FBCB: USC Upstate Spartans
 

After a hard drive crash forced me to reinstall FBCB, I've decided to fire it up and start only my 2nd slow play 'coach every game' dynasty ever. I generated history starting from an arbitary start date of 1927 and loosely applied real life rule changes/era settings - enabling the 3pt shot in '86, messing with early declarations, etc. up until the 2018-19 season where I step in. Conference alignment is accurate(ish) as of 2017-18 I believe.

The History
 

By the year 2018, NCAA division basketball has been around for 91 years. Duke have been a model of consistency over this period, winning their first national championship back in 1931, and 8 more following that, with the most recent being just 2 years ago. Remarkably, they have missed the NCAA tournament just twice in 91 years, and have the highest overall win % of any school. They've also had 79 guys selected in the 1st round of the NBA draft, 10 more than any other school, although UConn and Marquette have had the most #1 overall picks with 6.

The greatest coach in terms of wins is Colby Nickles, who bounced around between schools a little bit early in his career at Detroit and Indiana State, before a 34 year career with Texas A&M. Despite all the success he had there - missing the tournament just twice - he never advanced beyond the Final Four, and retired in 1999 after a couple of seasons with North Carolina State, finishing his career with 1013 wins, nearly 80 more wins than any other coach.

Not having access to graduated player's career stats makes it tough to go into much detail about the legends who have graced the division 1 courts over the years. The all-time leading scorer is Ronald Cornwell of Michigan, who graduated just last year. Looking at the awards for the Big Ten, Cornwell scored over 27 PPG for consecutive seasons, and played all 4 years.

The Team
 

I create a level 7 rookie coach, my 36 year old namesake, and kit myself out as follows:

Recruiting: 10
Scouting: 6
Offense: 6
Defense: 5

I add myself to the coaching pool and get just one offer - lowly USC Upstate Spartans of the Atlantic Sun conference. I take the job!

It's been a rough 91 years for USC Upstate. They started off as a 28 prestige team, but struggled from year #2. There has been the odd radar blip over the decades where they've performed, but recent history is not kind to them. The last tournament appearance - one of only 7 in their history - was back in 1997 and came with a sub-.500 record. Their last winning record was back in 1994. Their prestige bottomed out at 4 a few years ago, and that's where it remains when I step in.

USC Upstate's History


Expectations

The AD expects me to finish with at least a .500 record. We are more than 10 points lower prestige than every other school in our conference (and almost 20 points lower than most), so that might be a tough ask...

2018-19 Season Overview - Coaching Staff
 

Coaching Staff

I make no changes to the previous coaching staff. These guys are about what you'd expect from a prestige 4 school.

Assistant Coach


Recruiting Assistant


Lead Scout

2018-19 Season Overview - Roster
 

Roster

This is not a very good roster, but hey, again it's about what you expect from a prestige 4 school. Not only will walk-ons be featuring heavily in our rotation, our top returning scorer is a junior walk-on SG, Chris Gilley, who put up an inefficient 13.6 PPG last year, and is primarily a spot up 3pt shooter with some ability to attack off the dribble as well. The real gem of the team however is 6'8 senior PF/C Hal Wade, who can score inside the arc but doesn't really excel in any one other area. I plan on force feeding him as much as possible on offense, and he seems to be our best shot at not being completely awful - although he was a 1* #1176 rated recruit back in 2014 to put his abilities into perspective.

Otherwise we have some guys who can do one or two things at an average level. Lack of depth at PG is a concern and we really need to focus on that area in recruiting.

I use a 1-10 rating scale just because I like the fact that it makes it harder to judge between similar-rated players:

2018-19 Season Overview - Recruiting
 

We have 4 scholarships this year, and a bunch of 3* and 2* star guys interested in us. The first couple of recruiting rounds eliminates most of the better guys who had initial interest in us, so I switch focus and go after some guys struggling to get the required GPA scores. I also miss out on a solid 3* JuCo PG who we led on right up until signing day. We do land two early signees though, neither of whom is terrific, but both would probably start for my current roster today.

Early Signings



Targets

The academically-challenged 3-star big we are after does qualify academically, but does not yet sign his letter of intent with us. Given some of the schools still on his list, there's a good chance we miss out on him despite having been the only school showing him interest for months.


Javon is another guy struggling with his grades, but unlike Davion he is still yet to qualify. I'm not too hopeful about him, and he's not the PG that we probably should be using this scholarship on.


I am also dragging the bottom of the barrel and looking at a handful of 3* and 2* PGs with no current offers, to see if I can find someone who can at least beat a trap without dribbling it off his foot and knock down the odd open 3.

2018-19 Season Overview - Strategy
 

We go into training camp working on both a M2M defense, as well as a 2-3 zone. I ask my assistants to suggest an overall gameplan (ie. I hit 'Recommend'), but then I tweak it quite a bit. Our only key player is Hal Wade, and our overall gameplan will look like the following to start the season:

Offense
Pace: 5
Motion: 4
3pt Usage: 5
Focus: Balanced - despite force feeding Wade, I find setting this to inside too negatively impacts good 3pt shooters.

Defense
Man: Yes
2-3: Yes
Press: 4
Trap: 3 (this will likely drop depending on how foul happy we are)
Double Inside: 8
Double Outside: 9 (we are terrible defenders in general, inside and out)

Starting 5:

I do all my substitutions manually, so I'm not so concerned about setting a full depth chart. Essentially we are planning on going 8 deep ideally, with Joseph Abram getting most of the backup minutes at PF/C, Arthur Davis the backup SF/SG, and Ronald Oswalt being the unconventional backup PG with his high handling ability.

This could be a long year.

2018-19 Season - Game 1, vs Eastern Washington
 

USC Upstate (0-0) vs. Eastern Washington (0-0)

We kick off the season on opening night with a home game against lowly Eastern Washington. The prestige 5 Eagles have had an even leaner time than USC Upstate as far as tourney appearances go, but have brought in a new coach as well... albeit one much better than me. Jerry Stanton is an 8/10 rated offense/defense coach in his first year as a head coach, and might be the man to help turn the school's performance around. The Eagles return 3 starters, the best being PG Blaine Meier who chipped in 11.6 PPG last year and has a versatile offensive game. They are definitely the more talented side, and win most of the individual matchups outside of C.

Out strategy of force feeding Wade inside does not pay off, as he is struggling to connect although doing a nice job on the boards. Eastern Washington jump out to a nice lead early behind the strong play of SF Andrew Rhodes, and we just can't get anything rolling. Down 33-42 at the half, it only gets worse in the 2nd. Wade finishes with 16 points and 15 rebounds, but on just 5-17 shooting, and no one else was able to step up on either end of the court. We go down, 58-77.

2018-19 Season - Game 2, @ Ball State
 

USC Upstate (0-1) @ Ball State (0-1)

Prestige 36 Ball State have been lacklaster of late, and have also brought in a first time coach to try turn things around, Edward Yarbrough. Yabrough was a long-time assistant who had bounced around at a bunch of schools before getting this shot at a head coaching gig. A decent recruiter and defensive coach, but bring nothing to the table as far as offense goes. The Cardinals dropped their opener to Southeast Missouri State, and will be looking for revenge over us at home. Their main threat is SF James Baker, a sweet stroking 3pt shooter, but they return their entire backcourt from last season, and all are capable players. They do have a lot of youth inside though.

From the opening tip however, it's clear Wade is going to have his way with the Cardinals. Their 3-2 zone was just not equipped to deal with someone like Wade down low, and backup PF/C Abram had another nice game off the bench as well. We pushed out to a 10 point lead mid-way through the first half, and despite some inspiring play by Cardinals forward James Baker in the 2nd half we held off the comeback and got away with an 8 point win!

Wade was huge for us, but I also got nice contributions from our bench in particular. Really didn't expect to take this game, so a very pleasant surprise on the road.

2018-19 Season - Game 3, @ Florida A&M
 

11/26/18: USC Upstate (1-1) @ Florida A&M (1-0)

The Florida A&M Rattlers started the season off with a 69-57 win over Nicholls State. Another team with a first year head coach, prestige 17 Florida A&M have had an underwhelming couple of seasons lately. Not sure the new coach is the answer, but he inherits a few key guys, in particular senior SF Quinton Yost and super-scorer junior SG Irwin Gilbert, who dropped 21 in their opening night win. On paper these guys are once again a significant step ahead of us across the board.

Hal Wade picks up a couple of cheap fouls to start the game and has to sit, but we are getting good production and are somehow withstanding an onslaught from Gilbert, who has 21 half time points, but we take a narrow 41-37 lead into the break, thanks largely to our backcourt of Gilley and Aguilar, who are picking up the slack with Wade out.

The 2nd half sees Gilley and Aguilar knock down 4 consecutive threes between them on 4 straight stops, and we push out to a nice little buffer that the Rattlers just can not cut back into! Wade ends up with a double-double, but 14-28 from 3pt land leads to a 88-72 win! What a game! Lilley finishes with 23 on 5-10 from long range (player of the game), and Aguilar picks up a sneaky 17. We held Gilbert to just 4 2nd half points!

I don't know how we're doing it, but our role players are definitely playing beyond themselves against this level of competition.

2018-19 Season - Game 4, vs St. Francis PA
 

12/1/18: USC Upstate (2-1) vs St. Francis PA (1-2)

We return home to kick off December against the St. Franics PA Red Flash, who are are coming off a nice win on the road over UC Santa Barbara. The prestige 9 Red Flash have a similar history to us, although are marginally better than us on paper, with their best player either senior starting SF Jose Broussard or 6th man and leading scorer combo guard Charles Mix. the sophomore Mix is probably the guy I'm most concerned about.

Early on it's a straight Broussard-Wade battle with both forwards doing most the scoring. We lose backup SF Arthur to a minor injury that will keep him out of the rest of the game, and forces us to move walk-on Hutchinson up the rotation. We push out to a small lead and maintain it most the way until a flurry of scoring by the versatile Broussard - switching between all frontcourt positions - puts St. Francis PA ahead at the break. A missed open layup was Broussard's only misstep as St. Peters PA takes a 45-43 lead into the break. Wade has 13 points (1 rebound) for us, Gilley 11 also, and Hutchinson does well with his opportunity to pick up 7 points. Broussard has 15 for the Red Flash. Lots of fouls for both teams in the first half, but we are turning it over way too much and that's been the difference.

The Red Flash come out firing in the 2nd half and we can't buy a basket. We switch to a 2-3 zone which, along with a timely 3 point play from Giley, keeps us in the game. We finally manage to lock scores on a big and-1 play from Wade, before snatching the lead with 11 minutes remaining. We stay ahead by a narrow margin until a cold spell at around the 6 minue mark is compounded by 3 consecutive turnovers that the Red Flash convert into points. A late spate of baskets from Giley and Wade make it look close at the end, but this was a blown opportunity at home as we go down 87-81.

Wade finishes with 26 points but was invisible for large stretches of the 2nd half, while Gilley had 23 and was probably our most impressive. St. Francis PA got good production across multiple guys, but Broussard in particular was a beast. A disappointing loss, but only because it's coming after a solid win.

2018-19 Season - Game 5, vs Incarnate Word
 

12/4/18: USC Upstate (2-2) vs Incarnate Word (1-3)

We get another chance to stay above .500 when the prestige 10 Cardinals come to town, looking to turn their season around as well. Coming off an NIT appearance (although a 12-20 record) last season, the Cardinals dropped 3 straight to start the season before a surprising win over a Fresno State team that is badly under-performing with a 0-5 record. The Cardinals have a balanced team with no one player scoring over 10 points a game, but definitely have more depth than we do, with no walk-ons in their regular rotation.

We build up a small lead early behind Cameron and Wade inside, and manage to push it out to 27-14 with 9:57 remaining in the half, as the Cardinals just have no answer to our scoring around the basket. We have a bit of a dry spell as the Cardinals deny our bigs and Aguilar in particular can't buy a basket, but every time the gap is closed we find points and enter the break up 35-26. Wade has 10 points and Giley 7, while Aguilar is just 1-9 from the floor. It's an even spread for the Cardinals, as expected.

Aguilar gets us our first basket of the 2nd half (...and I check to make sure I didn't accidentally set him as a key player...), but it's the turnovers from the Cardinals that is helping the most at keeping our lead out in double digits. We begin to creep out near a 20 point lead, although the Cardinals are hitting the offensive glass and giving themselves half a shot at this by trimming the lead back down to 15 with 8 minutes remaining. Up 18 with 3 minutes left I yank the starters, and we get the 83-60 win.

Great response to the disappointing loss a few days ago, albeit against a lesser opponent. Wade was solid as usual with 20 points and 5 boards, along with Gilley (16 points) and Aguilar who hit a few in the second half (14 points). I was most impressed by Arthur Davis though, who was still not 100% after his minor injury last week but managed a 5-7-4 line off the bench.