when does the next season start?

Hmmm I think around Dec 11th or so. Looking to get in as a rookie in D3?

yep. hopefully i'll do ok. i just couldnt tell after i reserved a team. around the 11th sounds right. still two weeks to go!

Which team?

cal-santa cruz

Cool. If you need any help, send me a sitemail.

a lot to read and consider. how much time does one normally spend each day on their team?

5 minutes during the regular season, 15 during the playoffs and a few hours during recruiting. Those 3-4 days are the most time intensive. Maybe 30 minutes the first few days as well to get the practice plans, rotation, initial distribution down.

i was able to look up my team finally. i didnt really do much research before signing up. the team i inherited has three seniors leaving as well as two walk ons, leaving me with no point guards and plenty of big men. the team also runs a press defense with a fastbreak offense. not a good combo without any experienced PG's i'm guessing. also, i dont think there are any human coaches in the conference which is too bad. maybe that'll give me time to mess up the first year and still have a successful season. looking forward to it. go banana slugs!

Good luck. Corn & I are usually around to assist newbies. Corn is a press guy, I play more man. Key to press is generally speed and athleticism and depth. So the better spd/ath you can recruit the better you'll be. Same with Fastbreak, so at least that is consistent.

I am a long while from D3, but back in the day shooting for 50s ath or spd would be pretty decent. Now a days 40s with average potential would be good.

Best thing is you have 5 open scholarships. I would use FSS on California, and recruit the best players I could find within about 340 miles. Should be very little competition. Probably will take about 1 home visit and 1 campus visit plus a scholarship offer to sign someone with no competition.

Also waiting around 36 hours into recruiting before starting is a good idea. D2 players give up hope and start considering D3 schools, even a C- prestige one like UCSB.

Good luck and have fun!

yeah my team is not athletic or speed so i'm in for some hurting probably the first year. im switching over to man defense this year and go from there. hope i can get some decent recruits. thanks for the tips!

As a suggestion, play a combo man/press while you are switching.

i was thinking of playing the press until their man IQ was sufficient. just am not sure how long it'll take to raise them up. i know there are a lot of variables.

championship game tonight!

Barney, in a perfect world, would you rather play a press (give up a high shooting percentage but force a LOT of turnovers) or a man (the opposite)?

The players at Santa Cruz are all Sim-recruited giant balls of suck, and you're not going to get fully switched until the current sophomores are seniors - that is, Chau, Emery, and Shoe will be seniors, Word will be a junior, and everyone else will be gone.

As a matter of fact, if you play your cards right in recruiting, none of your current players will be getting much playing time starting in your second season.

Therefore, I'd pick your defense based on what you WANT to do, not based on what your guys are capable of doing RIGHT NOW. I'm not going to argue against switching your defense - man, zone, and press are all perfectly legitimate systems - though I would definitely recommend switching your offense, as fastbreak has been proven to suck compared to the other three.

thanks for the tips. having giant balls of suck on the team is not a good thing! unfortunately, some of my real life teams were like that.

in a perfect world i would play a tight man to man with a fastbreak style offense. thats the style that i played in HS and college and am used to, which is why i was going to switch the defense rather than the offense. but if the fastbreak style doesnt work well here, then i'll go to a motion offense. i'l like to still go to a man defense as well. i just didnt know how long if would take to really get them to learn it. it sounds like that the recruits this season will be the backbone though for next seaon when they are sophs.