Round 3 of the postseason in Naismith and between the PIT and NT there is 1 non-BCS team left.

WIS couldn't be happier with that situation.  Correction, they could be happier.  There could be 0 non-BCS teams left.

1st round upsets...
11 East Tennessee St over 6 Baylor
10 Florida St over 7 UCLA
9 Oregon St over 8 Rutgers
9 Kansas over 8 Villanova

I can't complain too much though, since I coach East Tennessee St.

That will change next season.

more importantly. the CAC has a team playing in each of the remaining 8 NT games in d3! The power conferences are just getting more and more powerful!

Posted by wronoj on 5/4/2012 3:40:00 PM (view original):
more importantly. the CAC has a team playing in each of the remaining 8 NT games in d3! The power conferences are just getting more and more powerful!

ACC Phelan had 6 of the elite 8, 3 of the 4 final 4, and the NC + Runner up. I also remember ACC Allen doing something similar (maybe all 4 of the final 4?). Now that's domination. 

The problem isn't the results of games in the tournament, it's that the makeup of teams in the big-6 based on the talent of the players on those teams has become so superior to teams who are in mid/low-major conferences that there's a huge divide. We need fixes... 

• More top level recruits
• Recruits who are average but improve much more over time
• A fix to the way prestige is tethered to a baseline-level

I don't know what the specific fix should be, but WIS needs to find ways to close the gap between the big-6 and other schools. The divide has become too big.

It's funny because the top 2 problems you list only exist now as a result of a change because everyone complained before that there were TOO MANY top recruits.

The problem isn't not enough top level recruits... there are enough of those, IMO. But part of the problem is not enough of the next tier down of recruits (there's a steep drop from the top level to the next batch), and not enough guys with lower starting ratings and lots of room for growth.

Posted by dw172300 on 5/4/2012 4:40:00 PM (view original):
The problem isn't the results of games in the tournament, it's that the makeup of teams in the big-6 based on the talent of the players on those teams has become so superior to teams who are in mid/low-major conferences that there's a huge divide. We need fixes... 

• More top level recruits
• Recruits who are average but improve much more over time
• A fix to the way prestige is tethered to a baseline-level

I don't know what the specific fix should be, but WIS needs to find ways to close the gap between the big-6 and other schools. The divide has become too big.

Good points, dw.

Have you shared your thoughts with seble? You definitely should.

Prof -- I 100% agree.

Dahs -- You're also correct, but WIS hugely overcorrected. What we need is a happy medium between the old and new recruit generation systems. It really shouldn't be that difficult.

id be intrigued by a hybrid sort of system between what we have now and what it used to be (from what i've heard, i wasnt here for that).

something like where you can allocate minutes to improve any skill for any player and skills would improve at a rate dependent on work ethic and just how high their ceiling is, but each player has an unseen number of total improvement points to dish out.  some of this would be luck....meaning that a mid or lower tier school could hit the motherload on a guy with several hundred points of improvement and some of it you might be able to glean from some form of scouting (obv the current scouting system would have to be redone). 

a lot of work, and a pipe dream perhaps, but i think it might be a good way to help people really shape the kind of team they want to coach (you'd still see battles for guys because youre still going to have guys with certain starting cores that you want) and also make recruiting a little more interesting because there is always that little bit of unknown.  you might get the 790 guy with 40 points of improvement to allocate, or you might get the 600 guy with 400 points and a 99 WE.  Or you might really hit the motherload with that 750 player that has another 300 points of improvement potential. I imagine things like this happen all the time in the real world where the stud hits a wall or the guy you never expected to grow as much as he did becomes your go to. 

Posted by girt25 on 5/4/2012 5:26:00 PM (view original):

Posted by dw172300 on 5/4/2012 4:40:00 PM (view original):
The problem isn't the results of games in the tournament, it's that the makeup of teams in the big-6 based on the talent of the players on those teams has become so superior to teams who are in mid/low-major conferences that there's a huge divide. We need fixes... 

• More top level recruits
• Recruits who are average but improve much more over time
• A fix to the way prestige is tethered to a baseline-level

I don't know what the specific fix should be, but WIS needs to find ways to close the gap between the big-6 and other schools. The divide has become too big.

Good points, dw.

Have you shared your thoughts with seble? You definitely should.

Many people have, but that was a major overhaul and isn't something they want to change again so soon if ever.  You have to think, the Big 6 guys have been here for a long time and spent lots of money to get to that point.  They wanted the game to have more life like endings where Duke and UK weren't getting beat by a mid-major or lower school every year.  We had a small conference of 3 guys back then and got all 3 in the tournament more than not with one of us being very good and shooting for a final four on an annual basis.  While I see that more and more in real life, they aren't ready for Marshall or conference USA to take over any time soon on WIS.  I'm in the minority in that I like to take teams that are mid-major or less and build them up to be a competitive squad on a national level.  I do that on PS3 and it is what I like doing here as well.  I think every team should have about the same opportunity with the right coach to win it all.  I beleive that is the foundation of the "whatif" in WhatIfSports.  Obviously the Big 6 get some advantages in that those teams have more fans which want to coach them giving their conferences more human owners.  This in itself is a benefit as human coached teams are generally better and get more teams into the tournament thereby generating a higher individual team and conference prestige as well as more money for recruiting.  My thought is the same should be possible in CUSA or any other conference where you get 8+ owners and put enough time in the right areas.  As I said, I am a minority in this and I finally moved up to a Big 6 this year.  I did have a goal of having every DI team in Kentucky and making them a contender.  Now I will be happy with having Centre, NKY and Bellarmine in DII and DIII where there aren't inherent differences among the programs and everyone can compete.       

john, I do not -- at all -- think that that WIS was aiming to create major advantages for the BCS with the recruit generation and other changes. In fact, I can say this is a fact from talking to seble. 

They were just changes that they didn't fully appreciate the consequences of (although in some cases they certainly should have been able to). And if seble got to the point where he consistently heard from enough people and understood the imbalance he created, they'd work to fix it. (Now, I can't guarantee you (a) the timeline for a fix or (b) how good a fix it would be ...)

Posted by bow2dacowz on 5/4/2012 5:29:00 PM (view original):
id be intrigued by a hybrid sort of system between what we have now and what it used to be (from what i've heard, i wasnt here for that).

something like where you can allocate minutes to improve any skill for any player and skills would improve at a rate dependent on work ethic and just how high their ceiling is, but each player has an unseen number of total improvement points to dish out.  some of this would be luck....meaning that a mid or lower tier school could hit the motherload on a guy with several hundred points of improvement and some of it you might be able to glean from some form of scouting (obv the current scouting system would have to be redone). 

a lot of work, and a pipe dream perhaps, but i think it might be a good way to help people really shape the kind of team they want to coach (you'd still see battles for guys because youre still going to have guys with certain starting cores that you want) and also make recruiting a little more interesting because there is always that little bit of unknown.  you might get the 790 guy with 40 points of improvement to allocate, or you might get the 600 guy with 400 points and a 99 WE.  Or you might really hit the motherload with that 750 player that has another 300 points of improvement potential. I imagine things like this happen all the time in the real world where the stud hits a wall or the guy you never expected to grow as much as he did becomes your go to. 

Well, if each player has an unseen amount of points to dish out that varies from player-to-player, that doesn't mean "some" of it would be luck. It kind of means all of it would be luck. And no offense, but I think that would be -- removing a ton of strategy/skill from the game and replacing it with luck.

I have been beating the drum to fix recruit generation since the moment they rolled it out, so I'm with you there. I just think that suggestion is not the answer.

(And yes, there are some real world times where the guy you never expected to grow really does ... but the reality more often is that top coaches/talent evaluators are good at picking this out, and that's a skill. Reducing it to random luck would be disastrous and pretty much take the thing I like best about this game, recruiting, and turn it into something I disliked.)