Posted by ettaexpress on 4/29/2014 1:43:00 AM (view original):
Posted by gillispie1 on 4/29/2014 1:30:00 AM (view original):
etta, d1 recruiting is vastly more difficult. guys who romp d2/d3 - i mean who rattle off 2, 3, 4, 5 championships in no time flat - come to d1 and fall on their faces, because of the recruiting. plus, d1 has loads of coaches who could easily maintain A prestige type programs in lower divisions. its way harder, there is really no question among those who have succeeded at both (i put in that qualifier because a lot of people who never played d1 disagree...)
i personally think the top of d2/d3 are actually pretty tough, and get a bad wrap, the gap between them and top of d1 isn't as big as people make it out to be, IMO. but for say, a normal a to low a+ d2/d3 team, competing on that level (making the NT every year with an average of a NT win or two) isn't even close to as hard as d1. its so different that HDers talk about "best coaches" and "best d2/d3 coaches" because its almost impossible to compare coaches who made it in d1 with those who have not.
that said, i am curious, what is the potential of the guys you signed? i have no idea, i haven't even looked. i know you said you only have 4 players, which means you really should have been signing guys who are decent to fill spots, not holding out for greats... so just to make it clear, the quality of those guys doesn't really weigh in on the discussion of if there were other guys worth signing who you missed. on 30k, spending 10k on scouting is not unreasonable at all, to find more options, and even if you battled locally, you definitely should be able to win more freshman. but outside that, im kind of curious about the guys you got. i just checked them out, they actually look like they *could* be good, depending on their potential. and that juco sg can contribute right now, even if his potential sucks, the other guys, they need growth (like all freshman d2 recruits and most jucos), so i am reserving judgement.
edit: fyi, d1 also has pulldowns
I went through them before but I will again.
Crawford is black SP, DE, FT and blue LP and BH. So ballpark 75 SP, 65 DE, 45+ LP, 76+ BH. And you have to figure with his WE he'll get there.
Godina is black A, DE, BLK and BH. blue ST. Est max 60 A, 50 DE, 62 BH, 97 ST or something.
Grow is blue A, P, ST and black RB, DE, BLK, LP, FT. So 45+ A, 95 RB, 35 D, 85 BLK, 100 LP, 33+ P, 86+ ST. Btw, does he improve at all during his sitout year? Just wondering.
Joyce is black A, blue RB, DE, LP, BH, ST. So 45 A, 85+ RB, 53+ DE, 81+ LP, 31+ BH (with a 1 P, not sure how much this matters), 74+ ST.
interesting.
crawford is a good player, for sure. if he doesn't play your off/def, that will certainly limit the utility he provides you, because of the IQ weakness (as you know all about). thats solid though. for the record, red is 0-6, black is 7-20, blue is 21+. the top end of blue varies by ratings. so you can definitely expect crawford to do, on average, better than +7 in spd/def. anyway, his offense abilities should be very substantial, with that per, spd, and bh, with some lp to boot. that will go a long way - strong offensive players are by far the most important players on low end teams. in general, the most important player on any team is their top scorer, but sometimes thats not true with extremely talented teams. but in your situation, hes a very solid pickup.
godina will definitely be able to contribute on offense against lower caliber competition, but he would be a weak scorer against NT quality opponents. there is an effect in this game where lp and per are overly useful against **** defense, while good lp and per backed by poor to mediocre ath/spd are not really very useful at all against quality defense. i believe the scoring in the game is figured in 2 phases - getting open, and then scoring. against bad defense, i don't think you need the spd/bh (for guards, also ath, but to a lesser extent) and the ath for bigs (and other stuff, the extent of which is debated, but ath alone is huge, nothing else is close) to get open against poor defenders. against stronger defenders, with lower ratings in those "getting open" areas, you will take bad shots. you can still make an ok % of them, but for an average bottom half NT team, those guys will still generally struggle. godina has ok ath/spd but he would definitely be in that category of guys who struggle against good teams (NT teams). but, he will be able to contribute for you. his reb sucks for a sf and his bh/pass aren't very good, overall not really a good player, especially being a juco, but he can contribute for sure.
grow will not improve at all during his sitout year, although he can improve in the off season. with his work ethic, you can expect minimal gains outside stamina and some stamina loss, although offseason improvement is VERY volatile (but the expected values are fairly clear - guys in the 30s and low 40s generally gain a handful of points outside sta, and lose a few sta. once you hit like 60, you can start to see pretty significant offseason gains *on average*). that blue ath is critical. he won't be that good for fr/soph year till he gets his ath up, so practice conditioning hard. hopefully thats a high/high ath with like +30 on the horizon. although, against poor competition, his lp might come through for you - but don't be deceived about the value of players like this, from an offensive front, in the NT scene. that low ath and def is really going to be a liability on defense, but generally even in d1, if you can get guys to be good ability wise at 2 out of 3 of their core abilities, you are in good shape. those abilities for guards are offense, defense, guard skills (bh/pass), for bigs, off, def, reb. ath affects everything, its by far the most important category for bigs who score, and its the most important for non-scoring bigs although the gap over reb and def is much less. that said, grow is still a decent pick up. you have to be careful to schedule weak if you rely on guys like this (low ath or spd/bh) for offense, to increase your odds of making the NT. about 70 ath is a good average target for bigs in d2 (when they grow up), but higher ratings elsewhere can definitely make up for lower ath.
joyce is also a decent pickup. that ath is definitely going to hurt, but his reb and lp look like they could be great, while his def should be decent. he is a pretty solid pickup in your position overall.
overall, you found some pretty solid guys talent wise. with good coaching and a team full of guys like that, you could work your way into the NT. going deep would be extremely unlikely, but that's not really the target... anyway, the bigger issue than talent is composition. i mean, with 4 players, it doesn't matter. but assuming you had like, not 11 openings when you started ;) it would still be very important to get a well rounded freshman class. with 2, thats hard, but getting 2 scoring type bigs is as un-well rounded as you could get. with talent like that, not well arranged, it would make your job of making the NT much, much harder.
to be honest, those guys are a bit better than i expected. that said, im completely confident if you widened scope in some variety of ways described earlier, you could find more. of course, you might have spent too much too early for that to be possible *this time around*, but its worth keeping in mind for next time. the cost of scouting goes down late. i was always an early d2/d3 recruiter myself, but others have been very successful later - you need to battle less so you can search more. and if you do battle, you want to be smart about your battles - either recognize you are behind early and get out immediately (cheaply, even pull scholarship and redshirt to manage perceptions of other coaches looking at your other players), or knock the other guy off so you can claim him so to speak (and especially, so you can manage perceptions - not sure if you saw or read my post in that other thread, but managing perceptions is absolutely vital in HD recruiting)
also, you want to focus more on composition, getting decent players you can coach is better than reaching for studs via pulldowns and the like. most coaches will say recruiting is the most important aspect of the game - but at least two coaches will say team planning is the most important aspect of the game (one being me, the other being OR who has like 35 championships). so you should definitely keep an eye on that. again, i know its hard with only 2 freshman, but really, its very important. you don't need studs to win, but you do need a well rounded team with guys who specialize in things that complement the rest of the team, just like real teams. its probably the most realistic aspect of the game. black hole scorers will hurt less than in real life and of course, the value of ratings and what those ratings mean is confusing and certainly out of whack to some degree. but once you come to terms with what makes a player good in what way (at scoring or rebounding or whatever) in HD, then those abilities combine in fairly realistic ways, team-wise. there are definitely exceptions at the extremes, like black hole players not really hurting you if you just have 1 at a time on the court, or how you can overload scoring to 1 player and be more successful than you should be. but there is a nice huge window in the middle where stuff is actually pretty sensible.