With March Madness right around the corner, basketball season has officially kicked into high gear. The intensity is cranked up and coaches have a trashcan full of empty indigestion remedies for those Maalox moments. However, with online tournament play you too can experience your own greatest moments in college basketball. In order to achieve the success, you, the virtual coach, have to know your team’s strengths and weaknesses as well as those of your opponent. In the first of two articles, we will examine how you can determine an opponent’s strengths and weaknesses and game plan accordingly.

Scouting your opponent is so much easier in real life than in the virtual world. Coaching staffs can watch games and film to pick up on an opponent’s tendencies. In online tournament play one can only rely on numbers -- ratings to be exact. A quick scan of the overall ratings of each player on the opposing team should tell you a little about the strategy of your opponent. A scan can tell you the best players you will be facing and each player’s strengths. The numbers will help you determine your defensive strategy and match-ups. For example, it’s highly unlikely that a team that doesn’t have highly rated three-point shooters will try to beat you from deep. That will mean the team will probably rely on dribble drives and working the ball into the post. If your team doesn’t have the post players to match up with the other team then your best bet is to play a zone. On the flip side, if a team has highly rated shooters then playing a zone could actually be detrimental.

A program’s history and philosophy can also give you a clue to what you may be facing. Syracuse has traditionally been a match-up zone defensive team. The strength of the players on that team should be zone. Which then means that your goal should be to make them play man defense because it’s a weakness. However, you will have to rely on a team with some shooters to help bust the zone. If you do not reverse the ball and knock down open jump shots then your opponent will stay in the zone and cause you to have to abandon your strategy. Coaches have certain styles and preferences so naturally a team on a college basketball videogame is going to be modeled after the real thing. That means the ratings should fit the team’s style of play. If they don’t then either the coach didn’t do a good job recruiting players to fit his program or the game developers got it all wrong.

When picking your team to compete in any online tournaments throw “fandom” out the window quickly! I know it’s nice to play as the ol’ alma mater but can they slow down Memphis and their dribble drive attack offense? Look for teams with balance. A well-rounded team with solid post players and good perimeter players can go further in a tournament than a team with only one option. Three basic things to look for when choosing a team (and I tell my players these are the keys to winning) are: defensive ability, rebounding and taking care of the ball. Yes, it is nice to have plenty of scoring options but are you really that comfortable with your skills on the sticks to get into a shootout? Eventually, you will have to come up with a stop to win the game and that’s usually where the rebounding comes into play as well. If you force a team into a bad shot you can still get burned if there is no box out and rebound -- a majority of the time a team will score off an offensive rebound. Giving a team a second chance at the ball will hurt you every time so you will need to rebound to advance.

Taking care of the ball should also be of primary concern because you cannot score if you don’t have the ball. Look for a team with solid ball handlers and shooters, especially from the free throw line. This will help you in tight games and pressure situations. You will have confidence knowing that the player you’re controlling isn’t going to get the ball stolen from him every time down the floor.

Keeping these things in mind, next week we’ll take a look at some of the top teams in College Hoops 2K8 and break down some strengths and weaknesses of each. Then we’ll compile a list of the best overall teams that you can try in online tournament play.