Hoop Dreams [FBCB]
 

Per usual, I setup a league in the 30s because I like playing with a lot of history and I've been simming for about a decade already. There's an NBA parallel league but I'm not sure what I'm doing with it besides simming at the moment.

I'm in the mood for some rapid fire college basketball, but CJBL moves too slow and I need to get through seasons, look at some stats and be able to move teams around at will and do weird stuff with the FBCB.ini engine. I like where my stats are right now. During the post-season, I lower the pace of play from the regular season because it's a good way to induce upsets.

I've done some league merging since starting the league:

Right now, there's no real rhyme or reason to this. I did start this game with a real player file and coach file so the historical records for coaches have real names and that's kinda cool. Besides that, a few seasons ago I made some adjustments to the height of players in the hopes of making it more like "positionless" basketball of today, even if it's just cosmetic.

Not sure where I'll go with this dynasty other than just wanting to churn out some seasons and report on what's happening. Maybe I can just report on seasons as I sim them for the time being. If something catches my eye and I get more interested in it, then perhaps I'll slow down or pull on that thread.

Reading an old Izulde dynasty, I got the idea to go through and re-rank the conferences by prestige. The prestige were set when I started the file [I think britock's latest conference file] but I didn't have dynamic changes on [I thought I did] so it's time to give the conferences different prestige based on their current setups.

I'm averaging every league's prestige total by 12 [or less if it's a league with less than 12 teams] to keep things relatively fair/able to measure the relative strength of a league. Mid-majors start at 3 and below. I won't be restricting NCAA bids, every conference gets an auto-bid though [unless perhaps I make new conferences wait a bit, once I add them.]


As it turned out, there wasn't much adjustment needed because all of the leagues that were ranked where they were didn't really change. A few 3s turned into 2 conferences and a few of the 5s were downgraded to 4s, but that's about it. We'll leave conference prestige where it is for now unless there are dramatic shifts in how leagues are composed or in an instance where I realign a particular league.

PAST NATIONAL CHAMPIONS

1938 CONFERENCE REALIGNMENT

Now that the leagues have been rated, some of them have awkward numbers and I'd like to consolidate. There is a consideration for some programs that you don't wanna leave a league you're dominanting for a league where you aren't going to have the same impact.

Here are the major leagues that could use some expansion:

Obviously as those leagues expand lower leagues will realign to accommodate.

The WAC is too big, I don't want to recreate the Mountain West [though tempting] so I'm going to disburse those old MWC teams out of that league and into other ones more likely.

Wichita State wants out of the American because it doesn't really make any sense geographically, but going back to the MVC doesn't work either. They're a power program in this universe -- essentially Duke but in a terrible location -- and they have the juice to move things.

The Pac-10 having been raided by the Big 16 isn't the league it once was. Still, fresh off a title from Stanford and with the WCC only at 8 teams, the two leagues decide that it might be worth a merger that fills the western states with a true power league -- something it lacks right now -- and then wooing Wichita State and one of the WAC castoffs to create a 20-team power league returning to its old name the Pacific Coast Conference.

Several ACC + Big Ten schools create a spinoff league called the Yankee Conference in an effort to create a true northeast power league with an autobid.

1938 CONFERENCE REALIGNMENT

Next season, the University Athletic Association will join the NCAA D1, but they will not have an automatic bid until their 5th season. In addition to the core 8 members, MIT, Johns Hopkins, Cal Tech and Rochester Institute of Technology will join the league to give the league 12 teams to start.

My favorite part of new programs is that it creates new head coaching jobs in-game.

1939 SEASON RECAP

FINAL REGULAR SEASON POLL

Multi-bid NCAA tournament conferences, 1938

ELITE 8




FINAL FOUR

1) Michigan State [Big Ten]
2) NC State [SEC]
2) Butler [Big East]
3) Duke [ACC]

FINAL FOUR
NC State 85, Michigan 80
Butler 69, Duke 63

NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP
Butler 75, NC State 61

AWARD WINNERS

The American getting six bids in the NCAA tournament establishes them as a power league despite losing Wichita State to the west coast. Some WAC programs are going to defect to that league and bolster their numbers at the end of the season.

I don't have leaving early turned on right now, because I wanted players to build stats up, but I might enable juniors to leave after this season to increase parity amongst leagues, especially mid-majors.

1939-40 CONFERENCE MOVEMENT

The American Athletic Conference is now called the United League.


Years ago, I played fantasy college basketball league where it was head to head against other programs over an 18-game season. I kind of want to do a similar thing using FBCB as a simulator because it's a really neat way to get immersed into the individual players and also into the outcomes of individual games rather than only focusing on the programs or whatever.

I've always avoided it because it feels a bit tedious to "play against yourself" but I'm curious to look at some of the actual individual games across the season and this is easily the best way to do that, especially for those minor programs that I'd normally just ignore or gloss over.

I think to keep it manageable, I'd probably just "draft" four teams of players (it's a keeper league, though there are rules on drops...playing against yourself, no idea how I'll enforce this or if it matters at all...) and have them play against each other over a period of time.

At least this way, I can get a snapshot of the league, highlight fun performances that guys have and talk about strategies around building teams that involve teams.

I think rather than H2H, I'd just do a weekly game or something where I compile scores and see which team did the best. Perhaps to make it interesting, I'd compile 4 teams -- High Major A/B, Mid Major and Low Major.

Before I get to the game, I'm also thinking that in an ideal world, I'd probably try to do some version of Starting 5 the forum game I made up with Wade years ago #onhere. It's still silly to play against yourself like I said, but given it's just an exercise in immersion (in lieu of taking over a school, though I should just do that sometime too) is really all it's about.

Doing some trawling for large enrollment non-D1 schools just to diversify the playing pool. These programs will not end up in league with auto-bids as I'd prefer to keep the at-large bid situation about where it is. But if they're good enough to snag an entry down the road, all the better.

One of you older dynasty folks made a good observation that there are always more California recruits than there are California schools and I'd love to fix that a bit.

I also created a holding pen "Independents" where programs that I don't have a conference for can hang out and just schedule games against anybody, I sometimes enjoy doing that just for a weird bit of diversity.

CCNY is going to be my first independent, I always thought they ought to be D1 again and if NYU is now D1, they surely ought to be. I've added 9 other schools from California and elsewhere to give those would-be walk-ons opportunities to start somewhere.

Augustana (SD) is now part of the Summit League.

INDEPENDENTS
--------

We'll see if I do it, but I'm kicking around a long-held idea about creating some recruits of my own, seeing how many I can recruit and then trying to win at a school that isn't used to winning. In the past, I've avoided creating recruits because the game makes it tedious and so it's just easier to recruit guys already in the game [or to edit them] but I'm semi-intrigued by an idea where you're some guy running a youth program in some outpost, you get to know these talented players who aren't on the radar of most traditional programs, so you rig the game to give you an advantage recruiting them, whether they sign with you or not is a mystery, but once you have them in tow can you actually win with them?

For this story, they can't be super recruits but 3-star guys with 5-star potential in specific skills [meaning that you'd want 3 or 4 of them not just 1 or 2.]

Basically can you recruit a version of the Fab 5 and if you get them, can you win with them?

I think before I get to my side quest, I've got a different side quest that fits well with my desire to test the limits of the game. I want to see if it's possible to score 100 points with a player in this game without resorting to tricking up the fbcb.ini to give a team a ton of possessions or whatever.

The current scoring record is Kevin Bradshaw's 72 points, which broke Pete Maravich's 69 point record from 1970.

I'd pick one program and try to run a variation of an up-tempo Grinnell offense, but maximize the ball in one guy's hands - a la Jack Taylor's 134 pt performance - in the hopes of getting this guy the record.

Then I started thinking that it might be easier to take over an independent program, cut all of the recruits and play only with walk-ons and see how many points our terrible team other programs blow us out by.

Even upstart programs in FBCB will end up with a few scholarship recruits -- the dredgs of whoever remains after recruiting -- and then walkons, but if we cut all of that talent, who will be leftover?

The talent from my games are a lot better than what the game generates on its own, which makes this experiment a bit more challenging, but it also means that the gulf between elite and terrible should be wider because the star players are truly the best of the best.

I'll tinker with this idea a bit and see what I come up with. But it seems like it might be fun for purely the gaudy stats that it'll produce.

1940 SEASON RECAP


The Final Four was Butler, Seton Hall, Tulsa & UCLA. Seton Hall having a wild undefeated season. So far in this universe, there's never been an undefeated champion. The St. Mary's three-peat squads of [22-25] had a one-loss season sandwiched in 1923, but that's about it.

FINAL FOUR MATCHUPS


1940 AWARD WINNERS

National Freshman of the Year at Alaska-Anchorage was a walk-on from NEW JERSEY somehow. He was ranked #426 overall, so not a top recruit in any way, but a testament to my souped up FBCB.ini file.

If it's not obvious by now, I'm simming seasons and trying to find an idea that sticks and then will do that idea while I sim, essentially.

1940 REALIGNMENT

Going to bring back the Mountain West conference, with the United League [the old AAC] being a bit too bloated and leaving a 23+ win Houston team without an at-large because the league is trash was a bridge too far.

The eastern teams will be dispersed to other leagues, the western division will form the root of the new conference which will readopt the old Mountain West moniker.


Moving to other leagues:



After seeing the National Freshman of the Year end up as a walk-on at a school 5k miles from home, I'm wondering what other diamonds in the rough are going to simply go without offers. It makes me want to see what the ceiling would be for an upstart program that scavenges by picking up only last-minute recruits [guys who don't have offers late in the season post-February] and then hitting the transfer market.

To execute this, I'd want to take a program that's gutted by an academic scandal [fictionally, I keep academic suspensions off in this game, since there's no way to make dudes go to class] and basically a team full of walk-ons, then build the program from there with these dregs over a period of time.

More ambitious, I'd want to have a whole league run this way. But that's a lot of tedium. It might be better to have one team doing it against a bunch of programs trying to play it straight, giving you the ability to see how you'd perform against better heeled programs.

Two ways I equalize things -- FBCB doesn't really let you simulate what it's like to have a mid-major coach a la FGCU or VCU or George Mason -- is to give team control of their whole recruiting budget [once you sign coaches, before recruiting, change their salary to $1, so you get those dollars back to recruit] and I will often max out the assistant coaches at their respective jobs, to remove the fog of war.

It doesn't help you recruit 5 stars to a 1-star institution, but it does give you the ability to scour for talent like you might realistically if you had some inside information to a particular talent pipeline, a specific shoe deal or some other advantage beyond just a charismatic coach.

The debate with this idea would be determining whether you'd want a program in a talent hotbed or if you want to be a big fish in a small pond.

I'm debating adding more independents -- I already added Rowan [NJ] -- and might try one of these programs with this experiment.

Tulsa won the NCAA title after losing one game all year.

1940-41
Minnesota shocked everyone by winning the national championship this year, knocking off a perennial favorite in Seton Hall in the Final Four before dispatching Arizona. For context, this program hadn't ever gotten out of the first round of a tournament minus one season [1927] and had always had double-digit loss years until this year's insane 34-3 season, including 18-2 in the Big Ten.


Part of the beauty of cranking up the talent is that it's sort of turns it into a real-life situation where you have to look at stats versus just pure ratings and hoping to land superior talent. My way of playing accounts for guys who just get missed in recruiting and enables a bit of randomness, while still seeing that the "bigger" programs or whatever continue their advantages.

The Golden Gophers have a lot of in-state talent, too. Surprising, but no one is super elite. It was a senior-laden team too [5 seniors] and perhaps guys just gelled at the right time to make this a magical year.


In other news, I moved a bunch of foreign players to the US to populate Alaska and Wyoming and not surprisingly, it gave those in-state schools the ability to recruit those guys and get them before anyone else could. I'm curious to see how these recruiting hauls help those programs -- especially Alaska -- perform over the next few seasons.

I'll probably do it again, but I might choose a different state next time to see if it creates better recruiting battles for the players, though it could be a fun side quest to turn one of those states into a talent powerhouse and see how successful a program could be over a period of time.

The Alaska recruiting experiment worked well enough that after losing in the Big West title game to UC Irvine, they got an at-large bid to the NCAAs, but lost in the First Four to Houston.


Meanwhile, in other weird things I wasn't expecting...Chico State who I added to D1 as an independent had a really successful year last year in their 2nd season in D1 and made the NCAAs as an independent team. So I moved them and Central Washington to the WAC this season figuring it'd be good for both.

CWU made the NIT after another solid year, but Chico State ended the regular season ranked #7 in the nation and is a 2-seed in the NCAA tournament. Wild. We'll see if they're pretenders or real contenders to do the unthinkable. Still, it proves that lots of California talent -- obviously in-part thanks to my souped up stat situation - were simply going to go unsigned because of how I don't players leave until their junior year. [Originally, it was all 4 years. I might eventually lower this to 2 years so that there's more turnover among the elite programs, but for now, I kind of like how it works for the upstarts.]

1941-42
Such a strange tournament including a 16-1 upset for the 2nd straight year. This time, it was Syracuse who were bested by Quinnipiac [21-14], a team that needed to win in the First Four just to get dancing in the first place. The Bobcats do not score many points, but they are one of the top defensive teams in the country, ranking #6 in points allowed this year.

In the First Four, they beat Lehigh 51-31 and play a very short bench. Pretty wild to see the variation, though. It's also why I'm so adamant about slowing the game down in the post-season, because it gives you these variable outcomes and equalizes the game a bit.

They're an experienced team that also made the tournament last year, boast only two seniors and get to take on Wisconsin club in the next round that is among the top scoring teams [27th] in the country. So it'll be a test of wills, but I anticipate they'll finish their season and won't make it to the Sweet 16.

Other upsets:
15-seed Bowling Green [22-11] edged out Texas Tech 56-55 on the back of 34-point performance by PG Rich Green.

13-seed Kansas [22-10] blew Florida State out of their gym 92-65
11-seed Maryland beat Penn
13-seed Pepperdine [27-7] took out Boston College [not a good year for Yankee Conference programs]

Chico State won their opening round matchup against UC Irvine and get a date with Clemson for a ticket to the Sweet 16, and beat them by one point 73-72 to punch their first-ever ticket to the Sweet 16.

Sweet 16
Two of last season's Final Four programs -- NC State and Arizona -- are both into the Sweet 16. NC State seeks their first title in 5 years. Fun fact, their head coach was an assistant two years ago when they made the Finals, went to Tulsa and won a title as a rookie HC before turning to NC State after their coach retired.

[b]Elite 8[b]
3- Ohio State 74, 13- Kansas 56
7- Texas A&M 72, 5- Kansas State 64
1- NC State 60, 6- UConn 55
3- Florida 84, 8- Wisconsin 67

3 SEC teams [In this universe, NC State is a SEC team] make the Final Four.
Florida ['23, '25] has never won a title, Texas A&M won their only title in 1932 in their own previous Final Four appearance, Ohio State in also their 3rd Final Four [1933, 36]

NC State is in their 5th Final Four appearance in school history, all five of them coming in the past six years. Since winning it all in '37, they've lost in the title game twice and in the Final Four once.

The 37-0 Wolfpack would be my favorite to win it all, if I had to bet on these last two games.

Indeed they win out and become the 2nd program ever to complete the perfect season.


You can bet that Chico State's head coach will be taking a more lucrative role after this season is over, fresh off a Sweet 16 and a National Coach of the Year award.

1943-44 OFFSEASON
- Changed the rule to allow sophomores to declare for the NBA draft.
- Elevated new D1 programs:
[Fort Hays State, Oklahoma City University, Cal State LA] all added to the Independents

I forgot when I added the UAA [a D3 league of high endowment schools] that they're not eligible for a NCAA autobid. I'm going to change this for the upcoming season. It'll likely remain a one-bid league anyway, they've only made the tournament two separate times in the past 5 years of existence, and one of those was a play-in game. Still, it makes sense to let them in.

It's also home to RIT, Johns Hopkins, Cal Tech and MIT along with its IRL 8 members.

I think I'm going to disband the mega-conferences -- Big 16 & PCC -- in favor of their former iterations. It was a fun little moment, but the game doesn't handle them super well and so lots of otherwise top programs end up getting sandbagged. Right now, the PCC, Big 16 and Mountain West are all Level 4 leagues meaning that there's no Level 5 league west of the Mississippi. I could obviously promote one of them myself, but it just means the middle class programs in these leagues are dragging down the top ones.

I think we'll make a 12-team version of the Pac-12, revive a version of the Big Eight and come up with some kind of WCC that's basically a Big East for the West Coast. It'll cost an at-large bid, but we're really just restoring what existed before that conference was shuttered.

While I was on a roll, I also added another new conference - the Atlantic North Conference - which will be comprised of northeast schools including a few more large endowment programs in D3.

1943-44
This will be a two-parter with the 2nd one being the season recap. In any case, the tournament is happening now and Seton Hall -- two years off a Final Four -- get a #1 seed again and lose in the first round to a FIRST FOUR team with a LOSING RECORD.

Their coach is in his third year after taking over for a guy who had success and won a title there. After a Final Four in his first season, they've missing the post-season and now lose in the first round? I'm going to have to fire him on their behalf, because that's just unpardonable.

I love that it was a Jersey v Jersey matchup and that FDU went in motivated to prove people wrong, etc., etc., so it's actually kind of a perfect upset. But wow...what a deal. 27 attempts from behind the arc? Why?!


OTHER NOTABLE FIRST RD UPSETS

1942-43 RECAP
FINAL FOUR

Another season in the books. Tulsa knocks off Purdue for the national championship, their 2nd title in 4 years. Their current coach is their 3rd different head coach to lead them to the Final Four, the previous two left for Villanova and NC State respectively and had been an assistant to both coaches previously.


UAB beat UCLA in the NIT.
Wayne State won the CBI and probably will be elevated to a conference out of the independents now.
Merchant Marine Academy won the CIT.

Here are the award winners:

Final Poll:

Apparently in 1982, when the Ivy was still D1-A, they were going to invite Army, Navy and/or Northwestern to join so they could maintain 1-A status. Prior to that in 1980, the Ivy rejected Army/Navy from joining. Anyway, this gave me enough an idea to move Army/Navy to the Ivy League for 1944-45 season. I'm going to fold the Patriot League into a few other leagues including the Ivy because a 10-team league with an auto-bid annoys me unnecessarily.

For the time being, I've also banned international players [in the fbcb.ini file] to make things easier for me, the game isn't great at international recruiting anyway.

Loyola Chicago is moving to the Yankee conference, where Wichita State [who are too good for any other non-football league] are members to even that league out and provide a midwest travel partner. A few minor teams across the Summit + MVC + Southland switched as a result.

Lastly, I brought back the MEAC in the form of the Heritage League
, a conference incorporating their former members [minus FAMU who stay in the SWAC] and adding Morehouse, NC Central, Tennessee State & Kentucky State to make it a 12-team league with an auto-bid from the jump. With the Patriot League going away, it's an even split.

1944-45

No 16-1 upsets in this year's tournament thankfully.

This year's Elite 8 is full of "you could not write this script for real" weirdness with undefeated Central Michigan [37-0] taking on defending champions Tulsa [32-3] for a shot at the Final Four.

In another Elite 8 matchup, last year's national finalist Purdue was pitted against Notre Dame, the top seed in that region.

The South Region has top-seed Kentucky[35-1] facing Cincinnati [29-7]. Strangely, UK has never won a title in this league and has only made one Final Four.

East Region finals puts 5-seed Penn State seeking their first-ever Final Four against 3-seed Arizona who were last in the Final Four in '41.

In the end, this year's Final Four was full of chalk. THREE #1 seeds make it -- Kentucky, Notre Dame & Central Michigan, who were joined by first-timers Penn State.

Penn State [30-9] knocked off defeated Central Michigan, then Notre Dame to claim their first-ever national championship.

1944-45 AWARD WINNERS

We're going to merge the Big South and the SoCon after this season, because two of the old MEAC teams that I forgot to move out of the SoCon [NCCU and Coppin State] are headed the Heritage League after this year. It'll be 18 teams, but I'll probably find homes for two programs to get it to just 16. Given they were just one bid leagues most of the time anyway, the merge is no great loss.

So far, per usual, I'm just simulating and reporting out. The nice thing about picking the distant past is that I can sim for years, build some history and then dive in at some point when I feel like it.

My current idea is one I've long harbored in this game, which is, taking over a small conference and recruiting for all the teams and running different offensive/defensive systems. This isn't that different from playing in an online league, except I haven't played in an online league with my weird settings and with ADs willing to crank up the weirdness.

The last part would also being in a state with enough recruits that you could plausibly recruit more "home grown" kids to keep stuff interesting. For this purpose, I'd probably have the game generate more international students and then move all of them to whatever state/region I select as I did a few years ago, because that seemed to work pretty well -- since it's very tedious otherwise to create recruits in this game -- because if you pick a state that's big enough to have a deep recruiting pool, it likely already has too many schools to make it fun to start there.

So basically a Solesimic 8 conference but for FBCB and where you can recruit and see how interesting things can get over time. Wyoming is an easy place to select -- a state that's won a national title, only one university still [every other state in this universe has at least two universities in D1, even Alaska where I brought up UAA and UAF and Hawaii has Hilo...] and it's a place I know really well, so I can imagine the recruiting situation plausibly.

I have 7 community colleges to choose from in Wyoming to elevate to D1. Plus few D2 schools like Chadron State, Nebraska-Kearney, Black Hills State and maybe Montana State-Billings. I've already created CU Colorado Springs, Colorado School of Mines and Metro State [who I renamed Denver State because fuck DU for blocking that...] so you'd only need a few more schools [not Wyoming] to form a conference. You really only have the Mountain West and Big Sky, there's no "WCC/Big East" allegory for the Mountain West, so this would give you that.

Looks like I've figured out where I'm doing this, now. We'll just need to figure out the schools. I'd prefer not to create too many more schools, so we might just get creative and use programs I've already got in-game like Denver, Nebraska-Omaha and others that'd fit the regional footprint of this Mountain Plains Conference or whatever we're gonna call it.

Some possible members that already exist:

In theory, that'd give you some variation of 9 schools, if we create a 10th school for Wyoming that works for me, but I've been forcing leagues to have at least 12 teams. If I wanted to expand the footprint without having to add more programs, I have my eye on some very outside of the geographic footprint but sufficiently weird programs like New Orleans and Chicago State that would get me to 11, then Wyoming A&M or whatever becomes the 12th program.

So after this season, we'll embark. I don't know if I'll actually do the whole "take over everything program" thing because recruiting is kind of a bitch. But I can do the generate more international recruits, move them to the States to the area where our teams are and then try to recruit them and turn a moribund program into a powerhouse.

The real hitch here is, normally when I've done these stories, the whole idea is to move the program to a power league if they are every successful. This time, I'm intending for them to just stick it out in the whatever Cheyenne River League this ends up being.

Stay tuned.

1945-46 RECAP
FINAL FOUR
10-seed Wisconsin [25-10]
1 Tulsa [30-5]
2 Pepperdine [34-3]
2 Michigan State [29-7]

Wisconsin wins their 3rd national title in school history, their first since 1933.

AWARD WINNERS

My new league will either be the Colorado River [League/Conference/Association] or else the Missouri River [League] unless we come up with a better name between now and when I actually do it. Colorado River would allow me to go further west, so I suspect that's what I'm going to do. Cheyenne would be cool in some way, but in theory geographically limiting.

Continental Divide Conference
It's a random mishmash of programs west of the Mississippi, but it keeps me from having to create a ton of new schools, since I've already added so many.


Our new Wyoming program will be in this conference. There aren't very many generated recruits from Nebraska, Colorado, etc., so we'll have the uptick of international recruits that I'll repatriate to the US and populate the west with. Probably some of the 1-star players from bigger states too, because it's pretty unlikely they're signing with anybody anyway -- I don't track them, I have no idea -- it seems that the bigger programs all settle on the same 5-star dudes and then when they don't sign, they'll get 4/3/2 star guys in the late period with whatever schollies they have left.

The other big change I made is the non-major conferences tournaments will be much smaller -- only 4 teams max -- so that the better teams end up more likely to make the post-season. It'll make for a more interesting tournament, I think.

I changed my mind about who would ultimately end up in the conference, including moving some of my other created schools to other places to make this work better. Southern Oregon is because I want to do some Oregon recruiting and it's closer to California than the Central OR schools.

Black Hills State even though there's less talent in South Dakota than Missouri S&T had, if there's a glut of Wyoming talent, BHSU will be able to siphon some of it along with MSU Billings [Which I also added]

Wyoming A&M will join the league next year so I have a year to work out the kinks of recruiting and make sure the league works how I want it to.

Wyoming A&M will be based in Cheyenne, so it's closer to Colorado.

1946-47 RECAP
Short recap this year because I accidentally left fast-sim on too long and it ended up simming all the way to the Final Four.

Defending champs Wisconsin made it back, along with Texas Tech, Texas A&M and Arizona. In the end, Texas A&M claimed their 2nd title in school history over Texas Tech.

In this first season of the CDC, Alaska-Anchorage got the auto-bid.



It'll be a higher scoring year this one than normal, as I wasn't able to adjust my fbcb.ini file in-between as I normally do.

1947-48 WYOMING STATE HOMESTEADERS

We hired the highest rated coach without any job, who was under 30. I wanted to see if we could get someone that could keep the job a long time if things worked out. We hired 26-year old Cedrick Hobbs who is a Level 5 already.



We'll get some assistants, transfers to fill the initial roster [though we'll mostly rely on walk-ons so that we can preserve some scholarships] and then after I repatriate some recruits, we'll get down to recruiting some players.

Moving recruits works fine in the sense that the game can adapt pretty fast to their new geography when you move them after the first month of recruiting.

I decided to sim the first season of the program's history rather than tinker individually, just want to see how it plays out over their first year of D1 basketball, assuming that it'll go marginally well with a ton of young unproven talent with a young, unproven coach.

I cut 4 walk-ons to free up 4 scholarships for the upcoming year. If it were me controlling it, I'd stash one for the late season to see who we could pick up that goes unsigned, especially in this league where there's a lot of talent anyway. Still, more interested in following the saga at this point than being in the weeds of it just yet

A 6-24 season is about what I expected for an upstart program, but the ship can be righted over time.




League awards

47-48 RECAP
TOURNAMENT RECAP
Top seeds: Kansas, Kentucky, Boston College, Florida State

Because only the large conferences have big tournaments, the quality of the NCAAs should improve pretty dramatically meaning more upsets since the lower seeds will be a lot better than they'd otherwise be.

The Continental Divide Conference sent Colorado School of Mines to the NCAAs and they picked off Michigan State in the 1st round of the tourney, for the conference's first-ever NCAA win.

ELITE 8
Kentucky over Notre Dame
Seton Hall over Princeton
Tulsa def. Wisconsin
Boston College def. Temple

FINAL FOUR
BC def. Seton Hall
Tulsa def. Kentucky

NATIONAL TITLE
BC def. Tulsa
This was Boston College's first appearance in the Final Four. In fact, the program had only made the Sweet 16 for the first-time ever last season. Tulsa Head Coach Zac Foley keeps that program going, this is their 3rd national finals appearance since he took over in 1941 and their 5th Final Four.

POLL

I went back and looked at a bunch of old FBCB dynasties, especially the non-collaborative ones to get a sense of why this game is sort of hard to write about. Maybe it's the fact that you kinda have to rely on screenshots [or words] to really get a sense and the universes are always so diverse.

Per usual, I'm trying to figure out how to break out of a rut of just simming seasons because while I find it marginally interesting, you don't really get a good sense of the players. I've had success with the coaching dynasties long ago [Nebraska State, et. al.] which was fun, but I don't necessarily want to follow a coach this time, I'd be super interested in following players and being able to get invested in several types of programs.

I ran across in my reading this very quick attempt from Balldog t track recruits from one region/area and see how/where their careers took them. This appeals to me, because I'm a high school [not basketball] coach and so I've gotten to learn about the schools in different metro areas and kinda start to get invested in the ebb and flow of those recruiting situations.

With how I've expanded my league here, it'd be cool to be able to do what I was already doing with my moving international recruits to the US states deal, to follow a bunch of players at different levels -- 5 star to 1-star -- and seeing not only where they end up, but what of careers they have.

Then I have my pro game already setup as just an intake vessel for this league, so we could follow their career all the way to the pros [or overseas] if they are guys who make it that far, including bringing some of them back as coaches if I still enjoy writing the story.

I'm just kind of bored of only simming myself managing a team, and FBCB is kind of tedious for reporting out because it's otherwise sort of slow. But this idea of picking a bushel of recruits could be fun and since we're not running any team, I could just get you all immersed into the different coaches in my league right now, you could see the pure ratings [which are mostly bonkers due to my testing] and then see how guys perform relative to that over a period of time.

This feels like the best idea I've had in a while, so we're gonna pursue it. [in this thread, within this universe. If it's sustainable, I'll spin it off or delete posts to effectively 'start over']

As for picking what part of the country to highlight recruits, I'll just pick ones that are interesting to me, including dudes who I move to other places. It's not intended to be realistic, obviously. I won't intervene on recruiting unless I tell you I am -- there will be 1-star guys who likely won't get offers so we'll have to go out and find them deals -- but if you read this and decide you want to participate in some way, you can play
1. AAU/HS coach by telling me the area/high school to target, and I'll list some sub-3 star recruits from there, of which you can select one of them to 'mentor' and that player will see a boost in potential ratings enhancement that might help them sign with a program.

2] Or play booster for an alma mater/favorite school.

A booster can ask for a coach to be fired, can 'donate' money to the program that will give them a prestige boost. This will be especially useful for those smaller/low-major programs and we'll highlight their annual recruiting haul/results.

I'm just gonna sim and do my thing, but these are ways that if you run into this and wanna play in the sandbox a bit at any point, you're welcomed to.

But playing this way is like a hybrid of a collaborative dynasty and where I don't have to wait for inputs because I just wanna see results, but this will let me get more into the weeds a bit of the game and see how the seasons play out at the major/mid-major level.

To start, we'll probably only pick 2-3 guys and then work from there because it's going to be annoying to track otherwise.

I was trying to figure out the best way to do this. You want to see where or not certain recruits who are hyped or not are able to transform programs over time. That's what I'm curious about, seeing if the existing blue bloods are able to maintain their reigns and whether upstarts can move themselves into the upper classes of college basketball royalty.

Also, I want to be able to go quickly which means I can't do a whole lot of stopping to do things like recruiting and stuff. So instead, it's simply about finding the talent and watching what happens, seeing where they go. Or helping a program along from the outside without coaching, so really just playing "booster" to a few programs to see if you can direct enough recruits there to turn the program around over time using some kind of consistent strategy (e.g. getting more in-state recruits to an otherwise talent rich state to attend their home school vs going elsewhere. Or creating a pipeline to another state to a school outside of the region to reverse the fortunes of a program.)

The deal here would be that I wouldn't reverse the program prestige, change the talent of the coaching staff -- I can hire new coaches, but not edit them -- or make the players any different than the game generates them (only their names) to see how it all goes and whether my bets pay off. Also, I do have injuries on this league (at over 150% usually, except during the post-season) so things can go awry, but academic suspensions are off because it's just not well-designed in this game. (p.e. you can't make a kid go to study hall, it just presupposes you recruit 'smart' kids.)

Ultimately, this is just me trying to sandbox my way into interesting ways to break a game that's over a decade old at this point. It's purely for my own amusement.

SCENARIO A - FROM OUT OF THE CELLAR

There will be several of these storylines going at once, because I'll want to know different things. My first question is can we take a doormat program in a major conference and turn them into a national player?

The way we'll do this is two ways initially: First, the program will get a temporary prestige boost for a few seasons. I have no idea how much prestige will impact a program's ability to improve its hauls, but I figure that since I can't edit facilities (that'd be the easiest way to do it) that giving them a prestige boost would be akin to a booster giving the program a huge injection of cash to improve things.

The 2) thing we'll do is ensure there's an increase in the pool of talent in the state that school exists in, so they'll have more chances to recruit in-state talent. Again, we're just editing the locations of international players in this instance and not changing anything about their attributes otherwise.

After a 4-year period, we'll return their prestige to what it was at the start of the experiment, but we'll see how much (if any) impact it has on their prospects in the near term and beyond.

Depending on how long they've had their coach, we'll probably replace their coach with someone else in-gam.


SCENARIO B - THE REGIONAL POWERHOUSE GOES NATIONAL

I want to build a program into a regional powerhouse -- a la Gonzaga -- that turns the corner into a powerhouse team in a small league. They can recruit from anywhere, but if they recruit any 5/4 star recruits they **must** be from in-state or a neighboring state.

With this program, the story starts with a class of players all leaving around the same time, leaving a lot of scholarships available. Preference will be for players from their region, to develop a regional player identity and to eventually win recruiting battles for players in their local area.

By doing this, will it be enough to win conference titles and beyond? No idea, we're going to find out. Especially if it's just a bunch of 3-star dudes.

The program will get similar benefits as the Scenario A program -- increased prestige -- but largely so that it makes it easier to recruit local talent.

Will it work? Or will it be the wrong group of kids? We'll find out.


What's fun about both these scenarios is it gives me an ability to get invested in some players, to follow some careers and track the progress of specific programs to see if stuff works. With Scenario B, it's going to require a bit more hands-on because I'll need to actually do the recruiting to make that scenario work better, so we're going to start with Scenario A, where I can be more hands-off.

Also, I can see variations of that scenario as I try to build up other minnow programs/conferences and turn them into powerhouses over time.


SCENARIO C - MAKING HBCUs GREAT AGAIN

What if I made every HBCU in the SWAC and Heritage League (my MEAC successor) a high-prestige program and a 4-prestige league? How long would it take for them to become competitive power leagues if I change *nothing* else about how they're setup in-game. I won't change anything else, not their coaches. Just their prestige and conference prestige to see how long before one of their programs breaks-through.

This is an easy one to sim, because it can happen in parallel to my other experiments. It'll be the first one I start.

Our first target for the Scenario A is Wyoming. An easy choice because of my own personal investment in the state, but also...because it's an easy state to fill recruits for since there are [now] only two programs there, so you don't need a lot of recruits every year.

We've temporarily boosted their prestige in 1948-49 [two months into recruiting] and added some players [from Texas] to the Wyoming pool, all 3-star and below, along with the 8 or so players who were already in the pool. We'll sim this season, see how many sign with them and how their class stacks up against the rest of the Mountain West.

We'll also check on the SWAC and MEAC recruiting classes/results to see if there's any immediate progress and we'll monitor these for a while to see how it comes together.

Next season, we'll select another program in a different region to watch for another Scenario A experiment.

In 1948-49, the boost did not help the SWAC at all as it's still just a one-bid league. The Heritage League did enjoy a 2-bid season to the tournament as a result of the added help. Alcorn State pulling in upset in the SWAC tournament did not help the league's cause.


Meanwhile, Wyoming had a 12-17 season. We'll see how their recruiting fared, but after 4 seasons as head coach with no improvement, it's time for head coach Mike Ross to be fired. We'll see what sort of coach we can find them to help advance the program to the next level, thanks to the petrol bucks [probably] of our new booster.

The Final Four this year is three 2-seed in Kentucky, Cincinnati & Florida State. Perennial powerhouse program Tulsa is back in the Final Four again for the 4th time in 6 years. Is this the year Zac Foley finally wins his 2nd title? Or will Kentucky finally get over the hump and a title in the books in their 2nd straight Final Four?

Cincinnati (34-6) beat Tulsa (29-8) 76-67 to claim their first national title.

Here are the award winners:


Final Regular season poll

We're going to add Wayne State to our Scenario B list. I re-added them as D1 program and I'm curious if we can turn them into a power program in the heart of Detroit in due time. I don't really have to add recruits to Michigan, as it's already pretty well stocked, but I can emphasize the number of international recruits who "move" to Detroit, giving that program more local kids to select from when it's recruiting season.



Let's check in on last season's recruiting:

Wyoming had the 3rd best recruiting class in the Mountain West conference and a Top 30 class overall. Turns out, prestige helps a lot.

In the SWAC, Jackson State [32] and Grambling [46] were the only two programs to yield classes in the Top 50. No Heritage Conference program did this [Norfolk State topped that league at #53.]

We'll see if a second year does any better for any of them.

Here were the Top 10 recruiting classes.

1949-50 RECAP

Another year, another Final Four for Tulsa without a title. Instead, Florida knocked off UConn for their first-ever national title. Their head coach, Michael Lee was in his 1st season after spending last year getting Boise State to the Sweet 16.


AWARDS

FINAL POLL

Delaware State had a strong year, were ranked high and were a 6-seed in the tournament but lost to IUPUI in the first round. Arizona fell to Colorado College [a 16-seed] in the 1st round. Alcorn State was an 11-seed out of the SWAC, but made it to the Sweet 16, becoming on the 3rd SWAC team to make it that in the tournament. No SWAC program has advanced further, so far. No Heritage League team has yet made a Sweet 16.

Wyoming went 12-18 under first-year head coach Derrick Morales who came to the program after the past two seasons as an assistant with Kentucky. [He's 59 and had never been a head coach, but has good ratings despite his age so it seemed like a solid fit. We'll see if he can turn it around.]

Well, the prestige helped. With a full season of prestige assistance (tm), two SWAC teams made the Top 10 recruiting classes - Grambling (#6) and Florida A&M (#10) - with Alcorn State (34) making the top 50. In the Heritage League, it went even better as 7 programs rounded out Top 50 with Howard (?!?) landing the #1 recruiting class in the nation and Delaware State (#5) landing in the Top 5. Will this yield results? We'll see. Delaware State added a Top 5 class to a team that made the NCAAs, so perhaps they'll be more resilient.

Wyoming did not benefit, however. Their class was 167th in the nation and 7th in the MWC. Wayne State had a solid class getting 4 recruits that left them the 29th best class in th country -- far and away better -- than any Horizon League program.

I did realize that playing this way meant I wasn't focusing on players or individuals. Playing game-by-game seems a bit extreme given that I'm just writing for myself, but I'm still playing faster than I ought to be. Going to continue this same model, but think of something else that'll stick.

I got this bright idea that I could create "Fab Fives" for different areas, do none of the recruiting and just follow their careers. The premise being that you have these five recruits that you're trying to get to stay in-state and then follow their careers through college to the pros.

So strategically, we ought to find a few players that are not currently getting offers, place them in geographic areas where they'll get better noticed and then see 1] where they sign and 2] how their careers pan out. So long as I'm not doing the recruiting, it won't be a slog.