How To: Practice Plan

Practice! Practice! Practice!

Every coach in their right mind would say practice makes perfect. This is no exception with Hoops Dynasty and the number of options may be daunting. Follow this guide for some great tips on how to maximize your practice effort and get the most out of players. 

Team Practice

As a team it is important to note that you must be proficient in your type of offense to be formidable or at least decent in a few to be able to keep up with other teams. This part, when I started Hoops Dynasty, had my frazzled a bit since when I watch teams on TV they tend to change it up based on who they are playing and do not play just one style of defense in particular. Their offense kind of stays the same, but is more fluid so this part of Hoops Dynasty I am not a fan of. However, you will need to pick your favorite Offense and Defense. Now the number of minutes put into each needs to be at a minimum of 20. I do know there are diminishing returns after this number but I am sure that 20 is the sweet spot. 

I actually put 24 minutes in my own teams no matter what, I personally feel that this gives me a slight advantage when changing types of offense or defense as well as increases my players ability a little earlier than another team. I do not have any data on this but this is just a personal preference. 

Individual Practice

This is vital for your players and your team. This past two seasons I have had the best improvements overall for 2 of my players almost 100 point increase for both. This is huge because it makes an impact on the team right away as well as with that player and increases your teams overall ability. 

Potentials Matter

You must look at your players ratings and colors. 

• Green = Very High Improvement
• Blue = High Improvement
• Black = Average Improvement
• Orange = Low Improvement
• Red = Very Low Improvement - Basically NO improvement in this area

This will dictate your practice plan ALWAYS!

Study Study Study!

Players year in school is important as study hall is part of the practice plan. Your players if you are in DI and DII need to maintain a specific GPA. It might also be true in DIII but I have not played in DIII in a long long time, so I cannot remember, but I think that DIII is much lower than DI so if you follow my rules to this you will be fine. So with study hall I follow these principles and I have never had a single player be ineligible in over 20 seasons at DI.

**Update** I received some feedback from this area and am updating my personal findings as I tested other's information and it worked perfectly and allowed for greater improvement in my players. 

Follow these rules!

1. All players set at 0 Study Hall Minutes
2. If a High School recruit has a GPA below 3.0 for every 0.1 point below 3.0 add 1 to their study hall minutes. 
3. Check Mid-Term Grades, if any are low update their Study Hall Minutes accordingly, meaning add a few to each 2 usually maybe 3 depending on how low they are.
4. Once final grades have been posted - Put all Study Hall minutes to 0. This allows for optimal growth after they have finished their year and will not change their GPA whatsoever. 

**Note** That if you have a player with a low GPA coming in from High School this might change a bit and it always has to be fluid especially if you get to mid terms and someone is lower than they should be. Now if they are close I have never change their practice plan and by the end they were fine. Basically I only worry if at mid-terms they are below the required 2.5 GPA. If they have a 2.7 they will generally end with a 2.7 or higher and still be able to play. For some data here are the current GPA's of my team at the start of season 103 in Knight. 

As you can see all my players have a 3.1 and above GPA. So I never have to worry about them not being eligible to play. 

Recruiting the RIGHT players.

Ensure that you are looking at your players you are recruiting for the colors stated above. It is important to find players with a lot of green as well as what you need as a team. This plays into the next section in terms of each players individual ratings in each area. 

Please note that in HD 3.0 they have an optimize button - I personally tried it once and thought their ideas of putting in minutes was complete CRAP. But if you want to make it quick and easy click the optimize button. 

For me personally I generally put a lot of effort into green areas with the exception of PER and LP. This will depend on if they are a Guard or Big Man. Basically I do not care if my big man can shoot three pointers. The only exception to this rule would be if your Big Man has orange or red in all other categories and a Green or Blue in PER. This I would then focus on to make him more dynamic and shoot three pointers against other Big Men that cannot guard him on the perimeter. 

Summary

In all it will depend on your personal preferences however it is important to increase your players ratings as best you can in order to be able to improve your team to make the NT and PI each and every season. Again I am not perfect at this but I have learned from some of the best players in HD history including chapelhillne, who just recently had a user interview with WhatIfSports.