The EVHL's Dynasty - Operation Sports

Monday, November 2, 2020

NCAA 09 PS2 - Virtual MIAC Competition (UST @ CC)

Posted on November 2, 2020 at 04:34 PM.

(0)

Hi Everyone,

Welcome to my first Dynasty! I am a big offline sports gamer and I love envisioning a world where pro and college-level esports were a much bigger deal and stretched farther and wider than we currently see. If any of you know me from the NHL forums, you know I do this with the "EVHL" as well. I've never done one of these before, will for sure being doing one for the EVHL, but wanted to do a quick NCAA 09 blog first to get my feet wet while I'm still in the process of making my NHL 21 teams and rosters. This dynasty will be ran using created teams representing each team from the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC). To stay true to the "esport" approach to playing sports games, all teams will be given the "Balanced" team composition within the in-game create-a-team feature. I will also be only playing offense, therefore I'm essentially playing myself. I tried going back to NCAA 06 but was just not liking it as much compared to 09 when I tried it. Call me crazy, but the gameplay on 09 seemed much more enjoyable, therefore I will be sticking with this version. It's been a long time since I've played the PS2 era games with any sort of frequency, so turnovers and momentum shifts will be at record highs and I hope some of you enjoy reading these updates!

Brief Game Summary:
The first game of the competition features the University of Saint Thomas Tommies visiting the Concordia College Cobbers! As promised before, this game featured a ton of turnovers as NCAA 09 loves it's fumbles! Not knowing that there was a "cover ball" control I quickly learned that even star players love to drop the ball! This game was a really fun game and it reaffirmed why I love the PS2 era over the 360/PS3 era, the games just feel so much more dynamic. Here I am, playing with two equal teams, and both teams found success in completely different ways using the same playbook. UST was able to establish the run early. The zone reads/PA reads resulted in tons of open field! Throughout the game, UST took a very slow and methodical approach to the game. On the other hand, Concordia could not run to save their lives. Zone reads, options, end arounds, anything and everything was tried to establish the ground game, but nothing had any success whatsoever. Drives were stalled short, the o-line was being manhandled, and the momentum meter was securely in UST's favor most of the game. Concordia had to rely on big-splash passing plays to stay in the game (hence the turnovers) but they did end up finding a lot of success through the air. With the Cobbers able to stay in the game, UST was looking to close the game out with a drive that started in their own end with about 4 minutes left. UST's running game had been completely wrapped up all half and they had many short drives due to a subpar passing performance to this point, so the pressure was on to sustain a drive and keep a surging Cobbers offense off the field who had just captured the momentum bar for the first time in the entire game! UST's running game continued to be bottled up, but the passing game found life which resulted in a long drive that seemingly finished inside the red zone with just over a minute left. A bad hold cost UST a shot at the end zone, so a chip shot FG was going to be attempted to force the Cobbers to find paydirt to win. Now, I didn't know this because I bought all NCAA games post-07 on the 360 that 08-09 were known for blocked kicks (do you know where this is going?). So, UST lines up (CPU kicking because user kicking is automatic) snap, hold, up aaaaannd...BLOCKED!!! Concordia blocks the kick! What a break right? WRONG!! Not only does the blocked kick bounce backwards, it is recovered by UST FOR A FIRST DOWN!! WHAT!?? With no timeouts remaining for the Cobbers, UST was able to kneel the time out after getting their kicked blocked with just over a minute to play. Task failed successfully, UST!

Reflection:
As someone basically booting up this game as if I were new, I was pleasantly surprised with my first half of offense which saw a respectable 37 combined points. However, come the 2nd half, both teams were completely stalled. I assume the CPU started adapting to the 5-10 plays I am confident running, because all of a sudden UST was really struggling to move the ball on the ground and Concordia couldn't do next to anything right! This was a total opposite of the "2nd half collapse" we frequently see in NCAA 14. The defenses looked like they adapted and I had no answers! I was playing with 8-minute quarters on AA btw if that's any indication as to how rather poor my play was. In any case, I'm not going to practice plays, I'm just going to let my natural skill increase as I continue with this series. The first game was a tale of two halves, a one-score game, and a crazy blocked FG attempt to win the game for the...team who had the FG blocked!? What a game, what a learning experience, can't wait to fire up another game!

Saint Thomas Tommies at Concordia College Cobbers
Nov 1, 2020	1ST	2ND	3RD	4TH	SCORE
Saint Thomas Tommies (0-0)	7	13	3	0	23
Concordia College Cobbers (0-0)	7	7	0	7	21

Team Stats Comparison
	UST	CC
Total Offense	310	317
Rushing Yards	117	13
Passing Yards	193	304
First Downs	14	13
Punt Return Yards	6	19
Kick Return Yards	87	108
Total Yards	403	444
Turnovers	3	6
3rd Down Conversion	5-17	3-7
4th Down Conversion	2-2	0-0
2-Point Conversion	0-0	0-0
Red Zone Touchdowns/Field Goals	5-1-2	1-1-0
Penalties	3-25	5-57
Posession Time	20:47	11:13

Scoring Summary
FIRST QUARTER SCORING		UST	CC
	(CC) 3 yd TD pass	0	7
	(UST) 2 yd TD run	7	7
SECOND QUARTER SCORING		UST	CC
	(UST) 24 yd FG	10	7
	(UST) 40 yd FG	13	7
	(UST) 76 yd TD pass	20	7
	(CC) 78 yd TD pass	20	14
THIRD QUARTER SCORING		UST	CC
	(UST) 37 yd FG	23	14
FOURTH QUARTER SCORING		UST	CC
	(CC) 42 yd TD pass	23	21