I expect to install a halfcourt press this year, but that depends on whom I manage to bring to the team. It also might wait until next year, or possibly simply won't be run this year. I don't see Fordham being able to run uptempo this season, and to me the two go hand-in-hand.
Part of my recruiting struggles my first year here included an ill-advised attempt to use booster gifts. Actually, booster gift, a single throwback jersey to a kid who was begging for handouts. I thought better of it the next cycle, and let the recruit go somewhere else, as I had burned through my legitimate budget before I strongly considered going illegitimate.
After that moment of weakness and desperation, I decided to treat the whole exchange like an experiment on whether there was a de minimus violation for which I'd be caught. The player didn't turn me in, but some fired employee from the athletic department did, and my reputation plunged from an A or A+ to a C. Fordham was put on probation.
Since then, my reputation is now back up to an A-. I have stayed clear of anything that would hurt it further, including allowing any kids to struggle academically, even if they're on their redshirt year. There's another aspect to that, though, since I think it might be counterproductive, unless it would take a ton of practice minutes to get them to an okay point on grades, to allow a redshirting freshman to fall below a 2.0. While it doesn't affect their improvement over the year, I still have to make up for it in following years, as apparently a bad GPA makes a kid dumber.
I even had one, at Princeton, in Crum, who came in with a 3.8 or something and wound up failing one of his semesters while he was redshirting. If I'd dedicated 5 practice minutes to his classwork, I doubt he would have fallen below a 3.5.