The 50-year Challenge (FBCB2/FBPB3)
 

I started this dynasty as a 50-year trek to see how David Harris would do as a coach at Hilton Head Institute, his alma mater in the D3 ranks. After 25 years, he retired. I've decided to go on with Hilton Head Institute and see how they do into the future.

I've now turned this mostly into a dynasty with various scenarios following this D3 league comprised of a few fictional schools and largely real ones, with a fictional pro league to go with it.

You can view the league HTML: COLLEGE | PRO LEAGUE

So the first thing I had to do was create a new program. I wanted to make sure we were in a conference that wasn't too difficult because if I have to be there 50 years, I wanted it to be less than the worst slog ever. Nonetheless...I thought I'd let location dictate where we ended up, without ruling out being an independent because while I know that's a tough gig -- especially for 50 years -- I sort of like the idea of having to pick my own schedule year in and year out.

Anyway, I went to see what states didn't have D3 schools in them. In real life excluding Alaska and Hawaii, the following states don't have D3 schools:

Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Carolina, Utah, Wyoming

But I've added D3 schools to Arizona, Florida and Wyoming in this dynasty before I started so they're all off-limits. So that leaves us with South Carolina as the largest state without a D3 school.

I like New Mexico because it gives me access to both Texas, Arizona and California, though. Fewer schools in the east though.

So I ultimately decide to put my new university in Hilton Head, SC.

We're going to play in the upstate Southern Athletic Association (SAA) as that league's 9th team. The league used to have 9 teams until Florida Poly left to join the Sunset Conference, the most dominant league in my game. (Comprised of fictional or extent schools. Florida Poly exists, but isn't fully established yet.)

Hilton Head Institute Beachpounders

The first year of a created team is transfers and walkons galore. I think we'll be able to fill out a decent team nonetheless with 13 scholarships to offer. I'm not sure I'll try to give them all away, but...I'd prefer to start off successfully than struggle and have to rebuild with a bad team from the outset.

We're in for the long haul, but having surprising success and getting the prestige higher is going to be huge.

I'm not sure you want to be bored with a stat dump of who I recruited, though from the outset. So maybe I'll just highlight the useful ones, talk about our seasons as I sim them and go from there?

Let's try that for a while and see where it lands us.

Because it's Hilton Head, I made sure we have one of the season tournaments. I renamed one of them the Hilton Head Invitational, so at least we'll always get an invite to it. It makes sense given the location and it's a holiday event, so we'll get good schools to come and beat up on us year after year and maybe someday in the distant future we'll actually have a spot there and be worthy of participating.

Or not.

Here's the head coach.

Year 1, HHI went 2-29 (0-16 in the SAA)
Year 2 was a bit better, 9-24 (2-14)

The goal here is really to just see how much long-term success I can have using a really, really bad team without much in the way of enhancements. I imagine it'll be this way for a really long time. In the meantime, all I can do is attempt to recruit as well as possible given the constraints and schedule a weak non-conference in the hopes of getting some wins.

Year 3. The team has a breakthrough and goes 18-17, including 9-7 in conference play. A huge season which results in Coach Harris being named SAA Coach of the Year. No post-season of course, but still a big jump which hopefully will be the beginning of great things. Or at least a bump from a prestige of 1.

To keep it interesting (for me), I've done a few things. For starters, I'm going to do a recap at ten years to see where things are and how much progress we've made.

The other thing we'll do is, I'm going to use the coach salary calculator I made last year to figure out what this guy's salary is over the years that he coaches. It was made for bigger leagues, but it'll work for a D3 league so long as I don't calculate any bonuses like the big leagues have.

Based on the calculations, Coach Harris started his career making $36,539 per season at HHI. He's currently making $45,642 into his 7th year with the school.

In the 7th season, I activated a 4th tournament so more schools could have access to a post-season tournament. I didn't think it'd benefit us now, but down the road it might have some positive implications for our prospects.

Judging from our performance now, it's pretty clear the team is a long way away from contending for a post-season berth. But the interesting thing is, if we can get through 50 years is seeing who the next head coach will be after spending 50 years with the same guy on the sidelines.

As I head into Year 9 with Coach Harris, all I could think to myself is "the only thing saving him is the fact that I'm trying to map out a storyline here. Nonetheless, this isn't especially an unusual thing in a D3 program. Consider Coach Harris as a friend of the AD. Or maybe he's also a baseball coach and the team is really good, so they don't really care about basketball at all. I've seen guys manage to string together good careers just hanging out being terrible, but having the right people on their side.

Or maybe we'll just come to believe that the institution isn't concerned with trying to produce good teams, so long as the students graduate?

Well okay.

After ten years, here's the verdict on the ol' ball coach. His salary is now at $49,048, a modest increase from where he was a few years ago. Par for the D3 course financially, but he's not exactly setting anyone's world on fire.

So we'll go another ten years and see if anything improves. Doing this challenge in a D3 league adds a degree of difficulty to the game that I think maybe you wouldn't have in a conventional league. I have nothing to back that up, other than reading past dynasties people have done in this particular challenge. But there are a lot more teams, there's no team quite this bad and so...

We had improvement in Year 10, but still the elusive post-season berth has yet to arrive or even come close.

After 17 seasons, HHI has managed a post-season appearance, but all in all, it's business as usual.

For season 18, the administration have agreed to leave the SAA. The league doesn't like having an uneven number of teams anymore and Hilton Head just isn't competitive with the rest of the league. Alas, the 'Pounders will become an independent going forward.

This story for me, will become a real one once we've reached the end of Coach Harris's career. I'm not sure we're going to go all 50 years with him at the helm, though. I start to detach from reality once we get into too distant into the future. So he might just last say, 25 years and then I'll begin the actual storyline of where I'd like things to go the rest of the way out. He's making $52,146

In any case, here's how the team is doing:


The other thing is, the independents do actually play a game against each other during the year, so that's at least 9 guaranteed games per year. While it won't matter right this second, it might make it easier for the team to schedule in a manner that gives them a shot at a postseason bid and maybe, down the road, entrance into another league.

I wouldn't book a reservation immediately, though.

I intentionally created a pet conference of dominant teams called the Sunset Conference. It's a league of 8 teams now, but at its height there were as many as 14. Anyway, it's the most dominant league in this universe and it's not unusual for all eight teams to be ranked through the year and to make the post-season. It's just unusual for this level to put it mildly. But I sort of enjoy the narrative.

To understand the league's dominance in context, here's the story. This past season (1997) was the first time two non-Sunset teams appeared in the NCAA Finals since 1973, when Chicago and Lanesborough appeared in the championship game. But Lanesborough was a former Sunset team. You'd have to go all the way back to 1958 to see two teams that never played in the Sunset Conference in the final until it happened this past year.

After 21 years (and an increase in coaching talent over the years) Coach Harris has used being an independent to help the team make the post-season a few more times, including back to back CIT appearances. Team prestige is now at 15. Not bad, when you consider how down in the dumps this team was for so long.

I'm still pretty sure we're going to end his tenure at 25 years. I'm tempted to keep him going, since things are going better. But I'd rather not waste more good years having a sense of who the league's teams dominant teams are and I'm already losing a handle on that, so would prefer to take over with a new coach after 25 years at the helm.

Heading into the 25th season, Coach Harris is making $60,981. He's announced that it'll be his final season behind the bench at HHI. The school is proud of the strides they've made, including coming off an NIT appearance last year, which was the first time the team made that tournament.

The next job after this year is finding who will helm the team into the next generation.

Here's Coach Harris's record up to now:


The 25th season isn't going so hot and doesn't seem to make me think that we'll see anyone wanting a revival of the farewell tour again next season.

There is some talk that the SUNSET Conference is going to expand for the first time in over thirty years and that two of the target schools on their list are HHI and an unnamed southern school. The logic of these moves have nothing to do with competitiveness -- D3 moves often don't -- but geography. The league only has one team in the south -- Florida Poly -- and most schools aren't interested in joining the bloodbath that is D3's toughest conference night in and night out.

It would be a huge step up for HHI, but...with a renewed commitment and a new regime leading the program, it might be a very interesting pathway for the program.

David Harris is just seven losses away from 500 losses. He's currently 9th all-time in losses.


Only two of the coaches above him have all of their losses with the same program -- Garth McCracken (St. Mary's MD) and Morris Manor (Amherst) before he was fired there.

So he's surely had his chance to prove he's got some chops and that time seems to be over in my mind.

He ended his 2001 season at 14-18 to end his career at HHI at 334-497.


He's won 4 Conference Coach of the Year awards (two in the SAA, two in the Independents) and obviously will be the winningest coach in HHI history until someone shows up to follow his legacy.

If the old days of playing in the SAA were brutal, there're nothing like what's about to happen in the Sunset Conference. D3's toughest league is just that. No nights off.

The league's southern expansion will include: Southern Kentucky College (Hopkinsville, KY), Hagerstown State (Hagerstown, MD) and Georgia Gwinnett (Lawrenceville, GA)

That brings the league back to 12. Still, it remains an opportunity for the upstarts to begin to compete on the highest levels of D3 basketball and if it works out for them, could be huge.

So now that David Harris has retired, HHI has decided to really get serious about its athletic programs. The institution sees itself as a D3 powerhouse in the making (ha) and believes that with the renewed focus from alumni, they can really get to the upper echelons of low-level basketball.

The first thing they've done is to upgrade the head coach position. So the new Head Coach for men's basketball will also serve as athletic director for the entire program. This means they can pay more than they'd ever be able to pay a basketball coach full-time normally.

The salary is up to $85,541 for the new coach. So they're hanging a shingle to see if an experience, veteran coach with a program is looking to relocate. Plus, Hilton Head isn't a bad place to live so that helps too.

Looking at trends in D3 hiring, the situation is that a lot of D2 and D1 assistants (and specifically D2 head coaches in some cases, with a few JUCO outliers) will come to D3 programs. Even a few D1 coaches who can't get jobs elsewhere because of age, infractions (Jim O'Brien) or simply having experience at all three levels will look for a comfortable situation once they've made their money.

For a program like ours, money will talk, coupled with location. I think you could plausibly recruit different kinds of people. The school doesn't want to hire a young head coach though. The preference would be to have an experienced head coach come in and then maybe hire an assistant who can learn under him and become head coach in waiting so whenever the guy retires he can take over.

The thing about a place that sticks with a coach for 25 years no matter how bad the team does, is they don't really like change. So you're simply not going to get a place like this to get a guy who doesn't want to remain for a long, long time unless he dies or something.

So with that in mind, let's take a look at the finalists for the head coaching job at Hilton Head Institute.

Charles Coe


ELIOT TIDWELL


CHRIS WOOD


Coe is the seasoned veteran of the three. I like that he's been a head coach before and that he's coached really good programs as an assistant. He's the sort of dude looking for that last job that he can stay in until retirement and he has the chops to help, regardless of his overall record.

I love Tidwell and wish there was a way to hire him as an assistant to the program, because he'd be a great head coach in waiting situation for us. But he's not going to leave where he is if he can't get the head coaching job and I don't blame him. Plus, Coe is only 9 years older so they'd run parallel to each other, but if it were possible, that'd be a really cool staff.

I like that he's younger and is a strong X's and O's guy.

Wood is a young guy who has never been a head coach, working with a major D3 program after some time in D1. I think he's solid and balanced.

All three of these guys are better than Coach Harris ever was, so no matter what we end up doing, we'll get a huge upgrade at head coach. All of his assistants will also be let go, so there will be an entirely new staff at the helm of this program going into next year, which will be interesting to see how it works but should be good for the bottom line.

Basically if we're looking purely at records, I'd rather have Tidwell. He's shown some potential as a head coach. Coe hasn't. Plus, I think we could entice Coe to come on as an assistant potentially whereas Tidwell is the real talent here.

In any case...we'll need to decide what to do and then get on with it.

I've also decided to create a parallel pro league.

The new story is:


So we'll follow both how Hilton Head does, as well as Hilton Head alums into the NBA.

If I may make a request for a team for your parallel pro league, I would like to request that Wichita, KS be given a team. Closest thing there is to a pro team here is Kansas City, unless you count independent baseball (Wichita Wingnuts) as a pro sport.

Great job with this, looking forward to seeing how it plays out.

The Basketball Association of America begins in 1948.

Here's the original setup:


In 1950, we expanded by 4 teams.


In 1952, Little Rock moved to Reno, NV and became the Reno Rollers. Atlantic City moved to Allentown, PA to become the Allentown Dukes.

We play a 48-game season in the BAA, the playoffs take the top 6 teams -- division champs get byes -- and the playoffs are NCAA/NFL style for right now, 1 game only, no series. This might change down the road.

For ease of simming -- and to get historical records with dudes mostly on the same teams -- I turned finances off over there. That'll probably change as we get closer to the modern era, but even then, I anticipate we'll always operate that league with far lower salaries than real life, just to see how it all plays out.

I opted not to do the promotion/relegation structure though. Just a single league, eventually we'll get to a modern sized league, I anticipate. Just sort of making it up as I go along.

Thanks for reading. I'm glad I had a team in Kansas even before I saw this! Now to give them a better name.

In 1961, we expanded by 4 more teams and finally went to a 4-division setup, still with only one conference (NBA conferences are silly..not sure we want to adopt that model)

The owners agreed to expand the season now to a 54-game regular season and the playoffs will now take 8 teams. The post-season seeding will take the two teams with the best record to get top seeds and for the first time ever, each of the playoff rounds will be best-of-3 games.

In 1974, the BAA expanded by 4 more teams to go to 24. Regular season will go to 58 games. Playoffs will now include the top 10 teams and will use a 1-3-3-5 format.

Here's the list of past titles up through 1973:


Wichita went on a Celtics-like run in the 60s

In 1975, Harrisburg moved to Cape Coral, FL and became the Florida Tropics. Colorado Springs moved to Aurora, CO and became the Colorado 14ers. Chattanooga Choo-Choos moved to Savannah, GA and became the Savannah Spirits. Finally, the Hartford Whalers moved to Columbia, SC and became the Carolina Comers.

Dayton moved to the Midwest division, Savannah moved to the Eastern Division and the Eastern Division was renamed the Southern Division.

I also turned on finances starting this season and the current salary cap is $1 million.

In 1982, the Colorado 14ers who had never made the playoffs until 1981 (going 20 years without a berth) moved to Fresno, CA and became the Fresno Crushers. The Cedar Rapids Shuckers moved to Sioux Falls, SD and became the Sioux Falls Swarm.

In 1984, Fort Worth moved to Albuquerque, NM and became the Albuquerque Chicos


In 1985, the league expanded to Riverside, CA adding the Riverside Orange giving the league an uneven number.

In 1986, the league evened out again, with the Omaha Oracles joining the Midwest Division. That season, the playoffs were expanded by two teams and the format changed to a 3-5-5-7 format and the regular season expanded to 66 games, the first change since 1974.

Speaking of Wichita, here's the best player in Larks history. A monster of a man if there ever was one. I've taken to importing D3 team players into modern teams (I had old draft files) but the earlier years were just fictional players from the game generation and well...



He's like the Bill Russell of the Larks or something. No one has won more rings than him, either. He has double the number of rebounds than anyone else in league history that's retired and retired as the all-time leading scorer as well. Just a tour de force.

In 1988, the Grand Rapids Griffins became the first (and to date, the only) BAA team to fold.

In 1989, a 26th team, the Jackson (MS) Five joined the league and entered the Southern Division and the 27th team, the Duluth (MN) Superiors.

The Reno Rollers also moved to Ft. Collins, Colorado and became the Ft. Collins Profs during that season.

Have yet to add the 28th team, but will before the 1999 season.

Hilton Head Institute hired Milford Assistant and former Fredonia State head coach Charles Coe as their 2nd head coach in school history. Coach Coe has experience with two programs as an assistant in the Sunset Conference, which many believe will help him lead the team and he is well known as a recruiter nationally.

Here's how the first regular season ended in the SUNSET Conference. Just to give you a sense of how dominant this league is. It's the SEC of college basketball.

In 1998, the Birmingham Greys moved to Mobile and became the Mobile Missiles.

In 1999, the Flint Cougars moved to Aurora, IL and became the Aurora Commodores. The Syracuse Pilots moved to Anchorage, Alaska and became the Anchorage Pilots. Dayton shifted to the North, El Paso to the Midwest and Anchorage to the Western division in the switch.

The BAA finally announced its 28th franchise, the New Hampshire Primaries will join the league in 2000, based in Manchester, NH.

In 2003, the Sunset Conference went to a divisional setup. In 2004, to boost interest in the pro game, young prospects are allowed to go directly from HS to the pros. The college game isn't happy about this, but...we'll see what sort of impact it has on the future of pro basketball and college basketball going forward.

Former HHI head coach David Harris headed to the BAA in 2003 as an assistant coach. We'll see if he ever makes it to a head job.

In 2002, New Hampshire's owner went bankrupt. The league couldn't buy the team fast enough, so the club folded. The BAA league office, immediately had to scramble to get a new team in place and weren't able to. So 2002 will go with a team short and in 2003, they'll be replaced.

In his 4th year with Hilton Head, Charles Coe has shown improvement. The team is playing better than when he started, owing to the growing pains of playing in a new league. Some say he should survive beyond his 5th year, but he has not signed another extension as of yet.

The BAA expanded the playoffs to 12 teams and the 1st round is now a best-of-five game series starting in 2003. The Sioux Falls Swarm moved to Jersey City, NJ in 2003 and became the Jersey City Skyliners.

In 2003, the Madison (WI) Trappers became the league's 28th active team. BAA officials indicate that the league will "get to 30 and stop," in the next few years, as increasing interest in pro basketball has sent the league seeking new markets to explore.

The league added a 5th division in 2003, as well. In 2004, the 29th and 30th teams, the Laredo (TX) Gulls and the Oberlin (OH) Apollos were the final two teams added.

Former Hilton Head Institute head coach for over 25 years David Harris in 2003 became GM of the Allentown Dukes organization.


COE SHOWN THE DOOR
In 2007, after a 13-21 season, Charles Coe didn't have his contract renewed by HHI after five years on the job. The program would then conduct a new national search to find just their third head men's basketball coach in school history. Coe took the head coaching job at Plattsburgh State shortly after the season ended.

"It's problematic, really. We liked him, it just wasn't really the right fit for the kind of program we're trying to build here," said athletic director L.J. Christopher.

In the same time, Maryland-Hagerstown won the NIT, despite being a relatively new upstart relative to HHI. This upset boosters to HHI and sent them sure that they could find a better person to oversee the program going forward. Their coach left after one yhear

Their first choice was Elliot Tidwell, who led independent UC-Santa Cruz to a Final Four two years ago and a Top 25 ranking and a Sweet 16 this past season.

Unfortunately, the opening at HHI came at the same time that his former program -- Pearl River -- was looking for a head coach and they took glee in bringing back their former assistant to run the program before he could be hired by anyone else.

In the end, the team decided to go the BAA route. They hired former all-star Toby Fowler to be their 3rd head coach in school history. Fowler, 42, has no head coaching experience at any level. He was an all-star, won a title and had a lot of interest from BAA teams about serving on their staffs post-retirement. He worked largely in the front office and as announcer over the past few years since leaving the league, but program officials at HHI think he's just the guy they need.

Here's his BAA record:



It's worth noting that HHI is currently a 42 prestige program in Year 30 of this experiment. Given those of you who have been with us since the days of sub 15 prestige, that's pretty unthinkable, especially since we never set the world on fire, but playing in a league like the SUNSET means you need the staff to compete or you'll get run over night in and night out.

TEAM PERFORMANCE HISTORY FOR HHI.

Here's the BAA team history listing through the end of the 2003 season:



Here's the league structure for the pro league through 2003. Hopefully, things will remain stable for a while.


Here's the 2004 BAA conference structure


The salary cap as of 2004 is $46,946,205 and it's a hard cap.

BAA CHAMPIONSHIPS THROUGH 2003



Larks win their first title last year since 1970.

Going to use Fake Name Generator to start generating some recruits. I'd like to start following a few careers through college and potentially -- if they make it -- into the pros.

2010 Recruits

It's the 2008-09 season. I thought for sure that this was the year that HHI would finally get into the NCAA tournament for the first time in school history.

They didn't do themselves any favors by losing in the first round of the conference tournament though. But this was the last bubble watch before the selection day.


Welp. We must've been just on the edge, because HHI won't be dancing this year. But they did get a #1 seed in the NIT West Region. We'll see whether they can take their frustration out on a deep run in that tournament instead.

Lost in the NIT Elite 8. It's the best season in the 37 year history of Hilton Head Institute Men's Basketball. 1989 and 1997 were the only two previous 20-win seasons in school history and this year's post-season appearance breaks a seven year streak of no post-season tournaments.

Most of all it validates the decision to hire a new coach, who is paying dividends in his 2nd season with us. The fear is, can we manage to keep him after this year?

The first of our recruits has signed.



Sayre is a member of the SUNSET Conference and based in Sayre, PA. They've won 13 SUNSET Conference tourney titles, boast 33 All-Americans, appeared in 22 Final Fours and have claimed 9 national championships.

So um, they're pretty good. Explains why he signed with them. I took over a random program so I could see where he signed, since the game won't show you recruiting stuff if you're just playing in Commish mode.

This guy flew under the radar. It'll be interesting to see if he develops at all.

HHI followed up the best season in school history with...the best season in school history. 25 win regular season, a 2nd round loss in the SUNSET tourney and their first-ever bid to the NCAAs, a #4 seed in the tournament. Surely Toby Fowler should be Conference Coach of the Year, but no telling yet.

And he's soooo leaving after this year. I can just feel it.

Nonetheless, there's a tournament to play:



Telmar Karlstrom is headed to HHI next year.
Richie Goodwin signed with ASU Poly.
Liam Gill and Sebastian Holloway both went unsigned.

Next year's recruit class:

PF Dylan Appleroth (5-star) Texas
PG Natrick Lovell (5-star) Wyoming
SF Thankdiwe Grier (4-star) New Jersey

Dylan Appleroth is playing SF at Stony Point
Natrick Lovell is playing PG at Eastern Wyoming
Thankdiwe Grier is playing PF at Sayre

After Hilton Head's breakthrough season, Toby Fowler couldn't resist the big time. He'll stay in-conference, but when Hillman came calling, there was no real doubt that the reigning National Coach of the Year was going to have to bolt for a program that's been to 18 Final Fours and won 4 national championships.

Alas, it leaves us looking for our third coach in recent years. At least this time it was under far better circumstances than the last time we had to find a replacement.

This time, we closed ranks quickly. We found 60-year old Chet Sala from Sayre College. He's an assistant there, spending one season with that program after being fired as the Head Coach at Hartwick where he spent 18 years there compling a record of 348-212. He led them to eight post-season appearances including two NCAA tournament berths during his tenure and won three conference titles. Prior to that, he was an assistant at Sloatsburg State back when that was still a really good thing. They had a down year last year missing the tournament completely.

Anyway, hiring a 60-year old head coach is a bit strange for us but the gameplan was to go out and find a staff that we could stick with for a while and I think we've done that.

This is the first time I oversaw the process of hiring assistants rather than just a coach and I think it'll yield a better product. We hired Jerry Salvatore, the former head coach at SUNYIT as the #1 assistant. He spent 9 years there going 158-142 and leading them to two post-season appearances. He spent three years before that as an assistant at Somersworth State, so he understands SUNSET basketball.

Ted Lao joins us as the #2 guy, he's a 43-year old former BAA assistant who will really enhance our scouting situation.

Our #3 assistant is Jermanie Davis, a former player at Macalester who is on everyone's list for future head coach in this program. I had to throw the truck at him to bring him here, but it worked and I'm pumped. The guy is a tactical wizard.

So with our team in place, we're expecting huge things.

But I've been talking a lot about the SUNSET Conference like you know anything about it. It's bad enough I'm writing about a D3 league like you're supposed to care, right? But what of this made up league of schools I came up with from driving around the area too much? Well, let's introduce you now that they each have a bit of history.

I mistakenly though I'd introduced the league before. But I hadn't.

The current SUNSET Conference lineup is:


Former members of the league include Lanesborough (MASCAC), Southbridge State (MASCAC), Maine Presque Isle (Independent) and SUNY Harlem (SUNYAC), Georgia Gwinnett (SAA)

Florida Poly is based in Lakeland, Florida. They joined the league after spending the first two decades of their existence in the Southern Athletic Association (SAA). They joined to be part of the best basketball league in the country and they've done little to disappoint. They've won 5 championships, been to the finals 10 times and 17 Final Fours. Despite their success, their title drought is 17 years. Their last title came in 1993 when they completed a four-peat. The Gharials have made the Final Four each of the past three seasons and lost in the Championship game two years ago. They last missed the tournament in 1971.

Hillman College is an HBCU located in South Hill, VA. The Falcons boast 54 20+ win seasons and have been to the Fnal Four 18 times, the championship game half those times and have won 4 national titles, the most recent in 2001. They lost in the national title game last year. They last missed the tournament in 2005. (That year, they won the NIT)

Hilton Head joined as the league sought to expand its southern footprint. The Beachpounders didn't show up ready to play at a high level, but they appear to be reaching for those heights every year.

University of Maryland at Hagerstown joined the league at the same time we did. The Hubs were quick studys, under Head Coach Edwin Chatman they went from a program that had never qualified for the post-season ever to a NIT title and two years ago making the Sweet 16. They're a program that's soaring too.

Milford College is in Milford, PA. They're the best program in all of college basketball as far as we're concerned. 32 Final Fours, 12 national championships. They're dominant and don't take no for an answer much. They're two years removed from their last title in 2008. Last year, they lost in the Elite 8. The Black Bears have five national titles since 2000. Milford has NEVER missed the tournament since they began playing in 1952.

Pearl River University is based in Orangetown, NY. Despite their SUNSET pedigree, they've always been something of an ugly duckling in the league. Their only national title came in 1976 and they've "only" claimed two Final Four appearances since 1994, the second of those coming last season (2009). They've missed the tournament three times since 1995.

Sayre is Milford's rival. Located in Sayre, PA near the NY border, the Panthers have only missed the tournament twice -- In 1953-54 -- and never since. Their last title came in 2006, the school's 9th in history, only their rivals boast more (12)

For a long time, Sloatsburg State, based in Sloatsburg, NY near the Jersey border was the gold standard of Sunset athletics. The were just in the national title game in 2007, so let's not spit on their grave yet. But they missed the post-season last year for the third time in seven years and it caused them to fire their coach who'd had the job since 1995 as a result. The Patrolers have 13 Final Four appearances and three titles.

Somersworth State are the only New Hampshire entry in the Sunset league. When the Massachusetts schools left, some thought Somersworth would seek out an easier pathway to the NCAAs each year but they opted to stay. They won their 6th national championship this past year, it was the program's first since 1987 when they'd finished reeling off a three-peat. Just a recently as 2006, the Dalmations missed the post-season entirely.

Southern Kentucky is another new member of the SUNSET Conference. Located in Hopkinsville, KY, the program is still getting through the growing pains of being an upstart program. But to go from the doldrums to the best basketball league on the planet is a good starting point. They have yet to make the post-season. The main reason they were added was because they were willing -- most programs are not due to how competitive the league is -- and because it balanced the league's geography.

With Georgia Gwinnett leaving, the league still has 11 members -- the south division is a team short -- but there's no indication they'll be filling that spot anytime soon.

2010-11 SUNSET CONFERENCE RECAP & SEASON REVIEW

At the end of the regular season, it's been a topsy turvy year. All of that talk of Milford never missing the NCAAs is relevant now, because they're on the cusp of missing the tournament for the first time ever. Naturally this means the program is ready to call for the head of 66-year old head coach Alfonso Staub who has led them to three national titles and you can anticipate he'll be ask to resign if they do indeed end up in the NIT.


A few years ago, the league changed the in-conference schedule to only one go-round rather than double, because there was a feeling that making teams play each other too much was artificially ruining their records. This was the policy until about six years ago, when the NCAA told the league they needed to boost the number of in-conference games they play proportionate to the number of teams in the league, as there was some feeling among the membership that "the Sunset Conference is playing an entirely different game than the rest of us."

This has hurt schools like Sloatsburg State, but has made the league far mroe interesting to watch as a result. They still routinely send 8-10 teams to the tournament annually, but at least now there is attrition in the SUNSET ranks before heading to the post-season which would often be a festival of Sunset teams in the Elite 8.

Anyway, the only thing that'd save Milford now is a deep run through the conference tournament. But they lost in the 2nd round to top seed Pearl River.

In the end, Milford finished the year at 17-14 and alas won't be going to ANY post-season tournament this year. Coach Staub will resign immediately after the season.

In this year's NCAAs, Southern Kentucky makes their first ever appearance as a #5 seed in the South region. HHI is the #2 seed in the South Region.

FIRST ROUND: 15) Centenary (LA) W, 80-67
SECOND ROUND: 7) Denison W, 59-58
SWEET 16: 6) Spalding W, 78-70
ELITE 8: 12) Stevens

We dodge a huge bullet in having to face SUNSET rival Florida Poly in the Elite 8, as they were upset by Stevens Tech of NJ 83-70 in the Sweet 16, paving the way for a possible first-ever HHI Final Four berth with a win over the upstarts. Will it be?

Allentown Dukes have won one title in their history, back in 1961. They did win a division title a few years ago, their first banner since 1961, but that's about it. In any case, I am going to move the franchise to Niagara Falls, NY in a new downtown arena being built there in an effort to revive the franchise's brand.

Rather than maintain the Dukes history though, I'm going to move the players to a new franchise history and not do a dispersal draft or an expansion draft.

After trying to evaluate players for the Niagara Falls team in this year's draft, I decided that the BAA rolled back its provision on letting younger players into the draft. They now have to wait until their junior year to declare for the draft like football.

It makes it easier for us to evaluate players and it keeps the college game interesting for longer. Win win for everyone.

Several things have piqued my interest at the moment.

1) Why are there no huge basketball rivalry trophies. Maybe because teams play intra-conference games twice in a season. Would like to see that change.

2) I realize that a D3 dynasty doesn't really connect. But it's part of an exercise for me and I'm still figuring out what I want to do.

3) I'd like to move a D1 school down to D3, whether real or imagined to fill the 12th spot in the SUNSET conference, since there's a hole in the Southern Division of the league at the moment. I'm not sure what my storyline is going to be yet, whether we banish a D1 school to play for titles no one cares about -- though remember that D3 is now the soup de jour, so it'd be reverse -- or if I just want to make a new school that's connected to a familiar brand or invent a new one from scratch like the rest of these programs.

I made them up driving around the NY metro area for a few weeks, passing by places that sounded like good names to have schools and some of them looked like good college towns and that's literally how this happened.

So I'm going to ponder that one briefly and then come up with something.

We still only have one school in Florida, so I'm tempted to add another Florida school to give Florida Poly a run for their money and to tap the deep base of recruiting there. The Northeast is pretty saturated, as is most of the other recruiting hotbeds.

I'm going to put some kind of school in Southwest Florida. Seems like a good location to do such a thing since Florida Gulf Coast is the only school in that region, but I haven't decided whether it'll be a branch of an extent school in Florida or not yet.

As I ponder South Florida, I think it's time for a west coast conference to challenge the SUNSET Conference dominance after all of these years. With UC Santa Cruz as an independent and ASU Poly recently joining as an independent, those two should be in a conference. Going to find some western schools from California and such to form a new league called the Continental Divide Conference.

There are currently 46 auto-bids to the NCAA tournament, with last year's addition of the Penn State Athletic Conference, so a new league would make that 47, leaving 21 at-large bids. So long as your SOS is high though, with a solid record, you can qualify for the Big Dance, as there is a relatively wide gulf between good and bad in a league like this.

We're going to promote the State College of Florida into a four year school and throw them into the Sunset Conference as the 12th school.

I've been experimenting with adding recruits to the league each years, this upcoming year adding far more than normal using ESPN's recruit DB from past years to make sure the players mirror (h/w) wise what a real recruit would look like.

It's really tedious to do it or else, I'd do it every year for a lot of players, but..it's a good way to make sure recruit classes are somewhat normalized and also, so enables teams who maybe aren't as good to get better as better players fall down the totem pole.