Hardwood - Discussion Forum: Hardwood, a history by El Jefe

Forum >> Discussions >> Hardwood, a history by El Jefe - Part 1: Steve's Game

Post ID	Date & Time	Game Date

#19657	02/13/2023 12:28:12 pm	Oct 8th, 2030
El jefe Joined: 07/06/2018 Posts: 681 Temple Owls I.1	Hardwood, a history by El Jefe Part 1: Steve’s Game Basketball is beautiful in its simplicity. Two teams battle each other in a confined space for control of a 22 oz. spherical object that, if handled properly, will be make a tumultuous journey through the air and into a basket 10 feet off the ground. Each basket scores you 1, 2 or 3 points; score more points than the other team and you win. For those of us familiar with basketball and all of its intricacies, we know the game is far more complex and significantly more strategic than its basic premise. Realistically re-creating those intricacies into a form of virtual entertainment is a tall task that is difficult for many of us to envision. Yet here we are, celebrating the 30th season of an online basketball simulation game that has given us the privilege of taking the well-known and unknown of college basketball programs and recruiting, managing and strategizing them to the promised land of national relevance. This is Part 1 of a 3-part series that will examine the history, dive into the personalities, and celebrate the intricacies that make Hardwood……from the perspective of its presidents. And on the 6th Day.... (Steve - game creator and president of Cal State Monterey Bay) “So the question a lot of people keep asking is for the origin story of Hardwood. It was a long time in 2017 when Hardwood’s sister game, Broken Bat (baseball version) was running smooth in its 7th year and my kids were 10 and 6 years old and I figured I had fatherhood licked and had some free time to work on something new. As a child, I always loved baseball, but when I went to college, I became a college hoops fan and figured – that’s what I can do, I can use the Broken Bat framework and create a second game for college basketball. The real challenge was creating the game engine which is completely different than baseball. For one, baseball is well described by statistics – they have stats for everything now -- left-handed batting average versus above-average spin rate breaking balls etc. Basketball has shooting well covered by statistics, but many of the other parts of the game aren’t well modeled. For example, what’s the chance a top defender is able to steal the ball from an PG with above average ball handling skills? If three-point shooters or post players or elite PGs are overpowered, then the game doesn’t work. Same with star players to role players – if you win the recruiting battle for that 5-star player, you shouldn’t automatically win the conference and tournament title for the next four years. That was perhaps the hardest thing to achieve…..game balance. There were lots of issues, but people were very enthusiastic about the game. By June things were pretty much complete – so I figured, we’d launch the real game with a bang on 4th of July 2018! And so we did. That was nearly five years ago now and almost 30 Hardwood seasons. I’ve really enjoyed running the game and the community of team presidents has been so friendly and supportive. But the thing I’m most proud of is the 100% graduation rate of our Hardwood players – knowing each and everyone of them comes away with a virtual college degree is what it’s really all about!” The Beginning The early seasons of the game saw overpowered attributes, such as size, translate to a strategic advantage at all positions on the court. There was also a penchant for guards to forget they were allowed inside the 3-pt line – 21 of the 25 all-time single season 3-pt records are from 2001. Pre-populated rosters for each team also presented its own set of challenges as teams with upperclassmen-heavy rosters needed to learn how to recruit faster than those with underclassmen; however, this did provide the ability to put your “stamp” on the team quicker than others. (Hodge_17 – president of St. Thomas Aquinas, 2004 National Champion and 3 Final Four appearances) “I built my teams around how I believed teams would be successful - a passing PG, a shooting SG, a jack of all trades SF, a rebounding/offensive PF, and a BIG slow rebounding beast at C. I would say I got lucky with the team I selected starting off with Doug Price, who ended up being the #1 overall pick in the 2004 pro draft.” (Pig_cola – president of Arizona State, 2003 National Champion, 2013 Runner-Up) "In the early years of the game, recruiting was much easier. There are prospects that I think were overlooked by players back then that in the current state of the game could be recruited by a couple of teams despite having some negatives in their scouting report." (TPS2.0 – president of Tennessee, 2-time Legends League Playoff Champion, 2018 Runner-up, 17 D1 tournament appearances) "I think it is pretty cool that there is no clear-cut way to win when recruiting for your team. There are some things you can't do like just recruit 5 stars or only recruit players under 6 feet, but SI and height isn't all that matters. You can build a team that is all about defense or you can focus on a tall team. There are some people that recruit mostly in-state, but there have been great teams that sprinkle in a handful of international players. It seems like I learn something new every year about roster construction keeping hardwood new and exciting for me." (buffmckagan – president of Missouri, 2002 Final Four) “Recruiting has definitely grown the most, as players seem to really have developed strategies and look for what they want. My Missouri teams in the mid-aughts were very special, especially the 2004 recruiting class. It would be heralded as the greatest coup in school history if this thing happened in real life. One five-star recruit, and three four-stars who all went to the NBA. I remember people on the forums giving it a lot more credit than the in-game.” (Privatesnowflake – president of Cincinnati, 11 seasons in Legends): "In 10-years time, 10 D1 champions would be crowned……It was anyone's game, with new strategies, new schools, and new stars." (Mjreichard – president of North Carolina, 3-time Legends League Conference Champion) “The early seasons were quite something, very different from where we are now as a league….. as we tried to navigate strategy, depth charts and game management while still unsure how that all worked. We had our first roster assigned, no recruiting and some players started as Seniors, so that was a bit different. UNC started with several 4-and 5-star guys and played well, winning some titles in there early on.” And win they did. North Carolina won 103 games against 31 losses from 2001-2003, including a 72-18 Legends conference record. The monstrous Leo Darling who stood 6’10” and weighed in at 280 pounds and the 275-pound ironically named Duane Smalls bruised opponents on the interior as North Carolina leveraged its size to win the very first Legends conference title. When Darling graduated, Mjreichard brought in JUCO graduate Malik Thompson to quickly fill the void. (Mjreichard): “We recruited for size early, which seemed to help. Size always finds a way to be a net positive for the team. That takes some creativity though.” Realizing that size alone would not sustain success, sharpshooter Trevor “Sky” Walker was brought in from JUCO and Trevor “Ice” Waters was elevated to a more prominent role in the starting lineup. A future PRO draft pick, Waters in particular responded by being the outside presence North Carolina needed to maintain its dominance in Legends, helping the Tar Heels secure both the 2002 and 2003 Legends conference titles to become back-to-back-to-back Legends champions….an accomplishment that has only been equaled one other time 30 seasons later. Despite North Carolina’s Legends dominance, the landscape was far different on a national level and, for the most part, full of opportunity for savvy presidents to advance up the league level ranks. Success quickly became more about building familiarity with game tactics/strategy. Arizona State discovered early on that size matters in Hardwood, and could act as the great equalizer when going up against potentially more talent-rich teams. The 2003 big-man duo of 6’10” Bennie Moffitt and 6’11” Dax Powers teamed with the the 7’6” wingspan of backup Bill Nelson to wreak havoc on opponents, as the Sun Devils scored 50% of their points in the paint (44.4 per game) on their way to winning the National Championship. (Pig_cola): “The 2003 champion-winning season was amazing. Every game was intense. Once we got to the national tournament, the games were more intense since the stakes were higher. After getting past Maryland BC in the first round of the national tournament, I had to go up against Mississippi, an elite team back then, going 38-8. That was a team I was scared of because they had a few players that could score at will and they were an excellent defensive team that managed to force their opponents to turn the ball over 20.3 times a game, including a ton of steals. That defense was a reason why that team was outstanding. We beat Mississippi probably because we were a taller team and I played matchups, trying to take advantage of the smaller players that Mississippi had. After moving on to the Final Four, we had to face Tulsa and then Guilford in the National Championship. Both were great defensive teams that forced turnovers by playing the passing lanes – in fact, 9 of the first 10 National Champions were great at these parts of the game. The advantage I had was that I was a bigger team and I managed play matchups and played my tallest players at both PF and C.” Other teams began the rapidly improve during this time period due to a focus on recruiting, benefiting from a wider pool of available players due to less competition. It was a recruiting landscape that was far different from what the Hardwood community is used to today, and saw many prospects commit to out-of-state and out-of-region schools. (G10rsh – president of Columbia, 2006 National Champion, 2 Final Four appearances) "Recruiting was much less intense; we were able to recruit Michael Martin, a 6’11” future PRO star completely out of region. If he showed up today, he’d have three in-state teams on High before the first update." (wieditor - president of Arizona/Marquette, 2024 National Champion, 2023 Final Four) "Ah, the old days! In complete candor, I had little knowledge of how to properly strategize or recruit. I started by recruiting internationally but learned quickly to stay in-state and in-region for best results. The 2002 and 2003 recruiting classes were big-time, ranking ninth and sixth nationally! Arizona initially landed five-stars, but that never led to sustainable success though. Recruiting is so important though that I brought in Coach Stu Vern for his recruiting prowess and has turned in good results with over 600 victories." (Bridger – president of Huntington, 3 consecutive Final Four appearances) “Everyone was figuring out recruiting. No one knew what skills to prioritize, how to build a coherent team, or anything like that. I know I ignored the size/measurables for the most part because I was coming off of Broken Bat where it’s impossible to understand the value of the measurables. In this era of the game, I was focused on planning out roster’s years in advance, so I didn’t really learn anything about game tactics and just climbed up from VI slowly by having players that were more skilled than the rapidly-declining talent level in the lower leagues as everything evened out.” (WillEvansSC – president of Francis Marion, 2008 National Champion, climbed from LL6 to LL1 in successive seasons) “In the early days of Hardwood, someone with motivation to do so could climb the conferences more quickly. All the schools were still trying to figure out the best strategies, so if you picked a good strategy and stuck to it, it paid off. Scouting was and still is much more important than just recruiting the big-name guys.” One of those schools was St. Thomas Aquinas. Led by Doug Price, the Spartans spent their first 3 HW seasons in LL5 before promoting to LL4 for the 2004 season. The roster around Price was filled out with upperclassmen Archie Mason, Oliver Blanchard, Joe Cooper and Oscar Carr, building a team that emulated Hodge_17’s vision around how he believed teams would be successful in real-life. (Hodge_17): "We played a fast-paced, run & gun offense. Kind of coming off my high school team, I made them play fast and shoot from everywhere (especially the 3pt shot)." The Spartans put up 98.5 ppg in conference play on their way to securing the IV.5 conference title. In the National Tournament, Price and Blanchard turned on the gas, both posting over 20ppg and Blanchard also pulling down 12+ rpg. The team would average 113.5 ppg in the 2004 tournament, shooting 38% from downtown, on its way to winning the 2004 National Championship. The run to the championship included dominating wins against a juggernaut of opponents that included defending national champion Arizona State, 41-5 Vanderbilt, 2001 national champion Oregon State, 2001 runner-up Florida, and emerging super team Butler. (Hodge_17): "The 2004 title run wouldn't have been complete without JUCO PG recruit Joe Cooper who tied the team together along with the big C recruit Oliver Bouchard. The similarity between my 2004 National Champion & 2008 Final Four team is that they were both great 3pt shooting teams. They played the same strategy (run & gun offense). And like all my teams have been over the years, all very offensive, lacking defense!" Rise of the Super Teams (G10rsh): “It was much easier to just set your tactics based on your strengths and roll through on team power. Nowadays you really need to look at game by game player matchups and properly adjust your tactics or you will lose plenty of games that you should win on paper. That's not to say the competition at the top was easier; I think there were more super teams, given the lessened competition for players, and if you wanted to make it deep in the tourney you definitely still had to scout.” Similar to St. Thomas Aquinas, Columbia was able to tailor a strong game strategy through trial-and-error around an elite recruiting class. The arrival of the aforementioned Michael Martin, along with Chuck Waldrip and Alexander Patterson in the 2002 season built the groundwork for sustained success over a 7-year period that saw the Lions establish themselves as one of HW’s first super teams. Building on his prowess in recruiting and strategy, G10rsh was also one of the first presidents to realize and successfully leverage the benefits of Hardwood’s Redshirt option, as each of Martin, Waldrip and Patterson were redshirted in the 2004 season. (El Jefe - president of Temple, 2029 National Champion, 4 Final Four appearances) “Columbia had an aura about them in the early going where you just knew you didn’t have much of a chance. I remember they were one of the first teams, along with Misericordia, I ever really looked at and tried to study what they were doing and how they recruited. Seeing their success was a great benchmark for how I looked at my own team…..but I made sure to avoid them on the recruiting trails! The first time I even considered using a Redshirt was when I saw the success they had with it – so it’s safe to say G10rsh changed the way I…and a lot of us played the game.” This strategy bore fruits in the immediate term as Columbia qualified for promotion to D1 in 2005 and subsequently won the IV.1 conference regular season and tournament title. The 2006 national tournament was the real coming-out party for this program though, as it successively defeated powerhouses Butler, Villanova and Oklahoma in the Elite 8, Final Four and National Title game to claim the 2006 National Championship. To put its Super Team status into context, the ENTIRE starting 5 of this team was drafted into the PRO LEAGUE. Martin, Waldrip and Patterson were all drafted in the 1st round of the 2006 PRO draft, while Ernie Thorn went in the 2nd round of the subsequent year and Cody Moore was selected in the 1st round in 2009. Over 30 seasons of Hardwood, Columbia has seen 20 players drafted to the PROs. (Bridger): “Columbia and Vanderbilt are the teams that stick in my mind - really high SI squads and seemed to be able to put together intimidating recruiting classes, which is all that I was focused on at that point.” Not to be outmatched by Columbia, Vanderbilt has sent 17 players to the PROs to go along with 5 conference playoff championships and 2 conference titles in the first 7 seasons of the game. (TPS2.0): “In the early days, you had a few teams that would only target a few 5-star recruits and build crazy starting lineups. Vanderbilt for a while would bring in 5-star studs every year, and send multiple draft prospects into the pros.” However, whereas Columbia had a National Championship to their name in the first decade, Vanderbilt proved how difficult it is in Hardwood to translate an excellent team into tournament success. 9 consecutive D1 tournament appearances only saw Vanderbilt advance beyond the first weekend twice, albeit one of those instances was a championship game loss to Texas Tech in 2005. (Pig_cola): "Vanderbilt was a really good team; their strengths were offensive rebounding, points in the paint, and having a dominant paint presence. In the 2002 and 2003 seasons, Vanderbilt was a team that used a small rotation of players and they were very successful with that strategy - 6 seasons where they had at least 4 players average 10+ ppg and 3 seasons with a player that averaged at least 10 PITP/game. In the 2007 season, Vanderbilt managed to make the national tournament using this strategy by winning the conference championship despite having a 12-18 conference record and demoting. Having good shooting and a paint presence can give a team great success." (Ced - president of Indiana, 2013 Legends playoff champion) "No one really came close to Vanderbilt 2005 when it came to being the best program overall. They might beat you by 68 like they did to Nevada on the road, or 76 points like they did Utah in Legends play. They could successfully recruit nationally - I saw them come right into Ohio and get highly contested big man Ralph Flaherty, and he would average a double-double most games in Legends. They were the first school to monitor player loads to train and develop the entire roster and have squad depth. For whatever reason, though, they could never understand the philosophy that March mattered. Their president had a big personality on the forum, but they didn't have deep runs in March and never did win a national title." Vanderbilt’s original coach, Corey Luce, is still active on the Commodores bench today – one of the few coaches active in 2001 that still remain with their original team....still in search of that elusive National Championship. Thinking beyond all of the accolades that highly-touted recruits, PRO draft picks, prestige, National Championships and Legends titles can bring, one of the more distinguishing feats in Hardwood (and something that makes this game so appealing) is making the climb from LL6 to Legends. The first two teams to do this both achieved the feat in the 2008 season – the Francis Marion Patriots and California Lutheran Kingsmen. Their paths were different as Francis Marion struggled to find early success in a recruit-and-develop strategy, while California Lutheran charged out of the gate with a VI.14 conference regular-season and tournament championship and a D3 Sweet 16 appearance. From there the Kingsmen began a methodical climb to LL1 that included 4 other regular-season conference titles and 206 wins over the next 6 seasons. Meanwhile, the Patriots clicked in the 2003 season and captured 3 regular-season conference titles along with 188 wins over 5 seasons to catapult the program from LL6 to Legends, becoming the first program to ever accomplish this in successive season. (celtic4warrior - president of California Lutheran) "I have been playing Hardwood since the beginning and have enjoyed playing the game. I was very lucky to have snagged a very good coach in "Sir" Roger Keith at the beginning, who was able to lead my squad through a successful and quick rise from D3 to a very brief but successful stay in D1. My strategy was to focus on 2-and 3-star players who had a great upside, paired with the defensive mind of Keith. I then mixed in a 4-or-5-star recruit every now and then to create some very successful teams along that rise." (WillEvansSC): "Back in 2001, I convinced little known coach Juan Pablo Contreras to take a chance on a little known school in rural Florence, South Carolina. Coach Contreras’s recruit-and-develop strategy produced a 67.5% overall winning percentage over the next 21 seasons." (celtic4warrior): "After a while, I took the redshirt penalty as it was working for other teams, but since then I have struggled to recover, but my joy and enthusiasm in the game have not wavered. I will continue to play and continue to find joy in logging in daily to hopefully one day win a national championship!" (WillEvansSC): “The biggest achievement for me in this period was Francis Marion's 2008 National Championship, just 8 seasons after starting in LL6. HOWEVER, the disrespect for the little known coach and school from the national news outlets was real - 2008 Francis Marion was (still to this date) the only National Champion not to be featured on the cover of Hardwood Basketball News.” The national news outlets sleight of Francis Marion’s championship was possibly due to the old media mantra of “bad news is good news.” In this case, the bad news was a 2nd consecutive and 3rd overall runner-up finish for Butler. In fact, 2008 was a sort of culmination of Butler acting as a right of passage for some of the great teams in Hardwood’s early seasons as 4 National Champions in a 5 year span had to dispose of the Bulldogs during the national tournament – St. Thomas Aquinas, Francis Marion and a dominating Cal State East Bay team broke Butler’s heart in the finals, while Columbia had to fight them off in the Elite 8 during the Lions 2006 National Title run. Many speculated whether Butler had what it takes to close the deal, or if they would fall into the same tournament abyss as Vanderbilt. Nobodyjones had other ideas. One of the best presidents Hardwood has seen in its 30 seasons, he led Butler back with a vengeance in the 2009 season. Generating a +7 turnover margin (which included 12 steals per game), Butler finished 46-4 overall and 27-3 in conference play, good enough to win its Legends conference championship. (Bridger): "Nobodyjones figured out the importance of speed before everyone else. I remember figuring it out myself when some random bot team’s sub-100-SI Brazilian SG dropped 30 on me with absolutely no skills to speak of other than 19 speed, but Butler was ahead of the curve." The team was led by fireball All-American Cliff McCoy, a 5’10”, 160 lbs PG. Whether it was sinking your heart from 3-pt range, or maneuvering his way on a drive to the hoop, McCoy could beat you from anywhere on the floor. The Bulldogs squad also included arguably the best 6th man in HW history - Cameron Devine, 1 of 4 future draft picks on the team. A backup shooting guard, Devine put up 16.7 points in 26mpg, and was one of 3 Bulldogs to finish in the Top 10 in steals per game in Legends that season. Together, McCoy and Devine led a lightning quick Butler squad into the post-season with all of the momentum; yet questions abound on whether or not the top-ranked Bulldogs could close the deal in post-season play, something they fell short on the previous 2 seasons. First-up was the Legends playoff, where big-man Rich Grady stepped up to the plate with McCoy and Devine to breeze through the first few rounds of the tournament before winning a tight one in the Legends playoff title game against Texas Tech, extinguishing one post-season demon. However, a jovial Bulldogs locker room quickly took a turn for the worse in Round 1 of the National Tournament as star player, McCoy went down with a devasting injury that would keep him out for the rest of the tournament. Heading into a Round of 32 matchup against Vanderbilt, it seemed fate had it in for Butler. Not willing to accept the seeming inevitable defeat, Grady and Devine took the Bulldogs under their combined wings and showed the talent that would get them both drafted in 2010. Grady posted a double-double in the tournament, averaging 17.2 ppg and 11.2 rpg, while Devine stepped into the starting lineup and held opponents to 28% from the floor. Butler romped through the tournament and sealed the deal with a 10-point win over MIT to capture the programs first National Championship and permanently silence their doubters. With that victory, Butler became the first (and still to this-date, only) team to win each of the Legends conference championships, Legends tournament championship, and D1 National Championship in the same season. (El Jefe): "Those Butler teams were just a sight to behold. It was clear that Nobodyjones had figured something out and the rest of us were playing catch-up; how else do you make 4 finals in 10 seasons with all the randomness in this game? I doubt if we ever see that level of dominance again in this game, especially with how the community has expanded both in quantity and quality through further understanding of game mechanics." Into the next decade As the first decade wrapped up, another early super team, the Misericordia Cougars made the Final Four for a 2nd consecutive season and closed the deal as well with the 2010 D1 National Championship and 2010 Legends conference championship. However, the tides of the game had already begun to turn as more statistics became available and more thorough analysis of the importance of certain player attributes was possible. (Hodge_17): "Some early teams that I would consider rivals were teams such as Butler who we knocked off in the 2004 National Title game and lost to in the 2008 Final Four, Misericordia had a STACKED team during the 2009/2010 season, Kansas State, and Vanderbilt was just a menace of a team between 2001-2010 - probably one of the best presidents to never win a National Championship. All of these teams continued to dominate in the next decade." (Pig_cola): "It felt a lot easier to compete in the first decade and make a championship team than it is now mostly because the user base has grown significantly and players are more informed and have developed successful strategies since then." (Privatesnowflake): "Early powers started to give way to new schools whose presidents would uncover legendary coaches and players." (buffmckagan): "Vanderbilt and Butler are probably the two programs the defined the earliest parts of the game, parity has gotten much better since. I think Missouri peaked as a program in the earliest days, partially because guys tried to work with smaller programs and work their way up. I am an alum and wanted to take them over, and it's certainly gotten more challenging as the years have gone by. That's a testament to the guys who have really put in the effort to build these teams up from scratch." The impacts of another drastic change also began to change the way presidents recruited players. Part of the way into the 2008 season, Steve announced that the star rating system would be changed to weigh SI more heavily. Whereas, star ratings were previously almost exclusively based on potential, this new system gave more equal weighting between current SI and potential. This change not only caused a mid-season re-evaluation of a player’s star rating, but it also closed a bit of a loophole that some presidents had been able to exploit. Previously, a 125 SI – 12 POT player would have been rated a 3-star and not garnered as much competition as a much lower SI, 13 POT 5-star. Once Steve made this change, competition for the 12 POT equivalent became much more fervent. (Mjreichard): "Things changed when everyone started focusing on recruiting more because it was not as easy to "win" as many of the big recruits as we started with on that initial roster. We had to be creative and find 2-and-3-star players that fit roles on the team. We continue to need to recruit that way now. It is also difficult because every level has the same player pool to recruit from. Our best player ever, Lou Dillard, was a 7-footer, but only a 2 star. We took a flyer on him and it ended up paying off with a great career here, the #7 pick in the draft and a strong pro career." (El Jefe): "I feel like it took me the first half of the first decade to get any sort of feel for how the game played, but then every time I thought I had it figured out (whether it was gameplay or recruiting), I was brought back down-to-earth. Steve's tweaks to recruiting and gameplay kept things fresh as did my aspirations to try to make Legends." (TPS2.0): "The continued evolution of recruiting has been pretty interesting. I think the most famous case was Saint Mary's Minnesota who might have had the best recruiting class ever with 3 five-star prospects in one year and another one for good measure the year after, but never made it into D1 with that squad. Instances like that made people re-think their strategies going into 2011/2012, so I think now it's a little more balanced which is a good thing. The talent spreading out led to more bright presidents making good teams." The era of the Super Team was far from over, but the new decade ushered in a more diverse mix of contenders that were ready to put their stamp on the game………and a new hotbed that would become known for one of the most memorable and unique streaks in Hardwood. Coming Soon - Part 2: The Capital of Hardwood Updated Tuesday, February 14 2023 @ 9:22:27 am PST

#19659	02/13/2023 3:56:42 pm	Oct 8th, 2030
kauffdaddy Joined: 11/30/2020 Posts: 693 Inactive	Wow. This is great, and not something I could do. Bravo.

#19667	02/15/2023 5:28:54 am	Oct 10th, 2030
WillEvansSC Joined: 07/19/2018 Posts: 1 Francis Marion Patriots V.2	This is so much better than I expected when I was asked for quotes. Kudos, El jefe!

#19668	02/15/2023 11:49:57 am	Oct 12th, 2030
celtic4warrior Joined: 07/02/2018 Posts: 174 California Lutheran Kingsmen V.1	Indeed, a very well-written and put-together article. I will need to read it in more depth during my four-day weekend when I have time to breathe. I'm very interested to see how part 2 turns out... haha. celtic4warrior