Engine tune-up

[easybroth]

Really impressed with the game so far this year, it's looking great and really coming together over the last few years. But, I think there are still a few engine things that need hammered out. The ones I've discovered:

1. Starters need to be playing more minutes. This current 21-22 basketball season had 68 players average more than 35 minutes, and the player in 100th place had 34.63. In my sims so far, it's rare a player gets more than 35 mpg and there were only 76 players in the entire NCAA to play more than 30 mpg in my latest sim. I don't know if this an endurance issue or a rotation issue, but it does seem that most teams stick with a 10 man rotation, which is just too many. A high tempo pressing team might play that many, but most coaches stick with 7-9 guys and their best players, especially in lower tier conferences, are going to play 33 minutes plus every night.

2. Go-to players need to get more shots. I think scoring is too spread out among some teams. 68 players in the 21-22 season averaged more than 18 a game and that's fairly low. There have been seasons where there have been 80 or 90 score more than 18 across the NCAA. In DDCB, there's always a few guys scoring 20 or more, but it drops off pretty heavily, by the time you get down to 100 in my sims, you're down to the 14-15 ppg range.

3. There's not enough studs making to the mid-major and below level. The nation's leading scorer in my sims is almost always from a power 5 school, which is only the case about 30% of the time in actual college basketball. A lot of the low-major conferences won't have anyone scoring more than 14 points a game in the entire conference. I think this is partly to do to the spreading out of offense, as a lot of guys on those teams are similarly talented, so the AI might spread things around evenly. But, even in the smallest conferences there are going to be several guys scoring 17-22 points a game, IRL.

4. Free throws need to be toned down a tad, I'll get several teams with 27+ FTA a game, with a handful in the low 30's, in the last 10 years of college basketball, there's only been 1 or 2 teams with 30 FTA per game and most years it tapers off by the 25-27 range.

5. Steals are extremely low for some squads. Teams that don't have any individual players with steal ratings will average less than a steal a game over the course of the season, which has never been done. The worst teams year to year in college basketball are at least going to average 3 or 4 a game, just by default.

6. Three point shooting percentages are a tad too low, but I think this is more because big guys who are middling three point shooters take a few too many threes.

The game looks and feels awesome, I'm a LONG time Fast Break College Basketball game guy, who has fiddled with the .ini file in that game more than I care to admit, all in the search to perfect the sim engine's stat output, I've never been quite able to get it to reflect modern college basketball as accurately as I'd like. But, DDCB seems so close, I thought I'd toss in what my research had shown.

Great job, Gary.

I used https://www.teamrankings.com/ncb/stats/ to source all of my statistics.

[Wayne23]

Good points. I can never find a way to get my starters the minutes I think they should get for one.

[Gary Gorski]

First welcome to the forums and that's a great first post! I will continue to look at the engine and see where further tweaks are needed

[PointGuard]

Good points. I have begun a CB2023 Suggestions List and added all these to that list in the event they aren't addressed for CB22.

[easybroth]

Thanks for listening everyone!

To point 3, I think some randomness in player creation might be beneficial as well. Perhaps a handful guys who are ranked quite low being 'diamonds in the rough' that turn out to be much better once they get on campus. Or more extreme divvying out of ratings guys who are say excellent offensively, but horrible defensively that allows them to end up at a mid or low major because of deficiencies in their game. But, would allow them to score 20+ points a game against subpar competition.

[Wayne23]

That exists already but you may need to play for awhile to notice it.

[PointGuard]

LOL...yeah, more used to seeing posts here saying the ratings don't match how players do...and us reminding people of how coaches don't necessarily rate players accurately.

But there already are a number of "surprises" in how recruits perform (and are rated) that are different than expected from recruiting ratings and rankings.

[easybroth]

I’ve simmed about 25 seasons so far and a few 100 in last years game. The diamonds in the rough definitely exist, but I think there should be more of them, just based on how frequently low major conferences don’t have a ppg leader above 15 or assist leaders over 4. There just isn’t enough trickle down of talent.

[thouse34]

I agree 100% with this. Guys aren't getting enough minutes / top guys aren't scoring enough. In my Summit League save the top guy scored 16 a game, I checked real life stats and every season there is at least 1 or 2 guys going for 20+ ppg on average. This held true with almost all of the other small conferences I checked as well.

[C-Bailey24]

LOVE #4. Free throws have always been a little high imo