The Not-So-Grand Experiment

[Bryan Swartz]

** OOC Author's Note: I do not have the time, sadly, that I did for the original DDSCB. For that reason I could not reprise my 5-coach "Race to the Top" dynasty, and I've had a hard time coming up with one concept that I felt could capture my attention. But I think I've found it here. Hopefully it doesn't fail too miserably . As always, all the names/results/institutions herein and herein contained are completely the figment of my imagination and do not represent real events.**

[Bryan Swartz]

July, 2012

You can't stop progress, but I'd sure like to try. Sometimes it seems there is nothing about 'progress' that is actually, you know, progressive. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The seeds for this begin way back in 2006. Funny how a few years can seem a lifetime. For me, that was my final year as a forward for a Tier III school in central Indiana that few people have even heard of. I mean, who calls themselves the Moundbuilders? But it was the basketball heartland, and I’ve always loved the game. It was the end of the road for my playing career, and I knew it. No matter how hard you work, at the end of the day you’ve either got the gift or you don’t, and my instincts and athleticism were merely pretty good. Not nearly enough to make a career out of it.

I spent the next couple of years as an assistant/gopher in Bloomington at the University of Indiana, one of the country’s more storied and presitigous programs. What I learned there is not so much an indictment of them as it is an indictment of what big-time collegiate athletics have become in the modern world. To put it simply, everybody cheats. Most don’t get caught, and those that do are treated with quite poorly feigned outrage. To see that the term ‘student-athlete’ is a complete anachronism, one must simply observe the fact that it is rarely even touted anymore, even tongue-in-cheek. One does what one must to win. Too high a price for me. I was constantly told I had the gift to be a fantastic big-time coach … I just needed to work on my ‘moral flexibility’. They needed to work on their hearing.

I returned to Anderson HS to teach history and coach the team at my alma mater there. Somewhat disillusioned was I, all the more so when I first heard of the ‘grand experiment’ the AACA(American Association of Collegiate Athletics) was about to implement. The traditional conferences were to be done away with. Gone were the regional rivalries, competitive stability, and pretense that anything but the final competitive product meant anything. Conference groupings would change each year and would be based soley on the success of the basketball program.

Then this spring, as our season wound down – we lost in the district semifinals, which for a school of this size is a good achievement, and besides, I’m enjoying working in something smaller, simpler, less complicated. Anyway, a couple weeks after the final buzzer, while I was still missing it more than I was enjoying the extra time, I got a fateful phone call. It took some phone tag and most of the next couple days to convince me that it was genuine. I was headed to the northeast – a new, not really believable job opportunity had just come up. But there are some things you don’t say no to, no matter how crazy.

You see, the turmoil of the AACA’s bold realignment had hit one place harder than all others – the schools of the former Academia League. A certain level playing field was instituted by the fact that only a dozen schools outside of the Academia even pretended to have academic standards as stringent as the most permissive of it’s eight members. A certain pride was involved. And of the now more than 350 Tier I programs, none were as demanding as those at Princeton and the place I was headed to interview, the Cambridge university and Massachusetts. Most pundits and nearly all of my mentors – yes, even the ones who don’t think I’m a complete nut-job wacko – expect the former Academia schools, with the possible except of Pennsylvania, to be out of Tier I in the next decade or two.

Finding people willing to walk into that kind of a situation is difficult. Which explains why my youth and near-complete lack of qualifiying experience became a virtual non-issue. The other part of that is the fact that failing at Cambridge, in a basketball sense, is a virtual impossibility. They haven’t won the Academia League since 1946. That’s also the last time they made it to the ACAA tournament, losing both games including the regional consolation game. Zero tournament wins in school history. That was before the recent unpleasantness made the job much more difficult.

I was just young enough and impulsive enough not to realize how potentially stupid it was to make such a leap. I saw a great opportunity, a challenge some consider impossible, and an opportunity to work at one of the few places in America where it actually might still matter how the result is achieved, not just the result itself.

Which brings me back to today. The summer recruiting wars are upon me, and in a few short months I’ll be guiding Cambridge to what I hope is not a huge embarrassing failure in the first season of the new conference structure. Many long nights are I’m sure ahead, but there’s a part of me that still believes something special is possible here.

And if not, at least I won't have to wonder what might have been ...

[Bryan Swartz]

And so it was that I, Jason Howell, begin as Cambridge’s head coach at all of 29 years of age. We've been assigned to Conference “S” to begin, 19th out of the 22 alphabetically designated conferences.

BY THE NUMBERS

Team Prestige: 16
Conference Prestige: 15
Facilities: C
Budget: $147,000
Reputation: Below Average(40)

STAFF

Reggie Morris -- 60 years old, $34k for 2 years
Strength: All(26)
Weakness: NA

Jerome Ferguson -- 39 years old, $31k for 2 years
Strength: Defense(25)
Weakness: Scouting/Development(21)

Donald Edmond -- 37 years old, $15 for 2 years
Strength: Defense/Recruiting(21)
Weakness: Others(20)

This trifecta of terribleness is among the worst two or three staffs in the S Conference.

As for me, 2 years at $100k a year. Pitts wants us to win the conference tournament(yeah right), win 10+ games(definitely doable), and have no academic ineligibity(goes without saying round here.

Next up, a look at the 2012-2013 Cambridge Reds ...

[PointGuard]

Welcome back to the college basketball dynasty world, Bryan.

[SouthernRebel]

Cool, another promotion/relegation dynasty. Let's see if them smart boys can actually play ball:)

[Wayne23]

Them thar smart boys can play. I've had some success with them in P/R (takes a little time though). I'm wondering what the coach's name is (maybe it's Bryan Swartz) and what his ratings are.

[Bryan Swartz]

Thanks guys!

We'll see whether the smart boys can play. Recruiting is a challenge when half to two-thirds of the pool isn't going to qualify for your school .

As far as the name Wayne, it's Jason Howell. I never use my own name. 40 Rep, lowest is recruiting(30) to start.

One other thing I should mention -- I don't recruit as 'aggressively' as most people do. By that I mean I only recruit players who are initially interested at some level ... I find this makes it more realistic than trying to game things by finding those who fall through the cracks.

Anyway, we'll see how it goes.

[PointGuard]

Will be interesting to see how recruiting goes for a highly prestigious college (which doesn't have a pretigious basketball program). You're right that the recruiting pool is diminished by the high SAT requirements, but offsetting that will be that strong players who have good GPA's and SAT scores and those who place academics high on their preferences will gravitate toward "Cambridge" and be honored to get a scholarship offer from there.

JC players will be pretty much off the radar since I don't see "Cambridge" taking many (if any) JC students or players. For me, who typically coaches at low prestige colleges (both in a basketball and overall sense) to which HS players aren't typically attracted and for which few, if any, HS players have parents who attended the college at which I'm coaching, JC players become a way to fulfill my recruiting quota.

In the distant past I have coached at a college with extrememly high academics and it really did make recruiting a different game.

Good luck, Coach Howell!

[Wayne23]

From what he's saying here the coach will probably be "Howelling" about how difficult recruiting is.

[Bryan Swartz]

Wayne gets the award for first horrible joke of the thread!!

JC players will be pretty much off the radar since I don't see "Cambridge" taking many (if any) JC students or players.

Dead right here. The coaching philosophy plays into that, so I might as well outline that at this point:

PHILOSOPHY

The basic idea is give nothing away, a cerebral, grinding style of basketball. Princeton offense, no offensive freedom, low pace, so a premium on experience in the system and no JC/transfer players. Freshmen will tend not to play much unless they are ridiculously good to the point where it's dumb to not put them on the court.

Man defense, no full-court pressure ... again, give nothing away. Emphasis on rebounding and ballhandling skills.

I've always been most successful with up-tempo teams, but I've never really given a total effort to making this kind of philosophy succeed.

I should also mention that for all my playing of them, I never won a (national)title in DDSCB or TCB. I think Elite Eight is the furthest I got. I always moved on to another dynasty/game before I got that far. I'm hoping to reverse that here ... eventually. As always, I value suggestions/feedback. Didn't expect this many posts in the thread prior to you know, actually doing anything .