SimSportsWorld Coaches Guide

SimSportsWorld Coaches Guide
Our coaching system is more realistic, deep and challenging then it has ever been before. We are here though to give you the run down on all the new modes and setup. Winning a championship is up to you. Being a successful coach on SimSportsWorld is similar to real life. You will need to excel at judging talent and setting your teams strategy in a way that maximizes your teams strengths and minimizes their weaknesses. What settings work for one team will not work for another.

The biggest accomplishment you can make with a coach is completing a full season. Coaching a team to win one game is a challenge by itself because your opponent is trying to accomplish the same goal even if the team is ran by a CPU coach. Show me a coach who can endure and I will show you the future of Basketball.

Creating a Coach
Creating a coach is easy. Go to your locker room tab and simply click the Create a Coach link on the upper left hand side. Enter your coach's name, and age. Age doesn`t affect a coaches ability so feel free to enter whatever age you wish him to be. Please Use a realistic name for your character as this could effect his Job opportunities.

Joining a Team
As a new coach you have a couple options for your first coachings job. The first and easiest option is to coach a high school. Any high schools who have openings will hire you immediately. Your second option is to Apply for a head coaching job in college or the pros. Your ability to get a job in college or the pros will depend greatly on the level of the team and your experience as a coach for that character. VIP coaches will also get a better shot at landing the job. If you cannot find a head coaching job in the college or pros, many coaches will opt to hire assistant coaches. At the moment you can only apply for an assistant job at the Pro level. You can apply for one of these assistant coaching positions and take on some of the responsibilities of a head coach while gaining experience and waiting for a head coaching position to open.

Applying for a Position
To apply for a coaching position in the college or pros, first click the Job Openings link under the Information section. Here you will see a list of all available coaching positions starting with the Sim Basketball Association and working down through each of the 3 tiers of college schools. You can click on Apply For Position to fill out the application. We hire coaches based on their coaches history, their VIP level, and their answers to the application questions, so take the application seriously as it can help improve your chances of landing a job. Once you have applied no more action is required on your part, all coaching hires are announced in the Hiring Forum, please check back there for updates on your favorite teams. Keep in mind that you can apply for more than one Job application.

You are not allowed to coach a team with your player on that roster. You cannot coach 2 teams in the same conference.

Team Control
As soon as you have landed a team your Team Control is unlocked for you and you can start taking the reigns of your team. Managing your team is broken down into 3 main areas, Game Planning, Practices, and Information. If you are in college a 4th section on Recruiting willl appear during times when recruiting is allowed. Game planning is where you wll set up all of your strategies for up and coming games. Practices allow you to set your daily practice schedules for your team practices each afternoon, and information provides links to League Central, as well as information on job openings, the ability to post news stories, or edit your CPU players names.

Game Planning
Some coaches are great recruiters, others are great at game planning for opponents. Game planning can be as simple as setting up 1 strategy for your team and running it all season, or as complex as fine tuning every aspect of the game plan and individualizing it to each opponent.

Roster Management
The first part of setting up your team game plan is getting your depth charts in order. On the Roster Management screen you can specify who your starters, second string players, and third string players are for each game. These settings are universal, in other words you do not set rosters for each specific game, they are set here and edited here any time you want them changed. The amount of time your 2nd and 3rd string players get will be specific to your game plan settings for particular games.

If you have duplicate players in your roster management a red warning message will appear and you will need to correct them. If you do not correct it and have illegal rosters set up, the simulation will auto generate a dept chart for you based on seniority.

Offensive Management
Once your core settings are in place for your rosters, you will now want to determine your core offensive plays for your team. Your team has multiple offensive sets in place for each defense you can face in a game, and each offensive set has multiple offensive plays you can use in game against that defense. When setting up your game plans you will choose the offensive set you will use in any given situation, here in offensive management you choose which plays to include in those offensive sets.

Any plays you wish to use should be set to "On", if no plays in a set are on the simulation will choose one of the plays at random to be your play for that set. You can have any or all plays on for a particular set, the choice is yours. To view a partcular offense you can click on the name of the offense to bring up a new screen with a series of slides that show the offenses motion.

As time goes on we will continue to expand the offensive plays and their offensive sets, so check back often for new plays to control.

Defensive Management
Defensive Management allows you to set some basic settings for your defensive presence in zone or man to man situations. Your Pressure for either defense is a risk / reward scenario. Higher Pressure will generally lead to more turnovers, however it can also lead to a higher rate of fouls and over play that leads to easy baskets. Lower pressure will save you in fouls but will also allow the offense to run more smoothly for your opponent and can lead to your opponent getting in a better rhythm.

The way you handle screens in the man to man defense can have a big difference on how your matchups work out. Switching screens allows screens to have a smaller effectiveness, however you can end up with mismatches when guards get switched onto forwards and vice versa.

Your zone spacing in zone situations is equally important. Packing a zone can help clog the interior post game and can allow your players to rest more, but exposes you to wide open shots on the peremeter, and applies little pressure to your opponents as they swing the ball around the arc. Expanding your zone can put pressure on your opponent and force them to work the ball inside, but it also works your players alot harder as they swing back and forth and can open up interior passing especially in the middle.

Gameplans
Gameplans allow you to set specific settings for specific games. To create a gameplan Click the New Game Plan link. You will be greeted with a series of strategy options. NOTE: Not all Game plan options show up in "New GamePlan". Once you create a gameplan you will be taken to the edit game plan screen where you will finish the gameplan creation.

Each Game plan starts with the basics of setting your bench depth determining your game tempo, how aggressive you want to crash the boards, End Game situations when to use timeouts, and your default offensive and defensive sets. Once you click the Add Game plan you will be greeted with all of the same options, but now you will have two additional options to add custom rules for offensive and defensive situations.

Lets take offense for example. You can decide to use the Motion Offense as your default ofense against man to man defense, and this is the offensive set that it will always default to. When the game is playing however, it will first check to see if any of the rules you have set up match and if so it will run that offense, if no rules apply it will default to the default motion offense. Rules go in order of priority, the first rule the sim matches will be the rule it uses for determining the offense used.

Rules can be based on the time into the game, and the point differential. When entering a starting minute and ending minute, games start at 0, and end at the total minutes for the game. In the pros this is 48, in college, 40, and in high school 32. You can also make rules for overtime(5 minutes), by extending past these times. Point differential is the difference in points between you and your opponent. A -10 means you are currently down 10 points, while a 6 would mean you are up 6 points. These numbers are inclusive, so setting the point differential from -5 to 5 will include -5 and 5 as options for this rule. Finally the priority determines the order of rules. The lower the priority number is the closer to the top it shows up.

How many rules you set is entirely up to you, you can run with as little as the basic default packages, or you can be specific changing offenses and defenses every minute to mix up your strategies, or tayloring them to specific key points in the game. There is no limit to the amount of rules you may create for a game plan.

Gameplan Scheduling
In order to use a game plan you must schedule it for a particular game. By clicking on the Gameplan Schedule link on the Team Control menu, you can see a list of any upcoming games and specify a game plan for that opponent. Tournament games cannot be scheduled until your opponent has been determined, so check back after games have been played to specify a gameplan for an up coming tournament game. In the event a game plan is not chosen, the simulation will default to your FIRST game plan. If you have not created a gameplan the system will generate one for you for that particular game.

Practices
As a coach, Team Practices are absolutely ESSENTIAL to not only your team's development but your ability to access your teams talents and determine who your best players are. Unlike the previous version of SimSportsWorld, coaches have no access to players ratings. Sure players can "tell" you what those ratings are, but you have no way of knowing if they are telling the truth. However, you are not blind in this endeavor. Practices are a great way of getting key information on each of your players strengths and weaknesses

Practices are broken up into 3 workouts(similar to training on the players side), and a 30 minute scrimmage. In order to run a practice, you must first go to Practice Management. Here you can set up your practice squads, how you set them up is up to you, you can put your starters together on a team to see them work together or make the teams even to best assess talent. Then you need to setup your custom workouts for future practice sessions. This works similar to the training mode, chose 3 different mini workouts for your team and give them a name. You can see what each workout trains and tests down at the bottom of practice management.

Once you have your workouts setup you can schedule some practices. Click on the Practice Schedule link. Here you can setup which custom workout routine you want your team to run, and finally set which offense you want each team to run during the scrimmage. Whichever offenses you choose will dictate what defense the other team runs. If you choose a 2-3 zone set then the other team will run 2-3 zone for the scrimmage.

Practices run at 10 AM(CST) every day. This gives you time to view the results before games begin and allows that information to aide you in your decisions. Viewing practice results is a key component of knowing your team. When you view the results of a particular practice you will see how each player performed in each mini workout. These results are going to be based on your opponents existing abilities in these areas, as well as how much effort they have used for the day. If a player has an across the board good practice, or bad practice, it could mean they used alot or little effort and that can factor into your playing time decisions for the game later in the day. Finally you get to see the play by play for the 30 minute scrimmage and the stats for that scrimmage. This also allows you to gain valuable information on your team.

Practice Results are only saved for 72 hours so it is important that you access the info and move forward.

General Recruiting Rules
1. Official Recruiting should take place on SimSportsWorld via Forums or Instant Messages. You can skype someone and tell them to check their messages, but recruiting is NOT to take place over skype.

2. You may NOT agree to any player swaps or deals where you recruit each others players and agree to sign. You may not agree to pay for players or negotiate any deals of the sort.

3. You may not share any of your player attrbutes with a coach for any reason, a Coach may not request that a user give this information.

4. Players may not sign and accept a scholarship until after the regular season during their junior or senior seasons. A Player can make a soft verbal and a coach can offer a scholarship but both are not binding until a signing is made. Once a signing is made it is locked in and cannot be reversed for any reason.

5. Misleading teams, coaches or players is not against the rules, however we will have a thread specifically listing users who intentionally mislead teams, coaches or players.

6. Signing your own players is not allowed.

Scholarship Rules

1. Each team can have 10 players on scholarship for one season. You may sign up to these 10 but do not have to fill all 10 for a particular season.

2. A team may sign no more than 5 players to a specific class.

The Recruiting Process - Coaches

By visiting your locker room you can start the recruiting process right away. Visiting the Manage Recruits Section starts the process. Here you can search for recruits based on a wide range of criteria. Once you find recruits you are interested in, you can add them to your watch list. This allows you to sort out the players you want, but also shows players you are interested. Once on your watch list, you can offer them a scholar ship if you choose. This can be done at any time, however a player may only sign with your team during the signing season which is from the end of the regular season to the end of the post season in their junior or senior years.

Visits

Visits are a coaches way of showing serious interest in a player. A coach may only visit one player on any given day, so visits are a big deal. Coaches can schedule future visits, but a visit is not official until NOON CST the day of. Once that time passes the visit has officially taken place, prior to that a coach can change his mind.

Visits do not give players any boosts or bonuses, however since a coach is recruiting 30-40 players at any one time it clearly shows you are important on his list, and it can help you determine which team wants you more by how many visits they make.

To view visits, scholarship offers, player or team interest visit any Players page in League Central.

Player Recruiting - Interest

Players can manage the list of teams they are interested in by visiting the lockerroom and going to manage interest under the recruiting menu. Here they add the teams that they are currently interested in, and can then trim it as they narrow down their choices. There is no order to the interest list, you simply list all teams you are interested in.

Communication

For convenience, there is a communication page that lists all interested parties and a link directly to pm the party at hand.

Questions?

If you have any questions about rules, compliance or how to's do not hesitate to send a pm to me or yankeecpt(League Coordinator), or post in the got questions or CSBA forums.

Information
The information section is for any info pertaining to your coach. Here you can find League Central pages to your league, team page, and your coaches page. You also have the ability to post information such as posting a news story. News stories you post get submitted to the League Central website and show up in real time. Please make sure that your news stories contain content and are appropriate, Anyone abusing this feature will lose their news story posting privileges. You can also view any new job openings in the Job Openings page, or you can edit your CPU Players names, if you want to give them more realistic names.

Retirement
A coach can retire at any time. When he retires that coaching position opens up and his character is removed. If a coach had a successful enough career he will be considered for the hall of fame.