Posted by zbrent716 on 11/1/2010 3:50:00 AM (view original):
Posted by coach_billyg on 11/1/2010 3:33:00 AM (view original):
i think you are technically slightly better if the redshirt is the second season - you gain no work ethic during the redshirt year, but would benefit from any gained work ethic in a redshirt soph year. also, study hall would slightly favor the second season redshirt. however, i don't personally feel the risk of the guy not taking the redshirt is worth it, and don't plan on redshirted sophs. but, there is nothing wrong with it! i think many have had success doing so.
one tip i would make for maximizing player development is to give players, especially young ones with a lot of growth, 0 minutes in low potential categories. and definitely in the maxed out categories.
That's an excellent point about the Work Ethic, thanks! It may or may not be worth risking the RS as a soph, but it's certainly something to consider.
With respect to the zero in low potemtial categories, do you run the same risk of having those categories decline as you would if you had practiced them up to a non-max level?
no, its not exactly the same risk. the way to think about it is, there is only one improvement curve - and decreases work off it as well. however, they are slower than improvement. so, when improvement gets very slow, so do decreases, and decreases may stop completely before improvement does. similarly, when increases are high, so are decreases.
with freshman, i usually put them at 0 in all lows. but that could be a low with 0 points of improvement, or one with 5 (or anything in between). a 5 point low, you will start seeing decreases, could be as high as 3 points in a season in a bad case. so usually after non conf or so i will check my players and then if anybody has dropped a point (which is not a big risk, right?), i will decide if i am willing to lose another point or two to continue higher gains in the categories i would have to steal those minutes from (i usually would stick with 0). in most cases, the freshman have not lost a point in the low category, so i just continue with 0 minutes, and maybe by season end they will lose a point (this might happen on say a 2 point of improvement low) or they won't lose any.
in the end of the day, if you are setting out to maximize improvement, i don't see why you wouldn't go with 0 lows for players with significant growth left. but some coaches play to maximize laziness - they want to set it and forget it, and want to make sure nothing drops. i also like to set it and forget it now, but, don't care if i lose a couple points, especially in a non core category, for guaranteed gains in core categories.
also keep in mind there is often 1 point of improvement left after the capped message. so in a core category, if you don't have much else to practice, it might be worth putting in extra minutes (more than it takes to maintain) to get that last point. but i rarely find this to be the optimal decision while players have any significant improvement left.