NSCAA Discussion thread

[Lisander]

Hey!

I had a little problem with United 15 tables. Seems like I forgot to make it a double round-robin. Yet, I know I'm in debt with this, and I'll organize all of it along Sunday. As an apology, all RPs made so far at the next cut-off will be generously rewarded.

[Commonwealth of Baker Park]

Hey!

I had a little problem with United 15 tables. Seems like I forgot to make it a double round-robin. Yet, I know I'm in debt with this, and I'll organize all of it along Sunday. As an apology, all RPs made so far at the next cut-off will be generously rewarded.

I didn't want come across as being pushy and rude about this. That's one reason I've waited until now to mention it.

[Banija]

Do we, like in previous seasons, get to bid our stadia to host NSCAA tournament games, including the Final Four?

[Drawkland]

Do we, like in previous seasons, get to bid our stadia to host NSCAA tournament games, including the Final Four?

No, this season I believe Newmanistan decided the Proving Grounds in Tundra Falls would be holding the games since he's in charge.

[Newmanistan]

Do we, like in previous seasons, get to bid our stadia to host NSCAA tournament games, including the Final Four?

No, this season I believe Newmanistan decided the Proving Grounds in Tundra Falls would be holding the games since he's in charge.

This is correct. Not only because I'm in charge but it is an awesome venue, too!
We did bid last year on it, and in the 10th anniversary season, it's a good venue to return too.

[Drawkland]

No, this season I believe Newmanistan decided the Proving Grounds in Tundra Falls would be holding the games since he's in charge.

This is correct. Not only because I'm in charge but it is an awesome venue, too!
We did bid last year on it, and in the 10th anniversary season, it's a good venue to return too.

I'm not too fussed, since we hosted it last year and I didn't want to repeat (since that'd be boring).

[Natanians and Nosts]

Woodland Conference
@ Stormvalen Arena, Stormguard, Valanora

redacted

Eternal Conference
@ Lagnthanian Arena, Raynor City, Valanora

First Round
Grande Mountain University (CDG) 92–68 Heritage University (ATX)
North Charlotte Empire University (NEW) 84–67 Araya Poltechnic Institute (NQU)
Western Filindostan - Bandaroon (FID) 66–78 Agricultural Academy of Čuržnja (NVK)
University of Jaipur (PRT) 64–70 Riuwiee State University (AFT)
Palæontological-Centered Research University (NTN) 68–62 University of Amolotopia (FFR)
University of Loyola-Istria (BNJ) 101–49 Tamarskand Fief University (COS)
Trinity College (LIS) 82–58 University of Lyosome (APH)

Quarterfinals
Grande Mountain University (CDG) 67–64 North Charlotte Empire University (NEW)
Agricultural Academy of Čuržnja (NVK) 78–75 Riuwiee State University (AFT)
University of Amolotopia (FFR) 60–71 University of Loyola-Istria (BNJ)
Ducentu State University (DRK) 100–60 Trinity College (LIS)

Semifinal Fixtures
(2) Grande Mountain University (CDG) v (11) Agricultural Academy of Čuržnja (NVK)
(5) University of Loyola-Istria (BNJ) v (1) Ducentu State University (DRK)

Apprently Valanora commited a mistake and advanced University of Amolotopia instead of Palaeontological-Centered Research University,which is even bolded.

[Drawkland]

Apprently Valanora commited a mistake and advanced University of Amolotopia instead of Palaeontological-Centered Research University,which is even bolded.

Valanora asked that I scorinate her conference tournaments tonight since she's not feeling well. I'll redo the results from both conferences since they both appeared to have issues. They'll be scorinated through the semifinals as I believe everyone else is doing tonight including myself.

[Banija]

So what's the timeline here? Tournament bracket released on the weekend I assume?

[NSCAA Basketball]

So what's the timeline here? Tournament bracket released on the weekend I assume?

Likely midweek, next week. By the 13th at the latest. This weekend is a bit too soon, there is some behind the scenes work from the selection committee that goes into play before the tournament can be unveiled.

[NSCAA Basketball]

The official Ultra 64 tournament has been created.
Please look it over for potential errors

[Drawkland]

The official Ultra 64 tournament has been created.
Please look it over for potential errors

Will there be a bracket challenge for this tournament?

[Newmanistan]

The official Ultra 64 tournament has been created.
Please look it over for potential errors

Will there be a bracket challenge for this tournament?

Yes, for sure!
Right now, I figured I'll give it 24 hours in case different sets of eyes notice something wrong with the tournament, so people didn't make predictions on brackets that ended up being changed.

[Drawkland]

Will there be a bracket challenge for this tournament?

Yes, for sure!
Right now, I figured I'll give it 24 hours in case different sets of eyes notice something wrong with the tournament, so people didn't make predictions on brackets that ended up being changed.

Excellent. Doesn't seem like anything is wrong from my glance over it.

[NSCAA Basketball]

Predictions can now be made on the challonge site! Get your picks in and try to keep me from defending my prediction title!

[NSCAA Basketball]

Tournament scorinations begin today, do not be left out!

[Drawkland]

Well-fought game, Banija. I was pretty happy with this tournament all around, and of course I can't complain with how it all ended

Thanks to all the other hosts, and everybody who RP'd. Can't wait to see you all next time!

[NSCAA Basketball]

Signups for NSCAA 11 are underway!

[Lisander]

I updated the logo.

[NSCAA Basketball]

I updated the logo.

Looks great, thank you!

[Banija]

So, to be that guy.

I may have mentioned this in the past, but I honestly don't remember. Presently, there's no way for schools from the same nation to play each other unless they happen to get a NSCAA tournament meeting. Which is unlikely.

I think that should be revised. Tradition and rivalries are a huge part of college sports, and that can be reflected ICly. I understand though that we don't want conferences with just two countries in them though.

Since the vast majority of entries are four or more, maybe we can pair schools off? For example, I have 6 schools, maybe they could be spread across 3 conferences rather than 6? Or someone with 7 or 8 schools can have them spread across 4 conferences?

Just an idea to hash out before we actually get this rolling and it's too late to consider it.

[Drawkland]

So, to be that guy.

I may have mentioned this in the past, but I honestly don't remember. Presently, there's no way for schools from the same nation to play each other unless they happen to get a NSCAA tournament meeting. Which is unlikely.

I think that should be revised. Tradition and rivalries are a huge part of college sports, and that can be reflected ICly. I understand though that we don't want conferences with just two countries in them though.

Since the vast majority of entries are four or more, maybe we can pair schools off? For example, I have 6 schools, maybe they could be spread across 3 conferences rather than 6? Or someone with 7 or 8 schools can have them spread across 4 conferences?

Just an idea to hash out before we actually get this rolling and it's too late to consider it.

I believe the reason that schools from the same nation aren't included in the same conferences is because it makes it harder to get your teams into the final 64, since you've basically cut the qualifying spots they're fighting for in half.

I suppose that's not a problem if one RPs enough that they're covered by the At-Large voting, I'm just saying that's likely why it was done that way in the first place. Especially because it'd be more complex to sort the teams into conferences if you have to force certain matchups.

Honestly I think it'd be an interesting thing to have, but it'd be tough to work out the kinks to make sure it's a fair system.

[Newmanistan]

So, to be that guy.

I may have mentioned this in the past, but I honestly don't remember. Presently, there's no way for schools from the same nation to play each other unless they happen to get a NSCAA tournament meeting. Which is unlikely.

I think that should be revised. Tradition and rivalries are a huge part of college sports, and that can be reflected ICly. I understand though that we don't want conferences with just two countries in them though.

Since the vast majority of entries are four or more, maybe we can pair schools off? For example, I have 6 schools, maybe they could be spread across 3 conferences rather than 6? Or someone with 7 or 8 schools can have them spread across 4 conferences?

Just an idea to hash out before we actually get this rolling and it's too late to consider it.

Drawkland's response covers why this has been done in the past, but it could be an interesting element if we wanted to change things up a little.

Also, I'd really like to get the number of signed up schools to at least 128. We're lagging a bit this year on that, so if people can spread word to enter schools even if they are just field fillers, that will be best. Otherwise we will have quite a few losing records in the Ultra 64.

[Osarius]

it'd be more complex to sort the teams into conferences if you have to force certain matchups.

I think I have some tools for this, that I used for NSCF, in case you guys decide you do want to go down this route.
Just let me know (tag me on discord, I sometimes go days, even weeks, without checking the forum).

Also...

I believe the reason that schools from the same nation aren't included in the same conferences is because it makes it harder to get your teams into the final 64, since you've basically cut the qualifying spots they're fighting for in half.

Interestingly, this is the opposite of the reasoning given in NSCF for grouping a user's schools -- i.e. to avoid having a handful of users dominate the playoffs.
But then again, we also changed the seeding rules later because good teams were being left out, so... six of one, half a dozen of the other, I suppose.

Both ways could be valid, depending on what you want out of a competition. I'm not familiar enough with NSCAA playoff seeding/qualification rules to really go into any depth here about the implications, tbh. For all I know, you have stricter qualification rules and that's why this method works best. I mean, we don't force puppets to be drawn alongside master nations in the World Cup.

[Drawkland]

it'd be more complex to sort the teams into conferences if you have to force certain matchups.

I think I have some tools for this, that I used for NSCF, in case you guys decide you do want to go down this route.
Just let me know (tag me on discord, I sometimes go days, even weeks, without checking the forum).

Yeah, we'll see. This would probably be Newmanistan's department since they're running the show this time around.

I believe the reason that schools from the same nation aren't included in the same conferences is because it makes it harder to get your teams into the final 64, since you've basically cut the qualifying spots they're fighting for in half.

Interestingly, this is the opposite of the reasoning given in NSCF for grouping a user's schools -- i.e. to avoid having a handful of users dominate the playoffs.
But then again, we also changed the seeding rules later because good teams were being left out, so... six of one, half a dozen of the other, I suppose.

Both ways could be valid, depending on what you want out of a competition. I'm not familiar enough with NSCAA playoff seeding/qualification rules to really go into any depth here about the implications, tbh. For all I know, you have stricter qualification rules and that's why this method works best. I mean, we don't force puppets to be drawn alongside master nations in the World Cup.

Well, the issue lies in the fact that the NSCAA qualification is quite different from the NSCF. Because we're trying to simulate the large and chaotic 64-team tournament from RL March Madness, we have to ask nations to submit multiple schools, or else we wouldn't have enough teams to have an effective tournament. 64 isn't enough either, because we also run the multiple conferences before the tournament itself, as is with an RL season and with other competitions on NS Sports.

So the issue with putting all 8 of a nation's teams in a single conference is that you've effectively cut their potential qualifiers to one or two, thus defeating the reason for asking nations to submit 8 teams at all. Of course, RPers will still get more teams in via the At-Large listing, but now you have the dilemma of having a sub .500 team making it into the tournament just because they're a team owned by the best RPing nation, for instance.

I can't speak for how the tournament ran prior to NSCAA 7 when I joined, but in every one I've participated in, there's been a pretty realistic ratio of teams qualified-to-RP effort for all nations getting teams into the field of 64. Really the last couple there's been a solid chunk of roster-but-no-RP teams making it in simply because all the RPing nations already have all their teams making it in. The issue with putting all of a nation's teams in a single conference is that you either have to concede a larger portion of the Field of 64 to no-RP nations, or break the immersion by giving At-Large spots to teams that don't deserve it IC'ly because OOC'ly they do.

In short, I don't think we'd be able to have a realistic system where all of a nation's teams are in the same conference without punishing RPers. In a perfect world, where everybody who entered RP'd consistently, this would be moot, but this isn't a perfect world. We could potentially have 2, maybe even 3 or 4 of a nation's teams in the same conference, but we'd have to change how the conferences worked a bit. I don't think it'd be good to do this as an opt-in system, because you'd basically be giving yourself a handicap.

---

Just for fun, I'm thinking up a potential reworking of NSCAA conferences that would allow for multiple teams in a conference while still retaining fairness for RPers. Basically, (assuming you entered the max of 8 teams), your entrants would be split into two groups of 4, and then these chunks of 4 would be sorted into conferences. Say conferences would consist of 16 teams (or maybe 12). Therefore, each conference would have 4 nations assigned to them, and nations would have two conferences they'd have teams in. This way there's some level of geographic cohesion and potential for rivalries and such.

There's several potential issues with this, obviously. Firstly, nations aren't required to enter 8 teams, or even more teams than 1. This system would require nations to submit exactly 4 or 8 teams, which some may not want to do (as evidenced by the fact that not everybody submits 4 or 8 teams right now, even though there's no reason to not submit 8 teams - especially since submitting less than 8 puts you at a disadvantage).

The other problem is that NSCAA doesn't have ranks, or pots, or any sort of legacy input from previous seasons. This is a good thing because it allows new and old nations alike to compete at the same level right away, it's entirely RP-based. This would be a nightmare for this sort of thing though, because a particularly unlucky nation could find both their chunks of teams inhabiting a conference with all other solid RPers, making their chances of qualification down to basically luck (and brings back the previous point of either screwing an RPer or breaking immersion).

This is the advantage of NSCAA's qualification in its current form: by having a large net to cast (8 teams, and thus 8 conferences), getting struck with some bad luck in a conference doesn't really harm your cumulative chances in the long run because you have 7 other teams to fall back on. This is the best it can be done without starting to keep track of ranks (even if it's just for Pot placement purposes for something like this suggestion).

Of course, if we could force everybody to RP, we could just have two nations per conference with all of their teams in the conference ... since everybody would be RPing, there wouldn't be "unfairness" by having your field of 8 reduced to 2-4 qualifiers for the final tournament since everybody would be giving the same effort and everybody would be experiencing the same drawback. We all know that isn't gonna happen, though.

TL;DR, there's no way to make a decent system of multiple teams from a nation in a conference without either starting to keep track of nation ranks for pot purposes, screwing over RPers, having a competition where somehow everybody RPs, or seriously breaking IC immersion.