All-NCAA: Consolidated D1/D2/D3 universe
 

I got the wild hair the other night to consolidate D1/D2/D3 into one universe. It works okay so far. I started the universe in 2014 and have simmed now to what will be the 2024-25 season.

It's hard to even know where to start in a universe like this. Outside of the first season, there haven't been any D2 or D3 teams winning national titles, the natural order is relatively staid.

All of the D1 conferences get autobids to the NCAAs, D2 and D3 don't which obviously raises the level of difficulty a bit for them.

NJIT was the only D1 independent left and I put them into America East, so Independents could stay a level 1 conference and it's comprised entirely of D2 and D3 schools.

I'm not even sure how to tackle this monster, because there's just SO MANY teams but...I think rather than try to do this like a traditional dynasty, I'll just issue various challenges and see how successful each of them tends to be.

I also used korme's coaches file to seed the game. John Wooden ended up coming back from the dead as an assistant for a few years, until I made him human and retired him for good.

Anyway, this might be a league where I constantly revisit. Mostly because I went through a half-decent amount of work to integrate them all and to see it work at all, I figure I have to do something with it.

So we'll see what challenges I come up with.

Stay tuned.

I'd be interested in getting this universe file.

alldivisions_ncaa.zip

Don't expect to sim quickly using this league. Even without box scores on, it doesn't move especially fast to get through the seasons with this many teams in tow. But it's sort of fun to see the non-conference matchups for good teams just because of the sheer number of teams.

There are like 1040-something teams, 99 conferences and 46 holiday/pre-season tournaments total to boot. Can't even decide what the hardest, yet most realistic way to play would be with THIS many teams. Still sorting that out.

You know I'm insane enough to try running a Zeroed Out dynasty with this, right?

The minor teams haven't caused too much havoc, which I'm okay with.

Sooo weird.

Haha what

This is solid!

Champs so far:

Butler and Brad Stevens are dominating the map.

Two interesting real-life coaching people. Shaka Smart is a top coach, but stuck at VCU where the A10 isn't doing them any favours.



Meanwhile, Dunk City Andy Enfield got fired at USC and has spent two years as an assistant at Georgetown.



I think I'd like possibly do a challenge with one or both of them taking over programs and seeing how those programs do with either at the helm. Another possible scenario I'm imagining is me taking over a super-level program and trying to bolster them into top prestige class.

But with this many teams and this much parity, the scenarios are endless, really. The NIT is still the NIT, but the CIT and CBI are the D2 and D3 tournaments respectively.

Pitt-Johnstown is the highest rated school not in a D1 conference. They play in the Pennsylvania State Athetlic Conference. Here's how they've done so far:

I think we're going to send Enfield to Rutgers. The game never fired Mike Rice, Jr., so we'll do that now. I have no idea where to send Shaka. VCU is a 78 prestige school. I could put them in a better league or I can move Shaka someplace and see if he can handle the big time.

Could place him at UCONN, another highly skilled coach at a smaller school, just like Jim Calhoun.

Good call on UConn.

They fired Kevin Ollie four seasons ago (he's now an assistant at Gonzaga) and Tommy Amaker took over for him and in four years, he's got a Sweet 16 appearance and nothing else to show for it. (He left Harvard for Quinnipiac) So it seems like it'd be a good idea to drop Amaker from the label, I doubt they'd tolerate that sort of relative futility in 3 out of 4 years post-Calhoun.

So we'll put Shaka at UConn and see how that goes for him.

As you can imagine, Bubble Watch when there are over 1000 schools is sort of insane.

Given the sheer number of schools, even regular season champions out of most leagues will often go without a post-season appearance of any kind because there just aren't enough spots.

Look at these tournament resumes, as we are two days from Selection Sunday:

For bad schools, the D3/CIT tournament is still the holy grail.

UConn and Shaka went 17-14 in year 1. Enfield went 19-14 at Rutgers.

So I finally settled on creating two schools in Vermont. The College of Windham is located in Southern Vermont in Brattleboro. Saint Anne's University is in Grand Isle County in North Hero.

They're rivals.

I took the two highest rated coaches without jobs and stuck them onto those programs.

I think rather than the normal storyline of -- guy takes over team, guy coaches team and wins with team and so forth -- I wanted to do a storyline where it's just a team that's not even in a conference, not that good, in a state with no natural recruiting advantage and in a university with a bazillion teams.

I just wanted to see them develop, play the storylines out and see if something sticks. It just feels more real to me, in that way.

I'm going to sim the first four years and then we'll pick up the story in Year 5.