Posted by terps21234 on 7/25/2013 8:54:00 PM (view original):
THANK YOU GILLISPIE1. That's what I need someone to speak the truth, I can take constructive criticism. I've asked before how to build or if I recruited well at DI and people just say your team sucks! Well I can figure that out when I have losing records, duh!! This has been helpful and not at all harsh. Also thanks to Trenton, you have been helpful too. I thought I recruited well last time but just went after Ath, def and leftout Per and Sp.
no problem, glad i could help. even with no teams i still enjoy spending a little time looking at teams and thinking about this stuff, especially when it benefits someone else :)
as ive said a million other places, the essence of quality team planning (team planning being the way you construct your team) is to find the sweet spot in each of the major categories (offense, defense, rebounding, ball control) where you've gotten the early rewards, which are huge, before diminishing returns really kick in. for example, your first offensive star is invaluable. your second goes really far, too. the third, if the rest of the team sucks, he can still be important, but if you have a bunch of role player 6-9ppg type guys, that 3rd guy is not nearly as good as the 1st or 2nd. by the time you get to a 5th or 6th, you are just wasting talent - better off to use that talent for defense or rebounding or whatever.
the reality, especially for d1 mid majors, is you can't get what you want - you just can only get so much talent. so you have to make do with *just* enough talent to get by in each category. offense is BY FAR the most diminishing returns oriented area - having a few high quality guys vs none gets you so far, those first few offensive players are the biggest impact on your team success, hands-down. defense is a team effort - not exactly, but roughly, the 5 guys contribute equally. on offense, your top guy on the court might do 5x more than the 5th guy. so getting a couple good offensive players is really an absolute necessity. but on the same token, you dont need lots of depth in your offensive talent. having a 4th guy in your starting lineup who can score 12-15ppg is just a waste. so make sure you get just enough offense to be good on offense, and then you really pour it on with defense. defense is the one area where diminishing returns only very softly kick in. so its like, going from 0 good rebounders to 1 is more bang for your buck than 0 good defenders to 1. but going from 3 good defenders (on the court) to 4 is a much, much, MUCH MUCH bigger benefit than going from 3 good scorers (on the court) to 4 - which is almost a complete waste in low d1. same goes for going from 3 good rebounders to 4, or 3 good ball control guys to 4. its not worthless - but the bang for your buck is dramatically better in defense.
so the recipe for success in low d1 is really to get a couple strong scorers, a couple strong rebounders, 1-2 strong ball control guys, and then to focus all other effort on defense. i often say, defense wins championsihps - because at the high end, its the one thing you can keep improving in talent wise while reaping meaningful benefits. at the lower end, defense is really important, too - but remember the opposite almost holds - your first or second star defender get you no where near teh dividends of your first or second star scorer. so you really need to prioritize with that in mind. on pretty much all teams, the reality is the most important guy on the team is your best scorer. but focus on too much scoring, and its worthless - so you really have to keep an eye on the marginal utility for these different abilities (offense, defense, etc - can break it down further than that but its not that important to do so). marginal utility meaning the value of the next guy, like, the 1st good scorer is incredibly valuable, the 2nd is really valuable, the 3rd is decently useful, the 4th is slightly beneficial, the 5th is practically useless (on the court at the same time).