As I looked at the emails that appeared in my inbox at the beginning of the month, I noticed there were, once again, messages about unhappy players. This time it was
Peter Segal and
Ernest Adcock, who are both having problems cracking the backcourt rotation.
I don't blame Peter or Ernest. They were five-star recruits, and Ernest was the best PG in his class. I began to wonder if this was the case at the other most successful programs in my dynasty. Do the other top teams have disgruntled young stars who find their paths to playing time blocked by other former high school phenoms?
I took a look at the rosters of the teams that have Prestige scores of 97 or higher, plus Kentucky and Lafayette, who are at 94. I picked Kentucky because, well, they're Kentucky, and I sense they recruit well. Plus, UK has spent much of the history of this universe at 100, before two off years "plunged" them into the 90s. And it's obvious why I chose Lafayette.
Here are the recruiting rankings of the scholarship players on these teams' rosters:
The #886 player at Tennessee and the #1020 player at Stanford are players who transferred in. A few of the others are as well, but those two guys are the only outliers, players far less highly regarded than those their schools usually recruit.
Reading down each program's column shows us how deep its stock of top recruits is. As you can see, we have eight players who were ranked #30 or better in their class at Villanova now. None of the other top programs have the same kind of top-shelf depth; Kentucky comes the closest.
Interestingly, some of these schools have only 10 players on scholarship, and only two--Tennessee and Lafayette--have their full allotment of 13. There are programs with four, and even five, walk-ons filling out their rosters.
I also noted how many players in each program are currently unhappy. As I mentioned before, we have two at Villanova. Tennessee, Vanderbilt, and Kentucky also have two unhappy scholarship players. Kansas, North Carolina, and West Virginia have one. All the players at Georgetown, Boston College, Stanford, and Lafayette are satisfied.
It probably shouldn't bother me that lines of computer code have expressed unhappiness about the way a computer simulation is playing out, but it does. I find myself thinking about this dynasty as a roleplaying game. I enjoy getting into Coach Sims' character. I can envision Peter and Ernest and their teammates. I can imagine what an unhappy player feels like. I'd like to create a program where players enjoy being part of something bigger than themselves, while winning a lot of basketball games.
Starting with the next class I recruit, I'm going to give myself a bit of a challenge. I'm going to see if I can maintain Villanova's prestige and our place as one of the nation's top programs, while creating a "culture" where all our players remain happy. I'm going to shape a roster with some role players who are content filling their roles, rather than a collection of blue chip guys, some of whom are disgruntled and end up transferring.
Right now we have 11 four-star or better players on our roster. Only Kentucky (12) has more; Vanderbilt (10), Georgetown (9), and Kansas (9) also can run out rotations full of top recruits. I'm not surprised that the teams with the most blue chippers also have the most unhappy players. There's only so much playing time to go around.
I'm going to to start recruiting some three-star players who do specific things well. Almost every other team in the universe is making that work, so let's see if Villanova can, too.