Think of this as the reboot to the 1998 movie. I was watching Ray Allen last night and remembered how surprisingly good he was acting (for a basketball player) and thought it'd be a fun way to fire up FBCB. Not guaranteeing this will actually work, but hoping that I can make a decent story out of it.



Jesus Shuttlesworth is the most sought after high school basketball player in the nation. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he's being hotly pursued by a variety of schools all of whom want him to sign on the dotted line for their programs.

We begin in the 2015-16 season. I have a whole spreadsheet that factors actual team factors, in-season factors (simulating the home visit and a campus visit) and things like distance from home, conference prestige and everything.

Since we don't get to control the actual recruiting process in FBCB, I want to control it here with a few human recruits that we'll play on teams as freshman walkons based on how the spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqzAk3cKr-_EdGVlUmtZV2l1QXN0bkR4WGRrbEd4WlE) determines the program they choose.

I might make it so that we're also figuring out where his teammates will go to school (a la LeBron), but I mostly want to make sure that we stick to the storyline and recruiting. Once we find where he's going to commit, we'll play out his entire collegiate career. Right now, the game is set to make players spend all four years in college before going pro, but I'm tempted to modify that (and will solicit suggestions...should we go with 3, 2 or 1?)

The way the sheet works is there's a "home visit" in mid-December which generates some values, then in mid-February, they make a decision based on a "campus visit" which is generated using a combo of wins and +/- on key players. Was just looking for random variables really and ways to differentiate teams beyond all of the other stuff I used.

From there, we pick a winning school. In Jesus' case, we're going to make sure that at least one of the final five schools he's deciding between is some kind of mid-major (that makes sense for geographic reasons or some other storyline) because it'd be interesting to see how that goes down.

So with our backstory intact, let's prepare for a story shall we?

I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do in terms of his recruiting, since I have a year to get to 2015-16 and decided why don't we start it in his junior year?

We'll have it narrowed down to 10 schools and then at the end of the year, the school that's got the top 5 rankings in the system will comprise his Top 5.

I took a look at some real-life recruits to try to figure out realistic options especially related to the prestige in my current league and what would make sense.

Here's his Top 10:


Kentucky (2013 National Champs)
UConn (2012 Runner-Ups)
Michigan State (2012 Final Four)
Syracuse (Lost in NCAAs 2nd round)
Georgetown (Back to Back Elite 8s)
Illinois (Back to Back NCAA appearances)
Southern Cal (Sweet 16 in '12)
Seton Hall (NIT 3rd round last year)
Xavier (Sweet 16 last year, #1 pre-season for this upcoming year)
St. John's (16-14 last year)

I've been much too busy to keep this dynasty, but I decided to revisit it tonight with some kind of committment to actually get through to it via the recruiting process.

So here's the update. Our friend Jesus Shuttlesworth had some problems qualifying for college, because he was stressed after being played by Big State and having to deal with the eventual death of his father in prison.

He attended a 5th year program at a prep school in Maine and is now poised to look at college again. Unfortunately, many of the big name programs think he's "damaged goods" and aren't as interested as before.

He's thus got an entirely new list of programs that are on his radar. There are going to be five unheralded programs, all away from the NYC area that will compete for his services.

Then we'll see how good these programs can be with a change agent in their midst.

The fall from hero to zero is a big one for Jesus and while he could go straight to the NBA after a year of playing international ball, scouts believe he's "lost a step" and "isn't the kid they once believed he was."

He's determined to prove them wrong.

So in a fit of randomness, here are the programs that Jesus has identified as his finalist programs either due to their interest, relationships with coaches or just plain perception as a good fit for his talents at the D1 level.

UNC-Greensboro
Weber State
UC-San Diego
Wyoming
UMKC
VCU
Depaul

Using my recruiting machine, I'm going to pick a school and then assign him replacing one of the school's actual freshman recruits. (The worst one, specifically)

So it's not entirely mid-majors, but it's a disparate list of programs in different kinds of leagues, but none are 1-prestige leagues for what it's worth in the current universe.

After his home visits, his list of schools in order of preference was:

1. Weber State
2. Wyoming
3. VCU
4. DePaul
5. UC-San Diego

Any schools beyond these were cut from the list, leaving these five as the finalists. He'll narrow the list down to 3 on January 26th and make a final decision on Feb. 27th

One of the depressing things of using my spreadsheet to make these decisions is there's a bit of randomness setup to make sure that not all of the decisions are just predictable because then there'd be no real point in trying to make it interesting.

So with that said, after his most recent set of visits, Jesus eliminated VCU which was the school I'd hoped he'd go to from a story writer's perspective, especially since Shaka hasn't left yet in my game (Brad Stevens took over at UConn fwiw)

Anyway, the final three have boiled down to:

1. Wyoming
2. Weber State
3. UC-San Diego

Right now, Wyoming has a huge lead but this process is never the same from phase to phase, so that means nothing.

Signing day is in a month and we'll then find out where Jesus Shuttlesworth will go. The idea with each is his desire to be part of a tradition he helps establish, to go far away from home and to just play ball.

In case you were wondering the "home visit/campus visit" formula that gets plugged into my spreadsheet along with other data to pick the school where he goes, it uses win & player +/- in the first and last formulas and the middle one uses team RPI at that point coupled with wins to factor in a formula that determine which programs get the recruits.

After plugging in the numbers for the 3rd and final recruiting visit, the winner of the Jesus Shuttlesworth sweepstakes is:

http://programs.weber.edu/nsf-reu/weber%20state%20logo.bmp
Weber State beat out Wyoming and UC-San Diego in the final decision process.

He'll be joining the Wildcats next year.

He's on the roster as a redshirt for the 2014-15 season, having graduated prep school and will begin his term with the Wildcats next year. They'll need him too. Despite a 20-4 record heading into February, the Wildcats remained unranked and are going to need to win the Big Sky conference to have a shot at the Big Dance.

After winning the Big Sky, they were a 12-seed in the Midwest region and took 5th seeded Missouri to the wire before losing 109-107 and ending their year at 27-7.