Posting even though im not done so I dont accident click back and lose my progress and I'm to lazy to open a word document.

Reaalllllllly bored and not tired so heres something I'll do.  Again not a lot of D1 experience so this is mainly based off observation/team history but I'll look at how recruit works in HD on its affect of D1 power houses, most notable would be like competing nationwide for a top recruit and having a legit shot at landing ala Duke.  See what schools are powerhouses in real life and have bad locations in HD that make them less desirable and vice versa schools that arent really considered prestigeous but have great location for HD.  Yes I know great coaches can win anywhere but don't bs me that a top D1 coach would be able to build NC conteders year in and out from say Hawaii compared to a NYC team.

Big 6 high prestige teams that suffer from location[don't live up to the name hype]

• Tobacco road.  Yes UNC and Duke are top teams in basically every world, but i think the lack of ability to recruit elite talent nation-wide pits UNC and Duke against each other as well as a competent NC State and Wake Forest as well as the Virginia schools with a good coach, make the a slight less desireable as I think compared to their real life counterparts they rely on not only recruiting the top local talent, but around the nation as well.  Personally I think the two schools would be under pressure more the way HD plays it.  Not saying you can't win or be extremely dominant, but when you think of Duke and UNC basketball irl, the hd counterparts don't measure up personally.
• NW schools, especially the more competent coaches up there, such as Oregon, Washington, Wash St, Gonzaga,  Mainly based off the amount of recruits generated, can be very good if most of the schools are sim or not elite coached then usually Oregon or Washington are pretty talented.  But having more than 1/2 realistic deep NT threats doesnt seem super easy unless you have great distance recruiters or the UT/CO schools are weak.
• UT schools, BYU and Utah are really hard especially BYU(granted they werent great when HD was created) but even Utah can be kind of down unless they have a very talented coach and then its still pretty hard(those guys at utah are amazing!)  And utah got screwed with baselines if the b prestige is correct which it looks like as if Im right aseline was based on the past 10 seasons ending in 04? when hd was created as Utah was superb 94-05 with 1 runner up 1 e8, 2x S16 and a bunch of 2nd round teams and great W-L records.  Should've been a B+/A- based on that imo
• Arizona teams again not a lot of local talent and if the southern cal schools are strong and ASU and Ariz are both good coaches distance recruiting needs to be really good.
• Miami very dependant on talent being in Miami if so can win NC with elite coaches, but otherwise it looks like its kind of boxed in by Florida and FSU
• Tennessee not that its been an elite program irl but above average/great it seems hard to replicate that in HD barring elite coaches with tn not producing a lot of talent, the carolinas basically locked down, the recruit starved KY teams above you and georgia tech below you.
• KY especially Louisville for the lack of KY recruits the Big 10 north and tobacco road east its kind of hard, Louisville def is harder than Tucky.
• Cincy similar to KY basically the exact same reasons
• Georgetown DC doesnt seem that great

Teams that benefit from Location:

• Colorado can lock down Colorado from the mwc and then dominant that region pretty well
• Kansas similar to Colorado not a bunch of top progras locally.  Can grab NE recruits over the Huskers pretty well it seems.
• UCLA prestige adv over USC and UCLA always seems to attract the better coaches locking down the top of the line CA prospects
• Florida is pretty power heavy I think based on recent real life success but also not being isolated down in FL completely like Miami is.  Same goes for FSU
• Boston College, those boston recruits are nice
• Uconn higher prestige attracts top coaches and not a lot of power teams nearby to stop them from grabbing NY and even some PA top talent.
• Wisconsin grabs the best WI recruits which there is usually a good amount Chcago is close and has big adv over NW and north there is only 1 school to battle with for a good amount of northern WI and MN recruits.
• MN isolated with MN and WI recruits as well as SD, NE, IA below.
• South Carolina generates good talent and is pretty isolated for big 6 teams
• Mid major CO schools a lot of talent leftover even fter COlorado goes through with the north generally abadoned and great mid major players not taken by the Big 6

Schools that seem good location wise but dont do well

• Nebraska thought it would be kinda easy to grab the NE kids and dip into IA/KS
• Missouri thought they could grab all the MO then dip into IL/KS/IA/AR

Any opinions?

*Preface*
There are 10 worlds and every world is a little different thanks to where the best coaches are at, and the randomness of where elite recruits are generated. So not everything I write is accurate in ALL worlds, so specific examples of something happening in a few worlds doesn't really make my opinion inaccurate since I'm not saying these things are absolute.
*/Preface*

ACC

Doesn't North Carolina and Duke being great schools in almost every world counteract the claim that it less desirable to be there? They eat up the great talent while North Carolina St, Wake Forest, and Virginia Tech pick up the crumbs. ACC is usually the top conference in bonus cash, so the elite schools can clean up the overseas internationals.

Miami actually does quite well despite its low baseline. They snap up Puerto Rico recruits since they are the only ones within 1400 miles. The rest of the state depends on the strength of Florida/Florida St, but I think it is a good school to be at.

BC is good as you get the ACC money without having to deal with battling the majority of the ACC schools.

PAC 12

Agreed on the NW. If you are King in that area in can be very nice as you can also pick up recruits in the upper Rocky Mountain states. When you have 3-4 good schools, it's trouble with the number of solid recruits. PAC 12 is interesting as you don't have to deal too much with other conferences unless it's international or a strong Colorado snooping in.

Big East

I don't have much experience in this conference. Syracuse is a great area. There's a Canadian city within 360 that you can get cheap recruits from. UConn always does well. I spent some time at West Virginia, not a good time. ACC gets what they want. Louisville must be an awful place to recruit from.

Big 12

Colorado is a place I don't understand, they are generally very good, if not championship contenders in many worlds, but the coaches there can't wait to leave.
Texas Tech is an island, although joehof had an incredible run in one world there.
Texas is nicely located to everywhere in Texas and can reach into Louisiana if need be. I've had tons of success at Oklahoma, to the detriment of Oklahoma St.
Iowa St and especially Nebraska are terrible to be at.

SEC

Kentucky is the worst A+ baseline school IMO. You are in the middle of 3 conferences, and the SEC is usually weak, so you are getting less cash.
LSU is King in the area and can reach into Texas.
I don't usually see the deep south schools have much success. Perhaps it is like the NW, where if the rest are weak, one can thrive.

Big 10

Michigan St is always elite. I would avoid coaching Indiana, Purdue, Iowa, Northwestern, Notre Dame, and Penn St at all costs. Wisconsin and Minnesota are far enough away from other conferences, that they do well.

TotalHigh| Low

Duke 23 5/0
UNC 35 9/0
NC State 3 total NC
Wake Forest 14 NC
VT 10 NC
UVA 7 NC

I guess I made a bad observation.  I guess NC State is the one that suffers the most, I guess Duke and UNC have won an amount that makes sense.  Maybe Wake Forest/Benefit?  Would have to see how coaches have affected those numbers I know tiani has 5 at VT in phelan alone.

For Miami I wasn't saying its a bad school just maybe not as talented as you would think with HD being big on local you might at first guess it could be one of the best before you realize it its actually kind of isolated.

BIg East is a bit funky a lot of their real life strong teams are in bad HD locations, Cincy, Louisville, Georgetown, West VA, Pitt, and then the ones in good locations have low baseline.

I'm really surprised nebraska is so bad, is the talent just taken by Kanas?

I'm surprised with the success LSU has with all the texas teams you wouldnt think they'd be able to go their a lot and the florida teams on the right as well, but they are always very good.

The Indiana area is just so crowded I honestly think their needs to be more recruits and compare it to how tobacco road works whici you corrected me on as you have Duke UNC competing very well but in Indy Indy's usually pretty good, but Purdue sucks as well as ND as it doesnt look like theres enough Indy talent or Mich talent as well, NW sucks( I assume they lose all Chi players to Illi or Wisky) and then Penn state isnt in a good position.  I personally think the OH/MI/IL/IND areas could be great improved more similar to the talent the tobacco road produces.

I'm goign to look at where top recruits come from in real life probably get that done tomorrow since I need to go to sleep now.

Louisville is horrible to recruit from... Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Georgia Tech, Mississippi, Ohio State, Michigan State are all normally only the recruits I want, they are all A or A+'s in our world.  I have thought of leaving many times but I can't seem to find a better place to jump too. 

Nebraska talent is always taken by Kansas or if they don't get it Colorado will normally come in with an A+ prestige and take anyone worth having. 

I actually think Penn State is not in that bad of an area. It is kind of far from most other schools. I also think DC would be a good area, although I have not recruited from there. Under 200 miles to Philly, NY City, and can reach down to Virginia and the Carolinas.

I have an ongoing forum which shows how many titles each team in D1 has won, and this should also help to clarify where good schools are: It is titled Most Championships by School. For some reason I can't paste a link.

I just bumped the forum I mentioned above.

south carolina is isolated for a big 6 school? im struggling with that one. there is a teeny tiny pocket of south carolina that is 200 miles from every other bcs school, which i have to mentioned in fairness - and its true a lot of schools dont have that. but, you are within 200 miles of UNC and duke, and there are usually elite programs in every direction (except where the ocean is). my experience there is... it is definitely not isolated :) i had to battle unc and duke and others regularly in my time there.

edit: oh wait - that 200 mile thing is only if clemson is garbage and you don't count them. clemson is a pretty good program with ACC money in many worlds. if clemson is good, with a good ACC, south carolina has to be one of the worst bcs jobs there is.

Posted by gillispie1 on 8/25/2015 11:33:00 AM (view original):
south carolina is isolated for a big 6 school? im struggling with that one. there is a teeny tiny pocket of south carolina that is 200 miles from every other bcs school, which i have to mentioned in fairness - and its true a lot of schools dont have that. but, you are within 200 miles of UNC and duke, and there are usually elite programs in every direction (except where the ocean is). my experience there is... it is definitely not isolated :) i had to battle unc and duke and others regularly in my time there.

edit: oh wait - that 200 mile thing is only if clemson is garbage and you don't count them. clemson is a pretty good program with ACC money in many worlds. if clemson is good, with a good ACC, south carolina has to be one of the worst bcs jobs there is.

Woops yeh I forgot, I guess it depends on the coaches at the 2 schools as you usually see one of the SC schools pretty good and yeh it looks like Clemson more often I assume because of the acc money and in the 1day worlds SC does sucks pretty bad.  woops

The problem at Colorado is recruit generation can be so varied that when great guy are in the area you can be great but you can go on a 2-3 year stretch where every recruit is terrible and you have to go at least 600 miles to find a guy that is decent.  It is feast or famine at least in my experience there

Im just guess here but maybe another reason why people leave it all the time is that when moving up if there "dream"/"ideal" school is taken and colorado is open they go to colorado since it can be very good until they can jump to a school they like for non-hd reasons.

Posted by gillispie1 on 8/25/2015 11:33:00 AM (view original):
south carolina is isolated for a big 6 school? im struggling with that one. there is a teeny tiny pocket of south carolina that is 200 miles from every other bcs school, which i have to mentioned in fairness - and its true a lot of schools dont have that. but, you are within 200 miles of UNC and duke, and there are usually elite programs in every direction (except where the ocean is). my experience there is... it is definitely not isolated :) i had to battle unc and duke and others regularly in my time there.

edit: oh wait - that 200 mile thing is only if clemson is garbage and you don't count them. clemson is a pretty good program with ACC money in many worlds. if clemson is good, with a good ACC, south carolina has to be one of the worst bcs jobs there is.

I too struggle with this one!!  I realize that I am still in a building phase with my South Carolina team, but excuse me!  An isolated and great recruiting site it is not.  And even with the elite programs in the SEC making final fours just about every year, the ACC teams do too, and have better baseline.

another one that always does good is Texas, where I guess the real life counterpart is just a result of rick barnes coaching ability.  but location wise they are very good in hd and do very well

Posted by chapelhillne on 8/25/2015 9:35:00 AM (view original):
I actually think Penn State is not in that bad of an area. It is kind of far from most other schools. I also think DC would be a good area, although I have not recruited from there. Under 200 miles to Philly, NY City, and can reach down to Virginia and the Carolinas.

I have an ongoing forum which shows how many titles each team in D1 has won, and this should also help to clarify where good schools are: It is titled Most Championships by School. For some reason I can't paste a link.

DC is not as good as you would think.  GTown has to be one of the schools with the lowest number of titles as compared to baseline prestige.

This is actually a pretty interesting thread. I have actually been working on a D1 recruit analysis in Crum that I many never actually have time to complete, but if I do I'll post the data.  With any location success often depends on the schools around that are human coached, the current prestige of those schools and the recruit generation placement in any given season. I don't really agree with the OPs suggestion that Minnesota benefits from remote location ... not at D1 anyway.  Based on the comments made about Colorado it seems pretty similar.  The current recruit generation in Crum has 1 D1 player from ND, he's a two-year transfer player. Here are his ratings:

SF

Robert Helmick

38

46

52

33

34

42

65

43

18

81

75

36

563

South Dakota has 0 D1 recruits this go around. This is fairly typical. If one needs to dip into Iowa there is potential competition from Wisconsin (A- baseline), Illinois (A+ baseline), Kansas (A+) as well as possibly Missouri, Iowa State and Iowa. If Wisconsin and Illinois are filled and successful, it's tough to get too much out of either of those states.  That leaves Minnesota itself which is hit and miss in recruit generation.  Some seasons it's great, others it's a barren wasteland.  

Two recruiting cycles ago I needed to replace my big men and wound up having to go to New Mexico and Nevada to get them because there were none located within 360 miles. Last recruiting cycle I had 1 - 4 star or better player within 200 miles.  He was in Iowa, 180 miles from my campus.  He was also 170 miles from A+ Wisconsin.  The next closest high quality recruit was 310 miles away from me and less than 100 miles from Wisconsin ... There were no other 4 or 5 star guys within 360 miles ... Isolation can be a benefit, it can also be a great hindrance.