The Rookie

[fondfoat]

Disclaimer: This is my first game of DDS: College 2, but I still thought it would be fun to do a story. I will make many mistakes, but that can be entertaining

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[color="Navy"]
It's not easy to finish a college basketball career when you are not good enough to really advance. I had practically decided to give the game away as a serious hobby and focus on getting a real job, when an old friend of my family, Anthony Kitt, gave me a call. He asked if I would be interested in being the second assistant at Idaho in the Western Athletic Conference.

He said they could offer me 40k a year for a two year contract. Well, screw the real job, I was off to join the Vandals![/color]

[fondfoat]

[color="Navy"]Before officially becoming a Vandal I had to have a long chat to Coach LaRon Malone. He seemed a nice guy, though I felt he did not seem to be very aware on how he wanted to play out games. He was more a recruiting/scouting kind of guy. Still, after about 45 minutes, he shook my hand and welcomed me aboard.

Later that afternoon, I went with Anthony to the practice courts and got a look at our line up.[/color]

[color="Navy"]I could see they were a reasonable bunch of lads, hardly world beaters, but reasonable. I felt we would be relying on Barnes, Williams, and Ross for a lot of the season.[/color]

[fondfoat]

[color="Navy"]I was officially given the assignment as Practice Coach, and practice we did. Through May and June we hit the courts hard and worked on a reasonably balanced set of plays the Coach Malone had given me.

It is great to be the Practice Coach as it lets you bond in with the players and, to me anyway, feel like you are part of the team. I guess the fact that I was 23 and recently finished playing, didn't hurt either.

Coach Malone had decided his strategy would be to get the ball into the paint on offense focusing on a 5 out. Defensively he liked a 1-3-1 zone with a half court 1-2-1-1 press.

I felt he had called a pretty good strategy as we were good on the boards and had some nice jump shooters. We entered the recruiting phase in good spirits.[/color]

[fondfoat]

[color="Navy"]It was time for the summer camps to begin. First up was the Western Regional camp, followed by the Great Plains regional camp, and finally the Midwest Regional.

I didn't have much to do, but still enjoyed the trip and gave my opinion on certain players. There was some great talent out there, and I was very interested to see who we could get to put their name on paper.

I didn't attend the last couple of camps, as Coach Malone asked me to keep working the boys on the court.

So while the rest of the coaching team focused on the recruiting process, I set up our first serious training schedule.

I didn't want to do anything too drastic early on, so I tried to set up a practice set that would try to work inside Coach Malone's strategy. As with anything, the first time is always a little nerve wracking![/color]

[fondfoat]

[color="Navy"]My second practice returned to being a balanced 10 across the board[/color] (because I didn't notice it reset)[color="Navy"], but for my third session I decided to switch it up just a little.[/color]

I admit I am showing you these schedules to get your opinion. I can't see much that guides me in what approaches I should take here

[fondfoat]

[color="Navy"]I have to admit that I made an error in my last session. A few of the guys were not too happy to have no shooting practice during the week. I really should have scheduled a least 5% shooting. I decided I better give shooting a boost this session and cut back down on the physical work.

Yes, I am a rookie![/color]

[CoachC]

Good luck, fondfoat!

[fondfoat]

[color="Navy"]The last two training sessions I ran, I kept at a balanced 10 across the board.[/color]

Is there anywhere that I can see how effective the training schedule is after it has been set?

[color="Navy"]Practice and recruitment is all well and good, but it is the games I live for. So I was very excited to see our schedule and get ready for our first matchup.[/color]

[Wayne23]

I've never played as an assistant so I really don't have any answers but I would check player ratings from time to time and see which ones they are improving in. Keep writing, this is fun.

[fondfoat]

Thanks Coach.

Still working myself around the game. For example, I want to do something simple like look at Savannah St. before we play them. I can't just click on them to bring up their team? I can't search for them either? Is there an easy way to look at the opposition?

Thanks as well Wayne. I am really enjoying the game. Just finding it hard to work out the interface at the moment. The manual is not that helpful