Posted by ethan66 on 5/1/2012 3:17:00 PM (view original):

Posted by kujayhawk on 5/1/2012 3:11:00 PM (view original):
Ethan - I think dahsdebater was over the top with that post but you also can't have it both ways.  If you're going to wait until the end of recruiting to pick over scraps you probably aren't going to keep pace with the A+ squads.  If you take the advice they offer, which I'm guessing doesn't include waiting until the end, you probably can do a decent enough job of matching their success.  Maybe not identical success, especially if you don't have the same amount of recruiting bonus money -- but close enough.

On the contrary, I can quote Tianyi himself, in chat to me,  on several occasions that *sometimes* the best approach for D3 is to be patient and wait for drop downs.  I've gone against that advice a few times with mixed results.  I suck at being patient.

Well this is another instance of needing to see body language and misunderstanding what is in a forum post.  That isn't what you said you were doing on page 2.  I'm all for patience, but you gave the impression that you were going a step or two beyond patience and just waiting until the very end.

My resume doesn't come close to most of those in this thread but it's good enough for me to feel pretty comfortable saying that I know what I'm doing and I'd say 85% of my recruits are patient dropdowns.

*EDIT*    The funny thing is that this thread is about a player that I recruited because I wasn't patient.  This was a recruiting season that went over the Thanksgiving holiday and knowing that I was going to be offline during most of recruiting, I jumped on Holt way too early even though I pretty much knew he wouldn't be anything special.

Posted by ethan66 on 5/1/2012 3:17:00 PM (view original):

Posted by kujayhawk on 5/1/2012 3:11:00 PM (view original):
Ethan - I think dahsdebater was over the top with that post but you also can't have it both ways.  If you're going to wait until the end of recruiting to pick over scraps you probably aren't going to keep pace with the A+ squads.  If you take the advice they offer, which I'm guessing doesn't include waiting until the end, you probably can do a decent enough job of matching their success.  Maybe not identical success, especially if you don't have the same amount of recruiting bonus money -- but close enough.

On the contrary, I can quote Tianyi himself, in chat to me,  on several occasions that *sometimes* the best approach for D3 is to be patient and wait for drop downs.  I've gone against that advice a few times with mixed results.  I suck at being patient.

I think what I specifically wrote (in regard to the team you picked up in Naismith) is the higher my prestige, the longer I wait. The lower my prestige (such as when I first took over Menlo), I get aggressive early and pulldown whatever I can get.

Once your prestige is over B , I would prefer to use the 2-3k in pulldown cost to FSS more states, and wait for dropdowns. D3 players are generally interchangeable. As I counted earlier from Tark D3 list, there were 30+ FR with combined ath/spd over 100, combined ath/spd/def over 150.  With average potential in one or two of those categories, you will hit Aejones recruiting standard from his post (which mirrors my talent evaluation). There are probably another 20-30 recruits with high/high ath/spd with starting value in the 30-40s.

It's a little harder to wait for dropdowns in a massive rebuild at C- prestige because players drop down to A+ first, A, A-, and so forth, so it's better to recruit early. 

Posted by kujayhawk on 5/1/2012 3:26:00 PM (view original):
Isack, your links aren't working for me.  I assume this is your ike account.  Are you playing press?  If so, I'd argue it's apples and oranges.

That said, the questions I was asking were to the comparison of the three players above.  If you do get a track star with amazing defense, almost all those questions that I asked become moot.

But I don't have Scott Cadet or Lloyd Brown.  I have Bruce Sawyer and Anthony Lockwood.  And they both kind of suck.  But as tianyi points out, they very well might be worth starting for me.  So the questions I was asking pertains to guys of that quality, not the talent that an A+ coach like yourself is recruiting.

Sorry, it was a copy and paste job.  The links were to the players when they were active.  They have since graduated.  The ratings are accurate, though.  That would have been the end of Cadet's soph year and the end of Brown's junior year.  Also, I play man.  So while not quite the same, the difference isn't as big as it would be with press.

Gotcha, I thought you were asking more generally of the importance of those ratings.

I guess I would play it game-to-game.  Against a great offensive team or press team, I'd probably start one of the other guys.  Against a mediocre offense with good rebounders, I'd probably start Holt.

The benefit of bh/pass would be mostly against a press.  I don't think it matters if none have any distro anyway and you're playing against man or zone.  Although, it's always helpful to have bh/pass, it's just not as important to me as ath/spd/def, and it's as if any of those guys have inadequate bh/pass from the SF spot anyway.

Posted by tianyi7886 on 5/1/2012 3:29:00 PM (view original):

Posted by ethan66 on 5/1/2012 3:17:00 PM (view original):

Posted by kujayhawk on 5/1/2012 3:11:00 PM (view original):
Ethan - I think dahsdebater was over the top with that post but you also can't have it both ways.  If you're going to wait until the end of recruiting to pick over scraps you probably aren't going to keep pace with the A+ squads.  If you take the advice they offer, which I'm guessing doesn't include waiting until the end, you probably can do a decent enough job of matching their success.  Maybe not identical success, especially if you don't have the same amount of recruiting bonus money -- but close enough.

On the contrary, I can quote Tianyi himself, in chat to me,  on several occasions that *sometimes* the best approach for D3 is to be patient and wait for drop downs.  I've gone against that advice a few times with mixed results.  I suck at being patient.

I think what I specifically wrote (in regard to the team you picked up in Naismith) is the higher my prestige, the longer I wait. The lower my prestige (such as when I first took over Menlo), I get aggressive early and pulldown whatever I can get.

Once your prestige is over B , I would prefer to use the 2-3k in pulldown cost to FSS more states, and wait for dropdowns. D3 players are generally interchangeable. As I counted earlier from Tark D3 list, there were 30+ FR with combined ath/spd over 100, combined ath/spd/def over 150.  With average potential in one or two of those categories, you will hit Aejones recruiting standard from his post (which mirrors my talent evaluation). There are probably another 20-30 recruits with high/high ath/spd with starting value in the 30-40s.

It's a little harder to wait for dropdowns in a massive rebuild at C- prestige because players drop down to A+ first, A, A-, and so forth, so it's better to recruit early. 

When I get to A prestige in D3, I'll try it that way :)  My ADD approach to recruiting has been "go hard, go early, then see what falls out".  It works a lot of the time, but about 1/4 of the time I have to adjust my priorities.  I think that's pretty normal.

Let me say, though, Sawyer could probably draw some fouls with that bh and what would likely be a big ath/spd advantage over most SFs.  Probably don't want to give him too much distro, but he could be moderately helpful on offense against the right matchup, even with the minimal lp/per.

You have A+ in Abilene Christian. I use very similar strategies in d2/d3, although scouting more states might not be necessary with you in TX. The general 360 radius already provides you with alot of talent. 

Posted by tianyi7886 on 5/1/2012 3:42:00 PM (view original):
You have A+ in Abilene Christian. I use very similar strategies in d2/d3, although scouting more states might not be necessary with you in TX. The general 360 radius already provides you with alot of talent. 

Very true.

And Texas is about $1200 to scout alone.  I normally add Oklahoma or maybe NM or ARK if there's a promising player there, but usually no need to reach that far.

kujayhawk - i really like holt. he's not off the charts any where, but he's certainly solid. i like having team ath/spd/def ratings at 50 or above and he doesn't do anything to skew those averages.  also looks like he's still improving quite a bit.  18 points of improvement as a redshirt junior is pretty good. either way, he's a good problem to have!

based on his stats thus far, he looks pretty efficient as he's shooting 67% from the floor.  when i have a guy shooting that well, i usually give him a little more distro to see what he can do with it. 

Posted by kujayhawk on 5/1/2012 3:37:00 PM (view original):

Posted by ethan66 on 5/1/2012 3:17:00 PM (view original):

Posted by kujayhawk on 5/1/2012 3:11:00 PM (view original):
Ethan - I think dahsdebater was over the top with that post but you also can't have it both ways.  If you're going to wait until the end of recruiting to pick over scraps you probably aren't going to keep pace with the A+ squads.  If you take the advice they offer, which I'm guessing doesn't include waiting until the end, you probably can do a decent enough job of matching their success.  Maybe not identical success, especially if you don't have the same amount of recruiting bonus money -- but close enough.

On the contrary, I can quote Tianyi himself, in chat to me,  on several occasions that *sometimes* the best approach for D3 is to be patient and wait for drop downs.  I've gone against that advice a few times with mixed results.  I suck at being patient.

Well this is another instance of needing to see body language and misunderstanding what is in a forum post.  That isn't what you said you were doing on page 2.  I'm all for patience, but you gave the impression that you were going a step or two beyond patience and just waiting until the very end.

My resume doesn't come close to most of those in this thread but it's good enough for me to feel pretty comfortable saying that I know what I'm doing and I'd say 85% of my recruits are patient dropdowns.

*EDIT*    The funny thing is that this thread is about a player that I recruited because I wasn't patient.  This was a recruiting season that went over the Thanksgiving holiday and knowing that I was going to be offline during most of recruiting, I jumped on Holt way too early even though I pretty much knew he wouldn't be anything special.

I know what I said.  When I wrote that, i was thinking about my just-ended ML class.  I got my #1 target to consider me right away, but waited til after signings started to get a pulldown for my second one.  He's not a bad player but I didn't have the cash to go earlier for some of the guard pulldowns I wanted and lost out on them.

I don't really buy the "guys who have won championships" said X argument.  Those opinions are valuable, but there is hardly only one way to win in this game.

Yes, his ATH/SPD is a little low for an awesome SF, but as I said before, a good 2nd/3rd option.  If you want better team defense, I'd play one of the guards tianyi mentioned at SF, but there is something to be said for solid guard play off the bench as well.

In some sense, this discussion is moot if he keeps shooting 67%. Keep running him out there!

Honestly, kujay is as good a D3 coach as any of the coaches that have posted here. His Thomas team in D3 Allen has been a consistent powerhouse. And ike's Hamline team (back to back NC in Wooden) a couple seasons back was probably a top 3 D3 team under this engine. I don't really see the value of the "championship" argument. 

Posted by ethan66 on 5/1/2012 3:04:00 PM (view original):

Posted by dahsdebater on 5/1/2012 2:17:00 PM (view original):
In D3 the value of prestige is fairly small.  The only difference between tianyi and you is that he's better at the game than you, and if your approach to recruiting is going to continue to be to kowtow to the top coaches and try to live life as a 2nd class citizen it's going to stay that way.

Kowtow?  2nd class citizen?  Man, there are some pretty harsh adjectives being thrown around in this thread.

I don't "kowtow" to anyone.  I've had great input from several of the top-level coaches here and have benefited greatly from their advice.  I respect their experience immensely, but that's different from "kowtowing" or thinking I can never get there myself.  I'm only acknowledging reality even if it's a temporary one.

But as anyone who's spent time in HD knows, hearing and doing are two different things.  Trying and doing are, as well.  In the end, all of us have to learn the hard lessons the hard way and engaging in that kind of insulting rhetoric doesn't help coaches who are trying to learn.  It only slams doors shut.

Maybe you've forgotten, but a coach with $3,000 per scholarship plus maybe another 1k for an NT bid is on a different playing field than one who has a championship bonus in their coffer.  Sometimes it's not a matter of will or lack of effort.  Sometimes it's nothing more than a matter of means.

This was not meant to be an attack.  I'm just saying that you need to have the attitude that you're going to bring in championship-caliber players in recruiting, not that you can't get the kind of players that tianyi or aejones get and give up looking for them too soon.

I agree with Tianyi - I have mostly avoided pull downs by scouting more states and waiting on recruits. Normally the last day of signing will come around and there will be 5-10 recruits who are solid and will have good careers. My Nebraska Wesleyan team in Tark that just played for the NC was all drop downs or on the D3 list except for maybe one player...

My 2 cents.

1. I wouldn't mind starting that SF on an A+ prestige, depending on the rest of the lineup.  If I had some other legit scorers, then yeah let him do his thing in the background at 5ppg.  You don't need 5 scorers on the floor or 12 scorers on the roster.  That being said, I usually prefer players who do some particular thing really well instead of 50s across the board.  Since I won't be giving him much distro anyway, I'd rather replace some of that "wasted" LP/Per with some combo of Ath/Spd/Def.  Track stars with defense and no scoring are NOT that hard to find.  Ideally the original guy would be a career (valuable) backup for me behind en elite defender and/or scorer.  I would recruit him if I was looking for a career backup, which I do pretty often.

2. The delivery was a little harsh, but I definitely agree with dahs' point.  Extra recruiting money obviously helps, but that's an excuse.  The very best coaches can take over a crap team in a crap conference and make them A+ in short order because they're good at the game.  If you're having trouble getting players that match up with the A+ teams, then pay closer attention to what they're doing.  Look at their recruits and see why they signed them.  If you can't see potential, ask on the CC..most coaches will happily brag about their players.  I definitely wouldn't advise waiting around for signings except in rare situations (e.g. 1 open scholarship).  Tight aggressive is the way to recruit in this game imo, and waiting in line is not a good way to move up the line.

bonus 3rd cent: Scott Cadet can suck it!

Posted by dahsdebater on 5/2/2012 3:07:00 AM (view original):

Posted by ethan66 on 5/1/2012 3:04:00 PM (view original):

Posted by dahsdebater on 5/1/2012 2:17:00 PM (view original):
In D3 the value of prestige is fairly small.  The only difference between tianyi and you is that he's better at the game than you, and if your approach to recruiting is going to continue to be to kowtow to the top coaches and try to live life as a 2nd class citizen it's going to stay that way.

Kowtow?  2nd class citizen?  Man, there are some pretty harsh adjectives being thrown around in this thread.

I don't "kowtow" to anyone.  I've had great input from several of the top-level coaches here and have benefited greatly from their advice.  I respect their experience immensely, but that's different from "kowtowing" or thinking I can never get there myself.  I'm only acknowledging reality even if it's a temporary one.

But as anyone who's spent time in HD knows, hearing and doing are two different things.  Trying and doing are, as well.  In the end, all of us have to learn the hard lessons the hard way and engaging in that kind of insulting rhetoric doesn't help coaches who are trying to learn.  It only slams doors shut.

Maybe you've forgotten, but a coach with $3,000 per scholarship plus maybe another 1k for an NT bid is on a different playing field than one who has a championship bonus in their coffer.  Sometimes it's not a matter of will or lack of effort.  Sometimes it's nothing more than a matter of means.

This was not meant to be an attack.  I'm just saying that you need to have the attitude that you're going to bring in championship-caliber players in recruiting, not that you can't get the kind of players that tianyi or aejones get and give up looking for them too soon.

I don't think I was implying that you can never bring in the same caliber of players as tianyi or aejones and so should never try.  That's missing my point.  And that point was, as I've discovered with my D2 team since reaching A+, it's easier to recruit those players when you have high prestige and more cash. 

You can still do it at lower prestige and with less cash, just not as effectively or as cheaply.  I've learned this from experience.

So yes, those of us below A prestige in D3 without multiple championships do live in a different recruiting world than the elites.  Doesn't mean we can't or won't get there.  Doesn't mean we don't set our sights high.  And it certainly doesn't mean we don't have a valuable perspective to add to threads like this.

I like to use the gambling analogy in recruiting.  Recruiting is like gambling - it's a system of calculated risks that range from the "sure thing" to the "long shot".  The good recruiters know when to cut their losses if they've over-extended.  And the elite coaches have a much wider range of 'sure things' than D3 coaches like myself.