Beginner help

[Mikaelinho]

Hi guys!
I could sure use some help. I have a basic knowledge of the game of basketball but that's pretty much it. However, I'm no beginner when it comes to sports management/sim games. I'm trying to get into CB19, but finding it a bit difficult with tactics and training, since I lack an in-depth understanding of the game. Is there anywhere where I can read up on tactical philosophies, what type of player that suits a certain type of tactic etc? I've been googling around but haven't really found what I was looking for...

[Gary Gorski]

Welcome! You'll find this is a great community to help answer your questions. You're going to want to start by investigating each type of offense and defense - click the link for Strategy and that will take you to the Team Strategy page. There you will start on the offense page and find a link to defense. Both have a drop box for offensive/defensive set description. For example if you select the 5 Out offense it tells you that it is designed for teams with good perimeter players at all positions. This means that offensively you're going to need to rely on players who are good outside shooters and can drive. From there I would go look at your roster and double click on the players to bring up a player card. If I wanted to run this offense I would look at my PF and C - if they are poor outside shooters and ball handlers and have low to no outside range (see the first of the two pie charts on that screen) then I would know this offense is not for them. If I really, really wanted to be a team who runs this sort of offense then I would perhaps practice it so the team became familiar with it (because familiarity carries over year to year) but I would wait to actually use it until I recruited players to fit it. So for instance when recruiting PFs and Cs for next season I would look for guys who are good three point shooters and not the typical low post bruising sort of player.

Defense works in a similar fashion - each defense description will tell you what it does. For example the man to man defense requires guys who are good individual defenders. Maybe your team is terrible in defensive ratings so you would want to choose one of the zone defenses primarily to try and hide that weakness. For the pressing/trapping sets you need players who are both good defenders and good athletically because they require so much extra effort and ground to cover.

The Practice Plan link takes you to a screen where you are setting up what your team spends its time on in practice to build up the proficiencies of each player in each type of offense or defense. You can't do everything so this is really where you have to decide what is going to be your philosophy. Maybe you want to be a really good offensive team and don't care that much about defense - then put more weight into learning the offenses. If players are not strong in their proficiency of a certain offense/defense they will not run it effectively. So if you have usage in the Princeton offense but nobody knows how to do it you're never going to see the "Princeton cuts" by players to the basket for layups but if everyone is really proficient in it then you will see those things.

Don't forget to keep in mind the type of school you have too - if you are a powerhouse that gets a lot of one and done type players its sort of pointless to have an elaborate offensive system like the Princeton offense because your star players will never spend enough time there to get good at it.

CB19 is really the deepest game we offer because there are so many ways you can go about things and so many factors. It really makes for an awesome experience because its like playing multiple games in one. You can't play the same way if you're a tiny school who's in a conference hardly anyone knows exists as opposed to if you're the powerhouses of the college basketball world. Your success becomes winning your conference and making the big dance. Maybe you squeak out an upset win. Maybe once in a twenty tries can you make a run in the tournament that would be considered unbelievable for your school but a failure for a top team. You can try to build a program to a specific philosophy or constantly adjust your philosophy to the players you have. There's no "right way" to do it. You just have to invest the time into the game to see what works. By all means feel free to ask any questions you like - you'll find many helpful people here and maybe this would even be a good topic for the next Feature Friday article in our blog!

[Mikaelinho]

Thank you for your great response Gary! I'll let the offensive/defensive set descriptions be my starting point and play around with it for a bit based on strength and weaknesses in my current roster!

[Gary Gorski]

For sure - and let us know if you have any other questions. Don't forget to look in our blog to at www.wolverinestudios.com/blog - we just started that Feature Friday idea two weeks ago and on Friday I talked a bit about recruiting in CB so there will be some good tips and hints in the blog for our games as we move forward now

[Wayne23]

Post specific questions here and one or more of us will respond, usually fairly quickly.

When I started playing this game, in 2007, I was quick to abandon an association as soon as I'd learned what I wanted to learn from it. It was probably a few months before I played "for real." That's one approach. Another is, as I said, to call on the guys on the forum. It's a friendly, helpful, welcoming place.

I'll close by saying that this game is very deep and very rich. I guess that the fact that I've been playing it for 12 years speaks to that. Welcome!

[Your_Imaginary_Friend]

"Don't forget to keep in mind the type of school you have too - if you are a powerhouse that gets a lot of one and done type players its sort of pointless to have an elaborate offensive system like the Princeton offense because your star players will never spend enough time there to get good at it."

Gary, could you elaborate on which systems are elaborate? I assumed that the systems descend in order of sophistication and that the level of your PG is most important.

[Mikaelinho]

Thank you for the inviting and friendly reception! I played two seasons last night with Maine and managed to replicate their abysmal 3-13 conference record in my first season. After trying to adapt the system to really fit my squad's strenghts and weaknesses we played a lot better, reaching .500. Looking forward to my third season tonight! One question, how much does the PG contribute to different strategies in offense? I had a less than decent PG this season, but managed to recruit a player that will hopefully be great. With a real star at PG should I think differently when choosing strategy or should I still mostly look at all the player's and find a system that suits them? How many different systems should I use?

[Wayne23]

I try hard to recruit a good PG. I think that's a real key in college hoops, both in real life and in the game. BUT, I have the PG play within the system I'm using, because that's what almost all successful NCAA college coaches do.

[Gary Gorski]

"Don't forget to keep in mind the type of school you have too - if you are a powerhouse that gets a lot of one and done type players its sort of pointless to have an elaborate offensive system like the Princeton offense because your star players will never spend enough time there to get good at it."

Gary, could you elaborate on which systems are elaborate? I assumed that the systems descend in order of sophistication and that the level of your PG is most important.

By elaborate I mean offensive sets that rely on everyone making the correct cuts - things like Princeton and Flex require players to keep moving in a certain pattern or else the offense breaks down and then they have to improvise but when everyone is running them properly they can also lead to easy baskets as opposed to something like the 5 out offense where its more of a general philosophy (just stay out on the perimeter somewhere and see what is available). The offensive set descriptions do a pretty good job telling you what offenses rely on players being well skilled or making good cuts etc...

[Your_Imaginary_Friend]

thanks, Gary!