LC
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Getting Started: A Step-by-Step Walk Through Using LC
It can be pretty intimidating to try out new software, and the LC is no exception to that rule. Rather than explaining each and every function, I’m going to walk you through how to use the LC. You’ll set up your first file, parse your schedule information, generate recruit rankings, calculate power rankings, and so on. This tutorial is updated through LC v0.9.4.
Creating A Stats Database (.xdb) File
The first thing you do is fire up LC. Find the “Commish.exe” icon and double click on it. This will get you going. To track stats for a league, you must create a database file in which to store all of the information from that league. Go to FileàNew Database (or just hit Control-N). This will prompt you for a location in which to save your .xdb file. Choose a location and name it (usually, something like L-27.xdb works quite well if you’re in League 27, for example).
After creating the database, LC then prompts you to enter in the league number and the season number. Go ahead and type this in, then click “Submit.”
There you have it! You’ve created your first .xdb file!
Downloading the Game Information
The next thing you want to do is download information from all the games. Look at the top left corner. You’ll see a label that says “Games,” with up/down arrows next to it. Find the number of games that have been played in your league. For this example, L-27 has played 8 games.
Next, click on “Upd Teams.” You must have an internet connection active right now. LC will now download and parse all of the game information for your league. As you can probably imagine, this takes a lot of time, a healthy internet connection, and lots of processing power. Now might be a good time to go get a cup of coffee and take a quick break. Depending on the speed of your computer, this step takes somewhere between 5 and 25 minutes.
NOTE: If you run into errors later on, this step is the most likely culprit. Often, the connection gets interrupted and you don't download all the games correctly.
Updating Recruit Information (Optional)
At this time, you can also import recruit information. Simply click on “Upd Recruits.” You will be prompted to locate the recruiting spreadsheet (.csv) file. Go ahead and import it. It will take a minute or two to parse all the statistics, and then you’re ready to go.
You don’t have to import recruit information. If you’re not a UTT team and can’t get access to the recruiting spreadsheets, you can still enjoy the rest of the benefits of LC. You just can’t use any of the recruiting functions without importing the information about the recruits.
Power Rankings
With our files ready, where do we go now? One nice thing to do is to load up the power ratings. Click on “PRCalc” on the menu. This will bring up the following screen:
Here, every team is listed, along with its record, Power Rating, RPI, ELORating, and Pts/aPts per 100 possessions. Clicking on “View Team” will take you to that team’s SimSports page. “Conf View” will load up conference information. “Predict” lets you choose two teams and have LC predict how they will match up with each other.
Click “Export.” This takes all of the information in the listbox and moves it the main text window. You can copy all of this (by clicking “Copy to Clipboard”) and then paste it into a web editor. Presto! Instant SimSports webpage! If you’d like to preview what the HTML will look like on a web page, switch the “Text View” drop box to “HTML View.” This lets you preview the HTML.
Alternatively, you can use the button on the bottom left of the “Text View” page to put your data in CSV, Text, or MessageBoard format. Unfortunately, the current SimSports message boards do not support tables, so the formatting looks terrible. If that changes in the future, I’ll be sure to update it here so you can paste these directly to the forums.
You can also generate High School Top 25 if you have the Recruiting.csv file loaded by going to the Top 25àHigh School Power Ranking option.
Game of the Week (GOTW)
Another feature of LC is that it enables you to select a game for the GOTW and do a write-up about it. Go ahead and click the “GOTW” icon. This presents you with two options: you can have the computer select the GOTW, or you can manually select your own. If you allow the computer to select it, LC now parses through the upcoming games and picks one that is most likely to be interesting and contested. The algorithm basically tries to find two good teams that are fairly evenly matched. If you are in the regular season, LC scans the next three games. If you’re in the postseason, LC scans the next game only. (Important: the schedule must be updated before you run LC). It takes a few minutes to work through all of those game files.
After running, LC will generate more HTML-formatted text for you about the game. It generates all of the basic info about the teams, include a match-up comparison. You can also type your own comments in the “Why X will win:” space.
After the game has finished and the box scores are loaded, go to Preferences-->Generate Game Recap. Select the teams and the game number, then hit “Submit.” This will HTML-format a quick wrap-up of the game. This is still a little rough, so you should be prepared to edit extensively. Still, it will take care of some of the formatting work for you.
Recruiting Functions
If you have parsed the recruiting information, go to HS Recruiting-->25 Can’t Miss Prospects. It generates HTML-formatted text of 25 top prospects in your league. You can copy/paste this text directly into a web page.
Along with the 25 Can’t-Miss Prospects is a button for OverRated/UnderRated recruits. Once the top 75 most recruited lists are out, it will generate a ranking of recruits who are pursued more heavily than merited or not pursued enough.
If you want to generate an HTML version of the top 75 most recruited (to post to the message board or to save elsewhere for reference), click on the top 75 and it will generate.
If you want to do more advanced work with High School Game-by-Game statistics, you need to select the correct preference under the preferences menu. Then you must update the high school recruiting.csv chart after each game. The corrected stats will show up under HS Recruiting-->Game by Game.
All-America Teams
Near the end of the season, LC can generate position-specific All-Conference and All-America teams. Go ahead and click on <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">All-America</st1:PlaceName>à<st1:PlaceType w:st="on">College</st1:PlaceType> or <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName w:st="on">All-America</st1:PlaceName>à<st1:PlaceType w:st="on">High School</st1:PlaceType></st1:place> to generate the HTML-formatted text for those teams. For All-Conference, just select the All-ConfàConference (Number).
Season Wrap-Up
At any point during the season, you can click the “Wrap-up” icon. It will create lots of information about all the teams in your league.
If you’d like to add these to a web page, just click “Format HTML.” The text will be sent over to the main window, ready to be pasted into your web page.
Preview
Before the season starts, you can generate a preseason top 25 list. You can also do conference previews and tournament previews (after game 18 but before game 19). Again, this will pump out HTML text, which you can then format for whatever medium you would like.
Conclusion
There you have it: an intro to using LC to generate information for your league. It’s very easy to use this tool to create a web site for your league or your conference, tracking all sorts of information. If you have any questions, check at the LC website at http://sourceforge.net/projects/simsportsutils. This gives you an opportunity to report bugs, request new features, or just ask questions and get support. Your feedback is essential to improving the LC.
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