So this has nothing to do with who you recruit but what class you recruit. It has been clear that there are 2 different ways to form your team, either with 6 Jr and 6 Srs or the more conventional way where you replace talent gradually and spread out the classes in groups of 3-4.

My goal is to eventually be good enough to build a dynasty where i'm competitive each season and make solid Post-season runs and win a championship at some point. Saying that, any coaches out there want to wiegh the differences. I've looked at teams and see this Sr/Jr plan wins, and wins REALLY HARD however I don't like the drop off effect so I have built traditionally.

there's a couple things to consider, when you compare the two options. it depends some on the system and sets you plan to run. 

one big thing to consider is that the law of diminishing returns kicks in pretty hard in most areas of the game. offense is a great example - the first great scorer on the floor is ultra valuable - the second is very valuable - the third, in the presence of two others, is kind of valuable - the fourth, in the presence of three others, is worth a little, but not very much at all, and a small fraction of even the 2nd or 3rd scorer - the fifth is flat out useless. depth works similarly. if you run say fastbreak/press, thats not so true, you need a lot of depth, its valuable all the way through. but if you run something like motion/man, what does having that 11th and 12th upperclassmen buy you? an 11th or 12th player will get 0 minutes or very close to it in most games, unless its a blowout. 

its not just the 11th/12th guys. if you've got 12 upperclassmen, you've got a great starting lineup, and then your backup lineup should be killer, too. thats good and all, but really the advantage you get from something like your backup line having 5 experienced players, compared to a line with say 3 experienced players, and 2 freshman, its really not that much. on the whole, a motion/man team who hits the experienced part of their cycle, with say 4 seniors, 4 juniors, and 2 sophmores, they are giving up a very small amount - if they build their team well.

that is really the biggest essence of the advantage the 6/6 model will give you in your best season - its not that much over a regular system with a well built team well. when you build your team properly, picking up players with clear strengths that roles that fit really well into the system you are running, when the players you play together fit together very well and have great synergies, you can already do well on the offensive, defensive, rebounding, and guard skills curves. on the other hand, if planning ahead and team building is a challenge, having 12 upperclassmen to choose from, that gives you a better chance of getting an efficient and effective lineup.

so, there's some advantage there, but there is so much waste. the result is your team can really suck other time, which can make recruiting a challenge if prestige suffers much. also, in recruiting, if you have say 10 high quality players generated locally over 4 seasons, and you can mostly dominate your local region, you are basically giving up 5 high quality recruits, forcing you to do a great job distance recruiting (the huge pocket book definitely helps), or to settle for players who aren't as good. usually those 6/6 teams recruits are not as good as the recruits on a high end regular team. in d1, the 6/6 scheme is way more difficult, as distance recruiting is harder, because the prestige impact is way more severe, and because early entries will often screw up your grand rollover plans. for that reason, and because you have less opportunities to really practice your team planning / team building skills, i would recommend the normal approach, its better from an educational standpoint. you can always do something like have a year you usually recruit 5 or 6 players, with a decent sized class right after, which gives you a great deal of experience and almost all the value from experience that a 6/6 team gets.

i think many people find its fun to do the 6/6 at first, so if you are interested (especially if you have multiple teams), it might be worth a shot just for fun. but i think many people find that system less enjoyable - its fun to be competitive season in and season out - and if you get unlucky early in the NT with your 6 senior / 6 junior year, it kind of kills the whole thing, for seasons to come. just so you know some people consider the 6/6 scheme "cheap", its not that different from "superclass teams" where the team would have 10-12 players in one class, which was removed for fairness.

I like the 4-4-2-2.   In your most experienced season, you'll have 8 senior/juniors.  In your least experienced season, you'll still have 4 seniors/juniors plus 4 sophomores. You'll never have to rely heavily on freshmen.

EDIT: Having said that, I checked my 6 teams. Currently, I'm not  using the 4-4-2-2.  At DII, especially, having a recruit go JUCO will alter your alignment.
My teams are currently:
5-3-2-2
4-2-3-3
5-4-1-2
4-3-3-2
5-5-1-1
6-1-2-3

I think context matters a lot

Are you planning to stay at this school for the long term - or do you want to win and move on up as soon as possible?

Where are you located? If you are in area with a high density of potential recruits you will consistently have more choices. If you are in the middle of no where - extreme cases being Hawaii and Puerto Rico but there are others esp in the dessert west - you have to go with the recruits that are available and the best laid plans.....

Hows your prestige - where is it now and at DI whats the baseline. That will matter some.

Consider these factors along with the sound notes above.

In theory I am at 3/3/3/3

In practice ... I have a 2/4/6/0, a 3/1/2/6, a 3/2/2/5, and a 4/2/5/1(which will be 2/5/0/5 theoretically next year due to a redshirt.). Now when I get severely unbalanced, like that 2/5/0/5, I'll probably be at least looking for a couple JUCO among my five recruits to make it more like 2/5/2/3. So I guess if I could wave a wand I would probably go for "reflective classes'. For example, 6/0/6/0, 5/1/5/1, 4/2/4/2 or 3/3/3/3 that make it so you have six upperclassmen on any given team,

I'm looking to build long term, My current prestige is B+ and I just repeated CT championship and my 3rd 20 win season in a row, i dont think it will go A- but I feel i will hold B+. I like the idea of basically having every player on my roster do a "2 on 2 off" Rotation where they spend 2 seasons on the bench and 2 starting so in essence I run a little bit of 3-3-3-3 with a RS every season. I just feel there are some teams that run heavier classes that are a little more stacked against me. I do commonly have freshman running 10+ minutes off the bench as they backup my main starter. The goal someday is to be capable of making a championship run every single season.

So basically right now I'm B+ looking to build long term and probably staying B+ next season.

I think it's a smart move to be redshirting players every year. As Gillispie said, you don't need to have 12 active players, especially playing a M2M defense. Redshirting players will give you an extra year of performance out of your developmental guys (being you'll be getting the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th years of development out of those players, rather than the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th).

What your goal is, to compete nationally, is to have both depth and skill. With 11 players on your roster, you can easily have a starter and a backup for each one of your positions. The 11th man should be solely for depth and will probably play in about 85-90% of the games, but only 5-10 minutes of each of those. That 11th player, however, could prove crucial when you have foul trouble. Therefore, my 11th man will usually be a 3rd PG/SG or 3rd PF/C as I consider those positions (esp. PG and C) to be somewhat specialist positions and if you don't have your depth chart set deep there and foul trouble hits you, the comp will sub in anyone on your team to fill the spot.

The key, I think, is to figure out which types of players will make the mix you'd like for your squad, and then getting those players experienced at the same time. I am right now at 2-4-3-3 with a RS FR (who counts in IQ like a SO). Therefore, when you count that I have a RS Sr, a RS Jr, a RS So, and a RS Fr, the experience level of my team is 1 5th yr-2 4th yr-4 3rd yr-3 2nd yr -2 1st yr. Thus, I have a pretty steady stream of upperclassmen on my roster and am setting myself up for some bulge classes.

Personally, I've never been fond of the 6-6-0-0 model simply because you have 10 spots where you can really guarantee minutes, and if you don't recruit the mix well, you're left experimenting and mixing and matching to figure out how your team (which will be very highly rated) plays it's best. With more evenly spaced teams, you can nab Transfer/JUCO's to add upperclassmen, while having multiple offseasons to search out and tinker with your player mix.

I do think one important thing to point out regarding gillespie's comment about sacrificing 5 local recruits every four years when going 6-6-0-0 is that when you have years with only 1 or 2 scholarships, you basically sacrifice good local recruits anyways, unless you're in a very low competition area. I wouldn't recommend 6-6-0-0 if you have your pick of the litter every year, but if you are having to fight people off, that extra money can be a huge help (of course, there's also the pressure not to take walk-ons, as they would ruin your class distribution). 

I have a bunch of D2/D3 teams with a lot of different alignments. The alignments change frequently, because I redshirt often and I occasionally take JUCOs. But this might give you a pretty good sense of how things have worked out, at least for me. 

5-3-2-2 (Concord, D2 Naismith, triangle/zone). In the four upperclassmen years, I am a borderline NT/PIT team. In the eight upperclassmen years, I am a title contender (although I haven't won it yet). In the middle years, I'm usually a mid-level NT team (seeded in the 5-10 range). 

3-5-2-2 (Greensboro, D3 Wooden, triangle/zone). In the four upperclassman years, I've been a solid second round team (I think this must just be because I've recruited better than at Concord, since the class distribution isn't much different). In the seven/eight upperclassman years, I've been a Sweet Sixteen/Elite Eight team, with one run all the way to the natty (the natty was with seven upperclassmen and three freshmen). 

5-3-1-3 (Dallas, D3 Rupp, flex/man). In the four upperclassman years, I've been anywhere from PIT to 2nd round NT. In the eight upperclassman years, I've been a solid Elite Eight threat with a run to the title game one time. 

6-0-6-0 (Shenandoah, D3 Smith, FB/FCP). In the six senior years, I'm anywhere between 2nd round NT to title threat (although I haven't won one), depending on player quality. In the six junior years, I'm anywhere between PIT to 2nd round NT. 

5-4-3-0 (Erskine, D2 Iba, flex/press). In the nine upperclassman years, I'm usually a top five team (although I got bounced early from the NT last time). In the three upperclassman years, I'm usually a PIT team. In the other years, I'm 1st or 2nd round NT. I think some of that is just because the five-man class has always been my best recruiting class. In this current cycle, I feel like my 4-man (currently junior) class is better than the senior class, so I'm hoping for a better run in my seven upperclassman/five freshman year. 

4-5-2-1 (Maryville, D3 Crum, flex/man). This has been my most successful alignment so far, although I confess to getting lucky with some really good pickups in the one-man recruiting classes, which are generally really tough. But last cycle, I made a Final Four in a three-upperclassman year and then three title games in a row in the next three years. This team has made the Elite Eight in 10 of the last 11 seasons. Won a title in a year with only five upperclassmen (and five sophs). 

4-5-3-0 (Mercyhurst, D2 Phelan, motion/man). This is only my fourth year here, but I made the NT (barely) in my 0 senior year and am in the top five currently in my nine-upperclassman year. The senior class is not great though (only two starters), so I'm hoping for good things in my eight-upperclassmen/four-freshmen season next year. 

As you can see, I've never come close to class balance, and I've also never come too too close to superclasses. I have at least one five-man class with every single one of my teams, and I've never had more than ten upperclassmen at a time. I regularly redshirt with most of my teams (not Shenandoah though). But I've had some teams that were really good during their rebuilding years (Maryville currently is a great example--we only have three upperclassmen and are 3rd on the PR) and I've had some teams with similar class balance that were PIT teams in their rebuilding years. More important than class distribution is just getting the right players. 

But hopefully this has at least been instructive in how it has worked for another coach and that that will help as you examine what to do with your own team. GL

Posted by bagger288 on 10/1/2014 11:42:00 AM (view original):
I'm looking to build long term, My current prestige is B+ and I just repeated CT championship and my 3rd 20 win season in a row, i dont think it will go A- but I feel i will hold B+. I like the idea of basically having every player on my roster do a "2 on 2 off" Rotation where they spend 2 seasons on the bench and 2 starting so in essence I run a little bit of 3-3-3-3 with a RS every season. I just feel there are some teams that run heavier classes that are a little more stacked against me. I do commonly have freshman running 10+ minutes off the bench as they backup my main starter. The goal someday is to be capable of making a championship run every single season.

So basically right now I'm B+ looking to build long term and probably staying B+ next season.

the heavier classes are a little more stacked against you, which is why usually i'd recommend a slanted setup, so on your strong years, you have a good shot at a deep run. if you have even an almost flat 4-3-3-2 structure, on your up year, you basically play no freshman (unless you press) and have a highly experienced group - but you don't give up nearly as much - your worst year is probably the year with 3 seniors, 3 juniors, 2 sophs, and 4 freshman, which really is not bad at all.

as others have said, because of redshirting, and very possibly also walkons, class structures are never fixed and shift regularly. so, you can only really shoot for a target. in practice, if you try to stay balanced, it will naturally get slanted, so its reasonable to try for even and just take what you get.