College Hoops 2K6 Legacy Simulation Guide
by Doug Dorval
If you have anything you'd like to add, suggest, or would like me to put in the
guide, please e-mail me here, at
[email protected]
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Revision History
1.0 (3/29/06)
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About this guide:
I know there must be some sim fans out there who picked this game up. After a
few seasons playing I'm sure you wanted to see what a real career would look
like if you simmed all the games instead of played them (that's what simmers
do!). Or maybe you're playing through the season but would like to know the
best way to recruit? Anyways, here is a quick guide I wrote up to provide some
insight on on successful strategies to get to the top quick.
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Table of Contents
#1. Selecting a team
#2. Organizing your team
#2A. Rosters
#2B. Coaching Style
#3. Recruiting
#4. Coach Attributes
#5. Job Offers
#6. Schedule Making
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#1. Selecting a team
If you choose the Career mode, there are a total of 40 bottom-of-the-barrel
teams you can select from to start your dynasty. I usually like to randomly
select a team as to vary my course, but if you're looking for a team that will
get you started off on the right foot I'd have to recommend Jackson St. They
have a high 70's point guard who's a junior, so he will keep you competitive at
least for the first two years, and play in a very weak conference (The
Southwestern) so you will be able to rack up a good amount of wins.
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#2. Organizing your team
#2A. Rosters
Ok, this consists of two important things. One is your roster management. I
generally just hit the RS button (right stick) to automatically set my starting
lineup, as the computer does a good job at this. But if you want to manually
set your own rosters. I would put the best player at each position in at each
spot. For each position a player is listed at, he can play more than one
generally, here's the list
PG - PG, SG
SG - SG, PG, SF (rare)
SF - SF, PF (rare), SG (rare)
PF - PF, C, SF (rare)
C - C, PF
(rare) indicates to only play a player at that position if he is much better (5+
points) then the next available player
#2B. Coaching Style
The next important part of organizing your team is your Coaching Styles. This
is where you can determine a lot of what your career path will look like.
As far as recruitment priorities go, feel free to mix it up. I generally use a
mix of 1. Intangibles and 2. Skills, but I haven't experimented a lot with this.
Press frequency is important. Select "Always" and you will give up a lot of
fast breaks and easy points, but this will also give your team more chances to
score, so you could end up with a conference player of the year or something
similar. But, if you really want to focus on winning, I would select
"Desperation" or "Never"
Now, the most important part of the entire game. The Sliders. I'm at work and
don't have the game in front of me right now, but I believe the sliders go
something like this, Tempo, Fast Break, Crash Boards, Pressure, Bench. Now,
excluding the Bench slider, the other four work this way: If you slide them all
the way to the right, your team will score more points, be less consistent, and
have a better chance of beating better teams, and better chance of being upset
by poorer teams if you slide them all the way left, your team will score far
less points, but be *very* consistent, meaning they will almost always beat
worse teams, and have a very little chance to beat teams much better then them.
But this consistency is important for a reason.
The reason consistency is important when simming is that once you start upping
your coachs attributes (section 4), the first one you will increase is
"Training" So once you get training to A+ status, (1 or at most 2 years), your
players will improve year-to-year much better than other players on other teams
in your conference. So once you've been with a team for four years, all of the
players have trained to their maximum potential, and in theory, you should be
one of the top (probably THE top) team in your conference. So, if you are the
best team in your conference, and you have your sliders all the way to left, it
is not uncommon to have a conference record of 14-2 or 12-4. Also this will
give you a better shot to win your conference tournament and get into the
NCAA's.
So again, for win's sake, trust me, all the way to the left. Your first year
with a team, if they are markedly worse than other teams in the conference, will
be rough, I'm not going to lie. But by the third year, you are getting close to
guranteed 20 win seasons (if you follow my schedule guide).
One note: Setting the sliders all the way to the left is a stat killer for all
the players on your team. Your team averages less than 60 points a game, and it
is very difficult to get Conference Player of the Year or Conference Freshman of
the Year (both of which give you a coaching attribute point). What I would
suggest, is once you have an established team that is much better than the
others in your conference, and you have a player that you think might be able to
nab POTY, (Mid 70's for a small conference, low 80's for a mid-major, high 80's
for Power), slide all your sliders to the right for a year and see if you can
get it. If all you have left to gain is 5 attribute points, and it's because
you've never won any of the player of the year awards, you might as well go for
it.
The Bench slider. This one is another one I will leave up to you, but in
theory, if you keep it around 50, you will keep more people on your bench happy,
and not transferring away. If you keep it around 70, you will probably play
your best basketball, but anger more of the lower guys who might transfer away.
Also, I've found that if you keep it at 70, you will get more players who want
to transfer to *your* school because they see an oppurtunity for the playing
time they want, but you don't see many transfers at 50.
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#3. Recruiting
Ok, probably the most sought after piece of this guide. I have a general rule
of recruiting that I like to follow. And it has to do with what caliber of
recruits you should be willing to sign. Here's my rational
Small Conference - Sign 2*'s and above
Mid-Major (and Major) - Sign 3*'s and above
Power - Sign 4*'s and above
Ok, now how do I determine who to go after? Well, first, I have a qualification
players have to meet before I go after them. They must have an 80% interest in
me. Personally, if they aren't at 80% with me, I won't bother, I see it too
often as wasted recruiting points that could be going to good underclassmen who
could favor me in the coming years when they have to decide where to go. It's up
to you. But here is my 'algorithm' of recruiting.
1. Look who is over 80% interested
2. Any 5*'s interested? If so, recruit them
3. Any 4*'s?
4. 3*'s? (Mid-major's and Small's only)
5. 2*'s? (Small only)
It should be noted: if nobody fits the qualification of 80% interest, and the
correct caliber for your size of conference, DO NOT make offers to anyone! If
worst comes to worst, in the last week of recruting, you can always make an
offer to some lower caliber players.
So, if I have 3 scholarships to give out, and I have one 5* senior who is 82%
interested, I will go after him no matter what. But say I have four 4*'s who
are all over 80 (82,84,88,89) in interest for me, who do I give the other two
scholarships to? I look at what other schools they're interested in
(RS button), and if no one else has given them a scholarship offer, than I will
offer one. Or, if someone has given them an offer, but their interest in me is
higher than the school that did, I will still offer them one. So say both the
89 and 88 recruits have offers from St. Joes and they're 100% interested in St.
Joes, but no one has offered the 84 and 82 recruit anything, I will offer my
scholarship to the 84 and 82 because I have a higher probability of getting them
to sign with me even though their interest is lower.
Recruiting points refresh every monday, so you can sim for a week, and then
check the status of your recruits, but I find it painstakingly long to do that,
so I only recruit for 4 certain weeks DURING the season. These weeks are:
1. The week BEFORE the early signing period.
2. The week DURING the early signing period.
3. The week AFTER the early signing period.
4. The last week of Recruiting during the season.
So, when I start a season, I will simulate to the Monday of the week BEFORE the
early signing period starts. (the computer automatically spends your recruiting
points for you when you don't use them) At this point, I will go through the
algorithm I described above. And make offer's accordingly. Then I sim a week.
If no one signed with anyone else, I will continue to spend all my points on the
players I have made offers to. After that week, players can no longer sign with
you. So if you have any free scholarships, make an offer to anyone who fit's
the qualification. At this point, you can sim your season to the last week of
recruiting (usually end of February)
At this point, you want to make sure all of your offered recruits have been
spent on, and if you have any free scholarships, and someone took interest in
you who fits qualifications (over 80, right caliber), then make an offer to him!
You never know if he might sign first week after the season.
So, once that's done, sim the rest of your season. Hopefully you make the NCAA
tourney, this helps pimp your school to future recruits. Then, the first week
of recruiting happens. Typically, you will get a few signees and a few
sign-other-place's in the first week. If you have any players who still haven't
decided but are still offered a scholarship, spend your points on them first to
seal the deal. Then follow the algorithm again. Sim one week, and repeat. Do
this until the LAST week of recruiting
In the LAST week, there's no more playin games. You need to sign people. Here
is the new algorithm: Sign the best players you can who have a 90% interest in
you or higher, and also have no offers (or lower offers) from other teams. You
need to fill up your roster, and you don't want a bunch of 55 rated walk ons on
your bench. So if you're a small conference, this may mean signing 1*'s, oh
well, it has to be done.
So that's the guide to recruiting, in your 7th or 8th year at a mid-major
school, you should average a little over 1 4* a year, and a 5* here and there,
and by the time your in your 4th or 5th year at a power school, you should be
average close to two 5*'s a year. This will make you a top 10 team perenially
over time.
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#4 Coach Attributes
Through doing things, winning 10 games, making the NCAA tournament, and other
success-related things you get attribute points. You start out with 5 to assign
to your coach, and you can earn the other 43. It is important where you assign
these points, and I will tell you what I think you should do with them here.
First of all, a note, I choose one stat (say Teaching) and max it all the way to
A+ before I begin improving anything else. The reason is, is I think College
Hoops 2K6 works on a model of expanding returns. What I mean by this, is say if
you up your Offense attribute from C- to C it improves your Offenisve Awarness
of your team by 10 points. Now, if you improve it from C to C+, it doesn't just
improve it by the same static amount, it would improve it by 11. So if you have
two points to spend, and you split them between offense and defense, your team
would overall be worse off than had you spent them both on offense, because
splitting them adds a total of 20 points to your team, while putting them both
into Offense adds 21.
So, with the idea we're going to max out each one before moving on to the other,
what order do we do this in? Here's my list.
1. Training - Non negotiable!! This will make your team one of the best in the
conference after you've been with them for a few years. Combined
with All-Left slider method, this is your path to glory!
2. Offense - Who couldn't use a little more offense? This will also help with
your chance for PotY awards.
3. Defense - Helps overall win games.
4. Discipline - Helps keep your team consistent and less likely to lose to
Mississippi Valley State.
5. Scouting - Helps your scouting ability and your gameplan ability.
6. Charisma - Helps in recruiting and in keeping players on your team happy.
Once you get the first 3 done, combined with All-left slider method, your team
will become a machine after you've been with them for a few years.
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#5 Job Offers
Yay! You coach so well other schools want YOU as their head coach. But I'd be
careful about where you accept. In general, only accept offers from schools
that are above you in conference pedigree. So if you're a small school, and
University of New Hampshire offers you a job, don't take it! With your training
ability already high and having groomed your team for a few years, it should be
much better than whatever you get at UNH! But, say, the offer came from Old
Dominion, say goodbye to your former school! The object of the game is to win
and you can't expect to win a national championship coaching at a crappy school
your whole life! You can check what conference class a team is in the job
offers menu by using the RS button and scrolling through their profile. It will
tell you what size conference they play in.
Another fun thing I like to do is have a “dream” job you want to attain from the
start, like the UNC head coach position, and work your way up to a power school,
and make your power school one of the best in the country. And then, when UNC
has an off year and fires their coach (or he retires) you can bolt over to your
dream job and finally reap the rewards (a la back-stabber Roy Williams circa
2003).
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#6 Schedule Making
This is one of the funnest parts of the game, and I don’t want to take that away
from you, so feel free to expereiment and make your non-conference schedule as
easy/hard as you want. But a word of advice: if you are undefeated into the 2nd
or 3rd week of December, you have a very good chance to be ranked nationally, so
setting an easy NC schedule does work to your advantage (just ask Jim Boeheim
and the Syracuse Orange who schedule DII schools sometimes!)
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Conclusion
Well, that’s it, hope it proved helpful! Once again, if you want clarification,
or anything added, or even just have a suggestion, send it over to
[email protected]. Thanks!
