While ESPN College Hoops seems promising, you can't help feel that it could have been much more.
First off, the presentation and college atmosphere holds its own against NCAA March Madness 2004. The graphics and animation aren't as sharp as in EA Sports' game, and the game flow is not as fluid, but there are other things that ESPN College Hoops does better. It does a better job of creating atmosphere. The crowd is livelier, and there are more crowd cutscenes, with pep bands, cheerleaders, and mascots. The crowd sounds reflect the size of the venue. As far as I could tell, the arenas are more accurate, and the schedules are as accurate as possible for the 2003-04 season. The broadcast team is made up of Mike Patrick and Jay Bilas, and they're sufficient. Like this year's NBA game, ESPN College Hoops makes uses of the ESPN license, so the score overlays and menus have the ESPN theme and feel.
There's nothing too special about Legacy Mode, the game's franchise mode. You select a school, hire a coach and two assistants. During the season, you can view a list of recruits, their rating, and their interest level in your program. You can invite them to a home game, attend or send an assistant coach to the recruit's game, and then offer scholarships.
As for gameplay, the same problems in ESPN Basketball can be found here. The frequency of missed closeup shots is atrocious, especially when your player goes into a canned animation. Extremely frustrating is your players' aversion to layups. Many times you'll find your forward in the key with the ball, a clear path to the basket, and while moving, you press the shot button, and he takes a short jumper instead of a layup. I don't need a flashy dunk, but is a simple high percentage layup too much to ask for? You literally have to be right under the basket to perform a layup or dunk.
Also, once the CPU has grabbed an offensive rebound, forget about getting the ball back. What will typically happen when the CPU gets an offensive rebound is that he will miss a couple more shots and continue to get the rebound before making the basket, all without you being able to get the rebound, no matter how hard you try. The isomotion and crossover moves are close to useless, and you can play just fine without them. Rarely you will be able to shake your man, but more often you'll lose the ball, or nothing will happen.
Unlike NCAA March Madness 2004, there is a midrange game, and your centers are a little more useful. In March Madness 2004, if your shot wasn't a layup or a dunk, you'd probably miss it. Centers would miss off balance shots close to the basket, and the only way for them to score was to dunk the ball. In ESPN College Hoops, your guards will be able to make midrange jumpers, and your centers can take and make short jumpers, unlike their counterparts in March Madness 2004, who would brick them more often than not. However, there are no special post moves, so you won't be able to perform drop steps and power dribbles as in March Madness. The frequency of blocks in the game is just about right, and it's not too difficult to take and make a midrange jumper without getting blocked.
In addition to the expected Exhibition, Legacy, and Season modes, the game offers Tournament, Rivalry, Gym Rat, Practice, and the new ESPN Slam Session mode. Gym Rat mode is like ESPN NBA Basketball's Street Ball mode, a casual mode in which you can play from 2 on 2 games to a full 5 on 5. Rivalry pits teams against their archrivals. ESPN Slam Session is in essence, a mode with various slam dunk competition modes, but it is not as cool as it sounds. Performing dunks comes down to pressing the sequence of buttons shown on screen. The longer the sequence, the more difficult the dunk, and you'll also have to press them fairly quickly. The novelty wears off fast.
With points you acquire by accomplishing different kinds of tasks in game and in Legacy mode, you can access unlockables at the Campus Store, which offers classic teams, mascot teams, pro courts, alternate uniforms, and fantasy courts.
ESPN College Hoops has a lot of room to improve: the graphics could be better, the default pace could be faster, the inside game should be reworked, and something needs to be done to reduce the number of missed close shots. The developers need to fix the turnaround jumper canned animations in the paint that often lead to missed shots, and offer post moves for your centers, so that they can back down their defenders and take hook shots.
Neither March Madness 2004 or ESPN College Hoops really is an ideal college basketball game. Neither one gets everything right, both have problems with the abundance of missed close shots. Pick your poison: the fast paced pro hop/dunkfest that is March Madness 2004 or the clunky, mysterious preference for two foot jumpers over layups in ESPN College Hoops. Neither one will truly satisfy hardcore college basketball fans.