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06-30-2012, 08:12 PM
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#51 | ||
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Dark Cloud
Join Date: Apr 2001
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Lessons Learned So Far
Recruiting 1-star players exclusively is hard work. You're always having to mine for some kid that might give you an edge someone else who looks just like him. Stats help a lot, but they're not really going to tease out the best amongst kids. I notice kids who were all-state can often be more helpful in bad states (and even in good ones, sometimes) than in states where they weren't even if the place isn't a hotbed of talent.
Most of all, the recruiting ranks tend to be very instructive. Once you get out of the top 750 and for sure, the Top 1000 then it's really a crapshoot (pun intended) and so, I try to mine those numbers to figure out where we ought to spend our time. After that, it's really about honing in on the positions you need. We know we can develop talent, so it's looking for kids with the potential in a particular area we need. I'm still trying to figure out how to recruit more balanced. Still doing a bad job of using JUCO recruits to balance out my freshman recruits and I think it's holding us back. I've learned a lot about the possibilities though and it's clearly possible to play this level. Not to win national titles or even do tournament runs. Teams are too subsistence level. But if you can spend a bit of time looking for what your program needs, you can win. This is the most "realistic" the game has ever felt to me, so it's sort of neat. I'm still working out the kinks though. I think for instance, I need a mechanism for inserting recruits into the future recruits pool. The game doesn't do a very good job right now of creating the kinds of realistic one-star kids who go lightly regarded (or have problems) and end up becoming really productive college players. So I think version two of this dynasty will focus more on that angle of things. But we're not quite done at Lindenwood yet. |
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06-30-2012, 08:46 PM
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#52 |
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Dark Cloud
Join Date: Apr 2001
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It was generally expected after losing our Fab 5 recruiting class that we'd take a big step back this year since future classes haven't been as good as that one was.
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Just to give you an idea of what a roster of entirely 1-star players with top coaching can produce in a semi-competitive league. Back in the conference tournament for the 2nd straight year as a 9-seed. I doubt this year's team will fare as well as last year's did, shocking the entire conference en-route to an NCAA bid. But despite the seemingly step back, I feel like we'll get the ship back on course next year with the recruits we're targeting. We beat Cedarville in the 8/9 game 66-53, to go (16-15) on the year and ensure that even with a loss in our next game, we'll end the year at least .500 which is good considering our streak of winning seasons was in jeopardy. Code:
We almost did the unthinkable two years in a row, in taking out the top seed of the conference tournament, but this year it wasn't meant to be and we end the year at 16-16. |
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06-30-2012, 08:54 PM
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#53 |
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Dark Cloud
Join Date: Apr 2001
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Code:
Looking at this year's Elite 8: West: 4-seed Central Washington v. 3-seed St. Mary's Midwest: 4-seed C.W. Post v. 2-seed Central Missouri South: 1-Tarleton State v. 14-seed Christian Brothers East: 4-seed Augusta State v. 3-Pitt-Johnstown All of them have at least one "star" player (I use the color black, the default is blue I think) and most have at least two with a ton of role players that on my roster would be star players. So that's the real gap between "us" and "them." The difference is what I like to call the Jameer Nelson factor. College basketball has always had teams that manage to bring a guy or two into the folder who otherwise would never star at a high level, but manage to have successful careers. Seems that in this game, that's guys who are at least 2-star and higher, but probably more like 3-star. I doubt if I moved this a 2-star and under dynasty that we'd do any better and doing it at the 3-star level would almost feel like it's defeating the purpose. Still, I'm tempted to see whether it's possible or not to build a regional power in the vein of a Gonzaga-type program or even a Belmont or Davidson of a lower-level conference by recruiting solely from the under-recruited talent the game has to offer. I was thinking I'd like to move to D1, but rather than go straight to D1, my thinking is I'll toil down here in D2 for a while longer and when I find a program that's successfully managed to do this; then I'll go with that program to D1 and we'll do it again. So I'm going to switch schools now and begin again. I think after a few years of no longer being a "new" program, the whole experiment loses its shine because the idea is to really start out of the chute with talent using this method, evolve the program in a Boise State-esque kind of ascent and then see if you can maintain it. Given that 1-star talent isn't good enough, I'm going to modify the rules a bit and see how it works then. I'm going to look at this year's tournament bracket and see which program(s) were able to get the furthest with the least amount of talent. Then I'm going to sim three years ahead without playing and test the same thing in each one of those tournaments. I'm just curious to see what the game engine does unfettered, realizing that a human has a bigger advantage if it knows what it wants to do. Last edited by Young Drachma : 06-30-2012 at 09:01 PM. |
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06-30-2012, 09:06 PM
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#54 |
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Dark Cloud
Join Date: Apr 2001
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There wasn't one team in the Sweet 16 this year that had less than 2 former 4-star recruits. I think the 3-star IOMT experiment will certainly put us at least notionally on some kind of playing field (not a level one. But at least the same court) as these programs we're going up against.
The National All-Freshman team does offer some hope. It was comprised of two 5-star recruits (the guards) two 3-stars and a 2-star. The other possibility is to create a human-controlled "Ivy" type league where all of the programs are restricted to 3-star and under talent. (Hell or 2 or 1) and then at least you know each year you're 1) going up against programs like you and 2) you're guaranteed an automatic bid after all of that madness. Last edited by Young Drachma : 06-30-2012 at 09:11 PM. |
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06-30-2012, 09:19 PM
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#55 |
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Dark Cloud
Join Date: Apr 2001
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Here's Lindenwood's upcoming recruiting class.
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Tried to go foreign, thinking that might help. Realized there wasn't the kind of size coupled with talent out there that I decided that we could just go little and try to do an up-tempo deal. Not sure that it'll really work as I intend, but that's my thinking with this class. Last edited by Young Drachma : 06-30-2012 at 09:22 PM. |
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07-04-2012, 08:26 PM
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#56 | |
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Dark Cloud
Join Date: Apr 2001
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I'm kicking around this new idea to create a new conference in the vein of FOF's Solecismic Eight where all of the teams are in the same state and have to recruit using only one-star talent a la the way Lindenwood was forced to when I was simming.
It'd be interesting to see one-star talent competing against each other in the same league under the same constraints, budgetary and otherwise. Not sure what state I'd use. Probably Wyoming, because it's the only state with one four-year school and alas, no D2 or D3 schools in its midst. There are 8 teams in the Wyoming CC Athletic Conference, so those would automatically be the 8 of I did it that way.  Plus, Wyoming has no real in-state talent to speak of -- in real life and in-game -- so it'd make it interesting to see them fight over scraps and surrounding state 1-star talent. I think this is going to be the new direction of this dynasty. The ten members of the newly created Wyoming College Athletic League (WyCAL) are: Quote:
In real life, Cheyenne State is Laramie County. Wyoming Catholic is an unaccredited private school with no sports teams and Snowy Range is a spinoff of Cheyenne State's Laramie branch campus. So yeah, there's the rundown of the landscape. All of the teams will be human controlled for recruiting only and we'll focus more on the conference rather than individual teams, except to see how well teams can do against other teams in other conferences, etc. Teams play 18 games in-conference and there will be no auto-bid for this league for five years. Last edited by Young Drachma : 07-04-2012 at 09:01 PM. |
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07-05-2012, 04:55 PM
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#57 |
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Dark Cloud
Join Date: Apr 2001
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Seems a lot of the strategy out there for FBCB isn't being shared because so many people who play religiously do so in online leagues. My thinking is that we'll try to use this new conference as a laboratory for different schemes and recruiting tactics of low-level players.
Each will be set to have the types of scouting/recruiting/assistant situation as I was doing with Lindenwood, because I feel like it's the best way to play is without a fog of war and providing the maximum environment for player development. I think we're also going to increase the limit from only one-star players to two-star players and below. This will enable us to widen the pool of recruits we can get and will also allow me to see what the differentiation is between a 1 or a 2 star player. There have been reports that 2-star kids can actually develop into useful cogs on teams. There might be an eventual DP situation like in MLS where teams can have one 3-star player on their roster at a time, but I haven't decided yet. It might not be in the same as the Island of Misfit Toys (and hence, perhaps I need to start the dynasty from scratch/reboot) but...since we're talking about bottom-feeding D1 basketball programs, the spirit seems the same even if we have to be flexible about quality in FBCB. My goal is to really see lightly recruited, etc. players develop into fixtures and how to do that. So that's the direction we're headed. |
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07-05-2012, 06:30 PM
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#58 |
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Pro Starter
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Madison, WI
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Just by bringing up the MLS DP, you're making me wonder if there's a good FM mod out there that bringing North America into line with Europe (promotion/relegation, no confusing MLS payroll rules, maybe a fall-spring season and no playoffs). Any way, carry on in Wyoming!
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07-05-2012, 07:04 PM
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#59 | |
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Dark Cloud
Join Date: Apr 2001
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Quote:
Alternate MLS North America to Level 8 (this is a bit more modern, focuses on present day MLS, puts Cosmos in MLS and is promo/relegation to 8 levels.) Alternate Reality America (This one takes old American teams from history and is a massive db.) Last edited by Young Drachma : 07-05-2012 at 07:05 PM. |
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07-06-2012, 07:11 PM
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#60 |
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Dark Cloud
Join Date: Apr 2001
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So I decided my current approach will be to fast-sim the next ten years. I want to see what sort of talent flows through the conference over that time. I'll be steering the recruiting ship for one program specifically, while the others will be human controlled for recruiting but they'll just be taking on walkons or whatever fodder they get as I don't have the patience to recruit for 10 programs.
With a likely dominant program to rise in the league, it'll be interesting to see how far they can go and how it affects their prospects or whether there's a big difference between a team of one + two star recruits versus a league of walkons. We'll check in with the top players, report on a all-conference decade team and see if I can't get immersed with a bit of history playing the way I like to play -- fast. |
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07-06-2012, 08:28 PM
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#61 |
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Dark Cloud
Join Date: Apr 2001
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So after the 1st year, here's what a team of walkons going up against other walkons will do. Add a few transfers to the mix (as I did at Snowy Range) and well, you dominate in the regular season in conference play:
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Despite that, we lost in the conference tourney final to Central Wyoming. No post-season for us, since there's no auto-bid for this league for 4 more seasons after this one. But a regular season title is a good way to start things. Last edited by Young Drachma : 07-06-2012 at 08:29 PM. |
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07-06-2012, 09:54 PM
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#62 |
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Dark Cloud
Join Date: Apr 2001
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Year Two shows how the AI has the advantage if you give a program a superior coach and do nothing else, he'll manage to squeeze the best out of whatever he's given.
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Didn't even win the conference this year. 3rd seed NW Wyoming won the Conference tourney title. For a bit, we were on the bubble but crashed back to earth through a bad February. |
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07-06-2012, 09:58 PM
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#63 |
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Dark Cloud
Join Date: Apr 2001
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Learned my lesson for Year 3. Schedule easy and keep those Top 50 programs out of your schedule, even as a test. Just pile up wins as much as you can and hope the team can roll through the conference schedule in the same stead.
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07-07-2012, 12:51 PM
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#64 |
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Dark Cloud
Join Date: Apr 2001
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Snowy Range goes 26-6 in Year 3. Weak SOS kept them out of the tournament, they needed to basically go undefeated to do that in the conference and they didn't. So missed out another year.
Expanded the D2 tourney to 68, because why not? There are current 299 programs in D2. Need to add a 300th school at some point, but not this coming year. Going to add some more recruits for Wyoming, because right now there are no in-state kids coming through at all for whatever reason and I don't know how to fix the game to have it generate more recruits from a particular state or anything. So far, no real standouts have emerged from the one-star class. I have seen at least one kid who was originally a one-star player who came in with potential at the highest level. I'd never seen that before, but he didn't end up qualifying. |
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07-07-2012, 01:03 PM
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#65 |
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Dark Cloud
Join Date: Apr 2001
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So now we're in Year 4. Clearly the "dominant team" in the WyCAL...which doesn't mean much. But we'll take it. Still two seasons away (Year 6 will be the first year) that the league will receive an auto-bid.
But if nothing else, I've figured out how to schedule finally. To be fair, I just used the scheduling module to find the games I wanted rather than waiting month by month to do it. After a early-season "tournament" setup, I sent us on the road a bit against teams and then played some regional games that make it more realistic and well, our RPI heading into the February swoon is 28. If we manage to make it out of Frantic February doing well, we should have an outside chance -- again, providing we can win the conference tourney -- of making the NCAAs as an at-large team. But that's saying a lot and we still have a lot of work to do for that possibility to unfold. Code:
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My goal so far was/is to find a standout star from this league. It hasn't happened yet. But at least we're a solid ballclub. That's progress. We might be simming a bit before one of those standouts manages to show up here. I could manage to recruit someone outside of the 3-star realm to be that for us in perhaps some miracle, but...in reality, I'd much prefer to see a 3-star or lower kid just evolve into a 5-star type player like in real life. But like in real life, that sort of thing isn't happening overnight and we haven't seen it yet. |
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07-07-2012, 01:10 PM
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#66 |
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Dark Cloud
Join Date: Apr 2001
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As of March 1st, we're actually listed as an in.
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With an SOS of 50 right now and an RPI of 35, that's clearly helping us out considerably. We'll see what the conference tournament has in store. |
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07-07-2012, 01:15 PM
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#67 |
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Dark Cloud
Join Date: Apr 2001
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As for March 15th, the WyCAL is a two-bid league.
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Western Wyoming is on the bubble, so one figures they have to win the conference tournament. On the flip, it seems like our RPI and SOS should manage to get us in either way, but it'll affect seeding based on how well we do. Even still, I can't imagine us as an especially high seed no matter what. The fact is, Western Wyoming is a team entirely comprised of walk-ons. So the whole thing is impressive by any measure. |
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07-07-2012, 01:19 PM
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#68 |
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Dark Cloud
Join Date: Apr 2001
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WyCAL Conference Tournament Championship game.
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I watched the selection show. In the end, Western Wyoming really needed to beat us to get that at-large bid which probably would've been a play-in bid to begin with. Instead, we enter the tournament as a 12-seed in the East region and will face Eckerd (24-8) in the first round. |
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07-07-2012, 01:26 PM
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#69 |
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Dark Cloud
Join Date: Apr 2001
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Code:
No shock at the end result, but still a heck of a season and a milestone by the Snowy Range club making its mark on WyCAL history with an at-large tourney bid and establishing its dominance in the conference for another year. Last edited by Young Drachma : 07-07-2012 at 01:26 PM. |
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07-08-2012, 09:11 PM
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#70 |
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Dark Cloud
Join Date: Apr 2001
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I'm going to close this dynasty down here. I think I might continue in D2, by now trying to create a D2 juggernaut program as I've never truly seen a program that was super dominant in any of my past solo iterations and I'm curious to see what that would look like, especially for recruiting and looking at an all-star cast of players.
Plus, there's a possibility that if it works we'll eventually elevate the program to D1 since we'd be starting now in 2002-03 so we'd have at least a decade or so to establish some kind of D2 dominance. Not sure if I'll dynasty about it or not, but...that's the path I have next. |
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07-13-2012, 05:22 PM
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#71 |
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Dark Cloud
Join Date: Apr 2001
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So like I said I would...I created a D2 powerhouse school. I asked around and someone suggested I create East Arkansas University and place it in West Memphis, AR. I liked this because I saw it as a realistic situation of a school in a metro area on the other side of the border establishing itself at the 2nd tier.
The first season for the River Dogs in D2 (from fictional NAIA) was 2002. They hired former Lindenwood and Snowy Range head coach G.D. Darnell as their first head coach and the program began hitting the ground running. They began their existence in the Heartland Conference of D2. In 2007, they moved to the more competitive Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletic Conference where they've maintained their success. Code:
Remember, this is D2 basketball. So we're not competing with the best of the best except at our level. Code:
Here are the teams that have won titles since I moved the dynasty to this focus. Code:
For what it's worth Lindenwood and Snowy Range haven't exactly set the earth on fire since we left them, Lindenwood still hasn't made it back to the Big Dance and Snowy Range has, but hasn't become a power team in the WyCAL conference which added Nebraska-Scottsbluff to its ranks and is now a much more competitive (though bottom tier) league in D2. But here's the real reason we're posting. The board of trustees and some boosters at East Arkansas are of the belief that the program needs to transition to Division 1. This is a controversial opinion, truthfully. Boosters and the President are the ones pushing this, the department and even the coaches are more skeptical. No one is sure that we ought to stop dominating D2 and go off to D1. On the flip side, no one cares how many national championships you win in Division 2. Especially when Memphis is announcing up the road that it's going to the Big East and even Arkansas State plays in D1. So what's a program to do? We'll keep chugging along. At the end of this year, there will be a study released to let the institution know whether it ought to move to D1. From there, there will be more meetings and so forth. The earliest the move would take place, after the school left transition would be 2016. On the flip side, they might just continue in D2. We'll use this thread to update the process of the program in D2 and whether it makes its ascent to D1 or not. |
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07-13-2012, 11:56 PM
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#72 |
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Dark Cloud
Join Date: Apr 2001
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The 2011-12 season is on the edge of being complete. The River Dogs are competing for their 6th D2 national championship against their nemesis from the East Coast Conference C.W. Post who have appeared in the Elite 8 more times than any other team (20), 15 times in the final four and 11 times in the national championship game. C.W. Post along with three other programs (including EAU) has claimed 5 national championships.
The two programs have a friendly rivalry going and seem to enjoy meeting in these finals. "It's really the best of what D2 has to offer," said C.W. Post head coach Issac Norris who is the career D2 leader in wins with 1032, but only joined C.W. Post four years ago after an illustrious career which includes two national titles at St. Mary's in San Antonio. Code:
The two teams are evenly matched.   So really, anyone could pull it out. We duel back and forth a lot, between the two. There was no neutral site regular season meeting between us this year (we do that every few years) and so, it's hard to know precisely how well we match up. What I did for gameplanning in this game was slow the pace of the game down relative to how we usually play, cut down on our 3-point play even though we're good at that (I didn't want to live and die by the 3 in such a pivotal game) and instead, focused on ball movement. tight defense and rather than let any one guy take over the game; I've opted to let that be a free-for-all approach. I find that with highlighting a few guys to run the offense through, you are subject to a bad night by a guy and end up losing. I realize that the only reason we can eschew this playing style is because of how much talent we have. But hey...just think of it as D2 talent. The game still uses my D3 height file, so the guys are shorter than they'd otherwise be, anyway. Moving on to the game... Code:
Well, the gameplan worked. We're so closely matched with these guys that literally every game could go either way. But it's nice to see the gameplan worked and in the process, make EAU the first program to reach six national titles. What's odd about this particular team is that while it was chock full of talent, it might have been the most complete program we've had since earlier title teams. SHOULD WE STAY OR SHOULD WE GO The EAU to D1 rumors are fueling. No one has any illusions that you can have the kind of success going from D2 to D1 as we have had from NAIA to D2. It's just a different kind of thing. First off, it takes money that East Arkansas won't have to compete with the big boys at the top of the ranks. On the flip side, there's a kind of irrelevance that comes from dominating at a lower level and there's a clamoring amongst our boosters and specifically, our President that wants to elevate the program to a higher level. EAU doesn't have football at the moment, but with me having NCAA13, that's a possibility.  Still, at this point, I haven't decided how to decide whether to move the program up or not. It just remains a possibility. We know for sure that next year at least, EAU will play in D2 and remain in the MIAA. |
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07-17-2012, 04:53 PM
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#73 |
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Dark Cloud
Join Date: Apr 2001
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The consensus on this after talking to a few folks is that you have Mt. Union in football (a team that's won 10 D3 national titles and has been in every D3 national title game but two since 1996. The last 7 D3 national title games have been between UW-Whitewater and Mt. Union) where you can be dominant at a level so far beyond everyone else versus the natural trajectory where you win a title or two at the lower level or do a Boise State where they won at pretty much every level they played at and then elevated to the top level where they've had success too.
And that's the debate. Football isn't getting added at EAU, because it doesn't make financial sense in a state with a dominant SEC team and a Sun Belt club. So then the debate is moving up and whether or not doing so makes a bunch of a sense. So we're still debating our next move for the program. At this point, all signs point to remaining -- at least for now -- in D2. Which means I move on with another story/program in the meantime, while keeping this one incubated. Not sure yet. |
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07-17-2012, 06:45 PM
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#74 |
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Pro Starter
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Madison, WI
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Find a school in Minnesota, maybe? Decent population and only the one D-1 school to compete with.
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07-17-2012, 07:02 PM
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#75 | |
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Dark Cloud
Join Date: Apr 2001
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Quote:
Ooh. I didn't realize that until you said it. Vermont, Wyoming, Maine & Minnesota are the only ones with just one D1 school. Crazy. I think that's a great idea. We'll make it a private school with a large endowment, because then it'd make sense that they'd want to be D1 for publicity or whatever. I could create a fictional school that'd be a merger of St. Olaf and Carleton (two private D3 schools) that together would have a billion-dollar endowment. I'll plot this and come up with a storyline. Thanks for chiming in, this was super helpful. |
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07-17-2012, 10:49 PM
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#76 |
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Dark Cloud
Join Date: Apr 2001
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I needed to come up with a fictional FCS school for a FCS fantasy league on another board and so..this was a good opportunity to figure out my Minnesota school.
Decided on Minnesota A&M University in Austin, MN about 45 minutes away from Rochester. (It's home to where they make SPAM) The Minnesota A&M Redhorse. Which is a fish, not a horse. We'll insert them into D1. I'm simming with the 2014 setup starting in the 1930s and going all the way to 2014 or so, then we'll bring the program into D1. Not sure if they'll start as an independent or in a conference yet...(probably the latter) Last edited by Young Drachma : 07-17-2012 at 10:49 PM. |
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07-21-2012, 02:18 PM
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#77 |
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Dark Cloud
Join Date: Apr 2001
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East Arkansas is going to move to Division 1 starting in the 2016-17 season.
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