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.

How To: Depth Chart

Here we go again, another season and yet another time to determine which player you want to start. There is no right or wrong here, but there are some things you can do to determine who is your best player at a specific position as well what strategy you want to use on a regular basis.

Offensive Ability

This has it's own section because you need to score in order to win games. Now this is important but would you give up defensive ability for an offensive menace? Probably not if you are a smart Coach. Determining offensive ability needs to be specific to guards and big men, because what is good for a guard is not good for a big man. 

Important Skills Guard: 

Athleticism - This is not as important but definitely helps all players. Not as necessary for guards as big men. Basically low numbers here make the player a slasher. 

Speed - Vital component of ability to get around other players. 

Perimeter - This is how well they are able to shoot jump shots, the higher the number the better shooter the player will be.

Passing - Ability to pass the ball to other players on your team. The higher this is the better they can assist other players in scoring. 

Ball Handling - Are they able to dribble the ball down the court without losing the ball. 

Important Skills Big Men

Athleticism - Vital skill for being athletic, jumping, squeezing between defenders etc.

Speed - Not IMPORTANT at ALL. These players do not need to be fast, it helps but doesn't matter.

Perimeter - Not important because they are interior players, however having a guy that can hit a jumper can be beneficial depending on strategy. 

Low Post - EXTREMELY Important, are they able to layup, make dunks, etc Basically can they shoot while down low. 

Rebounding - You MUST have this ability in terms of offensive rebounds as well as defensive. 

So while these skills are important, I personally would never put a guy that was an offensive menace in that had a low rating in Defense. I would give up scoring for a player that has a higher rating in defense because along with scoring I need to keep the other team from scoring as well. So these skills are vital but if I have a guy with lower ratings in these categories but a high rating in defense I would put him in over the offensive menace due to the fact that the offensive menace would either foul out, or allow more points against him. I would put the offensive menace second on the depth chart because it would allow him to go against their number two's or when the other teams players are tired so he can score more points. 

Defensive Ability

The main ability to look at here would be Defense for obvious reasons. The higher the rating the better the player is at defense. However you also need to look at Athleticism and Speed. These ratings are important to be able to get in front of other players and the ability to not draw fouls. This helps mostly with the guards but can be beneficial for the big men as well. 

I am not going to talk much about blocking or rebounding as those are somewhat separate, but having abilities in those categories will only bolster the devensive abilities for rebounds as well as blocking shots, but are not a major part of what you should look for when determining defensive ability overall. 

Always start players with high defense, athleticism and speed. These guys will do the best at their respective positions when it comes to defending, now if the other team has a guy that you can exploit in terms of offensive ability I would exploit that and change my lineup to have a guy that has the better offensive ability knowing that I will not lose out on the lower defensive ability of the player that I am attempting to exploit. 

Determining Who to Start - Strategy Matters Here

This is one of those sections that is going to utilize your own personal strategy. There are ways in which you can do well without using the offensive and defensive abilities above. However it is important to note that if you cannot stop the other team from scoring, YOU WILL NOT WIN, that is the plain and simple fact of the matter. I would give up scoring production to keep the other team from scoring. 

Utilizing a mixture of the above defensive and offensive abilities I would determine the best players at their respective positions edging on those that have better defense unless one players has huge offensive upside and is only slightly lower than the guy with better defensive stats. This also is based on position as well. 

If you like this post watch for the next post about game planning.

How to: Get Started at Hoops Dynasty

Are you considering starting a career at WhatIfSports Hoops Dynasty? Do you know someone that has already joined? Are you just a college basketball fan and want to see if you can do better than the real life coach. Well there are a few things to consider first and foremost...

In Hoops Dynasty you are REQUIRED to start at the DIII level no matter what you do. What?! You mean to say that I cannot coach at the school I want to coach at right away, that sucks I don't want to do this anymore......before you go on and get upset about this think about the real life coach that your team has right now! Did he/she just get that job right out the gates or did they have to actually move up the rankings or start as an assistance somewhere? In Hoops Dynasty starting at DIII is much like being an assistance coach at the DI level. So to ensure your success early on, so that you can get to the DI level quicker I am creating this Getting Started Guide and BE SUCCESSFUL!

Not to go off on a tangent here I WISH I would have known what I am telling you now. Selecting your team at Hoops Dynasty is not just a click I have a team, well it is but to improve yourself as a coach and move up it takes getting the RIGHT team early on to boost yourself up to the upper levels quicker and not moving on too early either.

Selecting a Team

All of the information below will help you, but if there is a school that you REALLY want to coach at go for it. Do not consider the information below if you do not want to.....it is only information to assist you in becoming a winner and having the ability to move up or obtain rewards for the teams performance to continue your career without paying more money.

Prestige 

All schools are given a grade A+ - D-. These give the school a boost when it comes to recruiting players. It is important for you to find the highest prestige of school you can that also follows the rules below.

Class Structure

When looking at a team to start at Hoops Dynasty you want to ensure that you are not selecting a team that has 5+ Seniors on the team and you have to recruit all those players with little to no experience in recruiting....with the exception of reading this post of course. I started with a team like this and got every lucky in recruiting but made crucial mistakes very early with my DIII team in which I could have had a better DII team if I would have looked into the class structure.

It is best to find a team that has returning players, preferably a 3-3-3-3 structure or a 4-2-4-2. What these numbers mean is the following:

3-3-3-3
3- Seniors
3 - Juniors
3 - Sophomores
3- Freshman

4-2-4-2
4 - Freshman
2 - Sophomores
4 - Juniors
2 - Seniors

These are all currently on the roster, which can be seen during sign up if you click on the team name. A new popup will appear allowing you to see the current players on the team with a ton of additional information. The most important piece of information would be in the History tab. This is where you find out if the team had a coach right before you or not, if it says Sim AI then the team did not have a coach in the previous season, anything else means that there was a human there before.

If you find a team with this makeup or with an overload of Juniors say 5+ Juniors on the team this will ensure a good initial coaching season.


Location: 


I am going to quote the Hoops Dynasty site below: This information relates to recruits which is vital for your team's future:

"To generate recruits, we first determine the total number to create, which is based on the projected openings in that world.  As we generate the necessary number of players, they are assigned to a particular state. The odds for each state are based on the number of schools in that state. Once a state is selected, a high school from that state is randomly assigned, which determines the player's geographical location.  From season to season, there will be variance in quantity and quality in a particular area due to these factors."

This basically means that places that have more colleges for example New York, California, Texas, etc... will have more recruits to choose from than places like Wyoming! Hey don't jab at me my school is the only DI school with no DII or DIII schools in the state making it fairly prime but still very difficult to recruit in this state. But I don't personally mind it since it is my alma mater. That aside this will help you recruit players closer to home since at the DIII level you have less budget, less scouting less everything than teams in DII and DIII. However there is the possibility to get recruits out of states such as Wyoming since there is no competition for the DII or DIII recruits.

Conference 

This is an important concept because my recommendation will change based on your personal needs, wants and or dedication to the game. There are two types of conferences:

Open: These conferences have a few to no human coaches in them. These ones are ideal for starting out because you generally can beat all the Sim teams just by recruiting. This will hurt your Strength of Schedule(SOS) but will help you rack up wins and increase your school prestige as well as coach prestige rather quickly.

Full: These conferences have mostly human coaches with 1-3 Sim teams. Each conference has 12 teams total, which means that these ones are more competitive, have a better conference prestige, attract better recruits etc. This also gives you more of a challenge since you will probably take over the team in the conference that is terrible, meaning you will have to work your butt off to make them better prolonging your move to a better school. On the flip side if you are able to pull off the rebuild and turn the school around better coaching jobs will open up for you in the long run...this is where one of my mistakes occurred.

It is also important to check out the following links for various division to determine what school you might want to start your career!

Division I                 Division II                      Division III

Finally I have to say that this is the important aspects to beginning at Hoops Dynasty. If this perks your interest please use the link on the right or below to sign up for a team.

If you liked this post see the next post on recruiting and scouting!

Starting at Hoops Dynasty

I stumbled upon Hoops Dynasty the other day, because of the lack of video games that are based on college football and basketball. I will confess that I was very surprised to of found something so amazing on the internet.

Hoops Dynasty is one of many options from What If Sports. They have Football, Professional, Baseball, and a few others. They have seasons in each setup specifically for each and are always updating. I looked at reviews, other blog sites and a bunch of different things before signing up. Which is one of my reservations about the game, you have to pay to use it even to test. But again I signed up for one season just to see if I liked it or not.

They have a ton of different worlds with various numbers of games played in each. These worlds can host upwards of 1000 human players from DIII to DI level college basketball levels. You always start at DIII which kind of sucks but is probably a good thing so you can get the hang of everything before you get up to the big boys. My Alma Mater is Wyoming, which I know is not the greatest school but this year they almost beat 'The Ohio State" during non-conference. Not saying Wyoming is great, but that is hopefully going to be my future home in what I have found already, in the limited amount of time that I have played, to be a fantastic College Basketball Coaching Simulation.

When you start out you pick a world and a team. I ended up choosing Fisk University, probably not the greatest idea because I picked them due to their high prestige, which I found online and in forums was a good thing to have for recruiting. Fisk was returning only 7 players and 4 of them were Point Guards, which is not a big deal because anyone can play any position, which we all know. Look at the NBA and College Game some guys play multiple positions, so this did not worry me until I looked at the team further. Most of the guys on the team eve if they were in their sophomore year were basically capped out, what this means is that they have potential in certain skill areas, in these areas most of the guys had Red which means that they have a low potential. This does not mean that they will not grow, but to me means that I needed a lot of new talent. I ended up taking away one of the players scholarships opening up 6 total scholarships, which in hindsight might of been a bad idea. On the other hand I had another opening to put in a better player in that position.

So I started recruiting following a forum post and a email from another player. The community is great and all you have to do is post in the forums for any help that you may need. Everyone is great. I started out rocky, going after some players that would never play for me because of my school and they wanted to go to a better place anyway. This was my first mistake, which I recovered.

Every once in awhile during recruiting some athletes will contact you, this is where I found a DI transfer from Florida A&M who was a 7'0" Center in which I had 0 players in that position. When I saw that he was interested I jumped all over him, because even with only having 2 years of eligibility left in this career he would be an instant starter for me and fill a huge void that I was missing. He may not be my best player that I have or even the best player ever, but he will fit into my defensive system, basically he will be my rebounder and force in the middle. I still have not determined what offense and defense that I am going to run, because I took over for a Motion Offense and a Press Defense team and I am unsure if I have the depth or the skill set with the players that I have for either of these sets. I would prefer to play Man Defense, however again not sure if I have the team to defend at certain positions such as the player I recruited at the Center spot who seems like a great all around player, he is lacking in a few areas that I think are crucial to this game. Again he will probably start for me but be subbed out often in order to keep the other team off balance with another transfer player at center that I found as well.

The recruiting portion has gotten me into this game and I look to improve on the record set by the human coach at Fisk last year of 24-7 and a National Tournament 2nd round along with a conference championship. That is a huge change from where I am starting off. It is going to be a rebuild but I hope to do well enough in my conference and out of conference to show that it is more than just the skill set of players but  the coaching strategy and how you adapt to certain situations.

From when I started a few days ago I have found this game to be mildly entertaining but definitely complicated, because it is easy to use and quick to get the hang of, however there is so much depth to it that you have to put in the time and effort to be really good. Hopefully I will be able to move up the ranks quickly, however I have no idea where this will lead. Feel free to post comments as I will check back and update on my daily schedule of games and how I am faring throughout the season. Also when the season is over if you like what you have read or are interested in Hoops Dynasty join the world Knight with 2 games per day during the regular season. Great human coaches and lots of help to be had. I would even be happy to have you join me or play exhibition games against anyone who wishes to challenge my teams. Again I am not great yet, but with the help that I have received I feel confident with some patience and good recruiting I could put a great team together.