04 at Arkansas-Pine Bluff
01/08/04 at UC Santa Barbara
01/10/04 at Cal Poly
01/15/04 UC Irvine
01/17/04 at Cal State Fullerton
01/22/04 Pacific
01/24/04 at Cal State Northridge
01/29/04 at Idaho
01/31/04 Idaho
02/05/04 Cal State Fullerton
02/07/04 at Long Beach State
02/12/04 Cal Poly
02/14/04 Utah State
02/19/04 at Pacific
02/21/04 at Utah State
02/26/04 Cal State Northridge
03/04/04 UC Santa Barbara
03/06/04 at UC Irvine

[Godzilla Blitz]

July, 2003 – October, 2003

Preseason Recruiting
I now know, from reading the manual, that my next step is to recruit some players for my team. We only have one scholarship to offer this year, so we can only do so much damage. Armed with some excellent consulting advice from RPI-Fan, I scour the high school talent available to me. Humm, no one that is any good seems to want to come to UC Riverside. I wonder why.

However, there is a small forward from Germany, a Clemens Gruber, who is a three-star recruit with high interest in UC Riverside. We spend the $2,000 to fly to Germany and take a look at the guy. We also identify another dozen or so players that may be better than their one-star ratings indicate, and send our staff off to evaluate them.

Gruber looks to be a brilliant three-point guy, and most likely that is what has gotten him his three-star rating. However, his defensive skills are weak so I’m not that excited about him. We do find a Center, Andrew Villarreal, who looks to be the real deal. Although we go after him aggressively in August and September, his interest in us never blossoms, and we lose him to Cal State Fullerton in mid-September.

As training camp starts, we shift gears to Center David Hart, a defensive standout with a good set of current abilities. We offer him our available scholarship, and head into the first month of the season.

[Godzilla Blitz]

November, 2003

I accept the AI’s recommendations for training camp, as I have no clue what to do here yet. We come out of training camp with the following crew:


UC Riverside Roster

# Name Pos Cl Ht Wt Hometown
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
40 Chris Smith C Sr 6'10" 252 Stockton, CA
43 Theodor Staab C So 7' 0" 276 Recklinghausen, Germany
2 Ronny Pugliese C Fr 6'11" 250 Richmond, CA
45 Thomas Tate PF Jr 6' 9" 244 Vista, CA
5 Lazaro Buckner PF Jr 6' 6" 221 Santee, CA
41 Freddie Ortiz PF So 6'10" 248 San Mateo, CA
0 Arlen Maloney SF Sr 6' 8" 239 Anaheim, CA
4 Jerold Tucker SF So 6'10" 228 San Rafael, CA
10 Stephen Bates SF Fr 6' 7" 217 Reedley, CA
32 Emmitt Brunson SG Jr 6' 3" 202 Lindsay, CA
44 Tim O'Neil SG Fr 6' 3" 210 Coolgardie, Australia
31 Kenneth Rakes SG Fr 6' 2" 179 La Habra, CA
23 Tony Jensen PG Sr 6' 2" 193 Ririe, ID
15 Jordan Girard PG Jr 6' 5" 200 Fair Oaks, CA
42 Andy Mellott PG So 6' 0" 188 Phelan, CA

Roster Evaluation

Ideally, I’d like to break down who I think our good players are, but I really have no idea, and I have a nagging feeling that they all suck. Smith, Ortiz, Tucker, O’Neil, and Girard will start, but I’m not sure that means much. Well, on second thought, I do see one player that might be ok: PG Jordan Girard. He’s got what look like respectable skills. Otherwise, we’re awful.

And on to the season we go…

November Results


Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11/17/03 Sacramento State W 56-53 1-0
11/22/03 Birmingham Southern L 73-57 1-1
11/27/03 Savannah State L 51-48 1-2

We come from behind to win our opener, but blow big leads in our next two games to fall to 1-2 on the year.

Recruiting

On happier news, Center David Hart commits to UC Riverside! I think this is a good thing, as he is a three-star, 6’ 11’’, 301 lb. mountain of a center. Unfortunately, one thing that slipped my eye: his stamina rating is only an 8. Eek. Probably should have noticed that. I hope this number can increase, or we have just obtained a bit player for our first recruit. As it stands now, he looks to be a strong defensive center with room for growth there. At the offensive end of the court, he looks to be decent, but with little hope for improvement.

Here is his current card:

#50 C David Hart
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Height: 6'11"
Weight: 301
High School: Sylmar Senior High School
Hometown: Sylmar, CA
GPA: 2.67
Test Score: 890
Rating: ***

Attributes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Type INS JPS FTS 3PS HND PAS ORB DRB PSD PRD STL BLK PFS QKN STR JMP STA
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current: 34 45 21 43 20 13 18 36 29 36 17 33 56 37 65 47 8
Potential: D D F B D F F A C B F A

Season Stats:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PTS OREB REB AST TOS A/T STL BLK PFS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
17.8 1.5 6.1 0.3 1.9 0.14 0.4 2.4 2.8

Shooting Averages:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FGM FGA FG% FTM FTA FT% 3PM 3PA 3P%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7.6 16.3 .463 2.2 6.1 .364 0.5 3.7 .135

Recruiting Notes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Qualified: Yes
Committed to UC Riverside
Rankings: West Region #88 Overall, West Region #23 C
High School Awards: None

This ends our recruiting for the year.

[Godzilla Blitz]

December 2003

Sophomore PF Freddie Ortiz, who played well for us in November, gets suspended for academic reasons. He’ll be out for at least a month. Damn.

Results


Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12/02/03 at Albany L 67-47 1-3
12/07/03 at Eastern Kentucky L 57-49 1-4
12/12/03 at Colgate L 76-43 1-5
12/17/03 Morris Brown W 72-65 2-5
12/22/03 at Chicago State W 63-54 3-5
12/27/03 Long Beach State L 75-62 3-6 (0-1)
12/30/03 at Saint Mary's L 65-50 3-7

We get blown away in Albany, blow a big lead to lose against Eastern Kentucky, then get steamrolled by Colgate to fall to 1-5 on the year. We rebound with solid wins against Morris Brown and Chicago State. Our first conference game is against Long Beach State two days after Christmas. Unfortunately, they completely outplay us, and we drop to 3-6 on the year. Saint Mary’s beats us silly three days later and we drop to 3-7 (0-1) on the year.

[Godzilla Blitz]

January 2004


PF Freddie Ortiz is back in action for us, after sitting out last month with an academic suspension.

Results




Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
01/03/04 at Arkansas-Pine Bluff L 76-70 3-8
01/08/04 at UC Santa Barbara L 73-60 3-9 (0-2)
01/10/04 at Cal Poly L 73-55 3-10 (0-3)
01/15/04 UC Irvine L 93-47 3-11 (0-4)
01/17/04 at Cal State Fullerton L 52-36 3-12 (0-5)
01/22/04 Pacific L 88-61 3-13 (0-6)
01/24/04 at Cal State Northridge L 68-52 3-14 (0-7)
01/29/04 at Idaho L 68-61 3-15 (0-8)
01/31/04 Idaho L 63-58 3-16 (0-9)



We have an absolutely ugly month. We blow a big lead against Arkansas-Pine Bluff, then get destroyed in the last ten minutes of the game to lose. We are never in our next three games, all conference matchups. UC Irvine puts an especially embarrassing loss on us. We hang tough against Cal Fullerton, but a late 10-point run knocks us out of that game as well. Pacific and Cal State Northridge score three points for our two points all night long, and we drop to 3-14 coming into two key matchups with next-to-last Idaho. They bowl us over in Idaho to put them two games up on us in the conference standings. Desperately needing a win, we open up a 15-point lead on them in the rematch, but we fall apart after that to lose our 11th game in a row. We now sit in last place, three games away from Idaho. This could be a very short dynasty.

[Godzilla Blitz]

February 2004


Well, with 9 conference games left, we need to make up three games on Idaho in order to avoid last place in the conference. Considering we’ve lost 11 games in a row, this is one hell of a tall order.

Starting Senior Center Chris Smith broke his hip at the end of the month and is lost for the season.

Results

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
02/05/04 Cal State Fullerton W 66-59 4-16 (1-9)
02/07/04 at Long Beach State L 82-68 4-17 (1-10)
02/12/04 Cal Poly L 61-52 4-18 (1-11)
02/14/04 Utah State L 65-60 4-19 (1-12)
02/19/04 at Pacific L 62-58 4-20 (1-13)
02/21/04 at Utah State L 81-46 4-21 (1-14)
02/26/04 Cal State Northridge L 66-53 4-22 (1-15)

We beat Cal State Fullerton to snap our losing streak and gain a full game on Idaho! The joy is short lived though, as we fade in the second half against a beatable Long Beach State and lose PF Freddie Ortiz for the season in the process. We play tough against Cal Poly, but a big run in the second half sends us once again to defeat. First-place Utah State pummels us for two losses in the next week, and Pacific tacks on another as we drop to 4-21 on the year and 1-14 in the conference. Cal State Northridge ends our month with our 6th consecutive loss. With two games left, we still trail Idaho by two games. Things do not look good.

[tucker342]

ouch, tough start....

[Godzilla Blitz]

Tucker: Might be a tough "finish". This could be my shortest dynasty ever.

March 2004

We are pretty much doomed as we head into our last two games.

Results

We are thoroughly beaten in our last two games. We finish dead last, with a 4-24 record overall and a 1-17 conference record. Yikes.

The final numbers:


UC Riverside 2003 Season Schedule

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11/17/03 Sacramento State W 56-53 1-0
11/22/03 Birmingham Southern L 73-57 1-1
11/27/03 Savannah State L 51-48 1-2
12/02/03 at Albany L 67-47 1-3
12/07/03 at Eastern Kentucky L 57-49 1-4
12/12/03 at Colgate L 76-43 1-5
12/17/03 Morris Brown W 72-65 2-5
12/22/03 at Chicago State W 63-54 3-5
12/27/03 Long Beach State L 75-62 3-6 (0-1)
12/30/03 at Saint Mary's L 65-50 3-7
01/03/04 at Arkansas-Pine Bluff L 76-70 3-8
01/08/04 at UC Santa Barbara L 73-60 3-9 (0-2)
01/10/04 at Cal Poly L 73-55 3-10 (0-3)
01/15/04 UC Irvine L 93-47 3-11 (0-4)
01/17/04 at Cal State Fullerton L 52-36 3-12 (0-5)
01/22/04 Pacific L 88-61 3-13 (0-6)
01/24/04 at Cal State Northridge L 68-52 3-14 (0-7)
01/29/04 at Idaho L 68-61 3-15 (0-8)
01/31/04 Idaho L 63-58 3-16 (0-9)
02/05/04 Cal State Fullerton W 66-59 4-16 (1-9)
02/07/04 at Long Beach State L 82-68 4-17 (1-10)
02/12/04 Cal Poly L 61-52 4-18 (1-11)
02/14/04 Utah State L 65-60 4-19 (1-12)
02/19/04 at Pacific L 62-58 4-20 (1-13)
02/21/04 at Utah State L 81-46 4-21 (1-14)
02/26/04 Cal State Northridge L 66-53 4-22 (1-15)
03/04/04 UC Santa Barbara L 65-55 4-23 (1-16)
03/06/04 at UC Irvine L 64-44 4-24 (1-17)

[Godzilla Blitz]

2003/04 Final Standings


2003 Big West Standings

CW CL Pct W L Pct
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Utah State 17 1 .944 22 6 .786
Cal State Northridge 13 5 .722 16 12 .571
UC Irvine 11 7 .611 16 12 .571
UC Santa Barbara 11 7 .611 15 13 .536
Cal Poly 11 7 .611 13 15 .464
Pacific 9 9 .500 15 13 .536
Long Beach State 8 10 .444 11 17 .393
Cal State Fullerton 5 13 .278 5 23 .179
Idaho 4 14 .222 8 20 .286
UC Riverside 1 17 .056 4 24 .143


Well, we really crapped the bed here. Fully expecting to get fired, I press the “End Season” button…

[Godzilla Blitz]

April 2004

We don’t get fired! We do, however, get demoted to the Mid-Continent Conference. I thought we were already at the lowest tier of conferences already, but I guess we’ve found a basement even lower.

On yet another positive note, our team prestige increases by 50% from last year’s amount! Wow! We are on the upward move now. Check out these new numbers:

UC Riverside
Prestige: 3 (+1)
2004/05 Goal: Avoid Last Place

The board of trustees is currently satisfied with my performance. Those four wins last year must have really impressed them. Once again, our goal is to not finish last.

And a little look at our short history:


UC Riverside Historical Performances

Season W L CW CL Rank RPI Prs Result
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2003 4 24 1 17 327 327 3 No Postseason


If I’m not mistaken, there are 327 teams in the game, right? That would make us, um…nevermind.

[sabotai]

Don't get discouraged GB. You took over a REALLY bad team. Good dynasty so far.

[Godzilla Blitz]

sabotai: Yeah, I knew I was getting some garbage. I basically picked the worst team I could find that wasn't an independent. I didn't think they would be 4-24 bad, but my chin's up. Nothing to lose.

May 2004

We sack our entire staff because we can. We get new guys. Here they are, these who are better:

2003/04 Staff Hiring
Recruiter: Jason Gil (32 years old) Skill: 40
Scout: Jason Brown (45 years old) Skill: 41
Asst. Coach: Justin Hoffman (55 years old) Offense: 48 Defense: 30

Each one of these guys is better than his predecessor. Hoffman represents a significant jump up in talent. Let’s hope this translates to wins on the court.

[Godzilla Blitz]

June 2004

We fill up our non-conference schedule with the weakest opponents we can find. We’ll take wins any way we can find them. We end up with this assortment of unheard of schools:


UC Riverside 2004 Season Schedule

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11/14/04 Morris Brown
11/19/04 St. Peter's
11/23/04 Morgan State
11/28/04 at Quinnipiac
12/04/04 at Gardner Webb
12/10/04 IPFW
12/16/04 Lipscomb
12/22/04 Arkansas-Pine Bluff
12/28/04 at Sacramento State
01/01/05 Eastern Kentucky
01/06/05 at Valparaiso
01/08/05 Oakland
01/13/05 Chicago State
01/15/05 at Chicago State
01/20/05 at IUPUI
01/22/05 IUPUI
01/27/05 at Oakland
01/29/05 at Oral Roberts
02/03/05 Valparaiso
02/05/05 Western Illinois
02/07/05 Saint Mary's
02/10/05 at Western Illinois
02/17/05 Chicago State
02/19/05 UMKC
02/24/05 at UMKC
02/26/05 Oral Roberts
02/28/05 Colgate
03/04/05 Albany

[Godzilla Blitz]

July 2004 – October 2004

Preseason Recruiting

We’ve got our work cut out for us this year. We have four scholarships available, and we’ll need to find two power forwards, a shooting guard, and a point guard. Also, our recruiting budget has been slashed in half, which will make things even more challenging.

We take a look at players that might be interested in coming to UC Riverside. Jumping off the board is PG Erasmo Pellegrino, a three-star poing guard with very high interest in UC Riverside. We immediately head off to check him out. We also look over a half dozen other players, and try to get a sense for who our targets might be.

Pellegrino looks to be the real deal, a lot of good current skills and a big upside. We immediately offer him a full ride. We make our second scholarship offer to PF Andrew Moss, a two-star recruit with some good defensive potential. We offer our third scholarship to SG Takeo Marquez, a three-star recruit with a sweet jumpshot. He is only mildly interested in us, so I think we’ll be looking elsewhere soon.

As we get into the early fall, none of our targets are in the nest. We continue to focus our efforts on PG Pellegrino, who is clearly the best player that we could land this year. SG Marquez has only mild interest in us, so we make an offer to SG Joseph Breault, a kid with a great jumpshot and solid inside skills, but with almost no defensive skill set. There really isn’t much else out there that we could get. PF Moss’ interest in us wanes, and we pour some more attention on him.

Just as training camp is ready to begin in November, Pellegrino and Breault commit to UC Riverside! Pellegrino is a nice landing for us, and gives us our second three-star recruit in as many years. Marquez goes elsewhere, and as the season gets under way, we can focus our efforts on landing two power forwards.

With Moss’ interest “average” we scour the country for other power forwards that might be interested in playing for us. We take a long shot and offer a scholarship to PF Roland Payne, a three-star recruit with mild interest in us. I doubt we’ll land either Payne or Moss, and will revoke our scholarship offers if we don’t hear from them by the end of November.

Here’s Pellegrino’s Card:


#20 PG Erasmo Pellegrino
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Height: 6' 0"
Weight: 179
High School: Hoover Senior High School
Hometown: San Diego, CA
GPA: 3.24
Test Score: 1380
Rating: ***

Attributes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Type INS JPS FTS 3PS HND PAS ORB DRB PSD PRD STL BLK PFS QKN STR JMP STA
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current: 40 44 47 60 45 23 34 19 33 21 4 34 36 61 20 50 18
Potential: C A D B A B B C C F F C

Season Stats:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PTS OREB REB AST TOS A/T STL BLK PFS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9.6 1.2 3.4 3.1 2.8 1.13 0.5 0.4 3.6

Shooting Averages:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FGM FGA FG% FTM FTA FT% 3PM 3PA 3P%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.4 10.7 .413 0.2 0.4 .500 0.6 3.8 .158

Recruiting Notes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Qualified: Yes
Committed to UC Riverside
Rankings: #48 PG, West Region #71 Overall, West Region #18 PG
High School Awards: None

Here’s Breault’s Card:


#33 SG Joseph Breault
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Height: 6' 3"
Weight: 198
High School: Alchesay High School
Hometown: Whiteriver, AZ
GPA: 2.86
Test Score: 1080
Rating: *

Attributes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Type INS JPS FTS 3PS HND PAS ORB DRB PSD PRD STL BLK PFS QKN STR JMP STA
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current: 43 42 35 56 16 44 0 39 7 12 19 28 55 68 46 62 48
Potential: A A D C C B C C F F C B

Season Stats:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PTS OREB REB AST TOS A/T STL BLK PFS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9.5 1.0 4.2 4.1 2.5 1.67 1.7 0.6 2.7

Shooting Averages:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FGM FGA FG% FTM FTA FT% 3PM 3PA 3P%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.3 9.9 .429 0.7 1.6 .419 0.4 1.8 .200

Recruiting Notes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Qualified: Yes
Committed to UC Riverside
Rankings: None
High School Awards: None

[Vince]

Riverside?!?!!

...

I don't know what to say...

But I'll still follow along :)

-Vince, UCSB Fan

[Godzilla Blitz]

Vince: Don't worry. We're gone now. I'll try to get a game against UCSB next year, just for your sake, but we're out of the Big West conference for at least one more year. Thanks for reading though.

Actually, come to think of it, I bet you are sad to see us leave the conference. Two easy wins for you down the drain.

November 2004

We come out of training camp with the following 15 men:


UC Riverside Roster

# Name Pos Cl Ht Wt Hometown
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
43 Theodor Staab C Jr 7' 0" 284 Recklinghausen, Germany
2 Ronny Pugliese C So 6'11" 259 Richmond, CA
50 David Hart C Fr 6'11" 302 Sylmar, CA (redshirt)
45 Thomas Tate PF Sr 6' 9" 244 Vista, CA
5 Lazaro Buckner PF Sr 6' 6" 224 Santee, CA
41 Freddie Ortiz PF Jr 6'10" 251 San Mateo, CA
4 Jerold Tucker SF Jr 6'10" 231 San Rafael, CA
34 Zachary Terry SF Jr 6' 5" 215 Fontana, CA
10 Stephen Bates SF So 6' 7" 219 Reedley, CA
32 Emmitt Brunson SG Sr 6' 3" 203 Lindsay, CA
44 Tim O'Neil SG So 6' 3" 212 Coolgardie, Australia
31 Kenneth Rakes SG So 6' 2" 181 La Habra, CA
15 Jordan Girard PG Sr 6' 5" 200 Fair Oaks, CA
42 Andy Mellott PG Jr 6' 0" 189 Phelan, CA
40 Steven Macomber PG Fr 6' 0" 179 Staten Island, NY (redshirt)

Roster Evaluation
For all intents and purposes, we’re returning five starters, as graduated C Chris Smith did not play much for us last year. With another year of experience under our belts, we should be able to field a better team.

PG Girard is the best player on our team. He’s an outstanding ball handler and the key to our offense. C Staab is a rebounding machine, but has little skill elsewhere. PF Ortiz is decent across the board, but nothing spectacular. SG Tim O’Neil has an above average shot and mediocre skills elsewhere. SF Tucker is a liability.

We’re redshirting C Hart and walk-on PG Macomber. Both of these guys need more time before they’re ready, and I think we can get by with the people in front of them on the depth chart.

On to the season we go…

[Godzilla Blitz]

November 2004

Results

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11/14/04 Morris Brown W 57-49 1-0
11/19/04 St. Peter's W 76-74 2-0
11/23/04 Morgan State W 84-69 3-0
11/28/04 at Quinnipiac L 68-60 3-1

We get up early on Morris Brown and never look back to win our opener for the second year in a row. Against St. Peter’s, we open with 15-point lead, fall behind in the second half by ten, the storm back to win on a Tim O’Neil three-pointer with 6 seconds to go. We dominate Morgan State completely to win our third game. After that, Quinnipiac runs out to an early 10-point lead; we manage to tie late in the second half, but fade away in the final couple of minutes to lose our first game of the year. At the end of the month, we stand at 3-1, and are only one win away from tying our season total of last year!

Recruiting
PF Andrew Moss decides to come to UC Riverside! This was unexpected, as his interest in us was luke warm at best, but we are not complaining. A two-star recruit, he’s better than anyone else on our board. Nice.

Our visits to PF Roland Payne must have paid off, because he now has “very high” interest in coming to UC Riverside. We pour on the gas; we offer him a campus visit, and I schedule a trip to visit him personally. This guy is another three-star recruit. I would be ecstatic if we could land him.

Here’s Moss’ player card:
#20 PF Andrew Moss
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Height: 6'10"
Weight: 233
High School: Sunny Hills High School
Hometown: Fullerton, CA
GPA: 2.70
Test Score: 1190
Rating: **

Attributes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Type INS JPS FTS 3PS HND PAS ORB DRB PSD PRD STL BLK PFS QKN STR JMP STA
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current: 22 23 30 14 41 16 54 18 59 50 26 33 72 19 45 49 50
Potential: B C C F B C A C A B D C

Season Stats:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PTS OREB REB AST TOS A/T STL BLK PFS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9.1 2.5 6.2 0.8 2.7 0.28 1.1 0.5 2.3

Shooting Averages:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FGM FGA FG% FTM FTA FT% 3PM 3PA 3P%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.0 8.3 .479 1.2 2.1 .561 0.0 0.0 .000

Recruiting Notes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Qualified: Yes
Committed to UC Riverside
Rankings: West Region #17 PF
High School Awards: None

[Godzilla Blitz]

December 2004

Results


Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12/04/04 at Gardner Webb L 68-66 3-2
12/10/04 IPFW W 70-47 4-2
12/16/04 Lipscomb W 69-58 5-2
12/22/04 Arkansas-Pine Bluff W 57-54 6-2
12/28/04 at Sacramento State W 56-36 7-2

Tim O’Neil misses a last second three-pointer and we lose to Gardner Webb. We demolish IPFW later in the week to match our 2003 win total, and pull away from Lipscomb late in the second half to win our 5th game of the year and rise to 5-2. We overcome a 16-point deficit to beat Arkansas-Pine Bluff, and then slaughter Sacramento State to end the month at 7-2. This would be impressive if it weren’t for the fact that we are playing high school level teams. Conference play starts next month, and that’ll matter more.

Recruiting

We land our 4th and final recruit, as PF Roland Payne decides to attend UC Riverside! He’s another three-star recruit, and brings a strong inside offensive game. Here’s his card:

#3 PF Roland Payne
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Height: 6' 9"
Weight: 249
High School: Santa Susana High School
Hometown: Simi Valley, CA
GPA: 2.56
Test Score: 1060
Rating: ***

Attributes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Type INS JPS FTS 3PS HND PAS ORB DRB PSD PRD STL BLK PFS QKN STR JMP STA
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current: 42 48 29 0 20 44 55 14 29 19 0 22 10 13 50 41 10
Potential: A B D F C C A D D F F D

Season Stats:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PTS OREB REB AST TOS A/T STL BLK PFS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
13.1 2.5 6.3 1.7 3.0 0.57 0.4 0.9 2.9

Shooting Averages:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FGM FGA FG% FTM FTA FT% 3PM 3PA 3P%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5.5 10.4 .527 2.2 4.0 .557 0.0 0.0 .000

Recruiting Notes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Qualified: Yes
Committed to UC Riverside
Rankings: #47 PF, West Region #78 Overall, West Region #15 PF
High School Awards: None

And with this guy, our recruiting comes to an end.

[RPI-Fan]

The 4 and 5 scholarship years are hell on recruiting. You don't really get to have contingency plans. I've taken a Siena team and slowly moven up the ranks, from the MAAC (prestige 2 out of 5), and after 4 seasons there, I moved on to Delaware in the Colonial Athletic Association (prestige 3). After one disappointing year there, though I did bring in a quality (top-60) recruiting class, I moved on to a lower prestige school in a better conference (Missouri Valley Conference, prestige 4). Here I have some talent to work with, and recruiting is going well.

See my dynasty if you want to read more.

FWIW, I love the format of yours - very easy to read.

Great job so far!

[JAG]

Good read GB. Looks like you've done a pretty good job with a poor starting situation. Maybe when this year's crop of recruits comes in (if you're still around) you can really start building your team up.

[Godzilla Blitz]

RPI-Fan: I feel lucky to have gotten what we did this year recruiting-wise. Especially the last guy, who really didn't seem to think much of UC Riverside. Glad you like the format, and I will definitely go check your dynasty out. I thought Marmel was the only person doing one, so I must have missed yours.

JAG: Thanks! Yeah, part of me wonders whether I will ever see how any of these recruits turn out. But so far we're hanging with the rest of the division, so I'm hoping things will turn out ok.

January 2005

We play the first half of our conference schedule this month. I’m hoping we can do better than our one win last year.

Results


Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
01/01/05 Eastern Kentucky W 66-48 8-2
01/06/05 at Valparaiso L 73-58 8-3 (0-1)
01/08/05 Oakland W 62-57 9-3 (1-1)
01/13/05 Chicago State W 71-64 10-3
01/15/05 at Chicago State L 59-52 10-4 (1-2)
01/20/05 at IUPUI L 63-60 10-5 (1-3)
01/22/05 IUPUI W 80-76 11-5 (2-3)
01/27/05 at Oakland L 65-53 11-6 (2-4)
01/29/05 at Oral Roberts W 66-63 12-6 (3-4)


We get a hot start in the second half to pull away from Eastern Kentucky and win our 8th game of the year. In our first conference game, Valparaiso runs away with the game. We bounce back with a gritty win against Oakland two days later to pull us to 1-1 in the conference. We then beat Chicago State at home, but this game is the second game of a home/home series set last year, so the win doesn’t count in the conference standings. Later in the week, we drop a game to them at home. We suffer a heartbreaking loss to IUPUI, but return the favor later by beating them in OT in our next game. Last-place Oakland wipes us out after that, but once again we rebound, this time playing perhaps our best game of the year in beating first-place Oral Roberts in their house. That win ends our month.

We sit at 3-4 in the conference, with two teams below us at 2-5. We’re ranked #269, which is a big improvement over where we ended last year. Not only that, but we’re undefeated at home with a solid 10-0 record.

[Godzilla Blitz]

February 2005

Results

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
02/03/05 Valparaiso L 77-74 12-7 (3-5)
02/05/05 Western Illinois L 58-54 12-8 (3-6)
02/07/05 Saint Mary's W 52-45 13-8
02/10/05 at Western Illinois L 67-48 13-9 (3-7)
02/17/05 Chicago State W 80-76 14-9 (4-7)
02/19/05 UMKC L 68-54 14-10 (4-8)
02/24/05 at UMKC L 57-48 14-11 (4-9)
02/26/05 Oral Roberts L 67-66 14-12 (4-10)
02/28/05 Colgate L 67-64 14-13
03/04/05 Albany W 62-39 15-13

Me and my big mouth. That’s what I get for talking about the undefeated home record: Valparaiso and Western Illinois beat us at home in consecutive games to start the month off. We beat St. Mary’s at home to rebound, but we play a horrendous second half against Western Illinois to lose our third conference game in a row and fall into sole possession of last place! Aargh! Suddenly, with four conference games left, we’re a full game behind UMKC!

Thankfully, we hang on to get a win against Chicago State and pull into a tie with UMKC with three conference games left—and two of them against UMKC. Unfortunately, they beat us soundly both times, then Oral Roberts finishes us off to end our conference schedule and leave us, once again, in dead last place. Damn it. They’ll fire me for sure now. In two end-of-season, meaningless, non-conference games, we lose by three to Colgate, then bury Albany.

We're in the conference tournament next month. The top eight teams make it and well, there are only eight teams! Yahoo!

2004/05 Mid-Continent Conference Final Standings

CW CL Pct W L Pct
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Valparaiso 9 5 .643 14 14 .500
Oral Roberts 9 5 .643 14 14 .500
IUPUI 8 6 .571 14 14 .500
Chicago State 7 7 .500 12 16 .429
UMKC 7 7 .500 11 17 .393
Western Illinois 6 8 .429 11 17 .393
Oakland 6 8 .429 9 19 .321
UC Riverside 4 10 .286 15 13 .536

[Godzilla Blitz]

March 2005

Results

We play first-place Valparaiso in the opening round of the conference tournament. They crush us perfunctorily, and our season ends.

Sigh. We suck. Still.

Well, once again we have failed to avoid last place. We got lucky and didn’t get fired last time, but I have to think that we’re doomed now. Tomorrow I’ll post the stats, then end the season, which could be the end of the dynasty as well. Unless by chance I can get employment somewhere else.

[JAG]

At least outside the conference you were 11-3...even if they were high school girls teams you guys were playing. :)

[Godzilla Blitz]

JAG: Hey, some of those high school girls were pretty tough!

Final Stats 2004/05

Here’s the numbers on the team:

UC Riverside Player Averages

Name Pos G GS Min Pts OReb Reb Ast Stl Blk TO Fl
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jordan Girard PG 29 29 18.4 8.7 0.9 2.7 1.7 0.5 0.0 0.5 1.5
Andy Mellott PG 29 0 14.8 7.2 0.3 1.2 0.9 0.4 0.0 1.0 1.3
Zachary Terry SF 29 29 26.3 6.9 1.3 4.5 1.7 0.7 0.1 2.2 2.5
Jerold Tucker SF 22 22 23.2 6.6 0.9 3.9 0.7 0.6 0.0 1.8 2.9
Emmitt Brunson SG 29 0 16.1 6.1 0.8 3.0 1.0 0.9 0.0 1.3 1.2
Freddie Ortiz PF 29 29 22.9 5.8 1.2 3.3 1.3 0.9 0.1 1.6 2.2
Thomas Tate PF 29 0 16.5 4.9 0.8 1.8 1.0 0.3 0.1 1.3 2.0
Theodor Staab C 29 7 14.2 4.4 1.1 4.3 0.6 0.6 0.1 1.1 1.2
Tim O'Neil SG 29 29 18.5 4.2 0.2 2.3 1.2 0.7 0.0 1.5 1.6
Lazaro Buckner PF 29 0 11.6 3.6 1.2 2.8 0.7 0.2 0.1 0.7 1.2
Ronny Pugliese C 29 0 13.4 3.0 0.5 2.1 0.5 0.4 0.2 1.0 1.3
Stephen Bates SF 29 0 7.5 2.3 0.2 1.0 0.4 0.2 0.1 0.7 0.4
Kenneth Rakes SG 29 0 2.8 0.8 0.1 0.6 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.1 0.4

UC Riverside Player Shooting Stats

Name Pos FGM FGA FG% FTM FTA FT% 3PM 3PA 3P%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jordan Girard PG 78 187 .417 76 99 .768 21 74 .284
Andy Mellott PG 66 139 .475 43 67 .642 34 69 .493
Zachary Terry SF 64 161 .398 39 61 .639 34 89 .382
Jerold Tucker SF 56 122 .459 33 55 .600 1 1 1.000
Emmitt Brunson SG 60 161 .373 45 55 .818 12 68 .176
Freddie Ortiz PF 59 131 .450 50 74 .676 0 0 .000
Thomas Tate PF 50 147 .340 32 49 .653 11 71 .155
Theodor Staab C 49 77 .636 29 40 .725 0 0 .000
Tim O'Neil SG 41 109 .376 22 43 .512 17 58 .293
Lazaro Buckner PF 39 72 .542 25 40 .625 0 1 .000
Ronny Pugliese C 30 52 .577 22 41 .537 4 7 .571
Stephen Bates SF 27 66 .409 10 16 .625 2 11 .182
Kenneth Rakes SG 8 16 .500 3 4 .750 3 7 .429

[Godzilla Blitz]

April 2005

Huh? Hey, they love us! Not only do I not get fired, I get the Mid-Continent Coach of the Year Award! No kidding! Wow! Why? Maybe the game considers overall record when giving out these things? Maybe taking the team from 4-24 to 15-14 mattered here?

On other news, apparently this is the real bottom of the basketball world because despite finishing last, we don’t get demoted: there is no place lower. We are the lowest of the low.

Our recruiting class ranked #92 in the nation, which has got to help us out a lot. Now if we could just avoid finishing last in the conference all the time.

Also, continuing this string of amazing successes, our prestige jumps 33%, up to 4! Wow! (For those of you who don’t have the game, I believe this is on a scale of 100. I’m being sarcastic here.)

UC Riverside
Prestige: 4 (+1)
2005/06 Goal: Avoid Last Place

The board of trustees is currently satisfied with my performance. Despite finishing last again, maybe they were happy with our 15-14 overall record? Who knows. All I know is that I’ve got a paycheck coming this year and a team to lead. Yahoo!

And a little look at our short history:


UC Riverside Historical Performances

Season W L CW CL Rank RPI Prs Result
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2004 15 14 4 10 242 280 4 No Postseason
2003 4 24 1 17 327 327 3 No Postseason

Although we did end up finishing last, I’ve got to be happy with the overall improvement we had, and I really am glad they didn’t fire me. I think we’re going places with these new recruits.

[Godzilla Blitz]

May 2005

Asst. Coach Justin Hoffman is stolen from us by New Mexico State. Talk about kicking someone when they’re down. New Mexico State, we’re adding you to our payback list. Somewhere, sometime, we’ll get you. Our other two guys stay put.

We hire a new guy. He’s not as good as Hoffman was, but he’ll do. I hope.

2005/06 Staff
Recruiter: Jason Gil (33 years old) Skill: 40
Scout: Jason Brown (46 years old) Skill: 41
Asst. Coach: Douglas Toliver (35 years old) Offense: 45 Defense: 25

[Godzilla Blitz]

June 2005

2005/06 Schedule

We collect a random assortment of cruddy teams to play during the non-conference portion of the schedule, but here and there we up the ante a bit. Still, you know more than I do if you recognize half the teams on this list:



Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11/13/05 Lipscomb
11/17/05 at Long Island
11/21/05 Eastern Kentucky
11/24/05 at Stephen F. Austin
11/29/05 Arkansas-Pine Bluff
12/04/05 at VMI
12/09/05 at Mount St. Mary's
12/14/05 at Coastal Carolina
12/18/05 at Albany
12/23/05 Loyola-Maryland
12/28/05 at Morgan State
01/02/06 Birmingham Southern
01/07/06 at Chicago State
01/12/06 Oral Roberts
01/14/06 at UMKC
01/19/06 at IUPUI
01/21/06 at Western Illinois
01/26/06 Oakland
01/28/06 at Oakland
02/02/06 UMKC
02/09/06 IUPUI
02/11/06 Chicago State
02/16/06 at Oral Roberts
02/18/06 Western Illinois
02/23/06 Tennessee State
02/25/06 at Tennessee State
02/27/06 Quinnipiac
03/01/06 Gardner Webb

[Godzilla Blitz]

July 2005 – October 2005

Preseason Recruiting
Well, once again we have four scholarships to dole out. This will be a big year for recruiting, as we’re graduating four starting seniors, and five seniors total. We’re looking to offer scholarships to four of the following five positions: point guard, center, two small forwards, and a power forward.

We take a look at the recruiting pool. There are two three-star players, PF Ward Rios and PF William Cartwright, who have very high interest in playing for us. We head off to check them out, and contact and evaluate a handful of other players that have average interest in us.

Rios’ interest in us drops and he doesn’t look that good when we evaluate him, but Cartwright looks to be a solid offensive player, so we make him an immediate scholarship offer. We also draw interest from SF Floyd Wilkerson, a three-star recruit with great stats. Sight unseen, we offer him our second scholarship. We also make offers to longshot, three-star players with average interest in us: PG Renato York and C Dorian Pollard. York looks solid all-around, and Pollard has a strong inside game.

As we enter the fall, we realize that we have spread ourselves too thin: we lose Cartwright, York, and Pollard to other schools. Aargh! We don’t have enough money to recruit four guys at once. I should have gone hard after two, then looked for others. Damn it. We scramble for more recruits, but this could get ugly. We quickly make offers to three, three-star players with average to high interest in us. I’m not excited about any of these guys, but I have to trust the star-ratings and hope we can start to land a few players. Yuck, this is ugly. We go to training camp with no recruits under our belt.

[Godzilla Blitz]

November 2005

We come out of training camp with the following 15 men:


UC Riverside Roster

# Name Pos Cl Ht Wt Hometown
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
43 Theodor Staab C Sr 7' 0" 284 Recklinghausen, Germany
2 Ronny Pugliese C Jr 6'11" 259 Richmond, CA
50 David Hart C Fr 6'11" 302 Sylmar, CA
41 Freddie Ortiz PF Sr 6'10" 251 San Mateo, CA
3 Roland Payne PF Fr 6' 9" 249 Simi Valley, CA
23 Andrew Moss PF Fr 6'10" 233 Fullerton, CA (redshirt)
4 Jerold Tucker SF Sr 6'11" 231 San Rafael, CA
34 Zachary Terry SF Sr 6' 5" 215 Fontana, CA
10 Stephen Bates SF Jr 6' 7" 219 Reedley, CA
44 Tim O'Neil SG Jr 6' 3" 212 Coolgardie, Australia
31 Kenneth Rakes SG Jr 6' 2" 181 La Habra, CA
33 Joseph Breault SG Fr 6' 3" 198 Whiteriver, AZ
42 Andy Mellott PG Sr 6' 0" 189 Phelan, CA
40 Steven Macomber PG Fr 6' 0" 179 Staten Island, NY
20 Erasmo Pellegrino PG Fr 6' 0" 179 San Diego, CA (redshirt)

Roster Evaluation
Mellott will take over for Girard at PG, and is a big drop in talent, but elsewhere we’ve got experienced vets back. Redshirt freshman C Hart, our first recruit, will see a lot of action at center behind Staab. At PF, true freshman Roland Payne is talented and may replace Ortiz as things move along: Ortiz had a horrible plus/minus rating last year. SF Tucker brings a much improved perimeter defense game to the table. He lead the team last year in plus/minus category, so he must be doing something right. Tim O’Neil is mediocre at best.

We’re redshirting PG Pellegrino, who needs a lot of conditioning, and PF Moss, who could use the development.

On to the season we go, seeking once again to not finish last. I can just see it now. “Ok, men, let’s have a great year. Just remember our championship motto: Don’t be the worst!”

[Godzilla Blitz]

November 2005

Results

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11/13/05 Lipscomb W 60-55 1-0
11/17/05 at Long Island L 64-61 1-1
11/21/05 Eastern Kentucky W 54-46 2-1
11/24/05 at Stephen F. Austin L 65-44 2-2
11/29/05 Arkansas-Pine Bluff W 67-60 3-2

We pull away from Lipscomb late to win our opener, the blow a big lead to Long Island to fall to 1-1. We soundly beat Eastern Kentucky, then get absolutely crushed by Stephen F. Austin. How do we lose to a school with a name like that? My god. As TMQ says, “How can a whole team lost to just one guy?” We come back with a solid win against Arkansas-Pine Bluff, which leaves us 3-2 for the opening month of non-conference play.

Recruiting

Phew! We get two three-star commitments, SF Floyd Wilkerson, who we had been hoping to get right from the start, and PG Gustavo Ortega, a guy we plucked out of nowhere. Wilkerson looks to be all offense, and Ortega has weak passing skills, but at this point in time I have to be ecstatic to land two three-star players.

Although we’d end up a bit heavy on small forwards, I make scholarship offers to two three-star small forwards. There aren’t many three-star guys left, and locking up either one of these two would really give us a chance to have a solid recruiting class.

Here are our committed recruits' cards:


SF Floyd Wilkerson
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Height: 6' 6"
Weight: 238
High School: Abernathy High School
Hometown: Abernathy, TX
GPA: 2.45
Test Score: 1030
Rating: ***

Attributes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Type INS JPS FTS 3PS HND PAS ORB DRB PSD PRD STL BLK PFS QKN STR JMP STA
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current: 23 45 35 76 58 39 41 11 38 20 25 10 84 45 54 62 59
Potential: C C C A D C C F D F D F

Season Stats:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PTS OREB REB AST TOS A/T STL BLK PFS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
15.6 1.3 2.5 1.5 2.7 0.57 0.9 0.2 2.7

Shooting Averages:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FGM FGA FG% FTM FTA FT% 3PM 3PA 3P%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6.6 13.7 .480 1.0 2.2 .432 1.5 4.1 .366

Recruiting Notes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Qualified: Yes
Committed to UC Riverside
Rankings: Midwest Region #75 Overall, Midwest Region #13 SF
High School Awards: None


PG Gustavo Ortega
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Height: 6' 3"
Weight: 200
High School: Rubidoux High School
Hometown: Riverside, CA
GPA: 2.61
Test Score: 1040
Rating: ***

Attributes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Type INS JPS FTS 3PS HND PAS ORB DRB PSD PRD STL BLK PFS QKN STR JMP STA
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current: 23 48 39 59 52 21 19 31 39 19 29 32 47 87 23 41 23
Potential: D A D C B D D D C D C F

Season Stats:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PTS OREB REB AST TOS A/T STL BLK PFS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
14.5 1.5 5.6 2.5 2.4 1.04 1.7 0.5 2.4

Shooting Averages:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FGM FGA FG% FTM FTA FT% 3PM 3PA 3P%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6.4 16.3 .394 0.5 0.9 .556 1.2 4.3 .271


Recruiting Notes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Qualified: Yes
Committed to UC Riverside
Rankings: #49 PG, West Region #57 Overall, West Region #19 PG
High School Awards: None

[Godzilla Blitz]

December 2005

Results

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12/04/05 at VMI L 66-62 3-3
12/09/05 at Mount St. Mary's L 80-72 3-4
12/14/05 at Coastal Carolina W 69-67 4-4
12/18/05 at Albany L 64-57 4-5
12/23/05 Loyola-Maryland W 56-48 5-5
12/28/05 at Morgan State W 67-53 6-5


We lose to VMI and Mount St. Mary’s to open the month, then Jerold Tucker hits a basket with one second left in the game to give us a two-point win over Coastal California.

With our record at 4-4, we make some lineup changes, bringing in two of our freshmen as starters: C David Hart and PF Roland Payne. Both have played well in backup roles so far. We promptly blow a big lead against Albany and fall to 4-5. We bounce back, though, and overcome a 13-point deficit to beat Loyala-Maryland. A few days later, we roar out to a 29-4 lead against Morgan State, then keep a comfortable cushion to win and end the month at 6-5.


Recruiting
We lose one of our three-star candidates, and get no movement from the other one. We throw all our chips at SF Joseph Weidner, the one remaining three-star small forward on the board, and offer a scholarship to C Lazaro McCoy, a one-star candidate that looks surprisingly good, but who we may use more in power forward role.

[Godzilla Blitz]

January 2006

Results

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
01/02/06 Birmingham Southern W 75-60 7-5
01/07/06 at Chicago State W 69-51 8-5 (1-0)
01/12/06 Oral Roberts W 64-60 9-5 (2-0)
01/14/06 at UMKC L 74-66 9-6 (2-1)
01/19/06 at IUPUI L 81-69 9-7 (2-2)
01/21/06 at Western Illinois W 71-64 10-7 (3-2)
01/26/06 Oakland L 78-50 10-8 (3-3)
01/28/06 at Oakland W 72-56 11-8 (4-3)

We finish off our non-conference with a resounding win against Birmingham Southern in which C David Hart sets a school record for rebounds in a game (13). Freshman PF Roland Payne starts off our conference schedule right: he scores 20 points to lead us in a big road win against Chicago State. Later in the week, we get what might be our best victory ever, beating Oral Roberts in a tense battle. Two days later, at UMKC, both C David Hart (15 days) and PF Andrew Mellott (6 days) go down with injuries. With them out, we lose our lead and our five-game winning streak goes down the drain. A few days later, with Mellot gimpy and Hart out, we can’t hang with IUPUI and lose our second in a row. Mellott comes back to lead us to a key victory over Western Illinois a few days later. Following that, we commit 27 turnovers in an embarrassing loss to Chicago at home, then, with David Hart back in the lineup, return the favor by trouncing Chicago in their house to end the month.

All things considered, not a bad month, as we sit at 11-8 overall and 4-3 in the conference. That’s good for second place at the moment, three games back of UMKC, who is 7-0 in conference play and up next on our schedule. If we are even toying with the idea of winning the conference, this next game would be a must win.

Recruiting
Yes! We land both our targets: three-star SF Joseph Weidner and one-star C Lazaro McCoy. McCoy looks to have a surprisingly good outside game, and I think we’ll move him to power forward. I’m not sure what to make of Weidner. He’s got a bizarre mix of skills that makes me wonder what to do, but he’ll most likely get a redshirt next year so that will give us time to figure out the answer.

Here are their cards:

C Lazaro McCoy
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Height: 6'10"
Weight: 241
High School: Ganado High School
Hometown: Ganado, AZ
GPA: 2.58
Test Score: 900
Rating: *

Attributes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Type INS JPS FTS 3PS HND PAS ORB DRB PSD PRD STL BLK PFS QKN STR JMP STA
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current: 23 41 48 0 24 22 35 46 26 47 19 36 93 27 71 44 19
Potential: C A B F F D C C F A D B

Season Stats:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PTS OREB REB AST TOS A/T STL BLK PFS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11.4 1.9 9.6 0.6 1.6 0.39 0.7 0.8 2.4

Shooting Averages:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FGM FGA FG% FTM FTA FT% 3PM 3PA 3P%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5.0 10.6 .472 1.4 3.1 .435 0.0 0.0 .000

Recruiting Notes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Qualified: Yes
Committed to UC Riverside
Rankings: None
High School Awards: None


SF Jospeh Weidner
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Height: 6' 7"
Weight: 233
High School: Wilson High School
Hometown: Long Beach, CA
GPA: 2.92
Test Score: 1300
Rating: ***

Attributes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Type INS JPS FTS 3PS HND PAS ORB DRB PSD PRD STL BLK PFS QKN STR JMP STA
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current: 30 36 47 21 66 5 59 39 46 19 4 42 22 65 53 74 2
Potential: C F B D B D C D C B F B

Season Stats:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PTS OREB REB AST TOS A/T STL BLK PFS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7.6 1.8 4.8 0.7 2.8 0.25 0.2 1.2 4.4

Shooting Averages:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FGM FGA FG% FTM FTA FT% 3PM 3PA 3P%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.5 8.3 .416 0.7 1.2 .565 0.1 0.9 .056

Recruiting Notes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Qualified: Yes
Committed to UC Riverside
Rankings: #44 SF, West Region #66 Overall, West Region #15 SF
High School Awards: None

[Godzilla Blitz]

February 2006


Results

UC Riverside 2005 Season Schedule

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
02/02/06 UMKC L 59-55 11-9 (4-4)
02/09/06 IUPUI L 73-61 11-10 (4-5)
02/11/06 Chicago State W 73-67 12-10 (5-5)
02/16/06 at Oral Roberts L 79-65 12-11 (5-6)
02/18/06 Western Illinois W 74-71 13-11 (6-6)
02/23/06 Tennessee State W 70-46 14-11 (7-6)
02/25/06 at Tennessee State L 78-71 14-12 (7-7)
02/27/06 Quinnipiac W 61-48 15-12
03/01/06 Gardner Webb L 75-74 15-13


We play a great game against UMKC, but they take us at the very end, and any hopes of catching them in the conference are dashed. Second-place IUPUI pulls away from us in the second half of our next game, and we drop our second home game in a row. We get back on the winning track with a win over pesky Chicago State, but Oral Roberts is too much for us and we drop into the bottom half of the conference standings with a tough loss. With our season in peril of spiraling out of control, we come up with a clutch home win against last-place Western Illinois. The victory drops them to 3-9 and puts us at 6-6, which means…

We won’t finish last! Yahoo!

We split a pair against Tennessee State, then split two final non-conference games to end our regular season at 15-13, 7-7 in the conference. Our overall record gives us the tie-breaking edge puts us in third place in the Mid-Continent Conference!

2005/06 Final Mid-Continent Conference Standings


CW CL Pct W L Pct
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UMKC 11 3 .786 15 12 .556
IUPUI 9 5 .643 16 12 .571
UC Riverside 7 7 .500 15 13 .536
Oakland 7 7 .500 12 16 .429
Oral Roberts 7 7 .500 12 16 .429
Tennessee State 6 8 .429 12 16 .429
Chicago State 5 9 .357 9 19 .321
Western Illinois 4 10 .286 8 19 .296

We’ll face Tennessee State at home in the first game of the conference tournament.

[Godzilla Blitz]

March 2006

Tournament Results

Tennessee State pulls off the upset, beating us at home in the first round of the conference tournament and ending our season. We finish 15-14 overall, identical to last year’s record.

Well, I think we won’t get fired this year, as we managed to move up considerably in the conference standings, and once again we finished over .500 thanks to our non-conference games against girls’ high school teams. This year, however, feels much better than last year, as we played respectable ball in the conference, and had a slightly more difficult non-conference schedule.

All in all, I have to be happy with the future of the team. The two freshmen, PF Payne and C Hart, held their own as mere youngsters. They could be the anchor of a strong team two or three years down the road. We’ll take a hit with four contributing seniors graduating, but we’ve got more talent coming in. Should be an interesting next two or three years.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Final Stats 2005/06

Here’s the numbers on the team:


UC Riverside Player Averages

Name Pos G GS Min Pts OReb Reb Ast Stl Blk TO Fl
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Mellott PG 29 28 23.8 11.2 0.4 2.8 2.1 0.8 0.0 2.0 2.5
Jerold Tucker SF 29 29 24.8 9.4 1.4 4.6 1.1 1.1 0.1 2.0 2.5
Tim O'Neil SG 29 29 29.7 7.4 0.5 4.5 2.6 1.1 0.1 2.4 2.4
David Hart C 27 19 19.9 6.8 0.6 4.4 0.9 0.4 0.9 1.8 1.8
Roland Payne PF 29 21 18.1 5.7 1.2 2.9 0.9 0.3 0.2 1.5 2.7
Steven Macomber PG 29 1 16.7 5.3 0.3 2.3 1.9 0.7 0.0 1.7 1.2
Freddie Ortiz PF 29 8 16.9 4.6 1.1 2.4 0.6 0.3 0.2 1.0 2.0
Theodor Staab C 29 10 17.8 4.2 1.7 6.3 1.2 0.3 0.1 1.8 1.8
Joseph Breault SG 29 0 9.6 3.6 0.2 1.0 0.4 0.4 0.0 0.6 0.8
Stephen Bates SF 29 0 5.6 2.6 0.2 0.6 0.4 0.3 0.0 0.3 0.3
Zachary Terry SF 29 0 9.7 2.5 0.7 2.0 0.7 0.4 0.0 0.7 0.8
Ronny Pugliese C 29 0 9.0 1.7 0.4 1.7 0.6 0.3 0.1 0.5 0.8
Kenneth Rakes SG 16 0 1.3 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.1 0.0 0.1 0.1
Erasmo Pellegrino PG 0 0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
Andrew Moss PF 0 0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

UC Riverside Player Shooting Stats

Name Pos FGM FGA FG% FTM FTA FT% 3PM 3PA 3P%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Mellott PG 102 251 .406 72 112 .643 49 124 .395
Jerold Tucker SF 117 264 .443 39 74 .527 0 5 .000
Tim O'Neil SG 73 166 .440 38 64 .594 30 93 .323
David Hart C 69 135 .511 38 63 .603 8 28 .286
Roland Payne PF 67 137 .489 30 53 .566 1 4 .250
Steven Macomber PG 54 123 .439 31 53 .585 14 49 .286
Freddie Ortiz PF 47 90 .522 38 50 .760 0 1 .000
Theodor Staab C 46 76 .605 30 48 .625 0 1 .000
Joseph Breault SG 36 82 .439 11 20 .550 21 42 .500
Stephen Bates SF 32 67 .478 10 19 .526 0 5 .000
Zachary Terry SF 21 61 .344 16 22 .727 14 41 .341
Ronny Pugliese C 14 31 .452 22 33 .667 0 2 .000
Kenneth Rakes SG 0 2 .000 0 0 .000 0 2 .000
Erasmo Pellegrino PG 0 0 .000 0 0 .000 0 0 .000
Andrew Moss PF 0 0 .000 0 0 .000 0 0 .000

[Godzilla Blitz]

April 2006

Well, this was a less nerve-wracking transition. We get a bunch of information at the beginning of the year, the most important of which is an email telling us that we got the #73 recruiting class in the nation. Considering that we are ranked near #300, I have to be happy with this.

And our prestige skyrockets! We gain 100%! We now stand at 8! Watch out world, here we come!

UC Riverside
Prestige: 8 (+4)
2006/07 Goal: Avoid Last Place

The board is satisfied with me, and their goals are modest once again. Cool. Given that we graduated quite a few starters, staying out of last place might be more difficult that it would seem.

Here’s our history to date:
UC Riverside Historical Performances

Season W L CW CL Rank RPI Prs Result
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2005 15 14 7 7 249 293 8 No Postseason
2004 15 14 4 10 242 280 4 No Postseason
2003 4 24 1 17 327 327 3 No Postseason

Be nice to improve on these results this season, but a lot will depend on how well our new guys play.

[Godzilla Blitz]

May 2006

Chattanooga steals our scouting director. We hire a new guy, but he’s not quite as good as the last one was. We stick with the other two, as there are no opportunities to move up.

2006/07 Staff
Recruiter: Jason Gil (34 years old) Skill: 40
Scout: Derek Robinson (37 years old) Skill: 35
Asst. Coach: Justin Hoffman (55 years old) Offense: 48 Defense: 30

Also, I make a formal request to the board to improve our training facilities, which are rated at a “0”. This doesn’t seem to be a good thing. Does a zero mean we don’t even have a gym? Maybe we don’t even have our own basketballs? We need a gym and balls, and I tell my athletic director so.

[Godzilla Blitz]

June 2006

The athletic department has approved our request to upgrade the training facilities! This sounds like a very good thing. The improvements will be online next year. Excellent, just excellent.

I schedule a couple of games above the garbage level, but mostly I just pick the worst teams I can find for a given date. We quickly get things in order. One of the smart things I did (completely by accident) was schedule a lot of away/home two-year sets last year, when we had a stronger team. That means that we get 19 home games and only 9 away games this year. Might help us if our inexperience makes things rough on us.

Here they are, this year’s games:


Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11/12/06 Lipscomb
11/17/06 at Bethune-Cookman
11/22/06 at Sacred Heart
11/27/06 Birmingham Southern
12/03/06 Gardner Webb
12/09/06 Morris Brown
12/15/06 Nicholls State
12/20/06 VMI
12/25/06 Mount St. Mary's
12/30/06 Albany
01/04/07 at Oakland
01/06/07 IUPUI
01/11/07 Western Illinois
01/13/07 at Oral Roberts
01/18/07 at Western Illinois
01/20/07 at Tennessee State
01/25/07 Oakland
01/27/07 Morgan State
02/01/07 at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi
02/03/07 Chicago State
02/06/07 Stephen F. Austin
02/08/07 Oral Roberts
02/15/07 Texas A&M-Corpus Christi
02/17/07 Tennessee State
02/22/07 at Chicago State
02/24/07 at IUPUI
02/26/07 Coastal Carolina
03/01/07 Long Island

[Godzilla Blitz]

July 2006 – October 2006

Preseason Recruiting

Well, once again we have four scholarships available. However, we’ll have none available next year so I think I will try to find three players, then hammer a long shot four-star player for our fourth recruit, if I can find one. If I don’t land the longshot, I’ll just save the one scholarship for next year, as each year there seems to be at least one decent player that likes us.

Looking at our graduating seniors, we’ll need to pick up a center, two shooting guards, and a small forward. We’ll badly need shooting guard help next year, and that’s where we concentrate in the early months. Two three-star players, SG Adam Maier and SG Joe Loera, show a strong interest in us after we evaluate them, and we make scholarship offers to both of them. We also offer a scholarship to C Benny Garrett, a three-star center with mild interest in our program.

Garrett’s interest drops through the floor after he visits our campus, and Loera’s drops to mild after he does likewise. Maybe they saw us trying to borrow balls from the local high school teams? Maier’s interest stays very high, and we offer our fourth scholarship to SG Alphonse Huckaby, a three-star recruit whose interest perks in us for no apparent reason.

In early November, SG Huckaby commits to UC Riverside, giving us a badly needed shooting guard in the fold for next year. Maier and Loera are still on the fence. We revoke our scholarship to Garrett, who is clearly not impressed with us, and pour on the gas to a three-star center, Eldrige Whittle, whose interest in us rise to mild after we take a chance on a quick evaluation. As we head into training camp, we’ve got one good player in, and are looking fair to good on a couple more. Much better than last year.

Here is Huckaby’s card:

SG Alphonse Huckaby
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Height: 6' 4"
Weight: 202
High School: Clairemont Senior High School
Hometown: San Diego, CA
GPA: 2.73
Test Score: 1060
Rating: ***

Attributes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Type INS JPS FTS 3PS HND PAS ORB DRB PSD PRD STL BLK PFS QKN STR JMP STA
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current: 3 53 39 59 32 6 30 10 18 38 76 51 19 71 42 79 43
Potential: F B C A A F A F F C A C

Season Stats:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PTS OREB REB AST TOS A/T STL BLK PFS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
16.8 1.8 3.8 1.7 2.7 0.62 2.8 2.4 3.2

Shooting Averages:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FGM FGA FG% FTM FTA FT% 3PM 3PA 3P%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7.1 19.3 .365 1.2 2.6 .451 1.5 6.0 .252

Recruiting Notes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Qualified: Yes
Committed to UC Riverside
Rankings: West Region #93 Overall, West Region #16 SG
High School Awards: None

[Godzilla Blitz]

November 200x

We break training camp with the following fifteen men:


# Name Pos Cl Ht Wt Hometown
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2 Ronny Pugliese C Sr 6'11" 272 Richmond, CA
50 David Hart C So 6'11" 304 Sylmar, CA
14 Lazaro McCoy C Fr 6'10" 249 Ganado, AZ
3 Roland Payne PF So 6' 9" 257 Simi Valley, CA
23 Andrew Moss PF Fr 6'10" 242 Fullerton, CA
15 Harrison Augustin PF Fr 6'10" 239 Pelham, NY (redshirt)
10 Stephen Bates SF Sr 6' 7" 220 Reedley, CA
34 Jospeh Weidner SF Fr 6' 7" 235 Long Beach, CA (redshirt)
12 Floyd Wilkerson SF Fr 6' 6" 239 Abernathy, TX
44 Tim O'Neil SG Sr 6' 3" 214 Coolgardie, Australia
31 Kenneth Rakes SG Sr 6' 2" 187 La Habra, CA
33 Joseph Breault SG So 6' 4" 203 Whiteriver, AZ
40 Steven Macomber PG So 6' 0" 181 Staten Island, NY
20 Erasmo Pellegrino PG Fr 6' 0" 179 San Diego, CA
24 Gustavo Ortega PG Fr 6' 3" 206 Riverside, CA (redshirt)

Roster Evaluation
There year is a tough one to call. Of our 15 players on the roster, 11 are freshmen or sophomores. Clearly, we lack experience. However, I think the players we’ve brought in are markedly better than most of the players we inherited. How this all works out is anyone’s guess.

At Center, returning starter David Hart is the only player of worth, and we badly need depth here. Losing Staab to graduation hurts us at this position, as incoming freshman McCoy is nothing special, and Pugliese sucks. At PF, Payne returns after starting last year as a freshman, and Moss will provide decent backup. We’re inexperienced at small forward, but talented Freshman Wilkerson will start here. Bates will provide a weak backup. Three-year starter Tim O’Neil will return for his fourth and final year at shooting guard; behind him is a fair Breault and a poor Rakes. We’re thin at this position. At PG, redshirt freshman Pellegrino will start and walkon Macomber will back him up. Ortega is talented, but I want to let him develop for a year.

On to the season we go…

[Godzilla Blitz]

November 2006

Results

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11/12/06 Lipscomb L 74-53 0-1
11/17/06 at Bethune-Cookman L 72-64 0-2
11/22/06 at Sacred Heart L 68-58 0-3
11/27/06 Birmingham Southern L 72-64 0-4

The season starts horribly. We can’t put down anything and Lipscomb shoots lights out to blow us away in our opener. We roar out to a 15-point lead at halftime against Bethune-Cookman only to end up losing by eight after a disastrous second half. In our third game, Sacred Heart jumps out to a 17-point lead; we can never catch up. Our fourth game is no better: we blow a 7-point halftime lead and lose by ten. We end the month at an embarrassing 0-4. We are not scoring on offense and giving up gobs of points on defense. We look inexperienced and overmatched. Something has got to change or this will be a long season.

Recruiting
SG Loera turns us down, which we expected. Everyone else stays put. We’re still optimistic regarding SG Maier, and hopeful regarding C Whittle. However, if we don’t start turning around our play on the court, we might never be around to see these guys.

[Godzilla Blitz]

December 2006

The AI has had us run a man-to-man defense this year, but we are getting killed on defense. I switch to a matchup zone, despite the team’s lack of talent at this defensive scheme. This is pretty much a random choice, as I have little clue as to what defense would best fit our personnel.

Results

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12/03/06 Gardner Webb W 75-74 1-4
12/09/06 Morris Brown L 66-63 1-5
12/15/06 Nicholls State L 64-58 1-6
12/20/06 VMI L 52-50 1-7
12/25/06 Mount St. Mary's W 52-43 2-7
12/30/06 Albany W 64-58 3-7

We finally break into the win column with a see-saw overtime win against Gardner Webb. Unfortunately, we open up a big lead against Morris Brown, drop back into a tie, then fade away in the last couple of minutes of the game to lose yet again.

We now stand at 1-5, and I shuffle the lineup a bit. PF Andrew Moss replaces PF Roland Payne, who has not played well. This however, does not help. In our next game we suffer a humiliating loss to Nicholls State, who comes from 15 points down in the last ten minutes to beat us in overtime. A few days later it happens again: we lead the entire game until we blow the lead late and watch VMI sink a shot to win by two as time expires. Things turn around a bit in our next game, though, as we run out to a 21-point lead by halftime, then hang on to win against Mount St. Mary’s. In our final game of the month, we pull away from Albany in the last couple of minutes to win our second in a row. We finish the month at 3-7, but on an upbeat as we head into conference play.

Recruiting
Bingo! We hit the jackpot! Both SG Maier and C Whittle commit to play for us next year! Both are three-star recruits at weak positions for us. This couldn’t come at a better time.

With our remaining scholarship offer, we take a longshot chance on a four-star recruit, SG Stuart Bennett. The chances are low, but it’s worth a shot, as we can always save our scholarship spot for next year if we don’t land this guy.

Here are our new recruits’ cards:

SG Adam Maier
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Height: 6' 5"
Weight: 181
High School: Clearfield High School
Hometown: Clearfield, UT
GPA: 2.79
Test Score: 950
Rating: ***

Attributes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Type INS JPS FTS 3PS HND PAS ORB DRB PSD PRD STL BLK PFS QKN STR JMP STA
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current: 21 44 62 55 21 20 13 29 0 28 43 23 48 98 24 87 33
Potential: F D D B F D C C C A C C

Season Stats:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PTS OREB REB AST TOS A/T STL BLK PFS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12.7 1.4 5.0 2.3 3.4 0.67 2.8 1.0 2.5

Shooting Averages:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FGM FGA FG% FTM FTA FT% 3PM 3PA 3P%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5.6 13.6 .412 1.2 2.0 .615 0.3 2.5 .122

Recruiting Notes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Qualified: Yes
Committed to UC Riverside
Rankings: West Region #96 Overall, West Region #17 SG
High School Awards: All-State

C Eldridge Whittle
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Height: 6' 9"
Weight: 223
High School: Western High School
Hometown: Las Vegas, NV
GPA: 2.32
Test Score: 910
Rating: ***

Attributes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Type INS JPS FTS 3PS HND PAS ORB DRB PSD PRD STL BLK PFS QKN STR JMP STA
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current: 29 21 57 0 43 39 17 77 35 13 18 22 5 3 100 30 31
Potential: A D B F B F C A B C D F

Season Stats:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PTS OREB REB AST TOS A/T STL BLK PFS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11.5 1.5 9.3 1.2 2.9 0.40 1.2 0.8 4.2

Shooting Averages:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FGM FGA FG% FTM FTA FT% 3PM 3PA 3P%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.6 10.4 .440 2.4 5.1 .465 0.0 0.0 .000

Recruiting Notes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Qualified: Yes
Committed to UC Riverside
Rankings: #31 C, West Region #56 Overall, West Region #8 C
High School Awards: All-State

[Godzilla Blitz]

January 2007

Well, it’s show time. Conference play. We’ll need to Cowboy Up here. I’m afraid that I might get fired if we finish last.

Results

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
01/04/07 at Oakland W 72-63 4-7 (1-0)
01/06/07 IUPUI L 72-68 4-8 (1-1)
01/11/07 Western Illinois L 56-53 4-9 (1-2)
01/13/07 at Oral Roberts L 91-68 4-10 (1-3)
01/18/07 at Western Illinois L 70-56 4-11 (1-4)
01/20/07 at Tennessee State L 78-73 4-12 (1-5)
01/25/07 Oakland L 63-60 4-13 (1-6)
01/27/07 Morgan State L 53-48 4-14

Well, so much for Cowboy Up. We start off conference play with a surprising win against 7-3 Oakland in their house. Things turn sour quickly, though, as we fall behind and can’t catch up to IUPUI two days later, lose to 2-13 Western Illinois in a terribly played game on our part, follow it up with a crushing defeat at the hands of Oral Roberts, and then get blown away by Western Illinois on the road. Tennessee State beats us in overtime next, Oakland pulls away from us in the second half to hand us our sixth straight conference loss, and despite leading by ten late in a game against Morgan State, we self-destruct and lose yet again. We end the month 4-14 overall, and 1-6 in the conference. Needless to say, we own last place. This is not good. I think this really might be the end of our run at UC Riverside.

Recruiting
Bennett turns us down, but we continue our strategy of making scholarship offers to top players. Maybe we’ll hit a cord and land a star.

[GoldenEagle]

Good luck I am following along. Hopefully you will not get fired, but I will admit, if I was the athletic board, I would give it a long hard look.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Golden Eagle: I think if we finished last I would be gone, that's for sure. But...

February 2007

Well, this could be it. Realistically, we’re going to need to win three conference games to have a chance of avoiding the cellar. 3-4 in conference play the rest of the way? Have we got it in us?

Results

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
02/01/07 at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi L 72-57 4-15 (1-7)
02/03/07 Chicago State L 59-50 4-16 (1-8)
02/06/07 Stephen F. Austin W 61-60 5-16
02/08/07 Oral Roberts L 76-66 5-17 (1-9)
02/15/07 Texas A&M-Corpus Christi W 69-56 6-17 (2-9)
02/17/07 Tennessee State W 74-67 7-17 (3-9)
02/22/07 at Chicago State W 66-61 8-17 (4-9)
02/24/07 at IUPUI L 65-38 8-18 (4-10)
02/26/07 Coastal Carolina W 64-60 9-18
03/01/07 Long Island L 78-60 9-19

Texas A&M Corpus and Chicago State beat us easily to start the month. Finally, PG Pellegrino sinks a last second shot to beat Stephen P. Austin and end our long losing streak. Things go back to normal after that, though, as Oral Roberts pulls away from a close game to beat us by ten and drop us three games into last place with four to go.

Things look dire. We once again juggle our lineup, as we have been doing all year, but this time replacing PG Pellegrino with PG Macomber in the starting lineup appears to trigger something good: we put a hurt on Texas A&M Corpus, Tennessee State, and then win a squeaker against Chicago State to take three consecutive conference games and vault into a tie with Tennessee State for last place with one conference game to go. In the last conference game, IUPUI demolishes us, but Tennessee State loses as well. With two non-conference games and the conference tourney to go for us, we are tied with Tennessee State in conference record, and up by a half-game on them overall.

With my job on the line, we come back from a 17-point deficit to beat a tough Coastal California team and go a game and a half up on Tennesse State, who loses their last game. Wow! We lose our last non-conference game to Long Island, to leave us one-game in front of Tennessee State coming into the conference tournament next month. If we win or they lose we’ll have dodged the bullet and finished seventh. The strong finish may just be enough to save my job. God, my guys must love me.

[Godzilla Blitz]

March 2007

Mid-Continental Conference Tournament Results

Oakland absolutely destroys us to end our season, but fortunately for us Oral Roberts beats Tennessee State to hand us the badly needed seventh place in the conference. We have successfully avoided last place!

2007 Final Conference Standings

CW CL Pct W L Pct
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oral Roberts 12 2 .857 21 8 .724
Oakland 10 4 .714 18 11 .621
Western Illinois 8 6 .571 11 18 .379
IUPUI 7 7 .500 12 17 .414
Chicago State 6 8 .429 13 16 .448
Texas A&M-Corpus Christi 5 9 .357 8 21 .276
UC Riverside 4 10 .286 9 20 .310
Tennessee State 4 10 .286 8 21 .276


Recruiting

I make my third trip to Hawaii in as many months to try to convince Charlie Brown to join our program, but Charlie never does make up his mind. The season ends and we have no idea what happens to him. He just kind of falls off the face of the planet, I guess. We end up with three three-star players on the team, and our one open scholarship will carry over to next year.

Wrap Up

Well, we needed that miracle finish to avoid last place in the conference, but I’ll take it any way I can. I’m hoping the hard part is over, as we’ll have much more experience next year and we will have cleared out all the junk we inherited from before we got here. Now it’s all my team.

I'll post stats then move on to next year...

[Godzilla Blitz]

Final Stats 2006/07

Here’s the numbers on the team:


UC Riverside Player Averages

Name Pos G GS Min Pts OReb Reb Ast Stl Blk TO Fl
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Floyd Wilkerson SF 29 26 24.9 8.5 0.8 2.2 1.7 0.6 0.0 1.8 1.6
Roland Payne PF 29 13 19.1 7.4 1.8 4.6 0.6 0.3 0.2 2.3 2.3
Steven Macomber PG 29 7 21.6 6.7 0.7 2.6 2.0 0.8 0.0 2.3 1.9
Joseph Breault SG 29 5 17.4 6.3 0.7 2.8 1.1 0.5 0.0 1.1 1.6
Erasmo Pellegrino PG 29 22 18.4 6.3 0.7 2.4 1.9 0.3 0.1 1.5 1.9
David Hart C 29 29 20.1 5.8 0.9 5.0 0.8 0.3 0.7 1.7 2.1
Tim O'Neil SG 29 24 23.4 5.2 0.4 3.7 2.0 0.9 0.0 1.6 1.9
Andrew Moss PF 29 13 21.4 4.9 1.6 4.9 0.9 0.7 0.1 1.0 2.6
Stephen Bates SF 29 3 12.5 4.0 0.5 1.6 1.0 0.6 0.1 0.8 1.1
Lazaro McCoy C 29 0 10.5 2.3 0.5 2.8 0.4 0.3 0.1 0.7 1.4
Ronny Pugliese C 26 3 11.0 1.9 0.5 2.2 0.5 0.3 0.1 0.8 0.8
Kenneth Rakes SG 27 0 3.6 1.3 0.2 1.1 0.3 0.1 0.0 0.5 0.3
Jospeh Weidner SF 0 0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
Gustavo Ortega PG 0 0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
Harrison Augustin PF 0 0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

UC Riverside Player Shooting Stats


Name Pos FGM FGA FG% FTM FTA FT% 3PM 3PA 3P%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Floyd Wilkerson SF 86 189 .455 39 63 .619 36 101 .356
Roland Payne PF 70 146 .479 75 107 .701 0 2 .000
Steven Macomber PG 69 173 .399 27 51 .529 28 78 .359
Joseph Breault SG 59 141 .418 39 62 .629 26 65 .400
Erasmo Pellegrino PG 57 169 .337 51 73 .699 17 79 .215
David Hart C 62 146 .425 39 74 .527 5 28 .179
Tim O'Neil SG 55 150 .367 21 34 .618 20 82 .244
Andrew Moss PF 54 104 .519 32 62 .516 1 1 1.000
Stephen Bates SF 51 136 .375 13 38 .342 0 11 .000
Lazaro McCoy C 26 57 .456 15 26 .577 0 0 .000
Ronny Pugliese C 20 46 .435 9 16 .563 1 11 .091
Kenneth Rakes SG 12 28 .429 6 9 .667 4 9 .444
Jospeh Weidner SF 0 0 .000 0 0 .000 0 0 .000
Gustavo Ortega PG 0 0 .000 0 0 .000 0 0 .000
Harrison Augustin PF 0 0 .000 0 0 .000 0 0 .000

[Godzilla Blitz]

April 2007

Well, I’ve now been in the college basketball world for four years, and about all I can say I’ve accomplished is to not get fired. I’m 26, though, which still gives me plenty of time to draw closer to my dream of winning a national championship before I become senile.

We’ve survived the off season once again, and once again I’ll lead UC Riverside into battle in the Mid-Continent Conference.

We learn that last’s year’s incoming class was ranked #93 in the nation. Happy, happy.

We also get word that our facilities have been upgraded to a 9, up from last year’s zero. In checking over some other teams, I discover that facilities are graded on a 0-100 scale, not a 0-10 scale as I had thought. Wow, our program really sucks. I decide not to push the issue now, but if we can manage to have close to a winning record and accomplish our goal this year, I do intend to push the issue at the beginning of next year. 9 out of 100? God, this is a pitiful program I work for.

On a less positive note, our drop in performance last year results in zero gain in our program’s prestige, which is understandable to say the least.

UC Riverside
Prestige: 8 (+0)
2006/07 Goal: Avoid Last Place

We have a pretty low key board of directors here, as they tell us for the fifth year in a row: “Please don’t finish last.”

And a little look at our short history:


Season W L CW CL Rank RPI Prs Result
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2006 9 20 4 10 324 324 8 No Postseason
2005 15 14 7 7 249 293 8 No Postseason
2004 15 14 4 10 242 280 4 No Postseason
2003 4 24 1 17 327 327 3 No Postseason

Last year was sure a disappointment, although I had considered the lack of experience could make things difficult for us on the court. This year we should be better, as we have so many players back. Be nice if we could get back over .500. I’d have to think that next year we can really do so damage, as we’ll graduate no one this year.

[Godzilla Blitz]

May 2007

Since we won’t be needing much recruiting money this season, I decide to move up a level in coaching assistants. We fire Hoffman (off: 48; def: 30) and make some offers to guys in the $50,000 salary range. We also see a better opportunity at scout, so we fire Brown (sct: 41) and make an offer on a similarly priced guy with slightly better skills.

The scout change works flawlessly, but unfortunately, we don’t draw much interest at the Asst. Coach position. Round after round our candidates turn us down for more prestigious programs. When the dust settles, we end up paying $25,000 more for a guy who is not as good as Hoffman was. Sigh. Also, at the last minute, Jason Gil ditches us for Indiana State, and we end up getting a less talented guy at recruiter as well. All in all, we spend more money to get less than we had last year. Consider this a lesson learned.

2007/08 Staff
Recruiter: Charles Melancon (40 years old) Skill: 34 (-6 from previous year’s staff)
Scout: Kenny Harwood (40 years old) Skill: 42 (+1 from previous year’s staff
Asst. Coach: Tony Becker (47 years old) Offense: 33 Defense: 43 (-2 total from previous year’s coach)

[Godzilla Blitz]

June 2007

Once again, we aim low. We’ll have a lot of road games this year, as I schedule 9 away/home pair match-ups. The goal is to be near .500 this year and make a run at the conference title next year.

Here’s what we end up with:

2007 UC Riverside Schedule


Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11/18/07 Mount St. Mary's
11/22/07 at Liberty
11/26/07 at IPFW
11/30/07 Long Island
12/04/07 at Birmingham Southern
12/08/07 at Lipscomb
12/12/07 at Stephen F. Austin
12/16/07 at Southern
12/21/07 Army
12/23/07 Cal State Fullerton
12/27/07 at Dartmouth
01/05/08 High Point
01/10/08 at Western Illinois
01/12/08 at Oakland
01/17/08 Chicago State
01/19/08 IUPUI
01/24/08 at Tennessee State
01/26/08 at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi
01/31/08 Western Illinois
02/02/08 Texas A&M-Corpus Christi
02/09/08 Morehead State
02/14/08 at Chicago State
02/16/08 Bethune-Cookman
02/21/08 Oakland
02/23/08 at IUPUI
02/28/08 at Morehead State
03/01/08 Tennessee State
03/04/08 Sacred Heart

[Godzilla Blitz]

July 2007 – October 2007

Preseason Recruiting

I cut a walk-on SF with no talent to free up our last scholarship spot. With only one spot to fill this year, we’ll be very aggressive at first. I contact all the five-star recruits I can afford to see if any of them have the slightest interest in our program.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t work. We get no loving from any of our long shot contacts. I go to plan B as the autumn sets in. We start to pursue a three-star shooting forward. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work either, as his interest in our program drops to nil after we go visit him.

On to plan C. We could use more help at center, and there is a three-star center, Sonny Putman, that shows moderate interest in our program. We make him a scholarship offer and bombard him with visits and calls. As we head into training camp, though, we still have no word from him.

[Godzilla Blitz]

November 2007

Training camp comes and goes, and we head into the season with the following crew:


# Name Pos Cl Ht Wt Hometown
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
50 David Hart C Jr 6'11" 306 Sylmar, CA
14 Lazaro McCoy C So 6'10" 251 Ganado, AZ
35 Eldridge Whittle C Fr 6' 9" 234 Las Vegas, NV
3 Roland Payne PF Jr 6' 9" 258 Simi Valley, CA
23 Andrew Moss PF So 6'11" 243 Fullerton, CA
15 Harrison Augustin PF Fr 6'10" 246 Pelham, NY
12 Floyd Wilkerson SF So 6' 6" 241 Abernathy, TX
34 Jospeh Weidner SF Fr 6' 7" 236 Long Beach, CA
33 Joseph Breault SG Jr 6' 4" 210 Whiteriver, AZ
41 Alphonse Huckaby SG Fr 6' 4" 214 San Diego, CA (redshirt)
11 Adam Maier SG Fr 6' 5" 182 Clearfield, UT
40 Steven Macomber PG Jr 6' 0" 183 Staten Island, NY
20 Erasmo Pellegrino PG So 6' 0" 179 San Diego, CA
24 Gustavo Ortega PG Fr 6' 4" 209 Riverside, CA


Roster Evaluation
14 players and not one of them a senior. Although we have much more experience than we did last year, we are still a young team. I would be happy to be near .500 at year’s end.

David Hart returns for his third year starting at center. I’m hoping he will step up his game this year. Freshman Whittle will see lots of time there as well. At power forward, Moss took over the starting job from Payne midway through the year last year, and it’s his to lose as we head into this season. At small forward, Wilkerson will start, but the talented freshman, Weidner, will see lots of action. At guards, PG Pellegrino will start out-of-position at shooting guard, and the talented redshirt freshman Ortega will lead the way at point guard. Macomber, Breault, and freshman Maier will see lots of action in backup roles, while Huckaby will redshirt this year.

On to the season we go…

[Godzilla Blitz]

November 2007

Results

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11/18/07 Mount St. Mary's W 72-45 1-0
11/22/07 at Liberty L 88-53 1-1
11/26/07 at IPFW L 84-83 1-2
11/30/07 Long Island L 79-63 1-3

We open strong. Hart gets 11 points and 10 rebounds in a crushing win over Mount St. Mary’s. The tables are turned in our next game, though, as Liberty shoots 62% from the floor and 50% on three-pointers in a humiliating defeat. We fight valiantly back from a 15-point hole against IPFW, but end up losing a heartbreaker by one-point. Our fourth game is much like our second: our opponent shoots lights out and we are left in the dust. We end the month 1-3, and although I feel like we are playing well, you wouldn’t know it from the standings.

Recruiting
Putman’s interest in our program rockets to “very high”, although he hasn’t yet committed. We pour more attention on him.

[Godzilla Blitz]

December 2007

Results

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12/04/07 at Birmingham Southern W 64-58 2-3
12/08/07 at Lipscomb L 62-54 2-4
12/12/07 at Stephen F. Austin L 70-63 2-5
12/16/07 at Southern L 72-48 2-6
12/21/07 Army W 77-48 3-6
12/23/07 Cal State Fullerton W 76-70 4-6
12/27/07 at Dartmouth L 82-65 4-7

We play a brilliant second half to come from behind and win against Birmingham Southern, but play crappy at the end against winless Lipscomb and winless Stephen F. Austin to lose two games we should have won. Southern blows us away in our next game, and our season is starting to fall apart, as we drop to 2-6. If there is any consolation, it has to be that we have played only two home games during this span.

Finally, we get home, tweak our lineup, and get the game we need: a blowout rout of Army to lift our confidence. We follow that with a solid win over Cal State Fullerton to rise to 4-6. The two home wins don’t solve our road troubles though, as we get destroyed in Dartmouth to end the month at 4-7. We’re a solid 3-1 at home and a dismal 1-6 on the road.

Up next month comes the first half of the all important conference schedule. Looks like it could be another struggle to avoid the cellar.

Recruiting
Putman commits to UC Riverside! He’s a three-star center that should help us out some in a couple of years, but I’m not that excited about his scouting report. Although he appears to be rebounding machine, his inside game at both ends of the court is weak.

Here’s his player card:

C Sonny Putnam

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Height: 6' 8"
Weight: 223
High School: Desert Pines High School
Hometown: Las Vegas, NV
GPA: 2.32
Test Score: 940
Rating: ***

Attributes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Type INS JPS FTS 3PS HND PAS ORB DRB PSD PRD STL BLK PFS QKN STR JMP STA
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current: 33 28 13 0 25 15 40 44 33 10 31 45 45 43 84 57 88
Potential: D C F F D F B A F D C A

Season Stats:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PTS OREB REB AST TOS A/T STL BLK PFS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6.3 1.6 6.4 0.6 2.5 0.22 1.0 1.5 2.9

Shooting Averages:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FGM FGA FG% FTM FTA FT% 3PM 3PA 3P%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.8 6.0 .462 0.8 2.3 .333 0.0 0.0 .000

Recruiting Notes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Qualified: Yes
Committed to UC Riverside
Rankings: West Region #86 Overall, West Region #17 C
High School Awards: None

And that wraps up our recruiting for this season.

[Godzilla Blitz]

January 2008

Results

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
01/05/08 High Point W 78-45 5-7
01/10/08 at Western Illinois W 68-66 6-7 (1-0)
01/12/08 at Oakland W 84-72 7-7 (2-0)
01/17/08 Chicago State L 74-60 7-8 (2-1)
01/19/08 IUPUI L 83-77 7-9 (2-2)
01/24/08 at Tennessee State L 60-59 7-10 (2-3)
01/26/08 at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi W 78-64 8-10 (3-3)
01/31/08 Western Illinois W 62-48 9-10 (4-3)


We open the month at home with a rout of High Point to get things off on a positive note, but lose SF Floyd Wilkerson for the rest of the month with a broken jaw. Ouch. We start conference play off with key road wins over 2-11 Western Illinois and 1-11 Oakland, but get out shot at home to lose to Chicago State and fall back below .500. 10-4 IUPUI comes to town next, and they pull away from us in the second half to drop us to 2-2 in the conference. The bad results continue, as we suffer a tough loss at Tennessee State to drop our third game in a row. We turn things around against 4-13 Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, as PG Pellegrino scores 19 to lead us in a big road win. Next, a 13-point second-half run buries Western Illinois, brings us to a solid 4-3 in the conference, and ends the month with us within one game of .500.

Well, our goal was to avoid last place and finish near .500 on the year. This was a solid month for us, and puts us on track to reach both goals. So far, so good, but we’ve got a full month of conference play left, and five of our last seven conference games are against conference teams with .500 records or better.

[Godzilla Blitz]

February 2008

Results

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
02/02/08 Texas A&M-Corpus Christi W 60-48 10-10 (5-3)
02/09/08 Morehead State W 66-64 11-10 (6-3)
02/14/08 at Chicago State W 70-51 12-10 (7-3)
02/16/08 Bethune-Cookman W 63-49 13-10
02/21/08 Oakland L 79-61 13-11 (7-4)
02/23/08 at IUPUI W 92-74 14-11 (8-4)
02/28/08 at Morehead State L 61-44 14-12 (8-5)
03/01/08 Tennessee State L 78-72 14-13 (8-6)
03/04/08 Sacred Heart W 82-73 15-13


We start off February strong, dominating Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, then winning a huge game against 15-6 Morehead State. The two wins put us two games back of first place, behind both Chicago State and IUPUI, who lie at 7-1 in the conference. In what has to be a high moment of our short career, we travel to Chicago State, run out to a 27-9 lead, and never look back to win our fifth conference game in a row. More importantly, the win guarantees that we won’t finish last.

The streak continues with a solid non-conference win over Bethune-Cookman, but inexplicably, last place 4-19 Oakland trashes us in at home to end the streak and end any hopes of finishing in first place. We rebound just as inexplicably, as we crush first place 18-6 IUPUI on the road to pull within a game of first place with two games left. The 92 points sets a new franchise record for points in a game, and the win guarantees our first winning conference record ever. The magic leaves us for our last two conference games, however; we lose easily to both Tennessee State and Morehead State. A final blowout of Sacred Heart gives us our 15th win on the year and guarantees that we’ll have a winning season.

I immediately request another upgrade of our facilities.

That ends the regular season. We end up in fourth place in the conference, two games back of IUPUI and Chicago State.

Up next is the conference tournament, where we’ll host Tennessee State in the first round. We have yet to win a postseason game of any kind, and we’d like to end that streak right now.

[Godzilla Blitz]

March 2008

Tournament Results

Tennessee State opened up an 11-point lead with 15 minutes to go in the opening round, but we storm back to win by five and take our first ever conference tournament victory.

In the second round, we face first place IUPUI, whom we beat soundly on the road near the end during the season. Today, however, they have our number. They run up a double-digit lead early in the second half, we manage to close to within four, but they pull away from there to end our season.

Wrap Up

Well, all in all it was a productive season. First, by finishing fourth, we greatly exceeded our number one objective: avoid last place. Second, we ended the year at 16-14, our best record ever. Third, we managed to advance to the second round of the conference tournament. We also righted a season that started off badly, and picked up some big wins against good conference teams. Given that the entire team will be back next year, I have to be optimistic about the 2008/09 campaign.

I’ll post some final info then move on to next year.

[Godzilla Blitz]

2007/08 Final Mid-Continent Conference Standings


CW CL Pct W L Pct
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IUPUI 10 4 .714 22 8 .733
Chicago State 10 4 .714 18 11 .621
Morehead State 8 6 .571 17 12 .586
UC Riverside 8 6 .571 16 14 .533
Tennessee State 7 7 .500 14 15 .483
Western Illinois 6 8 .429 10 20 .333
Texas A&M-Corpus Christi 5 9 .357 10 20 .333
Oakland 2 12 .143 4 25 .138

[Godzilla Blitz]

Final Stats 2007/08

Here’s the numbers on the team:


UC Riverside Player Averages

Name Pos G GS Min Pts OReb Reb Ast Stl Blk TO Fl
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gustavo Ortega PG 30 30 22.9 9.6 0.4 3.0 1.8 0.6 0.1 1.4 1.6
David Hart C 30 30 24.4 9.1 0.9 6.5 0.9 0.3 1.2 2.2 2.0
Erasmo Pellegrino PG 30 30 22.7 8.2 0.7 3.6 2.8 0.4 0.1 2.0 2.2
Roland Payne PF 30 0 13.9 7.3 1.5 3.3 0.4 0.3 0.0 1.4 1.6
Jospeh Weidner SF 30 24 20.3 6.7 1.5 3.5 1.0 0.5 0.1 0.7 1.6
Steven Macomber PG 30 0 17.0 5.7 0.2 2.2 2.0 0.7 0.1 1.4 1.5
Adam Maier SG 30 0 16.6 5.0 0.7 2.4 1.3 0.7 0.0 1.5 1.7
Andrew Moss PF 30 30 20.4 4.7 1.5 4.7 1.0 0.6 0.1 1.4 1.8
Floyd Wilkerson SF 26 6 14.7 4.3 0.7 1.5 1.2 0.3 0.0 1.0 0.9
Eldridge Whittle C 30 0 14.1 2.9 0.6 4.1 0.6 0.4 0.1 0.7 2.4
Joseph Breault SG 30 0 7.7 2.5 0.1 1.0 0.6 0.2 0.0 0.7 0.8
Harrison Augustin PF 27 0 6.5 1.7 0.4 1.1 0.4 0.2 0.2 0.5 0.6
Lazaro McCoy C 17 0 2.2 0.8 0.2 0.8 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.2 0.2
Alphonse Huckaby SG 0 0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

UC Riverside Player Shooting Stats

Name Pos FGM FGA FG% FTM FTA FT% 3PM 3PA 3P%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gustavo Ortega PG 105 200 .525 31 49 .633 48 94 .511
David Hart C 101 218 .463 47 82 .573 24 55 .436
Erasmo Pellegrino PG 93 259 .359 28 40 .700 31 122 .254
Roland Payne PF 80 146 .548 60 86 .698 0 0 .000
Jospeh Weidner SF 75 179 .419 37 46 .804 15 55 .273
Steven Macomber PG 59 127 .465 33 55 .600 20 50 .400
Adam Maier SG 46 111 .414 43 57 .754 15 45 .333
Andrew Moss PF 58 121 .479 26 40 .650 0 2 .000
Floyd Wilkerson SF 39 104 .375 20 24 .833 13 52 .250
Eldridge Whittle C 35 81 .432 16 29 .552 0 0 .000
Joseph Breault SG 27 90 .300 11 17 .647 11 33 .333
Harrison Augustin PF 18 31 .581 11 17 .647 0 0 .000
Lazaro McCoy C 4 11 .364 6 6 1.000 0 0 .000
Alphonse Huckaby SG 0 0 .000 0 0 .000 0 0 .000

[tucker342]

Good work! Looks like the team is starting to turn it around:)

[RealDeal]

X-Com?

[Godzilla Blitz]

Tucker: Thanks! I'm hoping this next year is a good one. Everyone will be back.

Real: Things are starting to settle down with the baby. I started this because it doesn't take much time at all compared to doing X-COM, which sucks up huge chunks of time. I can make decent progress in with little time, and the in-game print feature is great for outputting to this dynasty. Also, FBCB is a silent game, so it's less likely that I catch the Wrath of Wife than if I'm putting out screams and plasma blasts with X-COM (and X-COM without sound, well, just isn't X-COM).

Still, the baby is starting to sleep more in the evenings, so X-COM shouldn't be long now. Less than a month, I would say. Once I consistenly get evenings back, we should be all set to go. Well, that and I need to find a monitor to hook the old computer up to, but that's just a detail.

[Godzilla Blitz]

April 2008

We make an easy transition to our sixth season at UC Riverside. We start the year off going through our new messages...

On a positive note, our team prestige rises 3 points. We are now in double digits!

UC Riverside
Prestige: 11 (+3)
2008/09 Goal: Avoid Last Place

The board is satisfied with my performance, and once again has our usual humble goal of not finishing in last place.

Our recruiting class from last year, which only consisted of one person, gets us a national rank of #200. No biggie.

On a down note, the athletic director turns down my request to upgrade the facilities. He says that they were unable to raise the cash to make the improvements. Crap. At the risk of bugging him about this, we’ll most likely request the same thing again this year, as already our facility rating has fallen to an 8.

Here’s a snapshot of our story to date:

Season W L CW CL Rank RPI Prs Result
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2007 16 14 8 6 215 256 11 No Postseason
2006 9 20 4 10 324 324 8 No Postseason
2005 15 14 7 7 249 293 8 No Postseason
2004 15 14 4 10 242 280 4 No Postseason
2003 4 24 1 17 327 327 3 No Postseason

Clearly, last year was a large step forward for us. We reached all-time highs in wins, conference wins, and RPI rank. With everyone back this year, I’m hopeful we can do even better this year.

[Godzilla Blitz]

May 2008

Last year we got hosed in quality and cost when we tried to improve our staff. As it stands right now, we’re paying too much for too little at recruiter and at assistant coach. We fire both of them. Our scout gets hired away, and that means we’ll have an entire new staff this year.

Fortunately, we have better luck at recruiter and assistant coach this year. We go up in quality and down in cost at both spots. We don’t have much luck, however, in landing a decent scout.

2008/09 Staff
Recruiter: Thomas Diamond (40 years old) Skill: 40 (+5 from last year)
Scout: Solomon Porch (36 years old) Skill: 29 (-13 from last year)
Asst. Coach: Timothy Brown (44 years old) Offense: 42 Defense: 40 (+6 total from last year)

I’m not too concerned about the scout, as we don’t have enough money to hire someone good enough to rely on their ratings, and my personal ratings suck as well, so I’m pretty much going by the national star ratings now. Now that I’ve figured out how to list recruits by national rank as well, I should be able to get by using the national level stats to recruit.

[Godzilla Blitz]

June 2008

We scrape the bottom of the basketball world again to make our 2008/09 schedule, but we get the back end of so many away/home pairings that we’ll have 21 home games this year and only 9 away games. Particularly nice is having seven home games to finish the season.

Here’s the stuff we’re up against:


Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11/16/08 Mount St. Mary's
11/20/08 Morgan State
11/24/08 Army
11/29/08 at Bethune-Cookman
12/04/08 Texas-Arlington
12/08/08 at VMI
12/13/08 Arkansas-Pine Bluff
12/19/08 Stephen F. Austin
12/28/08 Southern
12/30/08 Dartmouth
01/04/09 Lipscomb
01/09/09 IPFW
01/15/09 Chicago State
01/17/09 at Chicago State
01/22/09 at Loyola-Chicago
01/24/09 Loyola-Chicago
01/29/09 at Morehead State
01/31/09 at Western Illinois
02/05/09 at Oakland
02/07/09 at Tennessee State
02/12/09 at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi
02/14/09 Tennessee State
02/19/09 Texas A&M-Corpus Christi
02/21/09 Oakland
02/26/09 Morehead State
02/28/09 Western Illinois
03/02/09 Birmingham Southern
03/04/09 Liberty

Not much time to play tonight. That's all she wrote until tomorrow night.

[Vince]

Congrats...the team looks pretty good now. And though the 5 game road trip in late January/early February looks rough, it's gotta be nice to have a 7 game homestand to close out the year...

[The_herd]

Originally posted by Godzilla Blitz
Real: Things are starting to settle down with the baby. I started this because it doesn't take much time at all compared to doing X-COM, which sucks up huge chunks of time. I can make decent progress in with little time, and the in-game print feature is great for outputting to this dynasty. Also, FBCB is a silent game, so it's less likely that I catch the Wrath of Wife than if I'm putting out screams and plasma blasts with X-COM (and X-COM without sound, well, just isn't X-COM).


This is funny, it reminds me of when my wife 1st became pregnant and she was sleeping about 20 hours a day. Well, Max Payne had just came out and I was playing the hell out of it. Needless to say, I had to purchase some headphones to enjoy the game. However, I did buy the most expensive set I could find so that I could enjoy it as much as possible with headphones on.

[Godzilla Blitz]

July 2008 – October 2009

Preseason Recruiting

We’ve got three scholarships to fill this year. Our biggest need will be at power forward, so we’ll have to land something there. We’ll also need at least one guard. Lastly, we could use help at small forward, but could conceivably go with another guard if there is better talent there. In short: PF, SG/PG, SF or SG/PG.

In looking over the recruiting pool, there are three three-star guards with high initial interest in our program. We run off to evaluate them and another ten or so three-star recruits with mild interest in our program. SG Reed Hamlet, the #209 ranked player in the nation, keeps his high interest in us after we visit. We make him a scholarhip offer, then go visit some of the higher ranked candidates who have displayed average interest in our program.

As we head into training camp and the first month of the season, we have yet to land any players. We have scholarship offers out to two shooting guards, Hamlet being one of them, and a power forward. Our hope is that one of the shooting guards accepts an offer, then we can revoke the other offer and go after a shooting forward with high interest out there. The interest is there, but we just have to cash in on it.

(As a side note, I’ve decided not to post the player cards anymore for the recruits we land. Because our scouting is so inaccurate, the recruits are coming into training camp quite a bit different than what they look like to us while we are recruiting them. I’ll keep posting about recruiting as I’ve done before, but will post a brief table of all recruits with star ratings and national rankings once we land the final recruit in a year.)

[Godzilla Blitz]

November 2008

Here’s our team as we head into the season:


# Name Pos Cl Ht Wt Hometown
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
50 David Hart C Sr 6'11" 306 Sylmar, CA
14 Lazaro McCoy C Jr 6'11" 259 Ganado, AZ
35 Eldridge Whittle C So 6' 9" 237 Las Vegas, NV (redshirt)
0 Sonny Putnam C Fr 6' 8" 224 Las Vegas, NV
3 Roland Payne PF Sr 6' 9" 258 Simi Valley, CA
23 Andrew Moss PF Jr 6'11" 245 Fullerton, CA
15 Harrison Augustin PF So 6'10" 258 Pelham, NY
12 Floyd Wilkerson SF Jr 6' 6" 242 Abernathy, TX
34 Jospeh Weidner SF So 6' 8" 237 Long Beach, CA
33 Joseph Breault SG Sr 6' 4" 210 Whiteriver, AZ
11 Adam Maier SG So 6' 5" 183 Clearfield, UT (redshirt)
41 Alphonse Huckaby SG Fr 6' 4" 218 San Diego, CA
40 Steven Macomber PG Sr 6' 0" 183 Staten Island, NY
20 Erasmo Pellegrino PG Jr 6' 0" 179 San Diego, CA
24 Gustavo Ortega PG So 6' 4" 213 Riverside, CA

Roster Evaluation
We’ve got everyone back from last year, so we’re hoping for good things.

Hart, who has had an exceptional career with us, is back for his final season. He should provide a strong foundation at center. Moss will start because of his exceptional defensive skills, but Payne will see equal action, and should rack up lots of points for us. Weidner outplayed Wilkerson last year at SF, and will start again this year. Pellegrino and Ortega, who had a brilliant freshman campaign, are back again this year and should give us outstanding strength at guard.

On to the season we go…

[Godzilla Blitz]

November 2008

Results

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11/16/08 Mount St. Mary's W 63-60 1-0
11/20/08 Morgan State L 89-77 1-1
11/24/08 Army W 64-56 2-1
11/29/08 at Bethune-Cookman W 73-70 3-1

PF Roland Payne scores 20 points, three of them coming with one second left in the game, to give us a dramatic 63-60 win over Mount St. Mary’s to open our season. Morgan State shoots red hot and runs out to a huge lead against us in our next game; we never get closer than 7 and drop our first game. We bounce back against Army, as PG Ortega scores 17 to lead us in a comfortable win. Against Bethune-Cookman, we run out to a 20-point lead and are cruising to a comfortable win, when they storm back to cut our lead to 2 points with a minute to go. Fortunately, we hang on and avoid what would have been an embarrassing loss. We end the month 3-1, and the team seems to be clicking.

Recruiting
Crap. We lose out on both shooting guards. Damn it, damn it, damn it. We scramble after our next level of recruits. They’re all three-star, but we’re late to get to them, and I’m afraid that the big schools will snatch them away. I’m starting to get worried here. We’ve no one in the nest and we’re heading into December.

[Godzilla Blitz]

The_herd: I was thinking about using headphones, too, but I would be risking Turbo Wrath of Wife if I can't hear her when she is asking for help. That would be ugly. Ew, I don't even want to think about that.

This post-partum emotional turmoil that women go through really sucks, by the way. My wife is extremely calm and understanding, except for the two months after she has had a baby, during which time she tuns into a cobra.

[corbes]

Hey, Godzilla, really enjoying reading your dynasty. I'm trying to decide whether or not to get FBCB -- my main obstacle is my computer (old) and my internet connection (only at work; my current living situation doesn't allow for it. I'd have to try downloading at the library or something).

At any rate, good luck with Riverside. You've written an enjoyable dynasty so far.

[Godzilla Blitz]

December 2008

Results

12/04/08 Texas-Arlington W 78-72 4-1
12/08/08 at VMI L 91-80 4-2
12/13/08 Arkansas-Pine Bluff L 64-58 4-3
12/19/08 Stephen F. Austin W 70-54 5-3
12/28/08 Southern W 74-52 6-3
12/30/08 Dartmouth W 55-46 7-3

We play a disastrous second half against Texas-Arlington, as we blow a big lead to trail by three with 5 seconds left. However, PG Ortega hits a three-pointer to send the game in OT, and we pull away in the second OT for another clutch win. We juggle our lineup a bit for our next game, but the strategy backfires: VMI trashes us. This same line up loses again to Arkansas-Pine Bluff at home, and we quickly switch back to our original lineup. The switch gets us back on track, as we come out of our funk and blow away Stephen F. Austin, Southern, and Dartmouth in our next three games. We end the month at 7-3, good enough for first place in the conference, as we head into the new year and the conference portion of the schedule.

Recruiting
Good news, bad news, and bad news. The good news is that we get the #368 player in the nation, SG Tyron Mestas, to commit to UC Riverside. He’s a three-star player who should help us out. Next, the bad news. Our target at small forward, Gary Ryals, commits to Utah instead of us. Also, PF Chris Faulkner, who had us #1 and looked like a lock to commit to us, doesn’t qualify academically. The moron.

We are in desperate straits at power forward. The market is pretty much cleared out. There is one good player left there, a Kenneth Garza, who is a three-star recruit with low interest in our program. We hammer the guy with phone calls, visits, scholarship offers, and hookers. Let’s hope it’s enough. The only thing working in our favor is that no one else has offered him a scholarship.

At point guard things look better. There were a lot of good players there this year, and there are two three-star recruits on the board that have high interest in our program. We offer a scholarship to PG Chris Hernandez, the #230 player in the nation.

[Godzilla Blitz]

corbes: Thanks! I'm glad you're enjoying it! I highly recommend the game. It has been a blast from the start, and just keeps getting better.

I think an old computer should work fine, but I wouldn't be the best one to say, as I'm running it on a fast machine. The only place I notice a hiccup is when saving games: it takes about 15-30 seconds. Oh, yes, you should be aware that it doesn't run yet on Windows ME.

The download is only 12Mb, so it should go reasonably fast on even a dial-up.

Good luck picking up the game. Be great to see another dynasty up if you have the time!

[JAG]

Looks like a promising year for Riverside. Hopefully the conference games go well.

[SirFozzie]

It ain't the westside.. it's not the east side... it's the Riverside!

(in other words, KUTGW)

[Calis]

This is Erasmo's year, I can feel it! I'll be pulling for him this year.


I will also be strongly rooting for Adam Maier to fail horribly as player, seeing as how he's from Clearfield, UT..that horrid place in which I'm forced to live right now. :)

Good stuff though, anxious to see how things turn out this year.

Right now reading through FBCB dynasties is the only thing allowing me to make it through the work day, until I can get home and play!

[Godzilla Blitz]

JAG: Thanks! I should get to the conference games tonight. So far, I don't know what to expect when I get into the conference games. I keep expecting them to be more difficult, but last year we had a better record in conference than out. I'd like to think we can compete for the title this year. I'd love to move up, maybe back to the Big West for some revenge.

Sir Fozzie: Thanks!

Calis: It's funny, but the AI suggested I start Huckaby over Pellegrino, but I ignored it and started Pellegrino instead. Pellegrino was shooting awful, and didn't shoot well last year either, so the "tweak" I made after game five was to bench Pellegrino in favor of Huckaby, who has been shooting lights out. Well, we get blown away in two games with Pellegrino out of the starting lineup. Back in he goes, and we start winning again.

That's actually one of the things I really enjoy about this game. I feel like I can dramatically effect how the team plays by messing with the depth charts and team strategy. I love tweaking those things. One of the things I was really happy with last year was seeing our record improve over the course of the year as I kept fiddling with the lineup.

[Calis]

Tell me about it. It can backfire also though.

I was playing with New Hampshire and had created what I thought to be a pretty good team, but kept losing game after game, by 1 or 2 points.. was killing me.

I made a few alterations to the general offense and depth, and my guys were just unbeatable for the last part of the season, too late though. It actually ended up annoying me more than making me happy, if only I'd of known.

My biggest problem right now is I can't bring myself to leave my New Hampshire team. That was the plan, just coach there a year or two and begin my ascension. I can't leave though, I always end up bringing in one recruit who I just HAVE to see play out his career. Now I'm in my 5th year, and I figure I'm almost stuck for good here. Hell, maybe I'll finally break away from my string of complete lazyiness and do a dynasty of my own. Nahh. ;)

And bah! What does the AI know? Erasmo is the key to your season. Actually, I just like the name Erasmo, quite catchy. Anyway, good luck with the conference schedule.

[Godzilla Blitz]

January 2009

Results

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
01/04/09 Lipscomb W 68-46 8-3
01/09/09 IPFW W 78-57 9-3
01/15/09 Chicago State W 89-61 10-3 (1-0)
01/17/09 at Chicago State W 78-61 11-3 (2-0)
01/22/09 at Loyola-Chicago W 71-67 12-3 (3-0)
01/24/09 Loyola-Chicago L 68-66 12-4 (3-1)
01/29/09 at Morehead State L 81-70 12-5 (3-2)
01/31/09 at Western Illinois W 66-58 13-5 (4-2)

We start January off with resounding non-conference wins against Lipscomb and IPFW to run our record to 9-3. Unfortunately, SF Floyd Wilkerson breaks his wrist in the IPFW game, and is lost to us for over a month.

In our first conference game, Ortega scores 20 and Payne gets a double-double to lead us in a rout of Chicago State, but PG Pellegrino goes down for a week with a knee injury to further complicate matters for our lineup. Fortunately, Ortega stays hot in a rematch at Chicago State two days later; he scores 17 and C David Hard gets the double-double to lead a second half charge to pull away and win. We split the series against Loyola-Chicago the following week: we win the first all beat up, then get Pellegrino back in the lineup only to lose a squeaker at home.

We start our five-game conference road trip with a crushing defeat at the hands of Morehead State, and lose guard Huckaby to a sprained wrist in the process. PG Pellegrino gets us back on track, though, as he scores 19 points in a key road win at Western Illinois.

We end the month at 13-5, and hold a one-game lead over Loyola-Chicago in the conference. We’ll start next month with our last three road conference games, and then be at home for the rest of the season. We’ll need to keep up the strong play, but the conference is ours to win. If we can get and stay healthy, I think we’ve got a shot.

Recruiting
We land PG Chris Hernandez, the #230-ranked player in the nation. We lose our long shot bid for PF Garza, though, and with that, the board is cleared of three-star talent at both forward positions. Rather than recruit a marginal player, we’re going to try to land another point guard, which is exceptionally deep at talent this year. We hammer the three-star recruits still on the board, and offer a scholarship to the highest ranked one still left: #260 ranked PG Quitin Paz. We’ll be short at forward next year, but we should be able to concentrate our recruiting at those positions next year, and perhaps we can go with a three-guard offense in the upcoming season.

[Blade6119]

13-5 isnt bad at all...erasmo is a kick ass name...go Zilla!

[Godzilla Blitz]

Calis: I can understand the attachment to a team. I'm glad I selected the "promotion/demotion" option, so that I can improve the team and advance with them. If we ever get the chance to advance, that is. This year might be the year, but with how thin we're going to be at forward next year, I think this might be our best chance to win the conference in the near future.

Blade: Thanks! Erasmo is kind of a cool name, isn't it?

[Blade6119]

erasmo sounds like a spanish soap opera star's name...its rolls off your tounge with a spanish accent...he has to be a major pimp with the ladies...

Then you have Gustavo, who is prob. a nazi and planning on killing everyone

[Vince]

Keep up the good work GB...now that you're out of the Big West, I can happily root for your team :)

[Godzilla Blitz]

Blade: The names are some of the best I have seen in a text-sim. Gustavo sure sounds German, but I'm not so sure about the Ortega part. All I can think of is taco shells.

Vince: Thanks! We might end up back in the Big West, though, if we win our conference and get promoted back to the Big West. I'll have to check and see what's happened to UC Santa Barbara. They may have been promoted or demoted as well.

[Godzilla Blitz]

February 2009


Results

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
02/05/09 at Oakland W 80-74 14-5 (5-2)
02/07/09 at Tennessee State L 103-97 14-6 (5-3)
02/12/09 at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi W 66-61 15-6 (6-3)
02/14/09 Tennessee State L 73-66 15-7 (6-4)
02/19/09 Texas A&M-Corpus Christi W 85-54 16-7 (7-4)
02/21/09 Oakland L 87-84 16-8 (7-5)
02/26/09 Morehead State W 88-75 17-8 (8-5)
02/28/09 Western Illinois L 77-68 17-9 (8-6)
03/02/09 Birmingham Southern W 64-54 18-9
03/04/09 Liberty W 87-74 19-9
03/08/09 vs. Morehead State

SG Gustavo Ortega scores a school record 29 points and C David Hart gets a double-double against Oakland to lead us in a thrilling, close win over Oakland. Next, we blow a big lead against Tennessee State and end up losing to them in overtime. In our final conference road game, we eek out a solid win against Texas A&M Corpus-Christi. At this point there’s a pack of teams all bunched together near the top of the conference. Fortunately for us, if things end up tied, we should have the best overall record.

We start our home stretch off on the wrong foot, though, as once again Tennessee State comes from behind to beat us. We slaughter Texas A&M Corpus-Christi in our next game, but Oakland deflates out title hopes by sinking a three-pointer with three seconds left in the game to beat us later in the week. With two games left, we lie a half game back of Tennessee State, and just in front of three other teams. We need two wins or a win and a Tennessee State loss.

We pick up the half game by beating last place Morehead State with a strong second half run, and head into the final game of the season tied with Tennessee State. With a chance to win the title, we continue our erratic ways: we fall apart in the second half and lose to Western Illinois. Fortunately for us, Tennessee State loses to Loyola-Chicago, and this leaves five teams atop the conference, all with 8-6 records. We currently have the best non-conference record, so things look good if we can win one of our last two non-conference games.

We pick up a solid wins against Birmingham-Southern and Liberty, and this locks up first place in the conference! We win the title! Wow! We’ll have a few days off to get ready for the conference tournament, which should be a wide open, anybody-can-win affair. We draw last place Morehead State, at home, to start things off.

Recruiting
PG Quintin Paz turns us down, but PG Thomas Welch, another three-star recruit, shows strong interest in us. We bombard him with visits; I hope this will do the trick and land us our last recruit of the year.

[Calis]

Congrats GB!

I don't know about this Gustavo Ortega character, he's stealing Erasmo's limelight!

I do have to admit though, if anyone is going to steal his thunder...a guy named Gustavo Ortega is the easiest to handle.
:)

Anxious to see how the tourney plays out! Looks like it's anyone's tourney. That #1 seed doesn't seem to mean much right now.

[Godzilla Blitz]

March 2009

Mid-Continent Conference Tournament Results

Morehead State leads by six points with ten minutes to go in the opening game, but we storm back to save face and win the opening game, 76-68.

In the semi-finals, we absolutely run away with the game against Loyola-Chicago. Final score: 75-49. We’re heading to the conference tournament final, with a chance to go to the dance! Whoa!

In our way is second-place Oakland. We split the season series with them. The conference final is everything a final game should be. Both teams take and erase ten-point first half leads, then spend the majority of the second half no more than two-points apart. With five minutes left, Oakland runs out to a five-point lead, but we sneak back in to lead by one with just a few seconds left. We foul Oakland with no time left; they make one of two shots, and we go to overtime. We run out to a big, seven-point lead, but Oakland storms back with three-pointers to close to one. We make a couple of clutch, last minute shots to take a lead that Oakland can’t overcome, and win, 82-80!

WE’RE GOING TO THE DANCE! BABY! Here we come! Yahoo!

[Blade6119]

SCORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[tucker342]

Great job!:)

Have fun getting raped in the first round!:D

[JAG]

Congrats GB, it was looking like your year. Maybe now they'll upgrade the damn facilities. :)

[SirFozzie]

Now the question:

Will It Be Playin game?

[Calis]

I should've known better than to the doubt the might of UC Riverside!

Congrats on the win! Good luck in the tourney!(I imagine you'll be needing it.;) )

[Godzilla Blitz]

NCAA Tournament

Well, I’m not sure we’ll be at the tournament all that long, as we draw the #2 seed in the west, 9th-ranked Oklahoma (24-9), as our first round opponent. This doesn’t bode well, but we really didn’t expect to be here long anyway.

Amazingly, we hang with Oklahoma through the first half, then put together a string of three-pointers to open up a ten-point lead with three minutes to go in the half. Oklahoma runs off an eleven-point run that crosses halftime, though, and our brief thoughts of an easy win are gone. Fully expecting Oklahoma to blow our doors off now, we are even more amazed to find us still hanging with them. With six minutes to go the game is dead even, and even after Oklahoma pulls out to a six-point lead, we manage to close within two with three minutes to go. From that point on, though, everything is all Oklahoma. They leave us in the dust in the last three minutes to win going away, 85-73.

Still, this was a great game for us. We played tough against a strong team, and got some valuable tournament experience.

Oklahoma continues on to the tournament finals, where they lose to Duke by three. Wow. We came so close to knocking them off.

Inspired by our performance, I once again ask our athletic director to upgrade our training facilities.

Recruiting
PG Thomas Welch commits to UC Riverside! This concludes our recruiting for the season. Not exactly what we hoped for by getting three guards, but we should be able to adjust next year. Here’s a look at the talent we got:

2008/09 Recruiting Summary
POS Player Name Star National Rank
PG Chris Hernandez *** #230
PG Thomas Welch *** #349
SG Tyson Mestas *** #368



2008/09 Wrap Up

Well, this concludes what has to be our best year yet. We won the conference (albeit barely), won the conference tournament, and played a strong game in the NCAA tournament. Our recruiting was decent as well.

We can look forward to a new conference next year, and despite the loss of C David Hart and PF Roland Payne, we can look forward to putting a competitive squad on the court. I think we’ll be a level below this year’s team, but I’m hoping we can be competitive enough to stick around in the next conference. I’d like to say goodbye for good to the Mid-Continent Conference.

I’ll post the numbers, then move on to the next season.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Blade, Tucker, JAG, SirFozzie, Calis: Thanks. I didn't expect we'd last long, and drawing Oklahoma didn't help, but I'm happy with the outcome. For a while there it looked like we might win.

[JAG]

Amazing run there. Considering that Riverside hung with Oklahoma, you guys were definitely for real this year. It'll be very interesting to see how you manage to get the ball to all your guards next year. Hope to see prestige in double digits!

[Calis]

Wow, nothing to be ashamed of there.. very nice job hanging with one of the top teams in the nation. Wish I could pull that off!

Gonna be tough replacing Hart, seems like he's been starting for you for about 8 years. :)

With Gustavo and Erasmo(Damn, you're hogging all the cool names in your dynasty!) with another year under their belt, and some big time recrutis coming in at Guard...going to be very deep there next year.

Can't wait to see more!

[Vince]

Great job GB! Good luck next year, even if it is the Big West again.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Final 2008 Mid-Continent Conference Standings


CW CL Pct W L Pct
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UC Riverside 8 6 .571 22 10 .688
Oakland 8 6 .571 19 12 .613
Tennessee State 8 6 .571 17 14 .548
Western Illinois 8 6 .571 14 15 .483
Loyola-Chicago 8 6 .571 13 17 .433
Texas A&M-Corpus Christi 7 7 .500 11 18 .379
Chicago State 5 9 .357 12 17 .414
Morehead State 4 10 .286 10 19 .345

[Godzilla Blitz]

Final Stats 2008/09

Here’s the numbers on the team:


UC Riverside Player Averages

Name Pos G GS Min Pts OReb Reb Ast Stl Blk TO Fl
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gustavo Ortega PG 32 32 25.0 12.0 0.3 3.0 2.9 1.0 0.0 1.7 2.0
David Hart C 32 32 29.3 10.9 1.8 8.5 1.4 0.4 1.8 2.2 2.6
Roland Payne PF 32 0 18.4 9.7 2.0 4.9 1.2 0.3 0.0 1.3 2.5
Erasmo Pellegrino PG 32 28 23.1 9.5 1.1 3.8 2.0 0.6 0.1 1.3 1.8
Jospeh Weidner SF 32 32 22.5 7.8 1.5 3.9 1.2 0.6 0.1 1.2 2.5
Floyd Wilkerson SF 23 0 16.1 6.6 0.8 1.4 1.0 0.6 0.0 1.0 1.6
Alphonse Huckaby SG 32 4 21.8 6.3 1.5 3.3 1.8 1.6 0.4 1.4 1.8
Andrew Moss PF 32 32 20.1 4.6 1.9 4.7 1.0 0.4 0.1 0.8 2.3
Steven Macomber PG 32 0 9.4 3.4 0.3 1.4 0.9 0.5 0.0 0.8 0.7
Joseph Breault SG 31 0 9.6 3.0 0.6 1.7 0.7 0.4 0.1 0.6 0.5
Sonny Putnam C 32 0 10.2 1.8 0.5 2.7 0.4 0.2 0.0 0.4 1.2
Lazaro McCoy C 24 0 1.7 0.5 0.0 0.5 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.3 0.3
Harrison Augustin PF 26 0 3.1 0.2 0.2 0.8 0.2 0.0 0.3 0.2 0.2
Adam Maier SG 0 0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
Eldridge Whittle C 0 0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

UC Riverside Player Shooting Stats

Name Pos FGM FGA FG% FTM FTA FT% 3PM 3PA 3P%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gustavo Ortega PG 124 261 .475 75 114 .658 60 120 .500
David Hart C 123 278 .442 71 132 .538 32 76 .421
Roland Payne PF 117 269 .435 77 132 .583 0 1 .000
Erasmo Pellegrino PG 106 268 .396 55 78 .705 36 126 .286
Jospeh Weidner SF 83 207 .401 64 84 .762 18 70 .257
Floyd Wilkerson SF 48 84 .571 32 40 .800 23 46 .500
Alphonse Huckaby SG 66 141 .468 46 74 .622 24 67 .358
Andrew Moss PF 58 118 .492 32 48 .667 0 0 .000
Steven Macomber PG 38 88 .432 19 36 .528 14 40 .350
Joseph Breault SG 33 110 .300 14 19 .737 13 53 .245
Sonny Putnam C 23 57 .404 12 29 .414 0 1 .000
Lazaro McCoy C 5 6 .833 2 3 .667 0 0 .000
Harrison Augustin PF 1 9 .111 2 6 .333 0 0 .000
Adam Maier SG 0 0 .000 0 0 .000 0 0 .000
Eldridge Whittle C 0 0 .000 0 0 .000 0 0 .000

[Godzilla Blitz]

April 2009

Aaargh! We’re still stuck here in the Mid-Continent Conference! We get passed over for promotion! I guess the routine that decides who moves up when there is a tie is not necessarily based on who wins the conference? Maybe it goes by overall rank? Who knows. All I know is that we’re still stuck in the shitpile of the NCAA, while Loyola-Chicago has moved on to bigger and better things. Damn them. Damn us for losing that last game to Western Illinois. Damn this friggin’ crappy gym we play in.

On another down note, we learn that our school still has no money to upgrade our facilities. I am turned down again. Cheap bastards. This is the thanks I get for taking the team to the tournament? For winning the conference? For winning the conference tournament? For the first time, I consider jumping ship, and will look at the “job offers” screen. If there is something out there, I actually might consider it.

On a more positive note, I learn that I have advanced in personal rank! I am now a level 1 (of 15) coach! Wow! I get 20 bonus points to spend anyway I’d like. I end up like this:

My New & Improved Skill Set
Recruiting: 35 (+8)
Scouting: 23
Offense: 30 (+5)
Defense: 32 (+7)

I also am declared the Mid-Continent Conference Coach of the Year. This is my second such award. I got one way back in 2004 for coming into the conference and going 15-14. Little fish, little pond.

On another positive note, our prestige jumps six big points! We’re moving and shaking!

UC Riverside
Prestige: 17 (+6)
2009/2010 Goal: Compete for the Conference Championship

Whoa! Just look at this! They won’t give us any better facilities, but they want us to compete for the conference championship? At least they tell me they are delighted with my performance. Big deal. Pay up, guys.

And a little look at our short history:


UC Riverside Historical Performances

Season W L CW CL Rank RPI Prs Result
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2008 22 10 8 6 104 106 17 Loss in NCAA Tourney Round 1
2007 16 14 8 6 215 256 11 No Postseason
2006 9 20 4 10 324 324 8 No Postseason
2005 15 14 7 7 249 293 8 No Postseason
2004 15 14 4 10 242 280 4 No Postseason
2003 4 24 1 17 327 327 3 No Postseason

UC Riverside Trophy Case

Season Trophy
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2008 Mid-Continent Conference Champion
2008 Mid-Continent Conference Tourney Champion

Lastly, our recruiting class last year earned us a #112 ranking.

Well, the stakes are higher now, as our board is putting a bit of pressure on us to win the conference. We’ve lost two good seniors this year, and are extremely thin at forward. I don’t think we’ll be able to take first place again, but I’d like to think we can make things difficult for whoever does win it all.

[Godzilla Blitz]

May 2009

Well, no one wants to hire me, so I guess we’ll stick with UC Riverside.

It appears that our staff has all jumped up a level in talent as well. Ordinarily, this would be a good thing, but at this level of the basketball world all it means is that they are ripe pickings for the teams above us. Within two weeks, we lose our recruiter and our assistant coach. We replace them with the best we can find at the bottom end of the pay scale, but we’ll have taken a slight hit in talent.

2009/10 Staff
Recruiter: Kerri Davie (34 years old) Skill: 40 (same as last year)
Scout: Solomon Porch (37 years old) Skill: 35 (+6 from last year)
Asst. Coach: Chauncey Zendejas (48 years old) Offense: 41 Defense: 35 (-6 total from last year)

Zendejas is a step down from last year, but overall we should be ok with these guys.

[Godzilla Blitz]

June 2009

Well, we move up a rung and schedule more games against slightly better opponents. This will be our “away” year, where we schedule quite a few home/home series where we start out as the away team.

Also on the schedule this year is the Calis Classic I: UC Riverside vs. New Hampshire, and the Vince Classic I: UC Riverside vs. UC Santa Barbara. I'd schedule an RPI Classic I, but Wichita State would slaughter us.

Here’s the whole thing:


UC Riverside 2009 Season Schedule

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11/15/09 at Nicholls State
11/19/09 at New Hampshire
11/23/09 at Morgan State
11/27/09 St. Peter's
12/01/09 at Stephen F. Austin
12/04/09 at Norfolk State
12/08/09 Coastal Carolina
12/11/09 UC Santa Barbara
12/15/09 North Carolina A&T
12/20/09 Bethune-Cookman
12/24/09 at Mount St. Mary's
12/29/09 at Manhattan
01/02/10 Florida A&M
01/07/10 Chicago State
01/09/10 at Western Illinois
01/14/10 Morehead State
01/21/10 Oakland
01/23/10 Western Illinois
01/28/10 at Tennessee State
01/30/10 at Chicago State
02/04/10 Northern Arizona
02/06/10 at Morehead State
02/13/10 Tennessee State
02/18/10 at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi
02/20/10 at Northern Arizona
02/25/10 at Oakland
02/27/10 Texas A&M-Corpus Christi
03/02/10 VMI

[CrashDavisSports]

You may be thin at forward and think you can't compete, but how many players did the other teams in the conference lose?

Loving your posts, keep up the good work.

[hollmt]

im hurt...no hollmt Classic???

[RPI-Fan]

Hey! I'm at GTech now.:D

[Godzilla Blitz]

JAG, Calis: I was amazed we stuck with Oklahoma as long as we did. I never expected we'd be down only 2 points with three minutes to go, or tied with six minutes to go. Yikes. Just a bit more luck, and we could have had a huge upset.

Calis: Yeah, Hart is finally gone. Whittle and Putman look to be pretty good though, and I'll try to add another center this year.

Vince: The Big West wouldn't have me! I just checked, too, and UC Santa Barbara is still there. No promotion/demotion for them yet.

Crash: Thanks! Is there an easy way to tell what teams lost what players? We really only lost two good players, but they were big ones. Our biggest problem is backup power forward, where we suck. I'll redshirt Putman this year, too, so that will leave us thin at center. If we play exceptionally well, I may think about taking the redshirt off of Putman to give us more depth.

hollmt: I thought you were following a bunch of recruits through college, but just noticed that you've changed gears and have taken over Navy. I'll try to start a Hollmt Classic I next year!

RPI: Yikes! Just caught up with your dynasty (I didn't see your latest posts). GTech would crush us! I'll have to run that one by the administration next year, but we might have to wait a few years for an RPI Classic I.

[Vince]

Sweet, the Vince Classic :)

Good luck in the conference this season. I have to say, your posts are awesome. You give enough information to keep people abreast of what is going on, and yet it's simple enough to skim within five minutes and be completely up to date even if you've missed a bunch of updates at a time. You're really making me want this game :)

[hollmt]

hollmt: I thought you were following a bunch of recruits through college, but just noticed that you've changed gears and have taken over Navy. I'll try to start a Hollmt Classic I next year!

oh im doing both...gotta keep things fresh so as not to get stale with one thing however, i am a bit more "in to" my Navy dynasty as i have more to actually do with it.

[Godzilla Blitz]

July 2009 – October 2009

Preseason Recruiting

We have guards up the ying yang, but we desperately need forwards and a center. We’ve got four scholarships to give out, and we absolutely must land at least one decent power forward and one decent small forward. In a perfect world, we’ll land a good center and a second small forward to fill out our class.

We scan the recruiting pool. Things look grim. There is only one small forward, a two-star recruit, that has good interest in our program. Yikes. Fortunately, we have a touch over $9,000 a month to work with now for recruiting, so we can examine a larger pool of players. We evaluate as many three-star recruits at forward and center as we can find. A couple of months in and things start to look better, as we have found a three-star recruit at center, small forward, and power forward for whom the evaluation sparked strong interest in our program. We immediately make scholarship offers to all three, and start bombing them with visits.

Just as training camp starts, we land PF Winfred Garcia, the #340 player in the nation. That takes care of our most critical need for next year, and we breathe a huge sigh of relief. The other two recruits—C Jason Hamilton and SF Richard Hand—still have us at #1 on their lists, so I’m hopeful we’ll land both of these guys soon as well. That would leave us to work on the one remaining small forward spot as we work through the season.

[Godzilla Blitz]

November 2009

Here’s our team for this season:


# Name Pos Cl Ht Wt Hometown
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
14 Lazaro McCoy C Sr 6'11" 261 Ganado, AZ
35 Eldridge Whittle C So 6' 9" 239 Las Vegas, NV
0 Sonny Putnam C So 6' 8" 226 Las Vegas, NV (redshirt)
23 Andrew Moss PF Sr 6'11" 246 Fullerton, CA
15 Harrison Augustin PF Jr 6'10" 260 Pelham, NY
31 Ronald Presnell PF Fr 6' 9" 258 Birmingham, AL
12 Floyd Wilkerson SF Sr 6' 6" 243 Abernathy, TX
34 Jospeh Weidner SF Jr 6' 8" 237 Long Beach, CA
41 Alphonse Huckaby SG So 6' 4" 219 San Diego, CA
11 Adam Maier SG So 6' 6" 185 Clearfield, UT
42 Tyson Mestas SG Fr 6' 3" 175 Elko, NV (redshirt)
20 Erasmo Pellegrino PG Sr 6' 0" 180 San Diego, CA
24 Gustavo Ortega PG Jr 6' 4" 214 Riverside, CA
2 Chris Hernandez PG Fr 6' 0" 175 Bellflower, CA (redshirt)
54 Thomas Welch PG Fr 5' 6" 168 Lovelock, NV

Roster Evaluation
Overall, we’re extremely talented at guard, solid at center, extremely thin at power forward, and respectable at small forward.

At center, I’m going to try to get by with Whittle and McCoy, and let Putnam redshirt for a year. I’m hoping Whittle, who is a solid player, can eat up a lot of minutes and give us some solid play. Moss is strong defensively, and owns the power forward position; with two walkons behind him, he’ll get as many minutes as his body can take. Both Weidner and Wilkerson are top notch small forwards; each will see equal time there. There are so many possible guard combinations, but Pellegrino and Ortega will share the duties to start the season. Huckaby is talented as well, so he’ll see a lot of minutes at both positions. I’ll redshirt two of our freshmen guards, but Welch, who has outstanding handling and passing skills, will see playing time this year.

Overall, we can put a good front five on the court. My biggest concern is our lack of depth at PF, where we really drop off when Moss isn’t on the court. I’d be happy if we are above .500 on the year, and above .500 in the conference would be nice as well.

On to the season we go…

[JAG]

But Welch can back up Moss...his 5'6" frame will really let him bang with some of the bigger forwards in the conference (read: all of them). :)

He's short, but he's wiry!

[RPI-Fan]

Uh-oh, started at 4:00 in the afternoon. The addiction is setting in.:)

[Godzilla Blitz]

Vince: I can't say enough good things about this game. There is enough depth so that the game is challenging, and yet not so much depth that you feel like you're lost in all the details, or that you have to micromanage anything. It's got a perect mix of complexity and simplicity, and is variable enough to let you dig in more (coach your own games) or less (hit "recommend" for any of the stuff you don't like doing), depending on your preferences. If you like text-sims, I highly recommend trying the demo.

Thanks for the kind words, too! One of the things that I find difficult when writing dynasties is balancing the details. Too much is overwhelming and no one cares anyway; too little and no one has any idea what's going on. I'm glad the balance in this one works for you.

I do have to add, though, that the print feature in this game rocks. You hit "print" and it instantly opens a notepad file with the text right in it. I don't know why more text-sims don't do this. It makes doing dynasty reports a breeze and is so much faster than "print to file".

holmmt: I'll go hunt down that other dynasty of yours!

JAG: Humm, that's a thought. His inside game is good (58), too. He sucks at rebounding (29 off, 19 def), though, and his inside defense (16) is weak as well. What do you think? (EDIT: Oh, wait. You were joking, weren't you.)

RPI: I'm busted! :) Um, I just took a "quick break". Really! Only 30 minutes. I'm not addicted. *twitch, twitch*

Actually, to be honest, I wrote the previous two posts last night. I did manage to play the first half dozen games of the season in a 30-minute break just now, but I'll have to write those up and post them tonight.

[JAG]

LOL Hey, that's a pretty good inside game for a 5'6" guy. I can just see the headlines now though..."Loyola-Chicago sets NCAA record for blocked shots in victory over UC Riverside"

[Calis]

Dang, that's weird you didn't get promoted.

Heh, the Calis Classic, I dig it! :)

In my UNH career, I've played Riverside every single year, and the 2008 season was the only time I actually WON. They've got my number. Usually they're winless until playing me.

You putting Gustavo at the point? Or moving him to SG because of the size?

Man, you're making me hate my dynasty, excellent posts man, as usual.

[RPI-Fan]

Ortega has really become a pretty solidly-built guy, while Pellegrino is still small. Gustavo came in at 6-3, 200, but grew an inch and gained 14 pounds (FWIW, I've had guys gain 20+ pounds). Erasmo never really worked on his conditioning, it seemed... I always love looking at little details like that...

[Godzilla Blitz]

November 2009

Results

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11/15/09 at Nicholls State W 70-64 1-0
11/19/09 at New Hampshire W 87-68 2-0
11/23/09 at Morgan State W 81-74 3-0
11/27/09 St. Peter's L 71-66 3-1

Freshman PG Thomas Welch gets 15 points in 17 minutes of playing time to lead us in a solid win over Nicholls State to start our season. The Calis Classic I doesn’t live up to its name: SG Huckaby gets 16, PG Ortega gets 15, and PG Pellegrino get 14, as our guards rain the threes in a one-sided victory. Later in the week, Ortega gets 21 points as we pull away from Morgan State late in the second half to win our third in a row. We come home, go cold from the floor, and lose a squeaker to St. Peter’s for our first loss of the year.

We finish the month 3-1, but play much better than I expected. We’re working an outside game to let our guards shoot, and so far it’s been effective. It looks like any game where we shoot well, we’re likely to win, but if we shoot poorly, we don’t have the inside game to compensate. Our season will rest in our accuracy.

Recruiting
Neither one of our two targets commits, despite us blowing over $6,000 on a campus visit for SF Richard Hand, who hails from New York. Ungrateful bastard. We keep after them, as we still look to be #1 on both their lists.

[Godzilla Blitz]

JAG: Yeah, Welch is a bit on the wee side for forward. But he would probably be better than the two guys behind Moss.

Calis: I don't know what happened with the promotion, but I remember reading something over at HR's forums that the computer uses a formula to determine the most deserving team to advance when there are more teams to advance than openings ahead of them. I know how USC feels.

Ortega can't pass as well as Pellegrino, so Ortega gets shooting guard.

RPI: Do you know if size matters? Wait, that didn't come out right. Well, you get what I mean?

[Godzilla Blitz]

December 2009

Results

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12/01/09 at Stephen F. Austin W 74-61 4-1
12/04/09 at Norfolk State W 60-50 5-1
12/08/09 Coastal Carolina W 79-70 6-1
12/11/09 UC Santa Barbara L 74-61 6-2
12/15/09 North Carolina A&T L 66-49 6-3
12/20/09 Bethune-Cookman L 73-67 6-4
12/24/09 at Mount St. Mary's W 71-59 7-4
12/29/09 at Manhattan W 73-69 8-4

PG Gustavo Ortega continues his hot hand as he leads the team in scoring in three straight wins over Stephen F. Austin, Norfolk State, and Coastal Carolina to start the month. However, UC Santa Barbara comes to town for the Vince Classic I and outshoots us by a wide margin to end our short streak. Next, we open a 25-9 lead against North Carolina A&T, but go stone cold from the floor after that to lose again, and then follow that with another horrible shooting performance to lose to Bethune-Cookman and drop our third in a row.

We tweak our lineup a bit to give Ortega more playing time, and he responds with 20 points in a strong win over Mt. Saint Mary’s, then 25 points in a hard-fought win over a pesky Manhattan.

We end the month at 8-4, good enough for a half-game lead in the conference. Interestingly, we have yet to lose a road game, but are only 1-4 in our crappy gym.

Recruiting
Bingo! Both SF Richard Hand and C Jason Hamilton commit to UC Riverside! Both are three-star recruits, and we will need their help up front next year. I offer our last scholarship to PF Carmelo Alexander, a three-star recruit with a cool name. I have good luck with the cool names.

[tucker342]

hmmmm, I wonder if Carmelo Alexander will be like they other Carmelo we all know and love:D

[Vince]

**Busy being torn about GB's squad losing to UCSB**

[RPI-Fan]

GB:

HR told me that it does have an effect. I didn't really ask in much detail exactly how much.:confused:

[Godzilla Blitz]

January 2010

Results

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
01/02/10 Florida A&M W 89-80 9-4
01/07/10 Chicago State W 65-54 10-4 (1-0)
01/09/10 at Western Illinois L 80-72 10-5 (1-1)
01/14/10 Morehead State W 69-58 11-5 (2-1)
01/21/10 Oakland W 88-58 12-5 (3-1)
01/23/10 Western Illinois W 80-59 13-5 (4-1)
01/28/10 at Tennessee State L 93-83 13-6 (4-2)
01/30/10 at Chicago State W 69-65 14-6 (5-2)

Ortega continues to impress, as he gets 21 points in a home win against Florida A&M, then scores 15 points in the first 6 minutes of the second half to bury Chicago State in our conference opener. 4-9 Western Illinois--who cost us a clean conference championship last year--is up next, and once again they have our number: they hold Ortega to a mere four points in a frustrating loss. We get hot after that: C Eldridge Whittle gets a double-double to get us back on track in a solid win over a weak Morehead State team; Ortega leads us with 21 points in a rout over Oakland; and Whittle gets another double-double in a payback demolishing of Western Illinois at home. Our run stops against first-place Tennessee, though, where we fall behind, fight back, then fade at the end and lose. In our last game of the month, we get a huge lead against Chicago State, then fight off a furious rally to edge out the win.

We end the month at 14-6 overall and a solid 5-2 in the conference. Both Tennessee State and Texas A&M Corpus Christi lie a half game in front of us at 6-2. Once again it looks like a dogfight for the title!

Recruiting
So much for the luck with the cool names: PF Carmelo Alexander blows us off for Stanford. However, a chance assistant-coach visit to a three-star British small forward by the name of SF Raji Schaffer pays off: his interest in our program rockets. I make the trip to England to personally offer him our last scholarship of the year.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Tucker: Unfortunately, we'll never know about Carmelo.

Vince: It's ok. I understand. You can be happy. We'll line 'em up again next year. They shot very well from the floor, by the way.

RPI: Thanks!

[RPI-Fan]

You lost to Tennessee State?!?!

The same TSU team that lost 94-53 to Georgia Tech (real-life) on Saturday?! Man, you guys suck.;)

Seriously, great job GB. Keep fightin' for the title.

[GoldenEagle]

Must stop reading the report....its talking me into buying it...when must spend money on girlfriend for christmas...

AHHHH!!!

[Godzilla Blitz]

February 2010

Results

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
02/04/10 Northern Arizona W 84-83 15-6 (6-2)
02/06/10 at Morehead State L 66-57 15-7 (6-3)
02/13/10 Tennessee State L 81-76 15-8 (6-4)
02/18/10 at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi W 64-57 16-8 (7-4)
02/20/10 at Northern Arizona W 81-74 17-8 (8-4)
02/25/10 at Oakland W 69-63 18-8 (9-4)
02/27/10 Texas A&M-Corpus Christi W 85-75 19-8 (10-4)
03/02/10 VMI W 71-60 20-8
03/07/10 vs. Chicago State

Down by 10 points to Northern Arizona with 5 minutes to go, Gustavo Ortega goes on a unforgettable tear, as he scores 13 points in a 14-3 end-of-game run that gives us a thrilling one-point victory! Wow! The joy is short-lived though, as in our next game, last-place Morehead state goes on an incredible 26-0 run early in the first half to put us in a hole we can never climb out of. Tennessee State nearly extinguishes our title hopes by outplaying us at home and sending us to yet another loss.

Things look grim: we’re now in third place, 2.5 games back of Texas A&M Corpus-Christi and 1.5 games back of Tennessee State, with only 4 conference games to go. Yikes. The fates would shine upon us though, as we beat Texas A&M Corpus-Christi, Northern Arizona, and Oakland all on the road, while Tennessee State and Texas A&M Corpus Christi falter against the bottom half of the conference. With one game left, we find ourselves at 9-4 in the conference and locked in a three-way tie for first.

In our last conference game, Floyd Wilkerson scores 24 points, as we jump out to a double-digit lead at home against Texas A&M Corpus-Christi, then hold steady to win! Amazingly, Western Illinois, our nemesis, helps us out by pulling off a three-point, upset win over Tennessee State! Our win and the losses by both Texas A&M Corpus Christi and Tennessee State leave us in sole possession of first place! We did it! We run the table in our last four conference games to come back and win the title outright! WOW! It’s anti-climactic, but in a meaningless end-of-season non-conference game, Eldrige Whittle gets a double-double to lead us in a solid win over VMI.

We end the month at 20-8 overall and 10-4 in the conference. We’ll have the first seed in the upcoming conference tournament, where we’ll host last place Chicago State. We’ll be looking for our second trip to the dance!

Recruiting
In disappointing news, SF Raji Schaffer spurns us for Wisconsin. Crap. There really isn’t much left in the recruiting pool that works for us. Rather than recruit at a position of little need, or recruit garbage, we take some risks on the best recruits on the board at small forward and power forward. We offer a scholarship to SF Jimmie Hobson, but I highly doubt the talented boy will turn down Hofstra and Deleware to come play for us. No biggie, though, as I’m willing to eat the scholarship until next year.

[Godzilla Blitz]

RPI: Hey, Tennessee State has had seven years to improve over the present. They're not bad in 2010!

GE: Kill two birds with one stone: buy your girlfriend the game.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Oh, poopy.

I think I made a biiiiiig mistake.

I needed to restart my computer. I had this game running in the background. I hit restart computer. The game popped up and asked if I wanted to save, I said "yes", and then my computer shut down.

Now, when I open FBCB, the saved game doesn't show up on the saved game list. Looking in the game's folder, the "league" file is missing. Somehow this doesn't seem like a good thing.

I have a backup file, but it's at the beginning of the this season.

EDIT: HR has just sent word that the file is toast.

What to do? Bang my head repeatedly on my desk, then go back to the beginning of the year? Or bang my head repeatedly on my desk, then start over with a new team? Such decisions.

If I start the year over, I just know Ortega will get hurt and we'll tank.

[Calis]

Ouch, that sucks.

/makes mental note to never do that.

Hmm, have you had an urge to start over with a different squad? That's tough. Man, you were having a killer season also.

Not sure what I'd do, but I'd say if you ever had an urge to start over, this is a perfect opportunity.

Don't know what I'd do.

[Godzilla Blitz]

March 2010

Mid-Continent Tournament Results

In the opening round, we shoot stone cold through thirty minutes of play against bottom-seeded Chicago State, and with 12 minutes to go in the game, we trail by 18 points. Our comeback starts there, but with two and a half minutes to go in the game, we’re still down by 9 points. Amazingly, we finish with a flare and manage to send the game into overtime, where we win by one point, 83-82. Gustavo Ortega scores a league- and team-record 35 points in the......................

I'm being violently shaken. I hear a loud voice. "Hey, you, bum, wake up. Your hooker paid your bail. You can leave now."

Huh? Oh, damn. What? I open my eyes. They struggle to focus in the dim light, but I am staring up at a large black man. He's wearing a police uniform. I'm inside somewhere. On a floor. There are bars behind him. My pants are wet with something. I've been lying in a puddle. The floor is cold. Oh shit.

"Let's go! I said you can leave now. You stay in that puddle of piss any longer and I'm going start charging you rent. Get your ass in gear."

I struggle up from the floor, but my head feels like a watermelon, and after I get off my knees, I stumble forward towards the policeman, who sidesteps me. My head clangs off the bars behind him, and I fall back onto my butt into the puddle again. What the hell happened?

"Jesus H. Christ. You alcholics are useless. I ain't got all day. Out we go." Huge arms reach under my shoulders from behind and pull my butt off the floor, turn me around, and then start dragging me backwards out of the cell. The policeman is a bit the impatient type. While he's dragging me down the corridor of the jail, my ringing head tries to piece things together...

I remember having a frozen chicken dinner in my Riverside apartment for Thanksgiving, then going to the gym to coach us against, um, St. Peter's, that's right, St. Peter's. We had three wins and no losses, but we couldn't hit a thing and St. Peter's dropped us to our first loss. We're three-and-one now.

After the game, I started the 15-minute walk back to my apartment, but stopped at River Rick's, the little dive just off the UC campus. I had a beer or two while I watched some ESPN, and...

...that's it. That's all I remember until now. Well, all except the dream, that felt so real that I could taste it. Damn. We didn't land those two recruits. No undisputed title. No comeback victory in the first round of the conference tourney. Damn. It's all vapor. But how the hell did I get here? I vaguely remember talking to someone at the bar, but I can't put a face on anything.

Anyway, one thing is clear. It's somewhere around the end of November, 2009, and I most likely still have a job to do: lead the UC Riverside basketball team out of this pit that is the Mid-Continent Conference.

(The crash wiped out everything from December 2009 on. I'll pick up the story from there, playing through everything again and taking whatever happens. I'll also be backing up stuff more often. ;) )

Here we go again...

[Godzilla Blitz]

December 2009

Results

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12/01/09 at Stephen F. Austin W 88-61 4-1
12/04/09 at Norfolk State L 70-65 4-2
12/08/09 Coastal Carolina L 65-51 4-3
12/11/09 UC Santa Barbara W 77-68 5-3
12/15/09 North Carolina A&T W 88-78 6-3
12/20/09 Bethune-Cookman W 88-66 7-3
12/24/09 at Mount St. Mary's L 71-56 7-4
12/29/09 at Manhattan W 81-75 8-4

PG Pellegrino gets 17 to lead us to an easy win over Steven F. Austin, but we go cold and falter against Norfolk State and Coastal Carolina later in the week. UC Santa Barbara comes in for the Vince Classic I, and we get back on track with a huge 19-point, 17-rebound performance from C Eldridge Whittle that carries us to a big win. Whittle stays hot in our next two games as well, as he gets 22 points and 12 rebounds to help us pull away at the end of tight game against North Carolina A&T and then racks up his third consecutive double-double as we blow away Bethune-Cookman. I tweak our lineup for our game against Mount St. Mary’s; we promptly get blown off the court. I untweak our lineup for the final game of the month; Ortega gets 17-points and Whittle gets another double-double to lead us to a comeback win over Manhattan.

We end the month at 8-4, an identical record to that of my “dream season”, although the route to get there was quite a bit different.

Recruiting
Bingo! Both SF Richard Hand and C Jason Hamilton commit to UC Riverside! Both are three-star recruits, and we will need their help up front next year. I offer our last scholarship to PF Carmelo Alexander, a three-star recruit with a cool name. I have good luck with the cool names.

Funny, I have a strange sense of déjà vu here.

[Vince]

Heh, nice recovery. Congrats on beating UCSB...Whittle's line is insane!

[JAG]

LOL I like the dream sequence. Glad you decided to continue with Riverside.

[Chief Rum]

GB stole the dream-sequence-to-save-a-crash from my old Kettering CM4 dynasty! :D

Good move, GB. ;)

Good read. Keep up the good work.

CR

[corbes]

Hey, Godzilla, glad you picked it back up.

[Godzilla Blitz]

January 2010

Results

UC Riverside 2009 Season Schedule

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
01/02/10 Florida A&M W 78-48 9-4
01/07/10 Chicago State W 93-70 10-4 (1-0)
01/09/10 at Western Illinois W 66-60 11-4 (2-0)
01/14/10 Morehead State W 74-54 12-4 (3-0)
01/21/10 Oakland W 79-54 13-4 (4-0)
01/23/10 Western Illinois W 72-61 14-4 (5-0)
01/28/10 at Tennessee State W 75-59 15-4 (6-0)
01/30/10 at Chicago State W 88-71 16-4 (7-0)

Wow! We open the month by roaring out to a big lead against Florida A&M and then coasting to a lopsided victory. We stay hot as our conference season starts: Center Whittle racks up a double-double to lead us in a rout of Chicago State; two days later Ortega scores 15 in a comfortable win over pesky Western Illinois; and later in the week Ortega scores 17 in a blowout of Morehead State. Things continue hot as we drive into the middle of the month: PF Andrew Moss leads us with 15 points in an easy win over Oakland; Whittle and Ortega each score 17 in a solid win over Western Illinois; and Ortega racks up 17 again in a smooth win over Tennessee State. We end our first ever perfect month with yet another easy win: this time Ortega gets 20 points as we bury Oakland.

It is here, however, that we get our first piece of bad news: power forward Andrew Moss fractures a hip and will be lost to us for a good chunk of February. The injury comes at our thinnest position, and the drop in talent from Moss to our next player is huge. I highly doubt February will be as easy a month as January was.

Nevertheless, we end the month at 16-4, with a perfect 7-0 record in the conference. Our current nine-game winning streak is our longest ever. We currently hold a two-game lead over Morehead State in the standings, and everything is clicking. At this point, I’m wondering if it wasn’t good luck that the game crashed!

Recruiting
Well, Carmelo blows us off (for the second time), so we redirect our efforts on SF Raji Schaffer of the United Kingdom. This is a long shot, but he’s the only good player left that doesn’t have a scholarship offer on the table. If we’re lucky, we can sneak him into UC Riverside before anyone else gets to him.

[Blade6119]

im glad to see our favorite nazi and spanish conquistador are doing well for you...too bad on carmelo twice...heres to not another repeat on raji.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Vince: Thanks! Yeah, Whittle is amazing on the defensive boards. He's averaging over 10 rebounds a game at the moment.

corbes, JAG: Thanks! It took a while to get motivated to redo the season, especially after everything turned out so well the first time.

Chief: Whoops! Sorrya about that. Didn't realize you had done the same thing. It was the easiest thing to do to get back on track, I figured.

Blade: I'm happy we got Hand and Hamilton again, though, as they were the most important guys. We should be ok next year with the three we've got so far.

[Godzilla Blitz]

February 2010

Results

UC Riverside 2009 Season Schedule

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
02/04/10 Northern Arizona W 77-65 17-4 (8-0)
02/06/10 at Morehead State L 91-74 17-5 (8-1)
02/13/10 Tennessee State W 69-62 18-5 (9-1)
02/18/10 at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi L 79-59 18-6 (9-2)
02/20/10 at Northern Arizona L 76-68 18-7 (9-3)
02/25/10 at Oakland W 88-72 19-7 (10-3)
02/27/10 Texas A&M-Corpus Christi W 86-67* 20-7 (11-3)
03/02/10 VMI W 64-56 21-7
03/07/10 vs. Western Illinois

*Win clinches conference title

Despite Moss’ absence from the lineup and early foul trouble by both Whittle and Ortega, SG Adam Maier scores 12 points off the bench as we defeat Northern Arizona to open the month. The magical run ends at Morehead State, though, as they rain threes on our parade and send us to a crushing defeat. SG Gustavo Ortega takes charge against Tennessee State, as he scores a team-record 29 points to carry us to a badly needed win. However, our offense collapses against Texas A&M Corpus Christi, and we blow a 15-point lead to third-place Northern Arizona to lose two in a row. Suddenly, we find ourselves in a critical situation: with two games to go, we’ve got a slim one-game lead over both Northern Arizona and Morehead State. We need some big wins.

We get PF Andrew Moss back in the lineup against Oakland, put six players in double figures, and blow their doors off. Two days later, we get five players in double figures in another blowout victory over Texas A&M Corpus Christi. The two wins end the conference season with authority, and give us our first undisputed conference crown! Yes! We defeat VMI in a meaningless non-conference game to end our regular season, but lose our backup center, Lazaro McCoy, for the season with a broken arm.

We end the month at 21-7, and win the conference with a sound 11-3 record. We’ll host last place Western Illinois in the opening round of the Mid-Continent Conference Tournament.

Recruiting
Raji Shaffer rejects us (again, as well), choosing instead to go to Princeton. We throw all our remaining efforts into an extreme longshot: four-star PF Jonas Borges. Our chances of landing him are next to nothing, as we are competing against some big schools. However, he is one of two remaining players that we would want, and I’d rather eat the scholarship than take on a marginal player for four years.

[Calis]

Grats on winning the conference! Great season, glad things didn't turn sour after the restart.

Here's hoping you don't get shafted on promotion this year!

C'mon Erasmo, show me something!

[Godzilla Blitz]

March 2010

Mid-Continent Conference Tournament Results

Western Illinois comes to town as the last seed in the tournament, but they start off the game red hot, and we find ourselves chasing them the entire first half. Towards the end of the half, they cool a bit, and we end up pulling to within two points. In the second half, they hit everything from the three-point line, and we are down by nine points with ten minutes to go. We storm back to tie with 3 minutes to go, then grab a three-point lead with two minutes left. However, it was not to be our day: they hit a three, get a two, and pick up another one on a foul in the last couple of minutes to knock us out of the tournament, 76-73. Crap. We lose to the #8 seed. Our season ends here.

Recruiting

Interestingly, PF Jonas Borges doesn’t commit anywhere. We’ve still got one chance to get him, and he is at least listening to our offers. We spend everything we’ve got on him, and hope for the best. I guess we’ll find out what happens at the beginning of the next season.

As it stands now, this is our final recruiting:

2009/10 Recruiting Summary

POS Player Name Star National Rank
PF Winfred Garcia *** 340
SF Richard Hand *** 351
C Jason Hamilton *** 334


2009/10 Wrap Up

Well, the tournament loss was sure a disappointing way to end an otherwise fine season. Still, I am extremely happy with how the season turned out. By winning the conference outright, I am nearly certain we will get moved up a conference next year. Our recruiting went reasonably well, and we can look forward to three three-star recruits next year. We’re also a reasonably young team. Although we’ll miss PG Pellegrino and PF Moss, we’re deep at point guard, and have a new recruit to look forward to at power forward. Things are looking up. I’d like to think we can compete at the next level up.

I’ll wrap up with our final informational posts, and then head on to next year.

[Godzilla Blitz]

2009/10 Mid-Continent Conference Final Standings

CW CL Pct W L Pct
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UC Riverside 11 3 .786 21 8 .724
Northern Arizona 9 5 .643 16 17 .485
Oakland 8 6 .571 17 13 .567
Morehead State 8 6 .571 17 15 .531
Tennessee State 7 7 .500 12 17 .414
Texas A&M-Corpus Christi 5 9 .357 13 16 .448
Chicago State 5 9 .357 8 21 .276
Western Illinois 3 11 .214 8 22 .267

[Godzilla Blitz]

Final Stats 2009/10

Here’s the numbers on the team:


2009/10 UC Riverside Player Averages

Name Pos G GS Min Pts OReb Reb Ast Stl Blk TO Fl
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gustavo Ortega PG 29 29 27.3 14.8 1.1 4.7 2.3 1.0 0.0 1.2 2.3
Eldridge Whittle C 29 29 29.1 10.1 1.1 8.9 1.1 0.9 0.1 1.9 3.0
Erasmo Pellegrino PG 29 29 23.5 9.9 0.8 2.9 4.0 0.8 0.1 1.7 1.8
Jospeh Weidner SF 29 25 22.2 8.6 1.6 4.1 1.4 0.5 0.2 0.9 2.1
Andrew Moss PF 24 23 26.7 7.6 2.3 6.0 1.4 0.9 0.1 1.2 2.5
Floyd Wilkerson SF 29 4 14.9 6.9 0.7 1.4 1.3 0.3 0.1 0.9 1.1
Thomas Welch PG 29 0 15.7 5.2 0.5 1.3 2.2 0.3 0.0 1.6 1.6
Alphonse Huckaby SG 29 0 9.8 4.8 0.6 1.7 0.7 0.7 0.1 0.3 1.1
Harrison Augustin PF 29 0 9.4 2.6 0.8 2.1 0.4 0.4 0.7 1.1 1.0
Adam Maier SG 29 0 6.7 2.4 0.2 1.1 0.4 0.4 0.0 0.5 0.7
Ronald Presnell PF 29 6 12.9 2.2 0.6 2.1 0.6 0.4 0.8 0.6 1.3
Lazaro McCoy C 28 0 6.6 1.4 0.4 2.4 0.5 0.1 0.0 0.4 0.6
Sonny Putnam C 0 0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
Chris Hernandez PG 0 0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
Tyson Mestas SG 0 0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

2009/10 UC Riverside Player Shooting Stats

Name Pos FGM FGA FG% FTM FTA FT% 3PM 3PA 3P%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gustavo Ortega PG 144 307 .469 80 111 .721 60 155 .387
Eldridge Whittle C 109 212 .514 74 119 .622 0 3 .000
Erasmo Pellegrino PG 95 254 .374 63 99 .636 35 115 .304
Jospeh Weidner SF 85 196 .434 52 56 .929 27 80 .338
Andrew Moss PF 75 136 .551 33 57 .579 0 0 .000
Floyd Wilkerson SF 69 160 .431 27 44 .614 35 92 .380
Thomas Welch PG 55 138 .399 29 44 .659 13 62 .210
Alphonse Huckaby SG 48 95 .505 22 28 .786 22 50 .440
Harrison Augustin PF 29 54 .537 17 29 .586 0 0 .000
Adam Maier SG 25 51 .490 11 12 .917 8 19 .421
Ronald Presnell PF 24 56 .429 17 24 .708 0 0 .000
Lazaro McCoy C 15 34 .441 10 20 .500 0 0 .000
Sonny Putnam C 0 0 .000 0 0 .000 0 0 .000
Chris Hernandez PG 0 0 .000 0 0 .000 0 0 .000
Tyson Mestas SG 0 0 .000 0 0 .000 0 0 .000

Player Awards

For the first time, we get some player awards of note! We picked up the following:

Jr. SG Gustavo Ortega First Team All Conference
Soph. C Eldrige Whittle First Team All Conference

This is the first time our players win anything other than a spot on the all-conference freshmen team. Looking forward to having both of these players back next year.

[Godzilla Blitz]

April 2010

Party time at UC Riverside! We get promoted to the Ohio Valley Conference! After five years away from a level 2 conference, we make our way back to the level we started at. Let’s hope we can do better this year than we did seven years ago, where we went 4-24 and got dropped to level 1.

And the good news doesn’t stop there. For the third time, I am named the Mid-Continent Conference Coach of the Year!

And even more good news! Our prestige rises a stunning six points!

UC Riverside
Prestige: 23 (+6)
2010/11 Goal: Finish with at least a .500 conference record.

The board is still delighted with our performance, but they have adjusted our goals down to match the tougher competition we’re likely to face here at level 2.

Here’s a look at our history:


UC Riverside Historical Performances

Season W L CW CL Rank RPI Prs Result
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2009 21 8 11 3 95 85 23 No Postseason
2008 22 10 8 6 104 106 17 Loss in NCAA Tourney Round 1
2007 16 14 8 6 215 256 11 No Postseason
2006 9 20 4 10 324 324 8 No Postseason
2005 15 14 7 7 249 293 8 No Postseason
2004 15 14 4 10 242 280 4 No Postseason
2003 4 24 1 17 327 327 3 No Postseason

UC Riverside Trophy Case

Season Trophy
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2009 Mid-Continent Conference Champion
2008 Mid-Continent Conference Champion
2008 Mid-Continent Conference Tourney Champion

We get even more good news! I gained another level! I’m now a level 2 coach (out of 15). I get 20 more bonus points to spend on my abilities. I do this:

My New & Improved Skill Set
Recruiting: 43 (+8)
Scouting: 23
Offense: 36 (+6)
Defense: 38 (+6)

In minor news, our recruiting class was ranked #121 in the nation last year.

In the only piece of bad--or rather “non” news--we lose track of our last scholarship offer. He vanishes. Not sure where he went, but since he’s not on our roster, I can assume he didn’t make it to UC Riverside.

Well, I’m now 29 years old, and we’ve finally taken our first step towards the goal of winning a national championship. We’re playing in a little bigger pond now, and the competition is sure to be a bit stiffer. Let’s hope we can step it up to meet the challenge.

[JAG]

Very nice GB. Out of curiosity, what level are the coaches in your new conference for comparison's sake? (if you can see this information)

[Godzilla Blitz]

May 2010

Wow! I get inundated with job offers! Seven in the first round, and more later. Most of them are from level 3 conference teams. This is tempting, mighty tempting. All of the schools have bigger budgets, more prestige, and better facilities than ours at UC Riverside.

Still, in the end, I decide to see what I can do with UC Riverside. My greatest concern at this point in time is the level of our facilities. I am going to hit the athletic director up for money for improvements, and if we get turned down this year, I will seriously consider jumping ship in the future. I’m not sure we’re going to be able to compete seriously at the next level with facilities rated below 10 on a scale of 100. We need a better gym, and balls without “K-Mart Realistic Basketball” stamped on them. My other reason for not moving up is that I am currently only a level 2 coach, and I need the bonus points that come from doing things like winning conferences, etc. If I jump to a level 3 conference with my low abilities, I think I might be setting the stage for trouble.

We head into the assistant coach hiring period, and I’m tempted to spend some more money on a better assistant, but decide this would be bad karma, and hold off. Interestingly, no one steals any of our assistants, and we head into the season with the same staff as last year:

2010/11 Staff
Recruiter: Kerri Davie (35 years old) Skill: 40 (same as last year)
Scout: Solomon Porch (38 years old) Skill: 37 (+2 from last year)
Asst. Coach: Chauncey Zendejas (49 years old) Offense: 41 Defense: 35 (unchanged from last year)

Our staff also gets bonus points, but for the most part chooses to spend them in areas outside of the ones useful to their jobs.

[Godzilla Blitz]

June 2010

There are nine teams in the Ohio Valley Conference, and we’ve got a lot of games to play this year that are the back half of home/home commitments, so there are only four games to set up. We add two more classics, the RPI Classic I against Wichita State (I’ll switch to Georgia Tech once he gets there) and the Hollmt Classic I (Navy), and we’re set to go. Amazingly, our first ten matches are at home.

On a side note, I put in a request for improved facilities, again.


UC Riverside 2010 Season Schedule

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11/16/10 American
11/23/10 Wichita State (RPI Classic I)
11/30/10 Navy (Hollmt Classic I)
12/06/10 UC Santa Barbara (Vince Classic II)
12/13/10 Norfolk State
12/17/10 Stephen F. Austin
12/20/10 New Hampshire (Calis Classic II)
12/22/10 Morgan State
12/26/10 Mount St. Mary's
01/01/11 Eastern Illinois
01/06/11 Alabama A&M
01/08/11 at Eastern Illinois
01/13/11 Illinois-Chicago
01/15/11 Tennessee Tech
01/20/11 at Illinois-Chicago
01/22/11 at Oral Roberts
01/25/11 Tennessee-Martin
01/27/11 Savannah State
01/29/11 Valparaiso
02/03/11 at Tennessee Tech
02/05/11 Oral Roberts
02/07/11 at North Carolina A&T
02/10/11 at Tennessee-Martin
02/17/11 at Valparaiso
02/19/11 at Savannah State
02/21/11 Nicholls State
02/26/11 at Alabama A&M
02/28/11 Manhattan

[tucker342]

Awesome job getting to the new Conference! Keep up the great work!:)

[Vince]

And it's not even the Big West, so I can still cheer for you :)

[Godzilla Blitz]

July 2010 – October 2010

Preseason Recruiting

We’ve got three scholarships to dole out. We’re still weak at power forward, and will be weak next year at small forward, so we’ll absolutely need one more player at each of those positions. PG Ortega graduates this year as well, so we’ll need to replace him. In short, we’re looking for: PF, SF, PG. Our budget has increased quite a bit this year, and because we didn’t blow much on salaries, we’ll have a hefty (for our standards, anyway) $15,750/month to spend on recruiting.

Unfortunately, there are no three-star recruits that are highly interested in coming to UC Riverside, so we’ll have to work for our guys this year. We scour the country for talent at SF, PF, and PG. After a month or so, we find some interested talent at all three positions of need. We make scholarship offers to PF Bernard Harrison, SF Kyle Kappe, and PG Daniel Lee; all three are three-star recruits ranked better than #300 in the nation. Landing any one of these guys would be a step up in talent from what we are used to seeing.

Just as we head into training camp, we get word from PF Bernard Harrison and SF Kyle Kappe, both of whom commit to UC Riverside! We pour the money into PG Daniel Lee, but also spend the leftover looking for alternate candidates should he not pan out. So far so good. Harrison is ranked #150 in the nation, and Kappe is at #228. Good stuff, for us.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Tucker: Thanks!

Vince: If we can make the next step up and stay there, we may be able to say goodbye to the Big West forever. We still could end up in the same conference as UC Santa Barbara, though, depending on their promotions/demotions.

[Godzilla Blitz]

November 2010

Here’s this year’s team:


UC Riverside Roster

# Name Pos Cl Ht Wt Hometown
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
35 Eldridge Whittle C Jr 6' 9" 240 Las Vegas, NV
0 Sonny Putnam C So 6' 8" 227 Las Vegas, NV
1 Jason Hamilton C Fr 6' 8" 252 Lodi, CA (redshirt)
15 Harrison Augustin PF Sr 6'10" 261 Pelham, NY
31 Ronald Presnell PF So 6' 9" 258 Birmingham, AL
30 Winfred Garcia PF Fr 6' 9" 224 Compton, CA
34 Jospeh Weidner SF Sr 6' 8" 237 Long Beach, CA
44 Richard Hand SF Fr 6' 7" 223 Kendall, NY
41 Alphonse Huckaby SG Jr 6' 4" 219 San Diego, CA
11 Adam Maier SG Jr 6' 6" 188 Clearfield, UT
42 Tyson Mestas SG Fr 6' 3" 177 Elko, NV
24 Gustavo Ortega PG Sr 6' 4" 216 Riverside, CA
54 Thomas Welch PG So 5' 6" 175 Lovelock, NV (redshirt)
2 Chris Hernandez PG Fr 6' 0" 175 Bellflower, CA

Roster Evaluation
All-Conference C Eldrige Whittle will anchor the center position for us. We’re so weak at power forward that the AI suggests we start backup center Sonny Putman there. We’ll follow that advice, and use our power forwards as backups for both center and power forward. SF Joseph Weidner played well at small forward last year, and the position is all his. SG Huckaby will replace PG Pellegrino in the backfield, but All-Conference PG Gustavo Ortega is clearly our offensive leader.

Should be an interesting season. We’re more experienced and stronger this year at center and point guard, about the same at small forward, and definitely weaker at power forward and shooting guard. I have no idea how all this will balance out.

On to the season we go…

[Godzilla Blitz]

November 2010

Results

UC Riverside 2010 Season Schedule

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11/16/10 American W 69-60 1-0
11/23/10 Wichita State W 93-55 2-0
11/30/10 Navy L 62-61 2-1

We shoot horribly in our opener against American, but rebound well, get a lot of steals, and take advantage of turnovers to somehow pull out a win. In the RPI Classic I against Wichita State, we shoot lights out all day (87% from the three-point line!) in our biggest victory ever: 93-55. The score was 59-25 at the half! Yikes! Apparently the AI hasn’t done the stellar job with Wichita State as has RPI in his dynasty. In the Hollmt Classic I, Navy sinks a huge three-pointer to edge us at the end, and send us to our first defeat. We also get bad news in this game, as freshman SF Richard Hand breaks a leg, which will leave us with only one small forward on the roster for the next 40 days.

We end the month at 2-1, and still confused as to how good of a team we have.

Recruiting
So much for the lock on Daniel Lee. He heads off to Weber State, misguided lad that he is. We find SG Clement Hagar, the #120 ranked player in the land, on our doorstep and highly interested in our program. We can make a shooting guard work instead of a point guard, and Clement Hagar is a much cooler name than Daniel Lee anyway. We offer Clement our final scholarship, and send him our best call girls. Come to UC Riverside, baby!

[hollmt]

gotta do it GB......


GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO NAVY!

[Chief Rum]

Kyle Kappe? That really the name there?

lol

CR

[Godzilla Blitz]

Originally posted by Chief Rum
Kyle Kappe? That really the name there?

Yup, he's in the game and on his way to UC Riverside. I just did a search of the name here. Is that Mr. Bug's real name?

Hollmt: I figured you might be happy. It was a tight game the whole way, but a bit sloppy. We'll get you in the Hollmt Classic II next year.

[GoldenEagle]

Originally posted by Godzilla Blitz
Yup, he's in the game and on his way to UC Riverside. I just did a search of the name here. Is that Mr. Bug's real name?


Yes sir.

[MrBug708]

Sweet

You got yourself a new reader

[Godzilla Blitz]

December 2010

Results

UC Riverside 2010 Season Schedule

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12/06/10 UC Santa Barbara W 77-62 3-1
12/13/10 Norfolk State W 68-54 4-1
12/17/10 Stephen F. Austin W 73-48 5-1
12/20/10 New Hampshire L 66-57 5-2
12/22/10 Morgan State L 53-50 5-3
12/26/10 Mount St. Mary's W 73-48 6-3

Gustavo Ortega starts out hot, as he scores 25 points to lead us to a solid victory over UC Santa Barbara in the Vince Classic II, then scores 23 in a romp over Norfolk State. We follow that with an annihilation of Stephen F. Austin. 8-1 New Hampshire comes to town for the Calis Classic II, and they prove too much for us, as they pull away late to beat us. We falter late in our next game as well: we lead the entire game before letting Morgan State score a flurry at the end and defeat us. We get back on track at the end of the month against a weak Mount St. Mary’s, as we jump out to a 33-11 lead, then coast to victory.

We end the month at 6-3, with conference play coming up next.

Recruiting
SG Clement Hagar, the #120 player in the nation, commits to UC Riverside! Good news indeed! With that our recruiting class is set. We’ll pay some special attention to FOFC member and fan-favorite Kyle Kappe, who’ll join our squad next year as a badly needed small forward.

2010/11 Recruiting Summary
POS Player Name Star National Rank
SG Clement Hagar *** 120
PF Bernard Harrison *** 150
SF Kyle Kappe *** 228

[Godzilla Blitz]

Mr. Bug: Welcome aboard. What are the odds, eh?

[Calis]

Sheesh, I completely missed your schedule earlier..you have what, 11 straight home games? Nice.

I can't decide if I'm glad that UNH beat you or not. :D Looks like they're having a good season though.

Looking good so far though, and some nice recruits coming in.

[Chief Rum]

Originally posted by Godzilla Blitz
Mr. Bug: Welcome aboard. What are the odds, eh?

Well, actually, I will bet they are pretty good. I think HR does what Jim does, putting in the names of past customers.

CR

[MrBug708]

Works for me. Hopefully I won't suck

[Godzilla Blitz]

Calis: This year UNH brought aboard a level 4 coach that has great offensive/defensive coaching numbers, but crappy recruiting and scouting numbers. They're currently 16-1! Wow! With his recruiting talent, though, they better win this year, because I don't think he'll be able to bring in good people.

Chief: Thanks, I didn't know that about FBCB. Be interesting to see if we get any others as things move along.

Mr. Bug: I only started keeping track of national ranking of recruits a couple of years ago, but this year's class is higher than anything we've gotten before. At #228 in the nation, I've got to think you'll be pretty good. The small forward that's a freshman this year is definitely someone you can beat out for a job, so you might be seeing some serious minutes as early as next season.

[Godzilla Blitz]

January 2011


Results

UC Riverside 2010 Season Schedule

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
01/01/11 Eastern Illinois W 60-41 7-3 (1-0)
01/06/11 Alabama A&M W 75-53 8-3 (2-0)
01/08/11 at Eastern Illinois W 72-57 9-3 (3-0)
01/13/11 Illinois-Chicago W 59-57 10-3 (4-0)
01/15/11 Tennessee Tech W 71-59 11-3 (5-0)
01/20/11 at Illinois-Chicago L 89-78 11-4 (5-1)
01/22/11 at Oral Roberts L 72-50 11-5 (5-2)
01/25/11 Tennessee-Martin W 58-52 12-5 (6-2)
01/27/11 Savannah State W 73-60 13-5 (7-2)
01/29/11 Valparaiso W 79-72 14-5 (8-2)

In our first conference game, against 2-9 Eastern Illinois, we jump out to an early lead, hold off a surge, then pour on the gas late to win going away. Alabama A&M proves no more difficult: shooting guard Alphonse Huckaby leads us with 18 points in another easy win. In our next game, we trail Eastern Illinois by 8 with 10 minutes to go, then go on a 30-7 run to win yet again. The following week, Illinois-Chicago leads us by 1 with three seconds to go, but Huckaby drains a three-pointer to give us a thrilling, last-second victory. Gustavo Ortega leads us to another with with 18 points against Tennessee Tech, and we are off to an unexpected 5-0 start in the conference.

The party ends at Illinois-Chicago: they run out to a 38-15 lead, and we just can’t make up the difference. In even worse news, star center Eldrige Whittle breaks a rib in the game and will be lost to us for nearly two weeks, during which time we have a packed conference schedule. We’re a different team without him in our next game, as Oral Roberts blows us off the court. With our season in jeopardy, we really need people to step up, and fortunately they deliver: C Sonny Putman gobbles up 14 rebounds and Gustavo Ortega scores 20 as we erase a 14-point, 2nd half deficit against Tennesse-Martin and win; Putman gets 13 rebounds and 16 points as we cruise to a win against a weak Savanna State team; and Ortega gets 20 points and Putman another double-double in a victory over Valparaiso.

We end the month 14-5 overall and 8-2 in the conference, and can look forward to getting Whittle back for our next game. With 6 conference games to go, we’re in first place, with a game and a half lead over Oral Roberts.

[Godzilla Blitz]

February 2011

Arguably, the hardest conference jump to make in the game is to go from a level 2 conference up to a level 3 conference: there are eight level 2 conferences and only five level 3 conferences, so you have to be in the top five of the eight conference winners if you hope to make the move. With that in mind, our current RPI-rank puts us fifth of eight teams that lead level 2 conferences. We’ll need to not only win our conference, but win out most of our remaining games if we hope to move up.

Results

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
02/03/11 at Tennessee Tech W 64-56 15-5 (9-2)
02/05/11 Oral Roberts L 80-76 15-6 (9-3)
02/07/11 at North Carolina A&T W 89-69 16-6
02/10/11 at Tennessee-Martin W 50-45 17-6 (10-3)
02/17/11 at Valparaiso W 75-66 18-6 (11-3)
02/19/11 at Savannah State L 59-58 18-7 (11-4)
02/21/11 Nicholls State W 78-59 19-7
02/26/11 at Alabama A&M L 79-59 19-8 (11-5)
02/28/11 Manhattan L 70-64 19-9


C Eldridge Whittle returns in style, as he gets a double-double to compliment Ortega’s 22 points in a big win over Tennessee Tech to start the month. Next, 2nd-place Oral Roberts comes to UC Riverside in what is a huge chance for us to pull away from the pack, but in the most exciting game of the season, they pull away in OT to win and keep things close. Next, Gustavo Ortega scores 25 points to give us an easy win over non-conference North Carolina A&T, and up 43-25 with nine minutes to go against Tennessee-Martin, we fight off a ferocious rally and hang on to win there as well.

With three conference games to go, we still hold a slim game and a half lead over both Oral Roberts and Illinois-Chicago. We get one step closer to a title as Ortega and Weidner each score 15 points in a win over Valparaiso, but we falter in our next game, as we get behind early to a weak Savannah State, and never have enough gas to overcome them. Whittle gets us back on track in our next game, as he scores 21 points in a non-conference win over Nicholls State.

With the title on the line in the last conference game, we travel to Alabama A&M and get our doors blown off. Oral Roberts wins their game, and we end up tied with them in conference record, and up a half game overall. We promptly lose our last game to Manhattan, meaning that we end the season dead even with them both overall and in conference. They have a slight edge over us in RPI ranking. It looks as if the conference tournament next month will determine the promotion question. By my estimates, we still sit fifth out of the eight level 2 conference leaders, so we’ll advance if we can play better than Oral Roberts in the conference tourney.

[Godzilla Blitz]

March 2011

Ohio Vally Conference Tournament Results


Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
03/01/11 vs. Savannah State W 70-55 20-9
03/04/11 vs. Alabama A&M W 62-52 21-9
03/05/11 vs. Oral Roberts L 84-56 21-10


We grab an early lead, then hold that margin throughout in a comfortable win over Savannah State to start off the tournament. Ortega leads us with 17 points in this effort.

In the semi-final round, we find ourselves tied with Alabama A&M with 3 minutes to go, but we go on an 11-1 run to win, and advance to the conference final against Oral Roberts! Ortega, finishing off his career with a flourish, leads us with 18 points in this game as well.

In the final, Oral Roberts jumps out to a quick ten-point lead, but we pull to within two points, at 45-43, early in the second half. From that point on, it is butt ugly: Oral Roberts outscores us 39-13 in the final 14 minutes, and we lose on our home court by the embarrassing score of 84-56. It is a bitter, yet fitting way to end a season that saw us blow a number of chances to lock up the conference.

As an aside, it looks as if Oral Roberts has a one-point edge over us in RPI rankings as well, and I believe that determines which team advances if teams are tied for first in the conference.

But, there is one slight hope…

We get a bid in the NIT Tournament! Wow! We’re seeded tenth in the east, and will face off against New Orleans (20-9) in the opening round. A chance for redemption!

[Godzilla Blitz]

NIT Tournament Results

Our game degenerates even more against New Orleans in the first half, as we can’t hit anything—I mean anything—against their defense. Fortunately, their offense doesn’t have much luck against our defense as well, and we trail at the half by the amazing score of 21-17. We fall behind by ten in the second half though, as we are shooting an awful 17% from the floor. With ten minutes to go, though, shots start to finally drop, and we climb back to take a one-point lead with 3 minutes left. Once again, though, we go cold, and New Orleans sinks some key shots to pull away for the win and end our season. Sigh.

[JAG]

Hey GB, still an impressive run. Hopefully it'll be reflected in another coaching skill promotion.

[corbes]

Pretty good for your first year in the Ohio Valley

[Godzilla Blitz]

JAG, corbes: Thanks! I guess it was pretty good considering we were playing against tougher competition, but all I can see right now is how we blew an easy chance to get promoted. We had it in our hands and let it slip away.

2010/11 Wrap Up

Well, this is definitely a bitter-sweet year. We greatly exceeded expectations in winning the conference, but feel deep disappointment in blowing a chance to win the conference outright and get promoted. Fighting back to make it to the conference tournament finals was rewarding, but getting crushed there by Oral Roberts only further deepens the sentiment that Oral Roberts should have the conference title, and that we don’t deserve it. Shooting so poorly and losing in our NIT game to New Orleans puts the final nail in the coffin of what was a spectacular season until the final six games, where everything disintegrated.

Still, I have to be pleased with our overall progress, as we can definitely compete at this level. We’ll struggle to replace PG Gustavo Ortega, who leaves UC Riverside as the team career leader in points, assists, and steals. But we’ve got three talented players coming in next year, and we’ll just have to move on, regroup, and take our game up a level.

I’ll post final standings, stats, etc., then move on to 2011. Go UC Riverside!

[Godzilla Blitz]

Ohio Valley 2010/11 Final Conference Standings


CW CL Pct W L Pct
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oral Roberts 11 5 .688 23 10 .697
UC Riverside 11 5 .688 21 11 .656
Illinois-Chicago 10 6 .625 13 17 .433
Alabama A&M 9 7 .563 16 14 .533
Tennessee-Martin 8 8 .500 13 16 .448
Valparaiso 7 9 .438 10 20 .333
Tennessee Tech 6 10 .375 13 16 .448
Savannah State 6 10 .375 13 17 .433
Eastern Illinois 4 12 .250 6 22 .214

[Godzilla Blitz]

Final Stats 2010/11

Here’s the numbers on the team:


UC Riverside Player Averages

Name Pos G GS Min Pts OReb Reb Ast Stl Blk TO Fl
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gustavo Ortega PG 32 32 31.4 16.7 0.6 3.4 3.5 1.5 0.1 1.9 2.4
Jospeh Weidner SF 32 32 30.1 10.7 2.7 5.0 1.4 0.8 0.2 1.4 2.4
Alphonse Huckaby SG 32 32 25.4 9.0 1.3 2.9 2.3 1.5 0.6 1.4 2.0
Eldridge Whittle C 29 28 28.2 7.6 1.4 9.2 1.3 0.6 0.1 2.0 2.9
Sonny Putnam C 32 32 25.6 6.1 1.3 5.8 0.9 0.7 0.7 1.6 3.0
Adam Maier SG 32 0 16.0 5.0 0.5 2.1 1.0 0.7 0.2 1.6 1.5
Tyson Mestas SG 32 0 9.3 4.3 0.3 0.8 0.5 0.7 0.0 0.9 1.0
Harrison Augustin PF 32 0 10.8 2.6 1.0 2.8 0.5 0.3 0.6 0.8 1.1
Richard Hand SF 23 0 7.7 2.3 0.2 1.5 0.4 0.1 0.0 0.5 1.0
Winfred Garcia PF 32 4 14.7 2.0 0.8 2.5 0.7 0.3 0.1 1.0 1.6
Chris Hernandez PG 27 0 3.4 1.5 0.1 0.2 0.2 0.1 0.0 0.4 0.2
Ronald Presnell PF 30 0 4.0 1.1 0.1 0.6 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.3 0.6
Thomas Welch PG 0 0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
Jason Hamilton C 0 0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

UC Riverside Player Shooting Stats

Name Pos FGM FGA FG% FTM FTA FT% 3PM 3PA 3P%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gustavo Ortega PG 172 383 .449 121 162 .747 70 179 .391
Jospeh Weidner SF 114 277 .412 79 92 .859 35 112 .313
Alphonse Huckaby SG 97 228 .425 57 80 .713 37 112 .330
Eldridge Whittle C 80 202 .396 60 99 .606 0 1 .000
Sonny Putnam C 79 155 .510 35 64 .547 1 1 1.000
Adam Maier SG 56 126 .444 26 35 .743 21 47 .447
Tyson Mestas SG 47 124 .379 24 47 .511 18 52 .346
Harrison Augustin PF 28 53 .528 27 41 .659 0 0 .000
Richard Hand SF 22 56 .393 6 13 .462 4 18 .222
Winfred Garcia PF 24 63 .381 17 35 .486 0 1 .000
Chris Hernandez PG 13 29 .448 11 17 .647 3 13 .231
Ronald Presnell PF 14 19 .737 4 6 .667 0 0 .000
Thomas Welch PG 0 0 .000 0 0 .000 0 0 .000
Jason Hamilton C 0 0 .000 0 0 .000 0 0 .000

[Godzilla Blitz]

Player Awards

We garner four year-end player awards! PG Gustavo Ortega wins Ohio Valley Conference Player of the Year! Way to end your career, Gustavo!


Sr. PG Gustavo Ortega Conference Player of the Year
Sr. PG Gustavo Ortega First Team All Conference
Sr. SF Joseph Weidner First Team All Conference
Jr. SG Alphonse Huckaby Second Team All Conference

[MrBug708]

Time to see how I grade out coach!

[Godzilla Blitz]

April 2011

Well, just as I expected, Oral Roberts gets promoted ahead of us. Damn them.

On more upbeat news, I get my third consecutive Coach of the Year Award, this time winning the honors for our performance in the Ohio Valley League last year.

Interestingly enough--and rightly so--we do not get the Conference Title last year. Apparently the game looks at overall record at the end of the entire season when determining conference titles, but seeds for the conference tournament based on the standings at the end of conference play. Our losing to Oral Roberts in the conference finals gave them the better overall record on the year, and with that they take the conference title from us. Good for them; they deserved it.

In any case, we do get a significant jump in prestige! We add five points to our total:

UC Riverside
Prestige: 28 (+5)
2011/12 Goal: Compete for the Conference Title.

The board is delighted with our performance, although they now expect us to be at the top of the conference board.

Here’s our history to date:


UC Riverside Historical Performances

Season W L CW CL Rank RPI Prs Result
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2010 21 11 11 5 85 95 28 Loss in NIT Preliminary Round
2009 21 8 11 3 95 85 23 No Postseason
2008 22 10 8 6 104 106 17 Loss in NCAA Tourney Round 1
2007 16 14 8 6 215 256 11 No Postseason
2006 9 20 4 10 324 324 8 No Postseason
2005 15 14 7 7 249 293 8 No Postseason
2004 15 14 4 10 242 280 4 No Postseason
2003 4 24 1 17 327 327 3 No Postseason

UC Riverside Trophy Case

Season Trophy
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2009 Mid-Continent Conference Champion
2008 Mid-Continent Conference Champion
2008 Mid-Continent Conference Tourney Champion

And in other good news, I once again gain a coaching level! I’m now up to level 3! We get 20 more bonus points to scatter over my abilities. I do the following:

My New & Improved Skill Set
Recruiting: 51 (+8)
Scouting: 23
Offense: 41 (+5)
Defense: 45 (+7)

In other news, our recruiting class gets ranked #48 in the nation, which I believe is the best we’ve ever been ranked so far.

Overall, things are still looking rosy here in Riverside, except for one big, big, problem: our facilities. On a scale of 0-100, our gym and training facilities are now rated at a 3, which frankly put, is horrible. For most of the past five years, I have requested improvements from our athletic director, but each and every time I have been told there simply isn’t enough money to do anything about it. I think it’s getting time to realize that moving on might be the best--and perhaps only--way of making a legitimate run at a national title. I just don’t know if we can do it with such a crappy system.

[Godzilla Blitz]

As an aside, I'll be away for the holidays, so this will go on hiatus for a week. I should get a chance to play and post again on the 30th, maybe the 29th if things go well. Happy Holidays to all! I hope Santa is nice to you all!

Mr. Bug: I'll post your player card when we resume.

[tucker342]

Great stuff GB!:D

[Godzilla Blitz]

Tucker: Thanks!

Got some time tonight to play...

May 2011

I get inundated with job offers, but I turn them all down. We’ll stick around here one more year and see if they can find some cash to improve this dump.

Our coaches go up a level as well, but our assistant coach gets a better offer and leaves us. We end up overpaying for Chris Hamilton, an offensive-minded coach that is a slight improvement over last year’s assistant. Here’s our current staff:

2011/12 Staff
Recruiter: Kerri Davie (36 years old) Skill: 40 (same as last year)
Scout: Solomon Porch (38 years old) Skill: 41 (+4 from last year)
Asst. Coach: Chris Hamilton (40 years old) Offense: 60 Defense: 24 (+8 from last year)

Should be interesting to see the effect new assistant has on our game. He’s by far the most unbalanced assistant we’ve had.

We also take some time this month to make yet another pitch to the athletic director to upgrade the decrepit facilities at UC Riverside.

[Godzilla Blitz]

June 2011

Well, we get a terse rebuttal from the UC Riverside board of directors, who tell me that I should worry about what happens on the court and not concern myself about the state of the team’s facilities. Their opinion of me drops. Bastards. They’re pissing me off now. Our facilities are rated a 3 out of a 100! My god! How do they expect us to win?

We’ll start off the year with our annual collection of Classics. We upgrade our RPI Classic to Georgia Tech, which should prove to be much too much for us to handle, and this will probably be the last year we’ll go against New Hampshire in the Calis Classic, as he’s off to Dartmouth now. Otherwise, we’ve got a balanced schedule this year, but set ourselves up for a massive amount of home games next year by scheduling quite a few home-home pairs where we start out on the road.


UC Riverside 2011 Season Schedule

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11/13/11 New Hampshire (Calis Classic III)
11/17/11 at UC Santa Barbara (Vince Classic III)
11/21/11 Navy (Hollmt Classic II)
11/26/11 Georgia Tech (RPI Classic II)
11/30/11 at Binghamton
12/04/11 at Harvard
12/08/11 at William & Mary
12/13/11 at VMI
12/18/11 at Gardner Webb
12/22/11 Rhode Island
12/26/11 Stephen F. Austin
12/30/11 Oral Roberts
01/05/12 Alabama A&M
01/07/12 Georgia State
01/12/12 at Tennessee Tech
01/14/12 at Savannah State
01/19/12 Southeast Missouri State
01/21/12 at Tennessee-Martin
01/24/12 at Alabama A&M
01/26/12 Illinois-Chicago
01/28/12 Tennessee Tech
02/02/12 at Georgia State
02/04/12 Savannah State
02/09/12 Tennessee-Martin
02/11/12 at Illinois-Chicago
02/16/12 Valparaiso
02/23/12 at Southeast Missouri State
02/25/12 at Valparaiso

[Godzilla Blitz]

July 2011 – October 2011

Preseason Recruiting

We’ve got three scholarships available this year. We’ll be looking for a center, a shooting guard, and a point guard, but if there is something nice at small forward or power forward, we’ll jump on it. After an initial month of searching, we find one recruit at each position, and make scholarship offers. C Irwin Spicer, SG Loren Muir, and PG Rob Allen all draw our offers. Spicer is ranked in the 200’s, but would be a fine addition at center for us. Muir is the #134 player in the nation, and has high interest in our program; he would be a big landing for us. We’re stretching on Allen, who has only average interest in our program, and is ranked at #123.

We keep up the effort on our three targets, but early in the fall it becomes apparent that Allen’s interest in us isn’t strong enough. We pull the plug on his offer, and instead offer it to a Canadian point guard by the name of Albert Goodwin. His #244 ranking is not comparable to Allen, but he has strong interest in our program, and I think we can land him.

We continue our visits and calls, and just as training camps start, we get a commitment from SG Loren Muir! Yes! One down, three to go.

[Godzilla Blitz]

November 2011

Here’s our brave team this year:


UC Riverside Roster

# Name Pos Cl Ht Wt Hometown
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
35 Eldridge Whittle C Sr 6' 9" 241 Las Vegas, NV
0 Sonny Putnam C Jr 6' 8" 228 Las Vegas, NV
1 Jason Hamilton C Fr 6' 8" 253 Lodi, CA
31 Ronald Presnell PF Jr 6' 9" 258 Birmingham, AL
30 Winfred Garcia PF So 6' 9" 227 Compton, CA
34 Bernard Harrison PF Fr 6' 7" 225 Manhattan Beach, CA (redshirt)
44 Richard Hand SF So 6' 7" 226 Kendall, NY
24 Kyle Kappe SF Fr 6' 7" 221 Rifle, CO (redshirt)
50 Deangelo Perez SF Fr 6' 8" 219 Monroeville, PA
41 Alphonse Huckaby SG Sr 6' 4" 219 San Diego, CA
11 Adam Maier SG Sr 6' 6" 189 Clearfield, UT
42 Tyson Mestas SG So 6' 3" 179 Elko, NV
10 Clement Hagar SG Fr 6' 5" 187 Escondido, CA (redshirt)
2 Chris Hernandez PG So 6' 0" 175 Bellflower, CA
54 Thomas Welch PG So 5' 6" 182 Lovelock, NV

Roster Evaluation
Well, this year looks like the Nevada connection, as three of our starters herald from that fine state of legalized prostitution and gambling. We’re devastatingly strong at center: Whittle, an All-Conference selection as a sophomore, returns for his senior year; Putman will play out of position at power forward; and Hamilton, a very talented freshman, will back up both of them. Maier makes a better small forward than does any of our current small forwards, so he will start there. Huckaby, a Second Team All-Conference selection last year, will play at shooting guard. The computer likes Hernandez at point guard, presumably because of his deadly shooting, but I opt for Thomas Welch, because of his strong ability to handle the ball and make passes.

Tough to say how good we’ll be. I’m not sure we have the depth and the shooting to make a run at the conference title, so I’m going to play for next year and redshirt three players this season. I’d be happy with a finish in the top half of the standings. Anything better would be gravy. Next year, however, we may be something to shout about. With two solid centers and some up and coming talent elsewhere, I’m thinking we could make a run for the title then.

On to the season we go…

[Godzilla Blitz]

November 2011

Results

UC Riverside 2011 Season Schedule

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11/13/11 New Hampshire W 90-85 1-0
11/17/11 at UC Santa Barbara W 96-82 2-0
11/21/11 Navy W 73-55 3-0
11/26/11 Georgia Tech W 92-76 4-0
11/30/11 at Binghamton W 74-65 5-0

Wow! We start the year off against New Hampshire in the Calis Classic III, and what a game! We chase them the whole game, with SG Alphonse Huckaby raining threes the entire time. Finally, with four minutes to go, we get a scoring spurt that gives us the win. Huckaby ends up with a team-record 31 points, and we go up 2-1 in the Calis Classic series. As an aside, New Hampshire finished 29-3 last year, and made the NCAA tournament. However, their coach (who is an awful recruiter) only filled three of six scholarship spots opened by graduating seniors, so their short run could be over.

The Vince Classic III is no less exciting. Unfortunately, we get disastrous news early in the first half, as SG Alphonse Huckaby breaks his arm, and will be lost to us for about 8 weeks. UC Santa Barbara puts the hurt on us after that, but somehow we manage to overcome two double-digit deficits in the first half to pull within one point at the midpoint. In the second half, our offense, led by a red hot Adam Maier, erupts, and we pull away for an easy win. Just four days after Huckaby set a team record for points in a game with 31, Maier scores 32 to set a new record. We are up 3-0 in the Vince Classics series.

Navy comes to town next for the Hollmt Classic II. We juggle our lineup to fill the gaping hole created by the Huckaby injury, and seem to find a good synergy: with SG Tyson Mestas leading the way, we run out to a 39-8 lead, then coast to an easy victory. The win evens the Hollmt Classic series at 1-1.

Concluding our run of early season Classic matchups, the once-daunting Georgia Tech comes to town for the RPI Classic II. In our world, their history has been piddling: they have been demoted at least twice in the past decade, and now sit in the level 3 Mid American Conference. The result of this fall is that they are not the fear-inspiring team I thought they would be, and we handle them with ease, as sophomore PG Chris Hernandez leads us with 17 points from the bench in a relatively easy win. The win gives us a 2-0 lead in the RPI Classic series.

Hernandez scores 17 points again in our next game, as we wrap up the month with a victory over Birmingham.

Surprisingly, despite the injury to Huckaby, we run the table in November and end the month at 5-0. We’re scoring like crazy, creating lots of takeaways, and gobbling up rebounds. At this point, everything is clicking.

Recruiting
Completing what has to be one of our best months ever, both C Irwin Spicer and PG Albert Goodwin commit to UC Riverside! This wraps up our recruiting for the season. Once again, we get three three-star recruits ranked better than #300. Man, these good classes will make it tough to leave this place. Here’s our recruiting summary for the year:

2011/12 Recruiting Summary
POS Player Name Star National Rank
SG Loren Muir *** 134
PG Albert Goodwin *** 244
C Irwin Spicer *** 262

[Godzilla Blitz]

December 2011

Results

UC Riverside 2011 Season Schedule

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12/04/11 at Harvard L 85-74 5-1
12/08/11 at William & Mary L 71-59 5-2
12/13/11 at VMI L 81-75 5-3
12/18/11 at Gardner Webb W 71-55 6-3
12/22/11 Rhode Island L 89-74 6-4
12/26/11 Stephen F. Austin W 90-65 7-4
12/30/11 Oral Roberts L 80-62 7-5

December starts off rough, as we go on the road and lose three in a row: Harvard (2-3) puts the hurt on us in the first game of the month; William & Mary outplays us the entire game; and VMI (1-5) pulls away from us in overtime. We finally snap out of our funk as SG Mestas leads us with 19 points in a road win over Gardner Webb. Things don’t improve much the rest of the way, though: we get blown away by a 1-5 Rhode Island team, bounce back to rout Stephen F. Austin in a game where SG Chris Hernandez scores 30 points from the bench, then get crushed in a revenge match-up against last year’s Ohio Valley Conference champion Oral Roberts.

We go a disappointing 2-5 for the month, our hot start is distant history, and we’re desperately eyeing Huckaby’s injury report. His arm is nearly healed, and we should get him back early next month. We clearly need him.

[JAG]

The offense looks pretty impressive GB. Especially once Huckaby returns, there should be some high scores for Riverside. That sucks that they still haven't upgraded your facilities, but hopefully one of these years they'll scrape some money to do so.

[Godzilla Blitz]

January 2012

Results

UC Riverside 2011 Season Schedule

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
01/05/12 Alabama A&M W 78-64 8-5 (1-0)
01/07/12 Georgia State L 60-56 8-6 (1-1)
01/12/12 at Tennessee Tech W 74-73 9-6 (2-1)
01/14/12 at Savannah State L 93-70 9-7 (2-2)
01/19/12 Southeast Missouri State W 82-54 10-7 (3-2)
01/21/12 at Tennessee-Martin L 73-70 10-8 (3-3)
01/24/12 at Alabama A&M L 74-71 10-9 (3-4)
01/26/12 Illinois-Chicago W 92-77 11-9 (4-4)
01/28/12 Tennessee Tech L 68-57 11-10 (4-5)


Our month is an inconsistent mess: we play brilliantly one day, then disastrously the next. We start out the month by crushing a weak Alabama A&M (1-10). Next, first place Georgia State comes to town. They run out to a big lead, and with 6 minutes to go, we trail by 14. We mount a strong comeback bid, but it just falls short and we end up losing. Tennessee Tech is up next; they sit in first, tied with Georgia State. With SG Huckaby back in the starting lineup, we are a different team and pull out to a comfortable lead, but Tennessee Tech comes back strong in the final five minutes to take a two-point lead with 15 seconds to go. Huckaby saves the day for us though: he hits a three-pointer at the buzzer to give us the win!

Unfortunately, we undo all that good work in a sloppy loss to Savannah State later in the week. True to our inconsistent form, we blow away Southeast Missouri State a few days later. Badly in need of some key wins, we blow big, second-half leads against both Tennessee Martin and Alabama A&M (who have not lost since losing to us and sit in first place), and end up losing both games in the final minute. We rebound with a solid win against a weak Illinois-Chicago, then play a lethargic game and lose to Tennessee Tech.

We end the month a mediocre 11-10 overall, but a disappointing 4-5 in the conference. Currently we sit 6th of nine teams, with 8-2 Georgia State at the front of a pack of teams playing over .600 ball. We’d probably have to run the table to have a shot at the title, but to do that we’ll need to find a better formula than what we’ve got now.

[Godzilla Blitz]

JAG: Some days our offense is amazing (probably due to the help of our assistant), but other days we simply miss everything. Frustrating year so far.

[Godzilla Blitz]

February 2012

Crap. Center Eldrige Whittle is declared academically ineligible for February. This will smush on any hopes we had of making a resurgent run at the title.

Results

UC Riverside 2011 Season Schedule

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
02/02/12 at Georgia State L 81-65 11-11 (4-6)
02/04/12 Savannah State L 93-70 11-12 (4-7)
02/09/12 Tennessee-Martin L 87-76 11-13 (4-8)
02/11/12 at Illinois-Chicago L 73-72 11-14 (4-9)
02/16/12 Valparaiso W 68-61 12-14 (5-9)
02/23/12 at Southeast Missouri State L 79-69 12-15 (5-10)
02/25/12 at Valparaiso W 74-56 13-15 (6-10)
02/28/12 vs. Tennessee-Martin


Ugly with a capital “U”: we mount a furious rally to pull ahead of first place Georgia State midway through the second half, then wilt completely at the end to lose big; mediocre Savannah State rolls over us at home; we blow yet another huge lead late in the second half and end up losing in OT to Tennessee-Martin; and then lose on a last-second foul to 5-17 Illinois-Central. Nothing I am doing with our lineup seems to work, and to further compound our problems, SF Richard Hand breaks his leg and is lost for the season. We have lost five in a row and our season lies in tatters. Even worse, we lie only a couple of games away from last place Valparaiso.

Fortunately, we get out of our funk in a blow-out victory over Valparaiso. We drop our next game to Illinois-Chicago, then once again beat up on Valparaiso to end conference play.

Our record stands at 13-15 overall, and a dismal 6-10 in conference. We placed 7th out of the nine teams in the Ohio Valley Conference. Yuk. Clearly a season to forget. We will have one chance to redeem ourselves: the conference tourney is up next. We’ll play Tennessee-Martin, the number two seed, on the road.

[Godzilla Blitz]

March 2012

Ohio Valley Conference Tournament Results

Tennessee-Martin opens up a huge 28-9 lead early in the game, but we manage to mount a comeback to pull within one with a minute to play. We do nothing in the final minute though, and Tennessee-Martin mercifully puts our awful season to rest.

[JAG]

Damn. :(

[Godzilla Blitz]

JAG: Yeah, that sums it up.

2011/12 Wrap Up

Well, this was the season from hell. Between Huckaby’s broken arm and Whittle’s ineligibility, we were able to put our best team on the court in less than half our games. Still, these things aside, we should have played better. I just couldn’t seem to find a rhythm with this team, and tweaking the depth chart and strategy options only seemed to make things worse. It was especially painful to blow so many leads late in games, and to see so many comebacks fall just short.

At least it has come to and end. I’ll post the final info and move on to next year.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Final Conference Standings

2011 Ohio Valley Conference Standings

CW CL Pct W L Pct
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Georgia State 13 3 .813 24 8 .750
Tennessee-Martin 11 5 .688 17 15 .531
Savannah State 10 6 .625 18 13 .581
Tennessee Tech 9 7 .563 18 12 .600
Southeast Missouri State 7 9 .438 13 16 .448
Alabama A&M 7 9 .438 8 21 .276
UC Riverside 6 10 .375 13 16 .448
Illinois-Chicago 5 11 .313 8 20 .286
Valparaiso 4 12 .250 10 18 .357

[Godzilla Blitz]

Final Stats 2011/12

Here’s the numbers on the team:


UC Riverside Player Averages

Name Pos G GS Min Pts OReb Reb Ast Stl Blk TO Fl
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alphonse Huckaby SG 19 17 28.5 12.1 1.2 3.5 2.8 2.1 0.7 1.2 2.4
Chris Hernandez PG 29 8 20.2 12.1 0.8 1.7 1.9 1.1 0.1 1.9 2.1
Adam Maier SG 29 12 22.0 9.0 0.9 3.4 1.0 1.6 0.1 2.8 2.4
Eldridge Whittle C 21 21 26.0 9.0 1.5 7.8 1.7 0.6 0.1 1.5 3.3
Jason Hamilton C 29 8 18.1 8.3 1.5 4.9 1.2 0.3 0.1 1.3 2.6
Thomas Welch PG 29 23 24.1 7.8 1.1 2.1 3.0 1.2 0.0 1.5 2.0
Tyson Mestas SG 29 10 15.3 6.7 0.5 1.7 1.1 0.9 0.1 0.7 1.7
Sonny Putnam C 29 29 26.9 6.3 1.9 7.7 1.5 1.0 0.9 1.7 2.7
Richard Hand SF 24 17 19.8 5.8 0.6 3.8 1.3 0.5 0.1 1.2 2.3
Winfred Garcia PF 27 0 11.7 1.6 0.5 2.1 0.5 0.3 0.3 0.8 1.3
Deangelo Perez SF 27 0 4.6 1.3 0.3 0.8 0.3 0.1 0.0 0.3 0.5
Ronald Presnell PF 27 0 6.3 1.2 0.3 0.9 0.2 0.4 0.5 0.3 0.8
Bernard Harrison PF 0 0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
Kyle Kappe SF 0 0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
Clement Hagar SG 0 0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

UC Riverside Player Shooting Stats

Name Pos FGM FGA FG% FTM FTA FT% 3PM 3PA 3P%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alphonse Huckaby SG 71 165 .430 48 73 .658 40 84 .476
Chris Hernandez PG 120 251 .478 61 87 .701 49 122 .402
Adam Maier SG 78 184 .424 65 73 .890 39 94 .415
Eldridge Whittle C 71 155 .458 46 73 .630 0 2 .000
Jason Hamilton C 90 187 .481 61 124 .492 0 0 .000
Thomas Welch PG 85 230 .370 37 67 .552 20 79 .253
Tyson Mestas SG 63 152 .414 43 63 .683 26 73 .356
Sonny Putnam C 72 138 .522 38 69 .551 0 1 .000
Richard Hand SF 53 136 .390 20 36 .556 14 52 .269
Winfred Garcia PF 14 29 .483 15 31 .484 0 2 .000
Deangelo Perez SF 11 30 .367 9 14 .643 5 18 .278
Ronald Presnell PF 16 28 .571 1 5 .200 0 1 .000
Bernard Harrison PF 0 0 .000 0 0 .000 0 0 .000
Kyle Kappe SF 0 0 .000 0 0 .000 0 0 .000
Clement Hagar SG 0 0 .000 0 0 .000 0 0 .000

Player Awards

We get one award worthy of note, as freshman center Jason Hamilton played well enough filling in for ineligible Eldridge Whittle that he earned conference freshman of the year honors.


FR. C Jason Hamilton Conference Freshman of the Year

[The_herd]

Great read so far GB. I'm interested in seeing how the Kyle Kappe era goes.

[hoopsguy]

Have enjoyed this dynasty, as well as your X-Com one. Glad it didn't take quite as long to catch up on reading this one. Good luck turning these guys around ... it has inspired me to break out TDCB and play it out before eventually scraping up some money together for FBCB at some point.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Originally posted by The_herd
Great read so far GB. I'm interested in seeing how the Kyle Kappe era goes.

Thanks! That's right! Kyle Kappe's done redshirting. It is time for the Kyle Kappe era, isn't it! I'll have to post his card once he gets through training camp.

Offhand, I think he's got a lot of strong skills, one correctable weakness (no stamina), and one critical one (no perimeter defense skills and no potential there either) that could ultimately limit his playing time. But since he's such a fan favorite, we'll surely have to give the boy a chance, won't we!

hoopsguy: Thanks! I'm glad you've enjoyed both of them. X-COM is on my list of New Year's Resolutions (to finish it this year). Good luck with TDCB! I'll have to give it a try sometime.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Dynasty Question

I was wondering, would anyone like to see any more information during the seasons? I was thinking about a couple of these...

A. posting standings at the end of each month (or perhaps Dec/Jan/year-end instead of just year-end)
B. posting team stats at the end of each month (or perhaps Dec/Jan/year-end instead of just year-end)
C. posting player cards of key incoming freshmen
D. occasionally posting team/player records
E. posting player cards of outstanding graduates
F. picking one player (this time Kyle Kappe, e.g.) and following his college career in a bit more detail.

...but was wondering what people think. I don't want to clutter the dynasty up with lots of stuff, but I was thinking a couple of things might improve it.

Also, anything else you'd like to see? Is there enough information on the players? Too much information on something? Should anything be shorter? Should anything be expanded on?

[The_herd]

Originally posted by Godzilla Blitz
Dynasty Question

I was wondering, would anyone like to see any more information during the seasons? I was thinking about a couple of these...

A. posting standings at the end of each month (or perhaps Dec/Jan/year-end instead of just year-end)
B. posting team stats at the end of each month (or perhaps Dec/Jan/year-end instead of just year-end)
C. posting player cards of key incoming freshmen
D. occasionally posting team/player records
E. posting player cards of outstanding graduates
F. picking one player (this time Kyle Kappe, e.g.) and following his college career in a bit more detail.

...but was wondering what people think. I don't want to clutter the dynasty up with lots of stuff, but I was thinking a couple of things might improve it.

Also, anything else you'd like to see? Is there enough information on the players? Too much information on something? Should anything be shorter? Should anything be expanded on?

I'm interested in seeing C, E, and F. I'm more interested in the players themselves, and only interested in the stats and standings at the end of the season.

My 2 pennies.

[Travis]

One thing that I did (I know, I know) was a report at the beginning of each season on a player that was about to graduate. That way you could really recap their entire career with you, what possible milestones they may hit that season for people to keep an eye on, and any other odd bits and pieces that made me identify with them. Always nice to see just how into it the writer is through the way they express themselves when writing about a fictional character ;)

[Godzilla Blitz]

Travis, The_Herd: Thanks! I think I'll incorporate a bit more about certain players as I go along.

April 2012

Our first email of the year lets me know that our facilities will get upgraded next year! Wow! Finally! New basketballs!

Despite our disappointing season, our prestige does nudge up one point.

UC Riverside
Prestige: 29 (+1)
2012/13 Goal: Compete for the Conference Championship

The board’s opinion of me drops to “satisfied”. Looks like we’ll need to have a good season if I want to be assured of keeping my job.

Here’s where we’ve been so far:


UC Riverside Historical Performances

Season W L CW CL Rank RPI Prs Result
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2011 13 16 6 10 237 231 29 No Postseason
2010 21 11 11 5 85 95 28 Loss in FBIT Preliminary Round
2009 21 8 11 3 95 85 23 No Postseason
2008 22 10 8 6 104 106 17 Loss in NCAA Tourney Round 1
2007 16 14 8 6 215 256 11 No Postseason
2006 9 20 4 10 324 324 8 No Postseason
2005 15 14 7 7 249 293 8 No Postseason
2004 15 14 4 10 242 280 4 No Postseason
2003 4 24 1 17 327 327 3 No Postseason

UC Riverside Trophy Case

Season Trophy
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2009 Mid-Continent Conference Champion
2008 Mid-Continent Conference Champion
2008 Mid-Continent Conference Tourney Champion

Last year was our first losing season in five years, and our RPI rank drops through the floor because of it.

On a more positive note, our recruiting class grades out at #75 in the nation.

[Godzilla Blitz]

May 2012

They still love me. We get a half dozen emails looking for new coaches, one of which comes from last year’s Ohio Valley Conference winner Georgia State. I pass on all of them. How could I pass up a chance to coach UC Riverside when we'll have new basketballs next year?

I was disappointed with our on-court performance last year, so I fire our assistant right away. We only have one recruiting vacancy this year, so I decide to pour a lot of cash into a new, more balanced assistant. After two attempts to land guys with $80,000 offers, I go up even more on the scale and land an assistant for the ungodly high price of $97,100. Yikes.

Here they are:

2012/13 Staff
Recruiter: Jason Gil (32 years old) Skill: 40
Scout: Jason Brown (45 years old) Skill: 41
Asst. Coach: Frank Moncrief (39 years old) Offense: 62 Defense: 56 (+38 from last year)

Frank Moncrief is the highest rated assistant we have ever had, by far. Boo yah!

[The_herd]

Damn, nice assistant. Congrats.

[JAG]

Nice assistant catch there GB. Glad to hear the facilities will finally be upgraded too. Maybe they needed that losing season to see the error of their penny-pinching ways.

I wanted to second The_herd's votes for C and F, and to a lesser degree E. I don't know if a player's card changes much during the 4 years but maybe posting the card of one or two key players for the current year's team would be cool too.

Thanks again for a great read.

[Godzilla Blitz]

June 2012

This is another year where we have lots of home games. We set up our Classics again, but fail to get Georgia Tech to agree to a home-home series, so we pass on playing them this year. Chickens. Also, Gardner Webb, home of Golden Eagle, is already on our schedule. We’ll simply rename the game as the Golden Eagle Classic I, and we’re set.


UC Riverside 2012 Season Schedule

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11/18/12 New Hampshire (Calis Classic IV)
11/23/12 Weber State
11/30/12 Navy (Hollmt Classic III)
12/06/12 IPFW
12/12/12 Morris Brown
12/19/12 Stephen F. Austin
12/25/12 William & Mary
12/28/12 VMI
01/03/13 UC Santa Barbara (Vince Classic IV)
01/05/13 Tennessee-Martin
01/10/13 at Tennessee-Martin
01/12/13 Tennessee Tech
01/14/13 Harvard
01/19/13 Savannah State
01/21/13 Gardner Webb (Golden Eagle Classic I)
01/24/13 at Alabama A&M
01/31/13 at Austin Peay
02/02/13 at Illinois-Chicago
02/07/13 at Savannah State
02/09/13 at Southeast Missouri State
02/12/13 Illinois-Chicago
02/14/13 Southeast Missouri State
02/16/13 at Tennessee State
02/21/13 Alabama A&M
02/23/13 Austin Peay
02/28/13 at Tennessee Tech
03/02/13 Tennessee State
03/04/13 Binghamton

[Godzilla Blitz]

July 2011 – October 2012

Preseason Recruiting

We’ve got lots of bullets and we only need to hit one target, so we can afford to aim at things we usually wouldn’t hit. Ideally, I’d like to get a high ranked power forward, but a center would do.

We make our usual bevy of phone calls to anyone that seems vaguely interested in our program. After a month, the #54 player in the nation, PG Lance Lintner, who shows mild interest in our program. He’s a local boy, so we take a chance and offer him our scholarship, even though he’s not at the position we want. After another couple of months, nothing changes though, so we pull the plug on that offer and make one to PF Andrew Harnett, the number #85 player in the land. He’s from Honolulu, and seems to like our program quite a bit. We’ve never had any luck getting guys from Hawaii, but it’s a cool place to visit, so I blow all our recruiting money on trying to get this longshot to come to California. Many trips later, things are looking surprisingly good, and I’ve got a great tan.

Just before training camp starts, we get the good news: Hartnett is coming to UC Riverside! Yahoo! Wow! The #85 player in the land, at a position of strong need for us! He’ll be the highest ranked player to come to UC Riverside (since we’ve been tracking rankings, anyway).
And that wraps up this year’s recruiting:

2012/13 Recruiting Summary
POS Player Name Star National Rank
PF Andrew Hartnett *** 85

[Godzilla Blitz]

The_herd: Thanks. He was expensive, and I doubt we'll have him for more than one season, but with only one scholarship to fill, I think it makes sense.

JAG: Thanks for the feedback. I think I'll follow Kyle Kappe through his next four years, and also follow one key player each year.

[Godzilla Blitz]

November 2012

Here’s our team this year:

UC Riverside Roster

# Name Pos Cl Ht Wt Hometown
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0 Sonny Putnam C Sr 6' 8" 229 Las Vegas, NV
1 Jason Hamilton C So 6' 8" 254 Lodi, CA
23 Irwin Spicer C Fr 6'11" 263 Belgrade, MT
31 Ronald Presnell PF Sr 6' 9" 260 Birmingham, AL
30 Winfred Garcia PF Jr 6' 9" 228 Compton, CA (reshirt)
34 Bernard Harrison PF Fr 6' 7" 226 Manhattan Beach, CA
44 Richard Hand SF Jr 6' 7" 226 Kendall, NY
50 Deangelo Perez SF So 6' 8" 220 Monroeville, PA
24 Kyle Kappe SF Fr 6' 7" 221 Rifle, CO
42 Tyson Mestas SG Jr 6' 3" 179 Elko, NV
10 Clement Hagar SG Fr 6' 6" 189 Escondido, CA
5 Loren Muir SG Fr 6' 5" 192 John Day, OR (redshirt)
2 Chris Hernandez PG Jr 6' 0" 175 Bellflower, CA
54 Thomas Welch PG Jr 5' 6" 183 Lovelock, NV
45 Albert Goodwin PG Fr 6' 3" 184 Bowmanville, Canada (redshirt)

Roster Evaluation
There are big shoes to fill with the loss of Huckaby and Whittle to graduation, but C Jason Hamilton may be the one to fill Whittle’s shoes admirably. He has a phenomenal inside game and should get a lot of chances. Sonny Putman, who brings a strong rebounding game, will play out of position at power forward for the third year in a row. Richard Hand gets the nod, by default, at small forward. At guard, our best shooter, Chris Hernandez, will start at shooting guard; PG Thomas Welch, our best ball handler, will start at the point.

Overall, we’ve got a lot of players with good inside games, and will try to emphasize getting the ball into the paint this year. We seem to have good defensive skills as well. Our weakness has to be our outside shooting, where all we’ve got is Chris Hernandez. If he goes down, we’re doomed. If he stays healthy, we could be tough to stop. I’m hopeful that we can be fighting for the title at the end of the year.

We’ll take a quick look at a few of our players then move on to the season.

[Godzilla Blitz]

In the Spotlight 2012

Starting this year, I thought I’d try to highlight a few of our players to put some names on the faces of the team. For one player, we’ll follow him throughout his four or five years with the team; the other players will usually be the players who we expect to play key roles in the upcoming year.

Key Players

We’ve got two key players this year: sophomore C Jason Hamilton and junior PG Chris Hernandez.

Hamilton saw limited action as a freshmen, averaging 8 points and 5 rebounds a game. This year he’ll take over the center role from graduated Eldrige Whittle. Hamilton brings star potential to the position: he’s got an incredible inside game (87) and powerful rebounding skills (75 off, 54 def). He can’t shoot a jumper to save his life, but we’re hoping to center our offense around getting him the ball in near the net, so with luck he won’t need that jump shot.

While Hamilton is our inside game, PG Chris Hernandez is our outside game. He is perhaps the best pure shooter to ever play for us (91 jump shot, 82 three-pointer), and made a big jump in his play last year as a sophomore, when he averaged over 12 points a game in a backup role. His weak passing skills make him more suited to the shooting guard spot, and that’s where he’ll see action this year. Defensively, he’s improved significantly, and is no longer a liability on the court. We’re looking for big numbers from this guy.

The Life and Times of Kyle Kappe: Vol. I

We’ll start our “follow the career” theme with SF Kyle Kappe, aka Mr. Bug, who will see his first action after redshirting last season. Here’s his vital signs:

#24 SF Kyle Kappe - UC Riverside - Freshman
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Height: 6' 7"
Weight: 221
High School: Rifle High School
Hometown: Rifle, CO

Attributes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Type INS JPS FTS 3PS HND PAS ORB DRB PSD PRD STL BLK PFS QKN STR JMP STA
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current: 42 45 36 57 46 29 21 33 42 4 31 36 48 42 59 48 44
Potential: B B C C B C D C B F C C

Health: Good
Scholarship: Yes
Status: Active Roster
Academics: 51

Awards & Acheivements:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Season Award
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2010 High School: Rated *** and #228 overall by the FBCB scouting service.
2010 High School: All-State (Colorado)

Kappe Scouting Report
Kyle is in much better shape after redshirting last year as a freshman. For a level 2 conference athlete, he has a good overall set of skills except for one glaring weakness: he can’t defend the perimeter. We’ve worked with him over the past year, but nothing we do seems to help. He just can’t get the job done on the outside. As a result of this weakness, he’s lost the starting small forward job to junior Richard Hand. This year, Kyle will backup Hand, but we’re also going to get him some minutes at power forward, where his weakness guarding the outside won’t hurt him so much. Realistically, power forward is where his only chance of developing into a starter lies.

[Godzilla Blitz]

November 2012

Results

UC Riverside 2012 Season Schedule

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11/18/12 New Hampshire W 84-80 1-0
11/23/12 Weber State W 85-74 2-0
11/30/12 Navy W 72-59 3-0


The Calis Classic against New Hampshire this year is another thriller. We open up a big lead early, but have to fight off numerous comebacks to hang on for a nail biting victory. Guards Hernandez and Hagar each get 19 points, and center Hamilton gets 17 points and 15 rebounds. Unfortunately, PG Thomas Welch breaks his jaw, and will be out for 11 days. We go up 3-1 in the Calis Classic series.

In our next game, Clement Hagar again leads the way with 20 points in a big second half that buries Weber State.

In the Hollmt Classic III, we get a big second half scoring burst to pull away for the victory. Hernandez is red hot, with 23 points, and Hamilton gets 18.

Like last year, we play well out of the gate and go undefeated in November. So far, we’re looking pretty good.

Kappe Update: Kyle has averaged a little over 14 minutes of play per game. Although he’s only averaging 4 points per game, his +/- rating is a team high 13.33! Wow! Good start for the fan favorite!

[RealDeal]

X COMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

[Godzilla Blitz]

December 2012

Results

UC Riverside 2012 Season Schedule

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12/06/12 IPFW W 66-60 4-0
12/12/12 Morris Brown W 86-80 5-0
12/19/12 Stephen F. Austin L 62-59 5-1
12/25/12 William & Mary W 79-53 6-1
12/28/12 VMI W 79-65 7-1

Hamilton starts off the month hot: he gets 16 points to lead us to a win against a weak IPFW team, then gets a double-double (22 points, 12 rebounds) to spur our victory against a winless yet pesky Morris Brown. Stephen F. Austin finally ends our run, as they pull by us late to send us to our first loss.

Despite some big numbers by Hamilton, it’s surprising to see that he has a plus-minus rating of -1.30 at this point in the season. Thinking that he might be getting too many minutes with his relatively low stamina, I trim his playing time a bit.

We bounce back against William & Mary, as PF Putnam gets a double-double and Hamilton racks up a team high 17 points in a dominating performance. We start out hot against VMI, but play poorly early in the second half. With five minutes to go, we find ourselves down by three, but SG Hernandez leads us on a two-minute, 15-0 run that leaves VMI in the dust.

We end the month at 7-1, and things continue to go well for us. However, the “real” season starts next month, as conference play beckons.

Kappe Notes: Kyle still is getting about 14 minutes and 4 points per game, but is only shooting 35% from the floor and a dismal 7% from the 3-point line. His plus-minus rating is still a solid +5.63. All in all, an unspectacular yet respectable start for the freshman.

[Godzilla Blitz]

January 2013

Results

UC Riverside 2012 Season Schedule

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
01/03/13 UC Santa Barbara L 81-59 7-2
01/05/13 Tennessee-Martin W 75-62 8-2 (1-0)
01/10/13 at Tennessee-Martin W 67-59 9-2 (2-0)
01/12/13 Tennessee Tech W 87-68 10-2 (3-0)
01/14/13 Harvard W 71-45 11-2
01/19/13 Savannah State W 67-58 12-2 (4-0)
01/21/13 Gardner Webb W 80-78 13-2
01/24/13 at Alabama A&M L 83-56 13-3 (4-1)
01/31/13 at Austin Peay L 103-71 13-4 (4-2)

Wild month!

We start off the month with the Vince Classic IV against UC Santa Barbara. They outplay us in every way as we suffer our first blowout loss. We bounce back nicely, though, as Chris Hernandez scores 25 points to lead us to a win over Tennessee-Martin in our conference opener, then five days later Hagar scores 21 and Hamilton gets a double-double to beat Tennessee-Martin yet again. We get bad news in this game though, as PG Thomas Welch, our best ball handler, breaks his wrist and goes down for a month. We’ll really miss his passing skills.

Next, Hagar scores 25 and Hernandez gets 21 as we pull away from a tight game to beat Tennessee Tech. Hernandez continues his hot play in our next game, a non-conference rout of Harvard, but he pulls a hamstring late in the game and will be lost to us for two weeks. We’re down to two guards now. We somehow manage to beat Savannah State in our next game, but SG Hagar pulls a groin muscle to go out for more than a week. Ye gads. What injuries!

We patch together a lineup (we’re down to 9 healthy players and 1 walking wounded) for the Golden Eagle Classic I against Gardner Webb, and one minute into the game C Jason Hamilton sprains his wrist and will be lost to us for more than a week! Oh my! What gives with this? Amazingly, this makeshift team—with Kyle Kappe starting at point guard and only 8 healthy players—scrapes out a win!

We begin a big, make-it-or-break-it five-game road trip with only 8 healthy players on the roster and three players at partial strength. It is too much to ask of our players against Alabama A&M, as they run over us and hand us our first conference loss. Fortunately, we get a week break, and during that time we get our roster back to near full strength, with only Thomas Welch unable to play. It doesn’t help us against powerful Austin Peay, as they paste us with one of our worst losses ever, a 103-71 drubbing that wasn’t as close as the score looks.

We end the month at 13-4, but the two conference losses at the end drop us out of first place and into the middle of the standings. It’s surprising how much I can see us missing the great ball handling that Welch brings to our team. We have a lot more turnovers when he isn’t in the lineup, as we have no one close to his ball handling skills. I’m looking forward to getting him back in the lineup next week.

Kappe Update: Kyle’s playing time (16.8 minutes) jumped with two starts during the injury run we had, but his points per game stay the same (4.1). He still hasn’t found his jump shot (38%), and shouldn’t be even trying the three’s (20%). On a side note, he got a mild concussion mid-month that sidelined him for three days.

[SirFozzie]

Probably from his coach slapping him upside his head after another perimiter mistake :)

[Peregrine]

Godzilla, I'm thinking about starting a small FBCB dynasty of my own, but I'm not sure how to post the print screen output from the game so it will show up in the posts in the right order, etc. What's the deal with the little /code/ markers by all of your data, do I have to enter it in some special way?

Edited - Hmm, looks like you just add code /code, okay. Guess that was easy after all! :(

[Godzilla Blitz]

February 2013

Results

UC Riverside 2012 Season Schedule

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
02/02/13 at Illinois-Chicago L 91-70 13-5 (4-3)
02/07/13 at Savannah State W 111-106 14-5 (5-3)
02/09/13 at Southeast Missouri State L 99-72 14-6 (5-4)
02/12/13 Illinois-Chicago W 91-75 15-6 (6-4)
02/14/13 Southeast Missouri State W 75-61 16-6 (7-4)
02/16/13 at Tennessee State W 87-74 17-6 (8-4)
02/21/13 Alabama A&M L 83-67 17-7 (8-5)
02/23/13 Austin Peay L 107-81 17-8 (8-6)
02/28/13 at Tennessee Tech L 91-75 17-9 (8-7)
03/02/13 Tennessee State W 78-68 18-9 (9-7)
03/04/13 Binghamton W 89-52 19-9
03/05/13 vs. Austin Peay

We drop our third in a row at the start of the month, as Illinois-Chicago outshoots us from the three-point line to pick up the victory. We badly need a win to stop the slide into oblivion. Thankfully, we’ll have PG Thomas Welch back for our next game. Things don’t change much, though, as we trail by 15 points in the second half against Savannah State. But Jason Hamilton goes on fire, scoring the bulk of his team-record 35 points in the second half, and we blow by Savannah in our highest scoring game ever: a 111-106 victory. This is the first time we’ve ever scored more than 100 points in a game! Wow!

Our optimism is unfounded, though, as first-place Southeast Missouri State crushes us with ease on the road in our next game. We’ve now lost four of our last five conference games and have fallen firmly into the middle of the pack, two and a half games out of first place. With seven games to go, we need to get back on track, and do it now. I take a chance and change strategies for our next game; we switch to a high pace, high press game. I’ve noticed that our bench players seem to outperform our opponents, and I’m hoping that a faster game can get us more time with our bench against our opponents’.

The strategy seems to work against Illinois-Chicago, as we get 27 points from Hernandez in our first easy win in a long time. Next up, first-place Southeast Missouri State comes to Riverside in a must-win game for us, and we get equal results this time: our pressing defense forces 24 turnovers and we win comfortably. The win leaves us one game behind Tennessee Tech, who sits in first place. With four games to go, our hopes are soaring.

Alas, it was not to be. Alabama A&M, Austin Peay, and Tennesse Tech absolutely destroy us in our next three games, as our high pace game seems to wear us out more than them, and our conference championship hopes are crushed. The three losses are a devastating end to what had started out as such a promising season.

With nothing but pride to play for, the team rebounds for big wins against Tennessee State and non-conference Binghamton to end our regular season. We end the year at 19-9, but our 9-7 conference record is only good for fourth place.

We draw fifth-place Austin Peay in the Ohio Valley Conference tournament. Their powerful inside game scored over 100 points against us in our two regular season match-ups, both of which games were never close. A conference tourney title would do a lot to put a shine on this season, and to do it we’ll need to find someway to stop them.

[Vince]

Wow, tough for you to come back after those injuries...hopefully next year will be a bit of a better year.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Sir Fozzie: Poor Kyle really can't defend the outside, but he's been playing well at power forward. Depending on how the new guy that we recruited there looks, Kappe could see a lot of action up there next season.

Peregrine: Glad you figured it out.

Vince: The frustrating part is making it through that stretch and still being in contention, then blowing those three games at the end when we were healthy. I can't help but think that my "high pace, high press" strategy matched up well against a the two teams we beat, but was probably the wrong choice against the other teams.

I think, though, that we're capable of beating anyone in the conference if I can just hit on the right strategy. I'm hoping we have a good run in the tourney.

[Godzilla Blitz]

March 2013

Ohio Valley Conference Tournament Results

Round 1 vs. Austin Peay

Austin Peay has a monster center and a monster power forward. They are scoring machines from the paint and shut down the inside game at the other end. The two games we have played them during the season were disasters: they shut down our inside game and rolled over us on offense, winning 103-71 in the first game and 107-81 in the second. We radically alter our game plan to try to meet the challenge. We bring our best three-point shooters into the game, switch our offensive focus to outside shooting, and plan to drop three-point bombs over their human wall. On defense, we’ll exclusively run a 2-3 zone, double down on their scoring machines, and get our best post defenders into the game as much as possible. If we can hit threes and slow down their inside game, we might have a chance.

The strategy starts out hot, as Hernandez threads the needle with threes, and we jam the middle with bodies on defense. We quickly get a big 11-point lead. But before long, Austin Peay starts dropping in shots from the outside, and our hot hand goes cold. They blow by us to take a double-digit lead of their own, and things look grim. We hit some shots, though, right before the half and manage to close within two points at the break. We have hope, though, as the ones scoring for them are their guards, from the outside: their big men inside have only a handful of points. In the second half, their big center runs into foul trouble, and Hernandez gets hot for us. He hits everything, Hagar starts slashing through their weakened inside defense, and their outside shooting goes cold. Their game disintegrates, and we pull away to an easy 93-80 victory! Hernandez ends up with 33 points. The strategy worked!

[tucker342]

Great stuff as usual GB. It's about time that they upgraded the training facility!:)

[JAG]

Wow GB, good strategy. You've come a long way from not knowing what SF stands for. :) Hope you can keep it up for the rest of the tourn!

[Eilim]

Just wanted to chime in with another "great job" post. This dynasty inpsired me to pick up the game even though I'm pretty much lost when in comes to anything beyond the basics in basketball.

Hopefully I can lead Boston U. to greatness. First thing I did after taking over the team was schedule a home and home with UC Riverside. :)

[Peregrine]

Eilim, the coaching assistant who I am following in my dynasty, A Would-Be Head Coach, did two seasons with BU. Didn't have much of a chance to lead them to greatness though, hopefully you'll have better luck!

Great game against A-P, keep up the good work Godzilla.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Tucker: I am very excited about the new nets and balls. Who knows, maybe we'll even get hot water in the showers!

JAG: Thanks! That Austin Peay game was the most satisfying win for me in the dynasty to date. Having lost the two previous games so badly, I figured I had nothing to lose by trying a new strategy. It was fun trying to figure out what might work. I was surprised we won, but it sure felt good to beat them like that. There is still a lot I don't understand about the defenses, but I feel like things are starting to make more sense.

Eilim: I'm glad you've enjoyed the dynasty. Thanks. I hope you enjoy the game. I found that the "recommend" button is very helpful when learning the game, even if you only use it as a starting point. Good luck!

Peregrine: Thanks!

[Godzilla Blitz]

March 2013

Ohio Valley Conference Tournament Results

Semi-final vs. Tennessee Tech

Conference winner Tennessee Tech is a much more balanced team than Austin Peay, but I like how we match up against them on paper. During the season we won the first game handily, but lost the second game playing our fast pace game. I can see that the fast pace was a mistake: they are in better shape than we are. However, I think a balanced game on both offense and defense should put us in a good position to win: across the board we have better players, and our top five should be able to overwhelm their defenses. We change our game plan accordingly.

The first half is a back-and-forth game with neither team able to open up any kind of a lead. It ends with us down by two. Early in the second half, Tennessee Tech’s big center—their whole inside game—picks up his fourth foul, and with that, the tide swings. We start cutting through their defense and their inside offense grinds to a halt. By the midway point in the half, we’ve got a 10-point lead, and we never look back. We hold the lead and go on to win 74-66. We’re heading to the final! A win there will take us to the tournament!

[JAG]

Looks like someone might be in line for another coaching award this year...:) Good luck in the final!

[Godzilla Blitz]

JAG: Thanks!

March 2013

Ohio Valley Conference Tournament Results

Final vs. Southeast Missouri State

We split the season series against third-place Southeast Missouri State. We lost badly playing a straight up game with Welch injured, then won handily by playing a fast paced game with lots of pressing on defense. We’ll lean towards what worked for us last time, and plan to press as much as we can; they have weak passing skills, and with luck we can force a lot of turnovers like we did the last time we met. Otherwise, we’ll stay balanced, as we seem to match up fairly well against them in all other areas. If we can pick up a dozen extra possessions and play them evenly elsewhere, we should win.

We start out shooting hot, and quickly pull out to a 10-point lead. Southeast Missouri State fights back, though, and our pressing defense seems to only be getting us in foul trouble. By the half they are right back in the game, our lead is down to three, and we’ve got a handful of players on the verge of foul problems. In the second half they start pulling away. With 12 minutes to go, they’ve got an 8-point lead, and everything is going in the wrong direction. However, from that point on, Hernandez starts landing shot after shot, and within a few minutes we’ve swung the score 15 points and opened up a 7-point lead of our own. We cruise from there, and end up with an 81-70 victory! Hernandez is our high scorer, with 25. We’re going to the dance! Yahoo!

We learn a few days later that we’re the #13 seed in the Midwest, and will face 23-8 Texas, at the #4 seed. They’ve got an RPI-rank of 9, and rank #2 in the polls. Yikes. Looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us. I don’t think we’ll be at the dance very long.

[The_herd]

Wow, great season. You turned around a season that looked like it was quickly headed down the crapper.

[JAG]

Time to pull a Gonzaga!

[Godzilla Blitz]

The_herd: Thanks! It felt good to win that tournament. That took the edge off those three losses that cost us the conference.

JAG: We'll try, but Texas is, like, um, really good.

[Godzilla Blitz]

March 2013

NCAA Tournament Results

Round 1 vs. Texas

In many ways Texas resembles Austin Peay. They both have outstanding inside games led by a center and power forward that can dominate at both ends of the court. However, Texas is different in two other ways. First, they have an outside game to complement the inside game, and second, all of their players are much better than the players on Austin Peay. Their two inside men have ratings over 90! Yikes! On paper, we are clearly outmatched in every category. We have to attack their relative weaknesses, though, and if anything, their outside game is a level below their inside game. We set up a strategy similar to the one we employed against Austin Peay: plug up the middle on defense and shoot from the outside on offense. We’ve got to make their shooters beat us on the perimeter. There is no way we can play with this team on the inside.

It’s apparent early on that we are in trouble: by plugging up the middle, we are leaving too much open on the outside. Texas is getting open shots and making us pay the price for plugging up inside. It’s also apparent that we can’t stop them inside even if we double down on people: their inside game is clicking as well. Inexorably, despite good shooting on our part, they pull out to a 10-point lead by the half. Things disintegrate more in the second half. We start turning the ball over, they continue to score at will, and we run into foul trouble. When the dust settles, we’ve lost 94-60, and our season comes to an end. They end up shooting 67% from the 3-point line, and we barely slowed them inside. They were simply a much better team than us.

[Godzilla Blitz]

2012/13 Wrap Up

All things considered, I’m happy with this year. Bouncing back to win the conference tournament was a big plus, as it was nice to make our second trip to the NCAA tournament, albeit short-lived. There is some frustration that we let a good chance to win the conference slip away, but we’re only graduating one scholarship, so with luck, we should be right back there next year.

I’ll post the final figures, then move on to next year.

[Godzilla Blitz]

2012/13 Final Conference Standings

CW CL Pct W L Pct
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tennessee Tech 11 5 .688 19 11 .633
Tennessee-Martin 10 6 .625 19 12 .613
Southeast Missouri State 10 6 .625 16 15 .516
UC Riverside 9 7 .563 22 10 .688
Austin Peay 9 7 .563 17 12 .586
Illinois-Chicago 9 7 .563 13 16 .448
Alabama A&M 6 10 .375 9 20 .310
Savannah State 5 11 .313 11 19 .367
Tennessee State 3 13 .188 7 22 .241

[Godzilla Blitz]

Final Stats 2012/13

Here’s the numbers on the team:

UC Riverside Player Averages

Name Pos G GS Min Pts OReb Reb Ast Stl Blk TO Fl
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Chris Hernandez PG 29 29 29.0 17.9 1.0 2.4 3.2 1.2 0.2 2.0 2.5
Jason Hamilton C 32 31 24.1 13.2 2.5 8.5 1.3 0.3 0.0 1.5 2.5
Clement Hagar SG 32 11 20.4 11.4 0.8 3.4 1.8 0.5 0.1 1.6 1.5
Thomas Welch PG 25 23 25.0 6.8 0.8 2.3 4.7 0.9 0.0 1.5 2.2
Tyson Mestas SG 32 3 13.2 6.2 0.6 2.0 1.2 0.6 0.1 0.8 1.3
Sonny Putnam C 26 26 29.1 5.6 2.2 9.7 1.6 0.9 0.7 2.0 2.7
Richard Hand SF 32 28 21.4 5.5 0.5 4.0 1.3 0.4 0.1 1.5 1.8
Irwin Spicer C 32 1 13.1 5.1 1.2 3.3 0.8 0.5 0.2 0.8 1.8
Kyle Kappe SF 32 3 15.9 4.1 0.8 2.8 1.4 0.7 0.2 0.6 1.7
Bernard Harrison PF 32 5 8.5 1.8 0.6 1.9 0.4 0.1 0.1 0.4 0.8
Deangelo Perez SF 32 0 6.2 1.8 0.1 1.0 0.5 0.2 0.1 0.5 0.7
Ronald Presnell PF 32 0 8.0 1.3 0.7 2.2 0.7 0.3 0.7 0.5 0.9
Winfred Garcia PF 0 0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
Albert Goodwin PG 0 0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
Loren Muir SG 0 0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

UC Riverside Player Shooting Stats

Name Pos FGM FGA FG% FTM FTA FT% 3PM 3PA 3P%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chris Hernandez PG 177 396 .447 75 103 .728 89 206 .432
Jason Hamilton C 158 307 .515 106 196 .541 0 2 .000
Clement Hagar SG 133 277 .480 59 91 .648 40 99 .404
Thomas Welch PG 58 161 .360 39 67 .582 15 58 .259
Tyson Mestas SG 68 158 .430 28 47 .596 34 84 .405
Sonny Putnam C 62 142 .437 22 40 .550 0 1 .000
Richard Hand SF 67 187 .358 26 43 .605 16 71 .225
Irwin Spicer C 61 124 .492 41 57 .719 1 1 1.000
Kyle Kappe SF 51 118 .432 19 29 .655 11 46 .239
Bernard Harrison PF 20 54 .370 18 28 .643 0 0 .000
Deangelo Perez SF 18 33 .545 10 13 .769 12 20 .600
Ronald Presnell PF 16 42 .381 8 12 .667 0 0 .000
Winfred Garcia PF 0 0 .000 0 0 .000 0 0 .000
Albert Goodwin PG 0 0 .000 0 0 .000 0 0 .000
Loren Muir SG 0 0 .000 0 0 .000 0 0 .000

[Godzilla Blitz]

Kyle Kappe Update

Kyle ended up averaging almost 16 minutes a game, which should help him develop for next year. His scoring stayed the same, and it is clear that he needs to work on his offensive game. On a positive note, his shooting did improve over the back half of the season. His plus-minus rating took a dive during that time, but so did everyone else’s, so that is not a big concern.

Looking toward the future, with power forward Sonny Putman graduating, there is an opening at the position, and Kyle will get a chance to prove himself. However, our lone recruit—power forward Andrew Hartnett--was the #85 player in the land, and Winfred Garcia is a talented power forward that spent the season redshirting. To start, Kappe’s will either have to beat out these two players, or somehow find a way to defend the perimeter so we can start him at small forward.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Player Awards

We pick up three minor awards and two bigger ones. PG Chris Hernandez makes 1st-team All Conference, and Clement Hagar gets Conference Freshman of the Year. Fan-favorite Kyle Kappe makes the Conference All-Freshman Team!


JR. PG Chris Hernandez First Team All Conference
FR. SG Clement Hagar Conference Freshman of the Year

[SirFozzie]

I'd consider running a 2-3 or other zone type, have him drop at a PF

[Calis]

Alright, back and finally had a chance to catch up on everything.

Looking good, nice work this season, congrats on the NCAA Tourney appearance!

As for Kappe, that's a tough call, is there any chance that Hartnett will be redshirted this year? With Garcia and Kappe both being pretty decent, it might be worth it to give him another year to really become Riverside's Uber player.

Then again, I'm always redshirt happy. I try and redshirt every guy I can who is worth a crap.

Good luck!

[JAG]

Ah well GB, good try for the Texas game. Looks like next year should be a strong one for Riverside.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Sir Fozzie: Thanks! I might give that a try, but I'm going to see what everyone looks like next season first.

Calis: Welcome back. I'll take a look at Harnett's card once he gets into camp, but I'm guessing that, yes, he will redshirt next year.

JAG: Texas was awesome. They ended up losing to Temple, who went on to win the tourney.

[Godzilla Blitz]

April 2013

A new season dawns, and we get a slew of emails…

Wow! We got the Ohio Valley Conference Coach of the Year Award! That’s our fifth such award in a decade. Unfortunately, it does not come with any coaching skill increase. I was hopeful, but I’m guessing you’ve got to be higher up in the conference standings to have that happen.

Also, I am stunned when I read the second email: The Board of Directors has decided to improve the facilities yet again this year! Wow! I’ve got a pile of new Wilson basketballs here, new white net strings on our rims, and shiny wax on the court, and now they are going to do even more! Luxury! Our facilities make a jump to 10 during the offseason, and we can look forward to even more next year! I’m feeling the love!

We also see our prestige jump four points. Slowly but surely, we’re making progress:

UC Riverside
Prestige: 33 (+4)
2012/13 Goal: Compete for the Conference Championship

Apparently we were close enough to the top of the standings that the board is once again delighted with my performance. I decide to push the issue, and put in a request for more money in the budget this year. I’d like to try to hang on to our assistant, but with four scholarships coming up, I won’t have enough left in the recruiting pool if I do so. You’ve shown me the love, now show me the money!

Our history so far, which now spans a decade:


UC Riverside Historical Performances

Season W L CW CL Rank RPI Prs Result
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2012 22 10 9 7 77 80 33 Loss in NCAA Tourney Round 1
2011 13 16 6 10 237 231 29 No Postseason
2010 21 11 11 5 85 95 28 Loss in FBIT Preliminary Round
2009 21 8 11 3 95 85 23 No Postseason
2008 22 10 8 6 104 106 17 Loss in NCAA Tourney Round 1
2007 16 14 8 6 215 256 11 No Postseason
2006 9 20 4 10 324 324 8 No Postseason
2005 15 14 7 7 249 293 8 No Postseason
2004 15 14 4 10 242 280 4 No Postseason
2003 4 24 1 17 327 327 3 No Postseason

UC Riverside Trophy Case

Season Trophy
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2012 Ohio Valley Conference Tourney Champion
2009 Mid-Continent Conference Champion
2008 Mid-Continent Conference Champion
2008 Mid-Continent Conference Tourney Champion

Although we only landed one player last year, we end up with the #91 class in the nation. The scouting bureau really liked Andrew Hartnett, our new freshman.

Well, on to the season we go. We’ve got most of our team back, and could be a threat this year. Our staff/recruiting balance could be a problem, but we’ll find that out next…

[Godzilla Blitz]

May 2013

We are swamped with job offers. Wow! Most come from level 3 conference teams, and although the offers are tempting, now that we’ve got two facility upgrades in the works, I’m sticking around here. I politely turn down all offers.

We turn to our staff, where we are faced with a big decision. I’d love to keep Frank Moncrief, our talented assistant, but his salary in nearly $100,000, and that doesn’t leave us left to recruit four scholarships effectively. With no answer yet on the budget increase, I decide to make the move to enable us to recruit effectively: I fire Moncrief. We go after a guy roughly half his salary, with significantly less skill, and land him on our first try. We also lose our recruiting coach, and end up paying $10,000 more to get someone of comparable quality. When it’s all said and done, we’ve saved roughly $35,000 this year to get the following crew on board:

2013/14 Staff
Recruiter: Albert Gonzalez (46 years old) Skill: 40
Scout: Solomon Porch (41 years old) Skill: 41
Asst. Coach: Ronald Ansley (33 years old) Offense: 46 Defense: 56 (-16 from last year)

I can live with this. Ansley is not as good as Moncrief, but still much better than we’re used to.

[Godzilla Blitz]

June 2013

With so many FBCB dynasties running at FOF, I decide to schedule Classics against teams from dynasties that are currently active. That will help keep them to a manageable number. That means, this year we’ll have: Govols Classic I, Hollmt Classic IV, Pearl Floyd Classic I, Peregrine Classic I, and the Vince Classic V (special exemption). As dynasties come to life and fade away, I’ll keep modifying this lineup.

We try to bump our schedule up a notch this year. We schedule a few games against level 3 conference teams. We end up with this:


UC Riverside 2013 Season Schedule

Date Opponent Result Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11/17/13 Liberty (Govols Classic I)
11/21/13 Navy (Hollmt Classic IV)
11/25/13 at UC Santa Barbara (Vince Classic V)
11/29/13 at Arkansas
12/03/13 at Towson (Pearl Floyd Classic I)
12/07/13 Lafayette (Peregrine Classic I)
12/09/13 UC Irvine
12/11/13 at Morris Brown
12/15/13 La Salle
12/18/13 Long Beach State
12/22/13 at Idaho State
12/31/13 at Southeastern Louisiana
01/04/14 Savannah State
01/09/14 at Illinois-Chicago
01/11/14 at Savannah State
01/18/14 Sam Houston
01/23/14 at Oral Roberts
01/25/14 Southeast Missouri State
01/30/14 Illinois-Chicago
02/01/14 Austin Peay
02/06/14 at Sam Houston
02/08/14 Alabama A&M
02/11/14 at Southeast Missouri State
02/13/14 Tennessee-Martin
02/15/14 at Tennessee-Martin
02/22/14 at Alabama A&M
02/27/14 Oral Roberts
03/01/14 at Austin Peay

[Godzilla Blitz]

July 2013– October 2014

Preseason Recruiting

We’ll graduate four key players this year, three of them top notch guards. Our targets this year will be: PG, PG, SG, and SF. If I see something really good elsewhere, I might swap one of these targets out. We’ll have our work cut out with four scholarships.

We take an initial look at the recruiting pool, and things look a bit better than they have in the past. We’ve got four three-star recruits that like us from the start, and all of them are ranked in the 200’s. We aim a bit higher though, and scour the country for talent. After a while we settle on three guards that express interest in our program: PG Paul Powers, PG Timothy Room, and PG Alvin Tyler. Unfortunately, we are having trouble locating a small forward scholarship candidate. As we enter the fall, we are looking good on all three of our point guard prospects until Arizona comes hunting after Powers. His interest in our program drops to average. Crap. We stick with our three targets, though, and continue to look for a small forward, or someone that we can use.

Just as we head into training camp, PG Alvin Tyler commits to us, and that makes one down, three to go. We’ll continue to work on other targets, but the focus on the three point guards has sucked up most of our funds so far, and there doesn’t seem to be too much left out there. This might be an off-year for us recruiting.

[JAG]

How highly ranked are the guys you've mentioned?

I know once you tried going after a 4-star recruit, but is that basically hopeless? Do all the 4-stars flock to the bigger better-funded programs?

[Godzilla Blitz]

I'll have to check the game when I get on my computer later, but they are all three-star, probably ranked in the 100's or so, except for Room, who's somewhere around #50. There aren't many four-star recruits, and they all hate us, every year, all the time. I've tried enticing a few of them at different times over the past decade, but even the best hookers and fastest cars don't get them to budge.

I think we've got a good chance to get guys ranked in the 100's because the AI for the lower conferences seems a little soft on recruiting. Realistically, we should really have to fight for guys in the 200's, I would think. The guy (Hartnett) we got last year was ranked better than 100, but he was from Hawaii, and I think the computer is still a bit less aggressive in going after those guys. This year, Room is from overseas as well.

I think we need another coaching level jump or two, more budget money, and a bit more school prestige to make a big jump in quality of recruits we're getting. This is going to be a long journey.