We left off last season with this final post:

Final Season 1 Post:

We started the year here:

Guess Reports graded all aspects of the team "F" with a full roster value of 32.05 which ranked this team the third worst team in Div II. To put this in context, the worst team in DIV III had a rating of 39.39. I have never personally coached a team with as little talent as this team.

We ended the year here:

Guess Reports:

Full Roster Rank - 139 (out of 144)
Full Roster Value - 42.70
Average Player Rating - 49.03

Offense Grade - F
Defense Grade - F

Tons of work to do, but overall I grade myself as follows:

Recruiting - A
In-Season Development - F (really bone-head move placing a redshirt on a Freshman promised start...just forgot the rules)
In-Season Growth - B
In-Season Coaching - C (I thought I could coach a win out of this talent. Not so much.)

Thanks for reading and tune in for Season 2....next season.

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On to Season #2 - Recruiting

Just prior to Season #2, I cut 3 juniors which resulted in 16 recruits for this class.

Recruiting Goals:

1. Improve across the board talent.
2. Try to limit recruits to High Potential only.
3. Get 1 QB that can be redshirted.

Allocation (tenative):

1 QB
3 RB
1 WR
2 TE (BLK/POSS)
3 OL
3 DL
1 LB
2 DB

Overall GD Rating Beginning of Season #2 - 42.70
Best Player - OL Gates 59.36
Div II Ranking - 139
AVG Player Ranking - 49.03

Let's win 6 games this year!

By the way, don't know where you got your projected ranking of 139 this season. Yatzr's tool has you at 82nd. I know you'll still have a lot of improving to do but I totally see 6 wins within reach, if not one or two more. Things look like they're coming together nicely for you so far. Keep it up.

This is pretty fun to see as well. You have made quite the improvement in just a year which I followed while I was in D3 last year. I'm like a little kid in a candy store when it comes to looking at all these other user's stats and I think this is awesome to see year by year growth nitros. How do you use/see the Yatzr tool?

http://gdreports.com/tools/yatzr/

Explore as much as possible and watch all the intro videos. They helped me with figuring everything out that I needed to. And donate to the man. It's an amazing service he gave.

Ickiwonkin: I do use Yatzr (and purchased the premium package), but for purposes of this blog I wanted to use a reference that everyone could access so decided to use the GD Reports. I don't think GD Reports rates the teams again until after recruiting...so I am guessing we should go way up in the rankings as Yatzr clearly shows.

Thanks for the vote of confidence on the 6 win season. I think we can get there as well. Frankly, on the optimistic end, we may play for the conference title this year if we get lucky in 2-3 games.

Posted by nitros on 4/8/2016 2:52:00 PM (view original):
Ickiwonkin: I do use Yatzr (and purchased the premium package), but for purposes of this blog I wanted to use a reference that everyone could access so decided to use the GD Reports. I don't think GD Reports rates the teams again until after recruiting...so I am guessing we should go way up in the rankings as Yatzr clearly shows.

Thanks for the vote of confidence on the 6 win season. I think we can get there as well. Frankly, on the optimistic end, we may play for the conference title this year if we get lucky in 2-3 games.

I definitely thought it was possible for you to play in the CCG and ultimately it was pretty much a coin flip that caused me to go with Arkansas Tech but it could definitely go your way as well. Good luck for sure!

Recruiting

For coaches reading this short blog, this is a lesson in vision. Better vision = better recruits.

West Alabama completed its second rebuild season recruiting and did about the same as last season, which is actually pretty good in light of the fact we went another 0-13 last year. GD Reports shows the following results for season 107 recruiting:

Season 107
Full Roster Rank - 60
Recruit Class Rank - 39
Average Recruit Rating - 52.58
Rank in Conference - 3rd

Season 106
Full Roster Rank - 139
Recruit Class Rank - 40
Average Recruit Ranking - 49.03
Rank in Conference - 3rd

Players:

OL:
Kelley 60.33 (2)
Weber 52.58 (3) (Redshirt)
Coates 51.54 (3)

RB:
Williams 54.86 (2)
Clark 51.76 (3) (Redshirt)
Hawkins 50.14 (3)

TE:
Hodge 42.99 (3)
Carlson 41.95 (3)

QB:
Wiggins 43.28 (3) (Redshirt)

WR:
Justice 44.32 (3)

DL:
Kline 52.38 (2)
Reed 51.68 (2)
Blair 47.70 (3)

LB:
Brown 50.46 (3)
Alexander 49.20 (2)

DB:
White 40.74 (3)

Overall: I am pleased again with recruiting but frustrated that my vision is still so poor. My team ranking by GD Reports improved from F's across the board to D- for Offense and Defense. It seems silly, but I am really pleased to be out of the F grade. My roster ranking improved to 60 in Season 107 vs. 139 in Season 106.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. If you are an opponent reading, Wiggins (my redshirt QB) is going to make you hate him in two years....;)

Kaboom! West Alabama just won its first game since Season 104 beating Wingate 62-17 behind the arm of Andrew Boyd with a line of
17/26 201 Yds 4 TD 0 Int.

Boyd is an interesting study in gameplanning and Formation IQ. Boyd is a JR and started every game since a FR.

FR - 1 TD/35 INT
SO - 1 TD/6 INT
JR - Formation IQ (I Formation) - 50

Congrats Nitros. Quite the way to begin the new season and best of luck to your West Alabama team. Just go my first win in DII but barely squeaked by. Made a few changes at halftime which helped and hoping that my team can play a full good game from now on

Nice mattyice08 (love the name by the way). I really like the competition in Div II of this world. Hope to stay a while and hope you do as well.

My gamplan change seemed to work a lot better so I'm hoping it continues to do that. I plan on staying here for a while as well. Good luck to your team the rest of the season.

West Alabama passed a great milestone. The fighting Tigers (Louie the Tiger is our mascot) have won 7 straight behind the smash-mouth running game of Soph Martinez and Freshman Williams. I met my goal this year of winning 6 games this year, which means my vision should go up considerably next year (or so I hope).

Let's not get too impressed...I scheduled all cupcakes and will do the same next year as well to improve vision.

Thanks for reading.

Nitros

End of the Season. I did much better this year than I anticipated. In fact, absent a random loss to one of the few teams I should have beaten...we would have been undefeated with a chance for the playoffs. So...great news that I made the conference championship game. This means I get one more game to improve my players. That is really important for a rebuild team.

Gameplan Note: I wanted my first two recruit classes to be running centric because those were the easiest players to recruit to get the team good as quickly as possible in order to improve vision (RB's, OL and DL). Next year I turn to WIS 3.1 style players...air raid offense. I intend to play air raid out of the I formation, so that I can pound the ball if the opponent has a weak DL.

Player Development: Since I have an extra game, I will post my stat gains in the year end wrap up. I implemented a new training program based on a few threads in the main forum. Basically, I put 20 points in my main offense/defense and 25 points in each primary attribute for my players. This seems to be the maximum return for points spend. If anyone has comments on this allocation, please let me know (if you are willing).

Player Cuts: I still intend to cut 2-3 players from my first recruiting class. Since my vision should improve dramatically, I want to cull out the lowest players on my team. I have plenty of time to rebuild my reputation as a coach.

Redshirt: The team is configured to only have 1 SR graduating. This presents a pretty cool opportunity to redshirt some SOPH players. Honestly, I have not redshirted SOPH players before so I am curious how much of a WE hit the players will take.

Thanks for reading.

I do redshirt sophs at times. This season I r/s a soph O-Lineman. He ad 59 WE to start and lost 7 points. You can expect 12 - 14%.

Thanks a ton for the response ranger1951. Very much appreciated.