It's in the Game: 2006 Patriots Named Top Cinderella

By Broadside Broadside Correspondent Tim Blank. Photo courtesy of EA Sports.

How would the 2006 George Mason University basketball team match up against some of the best ever in college basketball? In EA Sports’ NCAA Basketball ‘09, fans will get to see just that, as the team was voted into the game via an online poll from the game’s Web site asking “Who is the greatest Cinderella of all time?”

The team beat out such notables as last year’s Davidson Wildcats and the 1999 Gonzaga Bulldogs.

“The concept of playing as teams from the past is nothing new really, but in this game we’re giving players the chance to simulate who they think would be the greatest of all-time,” said the game’s producer Connor Dougan.

Electronic Arts emerged in 1982 and began distributing sports video games in 1993. Since then, EA Sports created top-of-the-line games such as FIFA, Madden, and NBA Live. The NCAA March Madness series first started in 1998. NBA superstar Tim Duncan was the first collegiate player to be on the game’s cover. For ten years, the game carried the name NCAA March Madness, but this year, the creators decided to change it to NCAA Basketball. Last year’s freshman sensation Kevin Love will be on the NCAA Basketball ‘09 cover.

The poll was put up around late September to early October and people voted on it throughout October. When the voting was done, the 2006 Mason team had accrued over 10,000 votes to earn the privilege of being digitally immortalized in the game.

The big reason that the classic teams are a big deal in this particular version of the game is because there is a special tournament in the game pitting 64 of the greatest and most memorable teams in the history of the NCAA tournament, for a new feature in ‘NCAA’ called the ‘Tournament of Legends’.

“For this feature we started with over 100 teams, we worked closely with our partners at ESPN and Blue Ribbon, to decide which teams would be included, from that it was not only a big challenge to pick the teams, but to seed them as well,” said Dougan.

Blue Ribbon publishes in-depth analyses every year, published in what they call “Yearbooks” for all major college sports. The major part about them is that their profiles of teams look at every major aspect of a team from offense to defense to the coaching.

Even with the 2006 team being in the game’s tournament, they have a tough first round match-up, against the 1968 UCLA team. Aside from being coached by whom many people regard by many to be the greatest coach of all time in John Wooden, they also had a player on their roster by the name of Lew Alcindor, who people may more recognize as NBA great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Aside from that, the 1968 Bruins had their entire starting roster average double figures, with Alcindor not only averaging 26 points, but also averaging around 16 rebounds per game.

Aside from all of that, NCAA Basketball ‘09 offers an abundance of brand new features for the game, not the least of which is a brand new game engine, which will look to offer better animations for the game. The game also includes tempo control for playing the game at a pace that players feel comfortable with as well as new pick and roll controls.

“It’s pretty challenging to put all of these features in a new game year in and year out, but what our advantage is, is that we can leverage our partners to get us that feeling. Until you get exactly what we see on TV on your console, we still have a long way to go to giving you the best,” said Dougan.