I just wanted to see what the lowest WE people are looking to recruit.  I have seen some players with serious upside in many categories but then have a WE of 23 in one case.  This is someone I tend to shy away from unless I can't get any player I feel will end up being better.  I have taken players in the 20's for WE and they were pretty good during their senior year as their WE improved.

There are also the players with a high WE with pretty good skills already and have one or two areas of high upside but everything else is pretty average.  I have grabbed a few of these players as well. They usually max out by the Sophomore or midway through their Junior year.

So the debate is on do you take the lower rated player with a WE in the 20's with many areas of upside or a higher rated player with a high WE but with one or two areas of big upside and the rest is average or low?

The potential determines how much the rating improves, and the WE determines how fast they can get there, so there isn't an easy answer to this question - it depends.

Generally, I'd probably take the high-potential guy as long as his WE is over 20, but it really is a case-by-case basis.

low WE high upside for sure. I'll take the higher ceiling and the better player in his JR/SR year than the high WE avg potential guy who maxes out too early.

That's another good point you bring up.  When a player has a high potential.  Does anyone use a rule of thumb to guess how much that rating will go up.  For example, a player has a 30 PE with high upside and a 23 WE how much improvement do you see for that player in that category?  Same thing goes for a player with a 30 PE with average upside and a 50 WE.  How much do you think the PE will go up for the player with average upside?  I assume for low upside you may as well set 3 minutes for practice so it does not decrease and forget about that category if it's relatively high.

Posted by danoneill on 2/2/2011 10:22:00 PM (view original):
That's another good point you bring up.  When a player has a high potential.  Does anyone use a rule of thumb to guess how much that rating will go up.  For example, a player has a 30 PE with high upside and a 23 WE how much improvement do you see for that player in that category?  Same thing goes for a player with a 30 PE with average upside and a 50 WE.  How much do you think the PE will go up for the player with average upside?  I assume for low upside you may as well set 3 minutes for practice so it does not decrease and forget about that category if it's relatively high.

dan -- again, the player's work ethic does not determine how high the rating will go. It does help him reach his max rating faster. So the real question when looking at recruits is, what will be his max rating/rating when he's an upperclassman.

Ok how about this.

High upside - how many points do you see this category going up.
Average upside - how many points do you see this category going up.
Low upside - how many points do you see this category going up if any at all.

Generally speaking, I would prefer a guy with a work ethic of 20 and high potentials over a higher work ethic with average potential.  Over the course of his career, the 20 work ethic/high pot guy can probably surpass the average potential guy in key areas, assuming start ratings are the same.  That said, I try not to take guys with work ethics <25 unless I feel they would be ok with no improvement.  Case in point, I recently had a low work ethic guard with 30+ potential in passing and bh.  Unfortunately his starting ratings were low and in order to be the player that I wanted he would need to get all of his 30+ points of improvement, which he did not come close to doing before transferring.  Conversely, I had a guy with a work ethic of 1 at DIII one time.  He had high potential in rebounding and LP and his starting ratings for each were probably in the 70s and 60s respectively.  He topped out at high 70 in rebounding and high 60 in lp.  He didn't come close to fulfilling his potential, but because his cores were ok to start with he was still an important player off the bench; he had a couple of seasons of 9 ppg.

For the second part of your question:
High 20 points.
AVG 10 points
Low 0 points.

Now those aren't how much the categories will go up, rather it is what I use as a rough guide when recruiting to determine how a player might develop.  I will also do a few scouting trips on guys with high potential in a lot of areas as you can determine whether the high is 20-30 points of improvement or 30+ points of improvement.  It can be worth taking a risk on guys whos evals show them to be high/high in some categories that have starting ratings a bit lower than you would normally target.  

I use the same numbers as cyben during recruiting (0, 10, and 20).  I actually put all the recruits in a spreadsheet and subtract 10 from the red and add 10 to the green, then evaluate on the modified ratings.

The actual potential ranges are:

Low: 0-5
Avg:  6-20
High: 21+

Those are the maximum improvements, so a low potential rating can never go up more that 5 points.

Now, how much improvement you will actually get depends on practice minutes, WE, and playing time.  A guy with high potential but low WE may only improve 15 points, but you can mitigate this somewhat with more practice in cores and more playing time.  

IMO, playing time is critical for low-WE guys, because it increases the rate of improvements, and also improves WE.  I will recruit guys with WE in the teens, but I will try to start them as much as possible from the beginning.

I personally try to stick with guys with a WE over 30 and high potential in as many areas as possible.  I once had a Center who started out with 1 LP and 1 PE with high potential in each one, and a WE of 99. He started with like a 380 overall rating. By the senior year, he had 60 LP and 60 PE and an overall rating of 737. He had high potential in Reb, Def, SB, LP, PE, BH, DU and FT. He was not very good the first year though.

Dano if you want to know how to recruit better just keep doing what you tried to do this year and steal my recruits, or William's you can't really go wrong.

LOL - I have been following that banter in the Rocky Mountain conference. Dan's in a CBS league with me, and I just happened to look at what was going on over there in the Rocky Mountain league. I was hoping my Palm Beach Atlantic D3 team would beat him, so that would give you guys something to talk about for a day or two.

How high  do you think his WE will go? I'd be curious to see. My prediction would be that he would top out at less than 30, and probably not fulfil his potential.  I have a player that had 17 WE when I got him, but he is only at 21. However I have not started him, mainly because other players developed faster than him and passed him.

Tim you da man.  I just figured I would see what everyone's opinion is.  I personally don't like anything under 35 but sometimes players are to tempting to pass up with a lot of areas of potential.  If anyone hadn't read Joshua and William are in a relationship.

Posted by chapelhillne on 2/11/2011 4:46:00 PM (view original):
LOL - I have been following that banter in the Rocky Mountain conference. Dan's in a CBS league with me, and I just happened to look at what was going on over there in the Rocky Mountain league. I was hoping my Palm Beach Atlantic D3 team would beat him, so that would give you guys something to talk about for a day or two.

Haha wondered once or twice if anyone was reading that. Has to be entertaining.