Realignment/Independents

[jlemmen43]

I noticed when importing from '24, and doing the realignment, that the Independent conference is still listed on the team select screen but no teams are in it. Curious if that would just be for any teams unassigned, or it's completely non-editable and just a void conference?

[PointGuard]

Check the Pac-12 conference. It should be empty also. When I tested importing during beta, the conference's were automatically realigned to match how they are aligned for real this season. You can add teams to the Pac-12 on any May 1 in the association you imported if you'd like to reconstitute it in some form. I assume you could also move teams out of conferences and make them independents as well (haven't tried that though).

[NCAAhoops]

Yes, it's left in as you could put teams in or move teams back to the way they were in 2024 if you wish. It just an available conference for future use like the PAC12 which will actually come back next year.

[jlemmen43]

Oh awesome! Nice to have those options. Thanks

[NCAAhoops]

Yeah, one though I've had is you could create an old NCAA setup with fewer than 364 teams in their real conferences and then add teams you need to finish out 364 total in the Independent conference as they would not play in your setups conference games and most likely not be part of the NCAA tournament, thus you could go back in time with little interference with those teams in your historical mod. Just an idea, but intriguing.

[jlemmen43]

Yeah, one though I've had is you could create an old NCAA setup with fewer than 364 teams in their real conferences and then add teams you need to finish out 364 total in the Independent conference as they would not play in your setups conference games and most likely not be part of the NCAA tournament, thus you could go back in time with little interference with those teams in your historical mod. Just an idea, but intriguing.

Wow, that's a really neat idea. I bet people would definitely try that.

In my fictional league for DDSCB24, I had the independents conference set as a sort of "best of the worst", where the bottom 8 conferences would compete to be swapped into the 33rd conference "Independents", every 2 years, to reward them with better competition...but I think for '25, I'm just gonna throw all the "bottom tier" teams into 8 conferences so that it's a nice even 32 auto-bids. I really wish the Main tourney was only 64 and the NIT was bigger to encompass the 3rd and 4th tourney. I can keep dreaming of customizable pre-season and post-season tourneys...but I'm sure that's all it would be. I'm curious if anyone could make a mod that customizes that where it wouldn't interrupt Gary's code/etc? I wish I knew more lol.