Date: Wed Jan 16 21:08:08 2008
Sender: David Smith
The Dayton Project is a CBEL experiment designed to see if a veteran coach can
take the worst team in tier 1 (Dayton) and in 8 seasons turn them into a
winning program. It is the brain child of Dagger Dave Ayres who is the head
coach of Notre Dame. His suggestion grew out of concern (during the offseason
prior to the start of season 53) first voiced by Chip Caruth on the message
board about the loss of coaches from CBEL. One concern mentioned multiple
times was the perceived difficulty of new coaches being able to compete with
the established powers of the league, especially with regards to the all
important cycle of acquiring recruiting prestige, recruiting talented players
to win, and therefore the accumulation of further prestige. In short this
project aims to see not only if it can be done, but will hopefully be
informative to new coaches and for that matter veteran coaches alike.
I volunteered to take on the project because I really like this game and
thought I could give something back that could benefit the growth of the
league. I am hopeful that coach Ayres will come aboard as well and together
make this a worthwhile project. In that regard, I am hoping to make this as
interactive as possible and hope that as many of you as want to will
contribute. I intend to keep the record of the project right here on the
message board rather than through league wide emails. That will serve 2
purposes. One it will remain for new coaches in the future to be able to use
as a learning tool...sort of like the help pages. Two it will allow everyone
to see all comments made by coaches who want to contribute. I thought it would
be good to break the project down into parts and so after this initial start-up
thread I will continue with a new "Recruiting 53" thread. Another would be
"Game Planning/Evaluation" and then "Offseason".
I would also like to acknowledge both Chris Smith and Andy for supporting the
project and making it happen. So now...on with the project...
INITIAL THOUGHTS ON DAYTON
First of all I love history. So we start with a look at Dayton's recent past.
Dagger picked a doozie. These guys are bad. Not only were they 0-30 last year
but they are 2-52 in the A-10 the last 3 years and over the past 8 years (since
the A-10 got rid of the 2 divisions) they are 72-172 overall (.295). In the
A-10 during that time they are 27-117 (.187) and have finished last 5 times and
10th (out of 14) 3 times. They have sent just 2 players to the pros during
that time. Dave Ayres has broken down the roster and it is weak. I include it
here only so that coaches in the future can see the players we are talking
about.
G.Gregory C So 2 5 4 4 6 1 2 10 100 6' 7" RS C B C
A.Reyes C Jr 1 7 0 2 3 1 5 11 100 6' 5" -S D D C
C.Leverenz C Fr 3 6 4 2 2 2 4 9 100 6' 6" -- D C SG
C.Alioto PF Jr 5 2 2 2 6 4 2 11 100 6' 9" *S C C PF
M.Lacayo PF Fr 2 3 0 2 5 3 6 7 100 6' 7" - D D PF
M.Levin PF Jr 5 2 4 3 4 1 7 13 100 6' 7" *S D D PF
C.Hatcher SF Fr 3 2 7 2 3 5 3 7 100 6' 6" - D C SF
F.Rogers SF Fr 2 2 8 3 3 5 0 8 100 6' 7" *S D C SF
T.Mitchell SF Jr 2 6 2 4 1 3 2 12 100 6' 6" *- D D SG
P.Avlon SG Jr 2 4 3 3 3 3 9 10 100 6' 2" -S D D PG
S.King SG So 1 4 1 2 3 4 2 5 100 6' 0" S F D PG
B.Alexander SG So 5 3 4 3 1 2 6 8 100 6' 0" -S D C PG
A.White PG Fr 6 2 0 4 3 2 1 7 100 6' 1" - D C PG
D.Gambrell PG Jr 5 2 0 4 1 2 2 7 100 6' 1" -S D D PG
D.Negrete PG Fr 2 5 1 4 1 3 4 10 100 5'11" -- D C PG
In looking at the roster the key things to look at are the players that have
the scholarships. Problematic right now is the fact that 7 scholarships have
been given to players that are graded as DC/DD/FD. Now 4 of them are juniors
and will be gone in 2 years. The other 3 are sophomores (2) and a redshirt
freshman (who could be decent down the road). I'm not going to be too critical
of DC players right now as long as they are freshmen or sophomores. They will
hopefully develope into CB or BB and maybe if lucky a BA player in time. Right
now all the DC players are that age. In breaking down the scholarships by
class we have 0 seniors, 5 juniors, 3 sophomores, and 1 redshirt freshman. We
have 4 scholarships to work with. So...it won't be a major problem getting
that into order.
Since I just got the team controls tonight (after initialization and walkons/1
day before invites run) I had no control of cutting bad nonscholarship players
and taking my chances with walkons. Also...it seems that Bob cuts 3 players
(perhaps to get ready for recruiting). Who he cut we will never know. I do
know that he had a FD player transfer at initialization so that is good that he
wasn't given a scholarship.
It would be interesting for anyone else that wants to make observations along
these lines so that we can get other opinions. My idea would be to get
suggestions that we may use in decision making, along with critiques of
decisions we make. This is wide open and I encourage everyone to participate.
Criticize, second guess, say what you would have done. No offense will be
taken. I plan on learning from this project as well. The next thread will
focus on "Recruiting" so save any thoughts about it for that thread.
Date: Wed Jan 16 21:57:59 2008
Sender: Dave Ayres
I'm on board as a part-time member of the "David Smith AA" (aka, "Beast of the
Big East") coaching staff. I won't make any recruiting or coaching decisions,
but will be here primarily to provide comic relief for Mr. Smith when the
Dayton Flyer alumni threaten to give him a one-way ticket out of town on a 1937
Boeing 247 with a faulty navigation system.
Date: Thu Jan 17 08:54:06 2008
Sender: Jay Schlegel
Did you already make any position changes, or is this what you started with?
From the perspective of "what should a newbie do", have you run roster-sorts
for each position using the sim's weights (using current-attributes, not
projected) for who would be best at each position?
Date: Thu Jan 17 18:11:10 2008
Sender: David Smith
Jay,
I have not done anything with the roster yet. Even the redshirts are from
Bob's control. I have done some of the sorts as you suggest and it's not a
pretty sight...lol. I may do some later this evening.
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