Hoops Dynasty: Intro

You may have realized that I am a fan of games, sports, and any combination of both will get me just plain old giddy.  Well I stumbled across What If Sports: Hoops Dynasty probably about 7-8 years ago.  I played it for about a year or two and just found myself getting busy with life and school and just losing touch with it and sort of phasing myself out.  I then took a few years off and just decided to get started with it again.  I figure this could make a fun weekly post, just updating the career of my coach as I started in a new world at the bottom of the ladder, Division 3’s Upper Iowa University. 

To give you an idea what Hoops Dynasty actually puts you in the place of a college basketball coach.  Here is the description that the site gives, “(it’s) your chance to work your way to the top of the college basketball coaching world! You’ll first need to find a job and begin recruiting. As if finding the perfect high school or junio college player for your coaching system wasn’t difficult enough, you’ll have a limited budget and hundreds of other coaches competing with you.  After the recruiting period has ended, you’ll coach your team through an entire college basketball season.  Gameplan for each upcoming opponent. Manage playing time. Watch your RPI. Win your conference tournament. Win a National Title. You have just laid the foundation for your own Hoops Dynasty!”

Sadly it’s not quite as easy to win your conference tournament and especially not the national title as their little description makes it sound (during my 1^st foray I coached 10 seasons, working my way up to D1, and only qualified for the national tournament 3 times, winning one game during those trips).  If you can already tell this isn’t something that would interest you, then I won’t be upset if you check out right now and every post from here on out that begins with “HD:”.  However if you are like me, this is quite interesting and even if you don’t feel like dropping the $ to get involved yourself you can still come along with me for my journey.

Players are rated on a scale of 1-100 on the following attributes: Speed, Rebounding, Defense, Shot Blocking, Low Post, Perimeter, Ball Handling, Passing, Work Ethic, Stamina, and Durability.  They are also given a letter grade on FT shooting as well as their IQ on the different Offenses (Flex, Mothion, Triangle and Fastbreak) and Defenses (Man, Zone, and Press).  Obviously each position has certain attributes that are the most important and at the lower levels you kind of have to give up a little on some in order to get the ones you want while at the big time D1 schools you can get the players who come in as already complete players.

To start things off I wanted to give you an idea of what my plan is for this career.  I’m thinking about staying in D3 for a season or two before making the jump up to D2 where I would hopefully take that team to the national tournament a few times and decide if/when is the right time to make the leap to D1.  Starting at Upper Iowa is putting me ahead of the 8ball as they are coming off an At Large bid to the NT last season and return 5 seniors and 3 Juniors. 

Roster:

PG – Malcolm Dunklin (6’1” Senior)

SG – William Ayers (6’2” Senior), Wallace Burns (6’4” Junior)

SF – Glenn Montano (6’1” Senior), Louis Peterson (6’3” Junior)

PF – None on the roster

C – Joseph King (6’11” Senior), Dennis Racine (6’6” Senior), George Bang (6’11” Junior), Ruben Mulvihill (6’6” Junior)

The recruiting period has just ended and we have gotten our top 3 targets to sign. PG Arthur Summerfield (6’1” from Blaine, MN) will see minutes as the backup PG behind Dunklin.  SG Keith King (6’2” from Milwaukee, WI) will be a candidate for the redshirt depending how the 2 exhibition games go as he would likely only see minutes in blowouts.  Finally the recruit I’m most excited about is C Kenneth Lunceford (6’9” from Brownton, MN).  He is another candidate for the red shirt but looks to be the exact type of player I am looking for as he will be an absolute beast on the boards and in the post despite being slower than molasses.

We’ve been able to save about $1,200 (was given $10,000 to start recruiting with) which can be used to scout the next batch of recruits.

I’ll post an update on this Upper Iowa squad early next week and at that point we’ll be into the first few games of the season so you’ll get an update on how the team looks and if either King or Lunceford accept the redshirt.  Look forward to share the journey with you all early next week!