Practice Planning Guide.

This is not meant to be exhaustive but I tried to add in a couple 'advanced' tactics that I use. I am trying to keep these guides relatively simple and concise - if possible.

I'm sure there are other methods and tactics people use so if you have any thoughts, please include them in this thread. Try to keep it to Practice discussions.

Noobs- post if you have any questions or if something isn't clear. I'll update as needed.

Basics

• Use 20-25 minutes for offense and defense each. Focus initially on one O/D
• Prioritize Greens and Blue ratings. Blues and Greens will increase or decrease quickly while the opposite is true for Orange and Red.
• Keep 7 points in a rating to keep it from going down - the exception is LP and PER which only requires 3
• Prioritize "Core" ratings. These include Conditioning and Def for all players. Reb, Blk, LP for bigs. Pass, BH, PER and sometimes LP for guards. Usually in that order but depends on how you plan to use the player (passing PG vs scoring SG for example).
• Study Hall - at least 5-8 minutes for freshmen. 5 if 3.0 HS GPA, 8 if 2.0 GPA. Remove 1 point as he moves up seniority. Seniors usually only need 1 or 0.
• After the 2nd Final Grades email that occurs a few games before the CT, you can remove all points from SH.
• Rule of thumb is that beyond 20 minutes, there is a diminishing returns effect. 25 will increase more than 20 but every point you put in will start counting less and less.

Advanced and other ideas open to discussion

• Zero out categories that are red or not important. i.e. if a guard's REB is Red, don't put any points here. Even if it's decent like mid 20s. It will likely only decrease by 1-2 points during the season or sometimes not at all.For bigs this could be something like BH. LP/PER are other categories that can be ignored if it is Red and relatively low already. This is one of the best ways to get a player to max out faster IMO.
• For Low WE (<30) players- prioritize 'Hard Skills' vs 'Soft Skills' (not sure if that's what others call it). Meaning - you want to put minutes into the attributes that will be used early and often. For a Big Man this typically means Reb and defense. If you have established a good team setup, it is unlikely he'll be asked to score as a FR or SO so even if he is Green/Blue in both LP and FT, you might not want to try to max this out first. He will be more useful as an underclassmen with high ATH/REB/DEF than high LP/FT. Note- don't remove all points in these categories that you're saving for later; keep 10ish points in it. It's not meant to neglect completely - just prioritize.
• A couple exceptions to Hard skills vs Soft skills include -
  • If the player-
    • 1) need to score early - weak upperclassmen
    • 2) is the only option. i.e. a guard with Per of 50 but is Green may be prioritized if no other viable shooters are on team and is a big need.
    • 3) Has very high potential for growth - it is not uncommon for LP and PER to grow 50+ points which can turn a mediocre scorer into a great one.
  • If WE is relatively high, he should max out so spread points more evenly in an attempt to max out at the same time.

Practice Plans:

Practice plans are the second most important thing in developing talent for your team (behind recruiting of course and, in my opinion, followed by getting your young guys a little playing time). Each player has 130 minutes of practice time. Each player has an Individual Practice Time of 130 – Team practice Minutes.

Team Practice:

For team practice you decide how much you want to improve your players IQ's. Most coaches will use 20 minutes in each Offense and Defense, you can be very successful by always having 20 in each and never changing it. It is highly recommended to only have one of each (although combo D’s are available at the lower levels players have to much individual improvement that its advised to only run one). Although it is your team so if you want to try having 2 different O’s go for it (Still I would not recommend it).

Some coaches change Team practice minutes based on how young/old their team is. With very large (possibly super-class size) freshmen and sophomore classes I advice to bump up the O/D at least a couple points. I usually run my D (I play mostly press where IQ is more important to cut back on excessive fouling) practice at 25 minutes and my O practice at 20. If you have a very big Junior/Senior class you could even possibly choose to cut out team practice altogether. IQ levels do not go down even if they are not being practiced. Players also improve their IQ by playing in games.

In my experience The point of diminishing returns is around 25 practice minutes in a single category. So anything over 25 will give you less then 1 minutes practice. It is ok to put more then 25 into a category, and is sometimes even the best thing to do. However, most times I rarely go above 20 unless the player has way too little to improve (especially early on in their career).

This is usually what I use when setting players SH minutes at the start of a season:

Freshmen: 7-10 depending on HS GPA
Sophomore: 5-7 depending on Cum. GPA
Junior: 0-3 depending on Cum. GPA
Senior: 0-1 depending on Cum. GPA.

Note: Treat a Red-shirted Freshmen as a regular Fr.

Note: There are 2 mid-terms and 2 final-grades. This gives you an opportunity to change your SH minutes if your players are in trouble of failing. Once you get your 2^nd set of Final Grades. You can take all SH minutes away from players and put them into other categories.

Note: If a player becomes ineligible during the season he will still practice with your team, he is just not allowed to play. So Do NOT move all his minutes over to Study Hall, just enough to get him eligible (Which could be anywhere from 10 to anything depending on his year and his gpa).

Off season Improvements:

These are random, based off a players Work Ethic, Practice Plan doesn't matter. Meaning a player with a higher WE has a better chance of gaining more in the off season. A player that has a lower WE has a lesser chance. Usually a player with under 30 WE losses points in SPD/STA/DUR in the off season.

Thanks for posting these. They are very helpful. One question: How many points should go to conditioning?

Conditioning I usually always have 20 in unless I have little improvement remaining. It drives some key attributes like SPD/ATH. Especially for guards I find those to be key. Bigs at lower levels tend to have less ability to improve in these stats so I've put as little as 5-7 (when they are all red)

Yeah typically it's like 18-20 minutes but it can depend on the player and what ratings are maxed. If it's all red, I'll move them other areas. Or if most else is red, I'll load up on 30 minutes in conditioning.

But it's the most important one since it impacts so man important attributes. St is included in there and that is one that is underrated/overlooked IMO.

I use 20 minutes for every player all the time for conditioning. I have always heard that diminishing returns starts at 20 minutes, so I never go over 20 minutes in any particular category, except for Conditioning if everything else is red. I do try to keep the team practice plans at 25 minutes for Offense and Defense, unless my team is very young and most players have a lot of improving to do in the cores. But IQ is very important in this game.

Posted by chapelhillne on 1/16/2017 8:20:00 PM (view original):
I use 20 minutes for every player all the time for conditioning. I have always heard that diminishing returns starts at 20 minutes, so I never go over 20 minutes in any particular category, except for Conditioning if everything else is red. I do try to keep the team practice plans at 25 minutes for Offense and Defense, unless my team is very young and most players have a lot of improving to do in the cores. But IQ is very important in this game.

This is what I do. Rule of thumb add 5 for good potential BLUE, GREEN subtract 5 for YELLOW , ORANGE, and RED. Set them at 20 across the board for each potential, then subtract or add depending on potential color.

I have often read that about 7 points are needed to keep an attribute from declining at all, except for LP and PER, where the number is 3. This conventional wisdom seems to be born out by experience.

Honestly, when a player starts below 10 in any category and is red, I just place it at zero. The loss is minuscule in the end.

bump for noobs.

Posted by chapelhillne on 1/16/2017 8:20:00 PM (view original):
I use 20 minutes for every player all the time for conditioning. I have always heard that diminishing returns starts at 20 minutes, so I never go over 20 minutes in any particular category, except for Conditioning if everything else is red. I do try to keep the team practice plans at 25 minutes for Offense and Defense, unless my team is very young and most players have a lot of improving to do in the cores. But IQ is very important in this game.

I guess I am the exception. I rarely put more that 15 mins into conditioning unless most of the other ratings have maxed out.

DO NOT DO THIS ^^^^^^^^

Posted by mullycj on 3/27/2017 7:48:00 PM (view original):

Posted by chapelhillne on 1/16/2017 8:20:00 PM (view original):
I use 20 minutes for every player all the time for conditioning. I have always heard that diminishing returns starts at 20 minutes, so I never go over 20 minutes in any particular category, except for Conditioning if everything else is red. I do try to keep the team practice plans at 25 minutes for Offense and Defense, unless my team is very young and most players have a lot of improving to do in the cores. But IQ is very important in this game.

I guess I am the exception. I rarely put more that 15 mins into conditioning unless most of the other ratings have maxed out.

You and me both, mully. I often only have 10 in conditioning -- I value the skills development more than conditioning. Also only max out at 20 in team O/D. Very interesting to hear the differing perspectives from some very good coaches.

Posted by johnsensing on 3/27/2017 9:16:00 PM (view original):

Posted by mullycj on 3/27/2017 7:48:00 PM (view original):

Posted by chapelhillne on 1/16/2017 8:20:00 PM (view original):
I use 20 minutes for every player all the time for conditioning. I have always heard that diminishing returns starts at 20 minutes, so I never go over 20 minutes in any particular category, except for Conditioning if everything else is red. I do try to keep the team practice plans at 25 minutes for Offense and Defense, unless my team is very young and most players have a lot of improving to do in the cores. But IQ is very important in this game.

I guess I am the exception. I rarely put more that 15 mins into conditioning unless most of the other ratings have maxed out.

You and me both, mully. I often only have 10 in conditioning -- I value the skills development more than conditioning. Also only max out at 20 in team O/D. Very interesting to hear the differing perspectives from some very good coaches.

for my press teams I'm usually pretty concerned about my ST along with the Ath/spd. But sometimes I need the st even moreso. I TRY to recruit good potential in ST esp in FB/Press so even more reason to get ST up.

So I'm typically in the 15-20 range for conditioning.