The OT Pt. 2: What do you do... Topic

bbunch
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Mid-major D1 is awesome. It's renewing my interest in the game as well. It's a tough challenge, but realizable with a group of solid coaches in that mid-major conference with you. 
11/20/2014 5:54 PM
emy1013
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Posted by zbrent716 on 11/19/2014 12:58:00 PM (view original):
Posted by gillispie1 on 11/19/2014 12:32:00 PM (view original):
thats great, the only thing is, if you really want that one team that is success driven, i highly recommend going to a power conference. that d2 conf is pretty much empty. we humans are all the same, we can try incredibly hard at incredible challenges, but its damn near impossible to give an easy challenge one iota more effort than it takes to satisfactorily complete that challenge. no way you can consistently work on your game planning skills (which you mentioned as a key weakness) when day in and day out, you are beating up some mediocre sim AI run program. instead, go to a power conference, let the top coaches there beat you down for a while - thats how you will see progress. when your conf is sending 10 teams to the NT and half your conf games are against top 25 teams, thats when you really sharpen your edge. you are only in your 2nd season there now, i'd take the hit if i were you, playing in a tough conference is one of the best things aspiring coaches can do to hone their craft. between that and engaging on the forums and with other coaches, you hit the 2 things i would recommend to new, highly competitive coaches - to me, that is 101, sure, you can be successful without those things, but its a heck of a lot harder. 

final note, one of the top traps of great teams is that they don't play hard enough opponents, and end up tailoring their team to the opponents they play, which is often VERY different from tailoring your team to the opponents you hope to be playing late in the NT. the relative efficiency of offense players, for example, varies greatly by the quality of your opponent. many game planning options are very different when you play the best as one of the best, or when you play anyone else. other than forcing you to stay on point, which i mentioned already, being in a great conference does two things. first, it allows you to tailor your play to real opponents, better preparing you for late NT games. second, it lets you know when you don't have your team setup right yet, or when your understanding of how good your team should be, is off. play a bunch of easy teams, win those games, you learn nothing - maybe your team is good, maybe its great, how can you hope to know? but if you have 15 games against NT opponents on your schedule, i'm guessing you'll find out where you really stand - which you can compare to where you SHOULD stand, or hope to stand, based on the talent on your team. you recognize you aren't where you should be, and make adjustments to get better. that feedback loop is the key mechanism to growing as a coach. if you are only getting real feedback on the quality of your top teams (the ones you think you built the way you think they should be built, not the ones with a bunch of mistakes you already know you made) by NT success, you are going to grow slowly, guaranteed. but if you are getting that feedback all season, you can make some real progress. 
 
 
I think this final note is actually very important. I firmly believe that one of the reasons for Tark GLV's success in the NT year after year is the fact we get to figure things out in conference against top competition. This past season, we sent 9 teams to the NT, 8 of whom made the Sweet 16. 6 of the Elite 8 teams were from GLV, 3 of the Final 4, and it was an all GLV championship game. In that championship game mniven's St. Joseph team knocked off gpgp's Lewis program. In conference play, St. Joseph went 8-8 and Lewis went 9-7. The two teams in the championship went a combined 17-15 in conference play, but by playing such strong competition and seeing real examples of how game plans fared against other top human teams, it is possible to get a very good idea of what works best come NT time.
Bullshit. The "reason" your conference has so much success is because you've got a full conference (a HUGE key in what has become a wasteland in D2 Tark. At one point within the last two seasons, there were only three conferences in D2 Tark that had more human coaches than Sim teams. And one of those other two conferences besides the GLV was at a 7-5 ratio, not exactly loaded with real people) and have figured out how to manipulate the Projection Report to get more teams and higher seeds in the NT (and that's not hard to do either with (a) enough coaches and (b) enough coaches in agreement about certain scheduling aspects). Not to mention that there's rarely more than one or two recruiting battles each season between GLV teams, which is fairly amazing given how close in prestige, proximity, and bankrolls to each other all those teams actually are. I mean, with a guaranteed eleven, usually twelve, high prestige teams in the same conference, all stuck in the same basic geographical area, all fighting over the VERY best recruits a D2 team can pull down, it sure is weird that the GLV doesn't end up cracking heads with each other all the time.

Then (and here's the "reason" that the GLV does so well), you get so much more recruiting money than everyone else that you're able to get better players than anyone else. Period. The better players on your rosters are the reason for the success, plain and simple, and to act like it's ANYTHING else is not only disingeneous but is bordering on Etta levels of arrogance. It would be commendable if those better players actually DID come from working harder than all the other coaches in that division of that world, from knowing the game better than all the other coaches in that division in that world, and from just being that much better of coaches than all the others in that division in that world, but they don't.
11/21/2014 3:57 AM (edited)
emy1013
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Wow, someone disagrees with your premise about your sacred little GLV conference, that you haven't been a part of for how many seasons now, and you decide to make it personal. Classy. Frankly, Jeff, I wasn't arguing your post, it was Zbrent's post, but goodness gracious is the GLV in Tark the highlight of your real life, the most important thing you've ever accomplished, because you sure do seem to have a thing about bringing it up any chance you get? Woooooow, you were the driving force behind a simulated conference on a simulated basketball web site that's stayed at the top for FIVE REAL WORLD YEARS!! Hey, AWESOME, make sure you put that on your next resume as that's bound to impress absolutely no one.

So my "championship winning rate" isn't as good as some other coaches. Well whoop-dee-*******-do. My interest in this game also isn't nearly at the level of someone who wastes time studying the results, studying the engine for every little advantage, studying the relationship between variable x and variable y (but don't forget to include how both of them are counteracted by variable z, but only when z is a left-handed, freshman shooting guard from the Ukraine). . Didn't you used to tell people that you'd EASILY spend 30-45 minutes analyzing a single game? Sorry Jeff, but that's just a little too extreme for me. You know why? BECAUSE IT ISN'T THAT ******* IMPORTANT. IT'S A GAME! I haven't seriously gameplanned for anything less than a Final Four game in getting close to four years now. I "might" spend five minutes a day, adjusting my plus/minus settings, or I might not look at my teams for a week. The game is not that difficult, but to hear some of you tell it, it may as well be rocket science, only written out in hieroglyphics but with no Rosetta stone. It's a game. That's all it is, yet some of you run around here acting like you're about to unlock the meaning of life. So you've mentored "literally dozens of coaches", again, whoop-dee-*******-do. Has that improved the real world in ANY way, shape, or form? No? Then why keep bragging about it? So you'll have to excuse me if my "championship winning rate" isn't in as lofty of a stratosphere as yours or some of your other disciples. Because to me, what my winning rate is means juuuuuuust slightly more than jack **** and juuuuuuust slightly less than whether Nepal is dealing effectively with their sudden shortage of hemorrhoid cream. This clown is worried about other people's "championship winning rates". Wow, just.....wow. Maybe you and the rest of your GLV buddies/mentors/proteges can all get on Skype now and have a circle jerk while you gameplan for your next tournament conquest. Gotta keep those rates up, up, up!!
11/24/2014 4:34 AM (edited)
arssanguinus
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Posted by nachopuzzle on 11/19/2014 1:28:00 AM (view original):
Why have you accepted the fact that you'll never win a National Championship?
Meh. I've come to the same conclusion. After something like six appearances in an nt final with six losses and some of them being things like my best player going out right before the final, etcetera, I've pretty much accepted that it's just not going to happen.

As for what to try? Try wild experiments. Try to win in new ways. Go rogue, go 'mad scientist'.
11/24/2014 6:05 AM
p6453
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Posted by arssanguinus on 11/24/2014 6:05:00 AM (view original):
Posted by nachopuzzle on 11/19/2014 1:28:00 AM (view original):
Why have you accepted the fact that you'll never win a National Championship?
Meh. I've come to the same conclusion. After something like six appearances in an nt final with six losses and some of them being things like my best player going out right before the final, etcetera, I've pretty much accepted that it's just not going to happen.

As for what to try? Try wild experiments. Try to win in new ways. Go rogue, go 'mad scientist'.
After all the posts (related or not) I think arssanguinus has the right answer..."Try to win in new ways. Go rogue, go 'mad scientist'." I spent a ton of time looking at just about every D2 team that was open and the D1's I was qualified for and decided that Oberlin was still the place to be.
The only team I applied for (and subsequently withdrew) was D1 Akron because they had 9 open schollies and I could have recruited my own players right away.

I've also decided to study the top teams a lot closer and try to mimic what they do, as well as upgrade my non-conference slate with 7-8 quality human coaches. Determined to earn some quality wins.

Thanks to all who stayed on topic and gave their two cents-appreciate it.
11/24/2014 9:25 AM
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