Posted by zorzii on 11/9/2015 7:39:00 AM (view original):
Check out Gillespie, he turned out St-Bonaventure's in no time and will probably compete in the NT soon enough. It's amazing what he has done. I think it's a solid idea, they should challenge themselves going to low-end D1 teams spread everywhere and see how it goes, if it's possible to win it there.
i appreciate it, but its honestly shocking to hear that program mentioned already on the boards a few times. its really not amazing, ill break it down so anyone else can do the same thing. first season, i signed 4 guards who were awesome offensively, for a mid major. i took the hit on defense, made sure 2 could play PG, and those 4 alone can basically comprise my entire offense. its better to have a deep team offensively but its certainly not necessary and at a mid major, you don't need to get close to perfection to be good, for a mid major. so, i just run my offense through those players, and it makes us decent. one or two are like 90/90/90 spd/per/bh and the others are imperfect per scorers, but close enough for a mid major.
since then, i did nothing, i recruited some mediocre bigs, skipped the next recruting with 1 opening, half assed the last one with 2 openings... just did enough to field a team. all to say, its really all about that first class, the success of st bon, thats all you should be looking at (P.S. we only made 1 2nd round so its not like they are some super team or something. have a better team this year but who knows how it will turn out, lot of luck in your NT draw).
anyway, heres the rub. its all about marginal returns in this game. the marginal return on your first scorer on a team is always the highest. for top teams, we always talk about how the marginal return on defense is the best, when you already have a great team, which is why elite defense wins championships. well, maybe in slightly different words, but thats the essence of it. on the bottom, its basically reversed. an elite defender is still only 20% of your defense while hes on the court. an elite scorer can be 40, maybe 50%, especially at a mid major. so i just took the low hanging fruit, my scorers are basically BCS caliber in their offense only (they suck outside of that), the rest of the team is mediocre, and thats really all i did. i run press so im not competing with the masses of man teams above me, i can get by with less ath/def and deal with a crappier fg% because we still force some turnovers. i will say i put a good amount of effort into class 1, scouting, finding internationals, etc, so i didn't slack the whole way, but this certainly isn't an example of all that can be done. this is only an example of doing 1 thing well with what is essentially a super classed team...
anyway, people talk about, what if the top coaches coached crappy teams, and of course, they could succeed. i don't even believe it has to be a full conference, not to succeed like a mark few has succeeded, who is sort of the long-term gold standard of mid major coaches. the last mid major i remotely tried at was also a 4 season shot (and also started on a d+, they were a true mid major not that it matters), and half the first two season's budget was spent on international recruiting testing, right after seble pulled out unlimited letters and it was hurting my real team that he did that without warning (it was unlimited letters to internationals only which was like a 2:1 advantage over HVs). i only recruited so i wouldn't ghost ship. got lucky with the local bigs and we made the elite 8 on a fb/press in our last year - on half a recruiting budget. its really not that mid majors can't compete here - its that the good coaches want the good jobs and its pretty hard to be that much better than those guys are, to make up for it. the top guys can do it, i've never really tried but just in that 4 season stint and this one its pretty obvious its doable (it was obvious before either, just to be clear, but it has reinforced my views).
its like ive said before, people have to stop trying to play a mid major like the big boys are playing their BCS schools. you can never win playing their game. mix it up, do something different, run your fb/press or give zone a shot. i really wanted to write a d1 mid major guide years ago but i just never have, i turned it into a full HD guide and never finished, its maybe, at best, half way done. i should have just stuck to the d1 mid major guide but i pulled in too much about team composition and stuff and it just got out of hand. but the crux of it was, you have to focus on the bang for your buck, offense, your passing in pg, your reb at the 4/5, focus on those things first. you almost have to play like d2/d3 but even more extreme because of who is above you. and really, enough man defense at mid majors... you can do it, but i really don't recommend it. just take over a program, focus on the key ratings at the key positions, and get your prestige up, and repeat. the reality is, at a mid major, a D+ vs a C+ doesn't even matter that much. the obviously good guys, you aren't getting with either. i mean, it does help, for sure, but you can absolutely build a team capable of pulling in multiple NT wins over their tenure, on a D+. don't try to brute force, gotta find the guys who nobody else is looking at, find the high/highs in the right areas...
11/9/2015 9:34 AM (edited)