It's long been said that the NBA is a me-first take on basketball, while NCAA college basketball is more of a traditional form of the sport--a hearkening back to the days when teammates were, you know, friendly, and people passed the ball a bit. For the past few years, the development team at 2K Sports has been honing in on defining the collegiate game as a separate entity from its NBA big brother, and its most recent attempt, College Hoops 2K6, further explores this territory. We got an updated hands-on look at the game, just a scant few weeks before the real NCAA season begins.

How long until March? College hoops can't get here fast enough.

While the NBA game is more about the superstars that dominate the course, it seems like the 2K folks are putting more of an emphasis on the guy who stands on the sidelines the entire game in 2K6: the head coach. In addition to featuring a host of real basketball head coaches in the game (2K6 game producers estimate they have roughly 85 percent of the currently active NCAA basketball coaches), the attributes of your created legacy mode coach will have a more active effect on your players' progressions than ever before.

Two coach attributes in particular--charisma and discipline--have tangible effects on your players, thanks to some expanded player attributes, such as focus and confidence. For example, as a player moves throughout a season, his focus and confidence will ebb and flow depending on factors such as playing time. If the player feels like he's not getting enough minutes, he might let you know about it. From there you'll have a few options. First, you can answer his request by giving him what he wants: more time on the hardwood. Barring that, you can call your player in for a pep talk to give him an immediate boost. Be warned, however, that you can only use 10 pep talks in a single season, so you'll likely want to save them for big games, not for when your whiny freshman walk-on shooting guard is acting petulant.

As a coach, your efficiency in attributes such as charisma and discipline will dictate how much success you'll have helping your player out with his confidence and focus attributes, respectively. In turn, once that player takes the hard court, the difference between a confident and focused player and a meek, sulking boy will be marked and obvious. So you'll likely have considerably more success with the former making plays.

Other coach-centric options during a game are the coach's clipboard, which is a quick and easy way to access your tactics during time-outs. Instead of pausing the game to cycle through menus to get to your defensive and offensive sets, the coach's clipboard pops up automatically so you can make adjustments right there. One aspect in particular, known as "points of emphasis," are of special importance in the game. They cover four specific areas of your game: ball control, rebounding, defense, and shot selection. Choosing one of these points of emphasis will give your team a boost in its relative attribute. Choose "ball control," for example, and your team will be less apt to turn the ball over. Once again, your created coach's ratings will affect the amount of boost granted to your team during these coaching sessions. If your coach has a high offensive rating, you'll have greater success choosing "shot selection" as a point of emphasis than you might if you chose "rebounding," for example.

Coaching will be more important than ever to ensuring your team's success.

The off-the-court activities in 2K6 will be deeper as well, thanks to some new recruiting twists that look to improve on last year's legacy mode. Recruiting, of course, is probably the most important job of every coach in the NCAA, but the amount of information that a player must deal with in many collegiate sports games when recruiting can be overwhelming. In College Hoops 2K6, the developer has sought to make things easier on the player by including a target list that will let you track up to 15 players you hope to recruit to your team. This list of 15 can include any combination of talent, including, perhaps, a handful of "sure things" for when you're just starting out; a couple of ambitious picks (hey, you might get lucky); and even a few five-star "dream signings" (for when the stars align perfectly). As you progress through your season, you'll be able to keep tabs on each of these recruits' interest levels, and you can make adjustments accordingly.

The idea, according to the 2K folks, is to give the player more options when recruiting. If you're a total control freak, you can closely monitor each recruit in your lineup from week to week to see how the prospects for signing him shape up. If you prefer to be more hands-off during some points of the season--you know, so you can prepare for the games happening right now--the producers said they strove to make sure the recruiting artificial intelligence (in the form of your hired assistant coaches, whom you can assign to automatically keep up recruiting chores) will make smart recruiting decisions from week to week based on the priorities on your target list. Considering you can now begin recruiting players as young as high school freshmen, 2K6 gives you the kind of hands-off control that should be an important factor in helping you consistently keep up the recruiting pressure.