OK, we all know athleticism is important in big men, especially in the press type defense. But, I'm wondering what others think as far as HOW important. Let me throw 2 comparisons out (hypothetical Division III players):

Player A:
Ath 20 with average potential
RB 55 with high potential
LP 55 with high potential

Player B:
Ath 30 with average potential
RB 40 with average potential
LP 40 with average potential

Assuming they were basically the same in all other areas, which player would you prefer and why. My gut feeling is that despite the athleticism being lower than I'd typically desire the high potential in BOTH major big man cores is enough to offset it. Thoughts?

my gut is with yours on this, player A by a long shot, in d3, I think it is very important to get players with some d1/d2 qualities, and 55 hi pot rb/lp fills that bill.

a better example might be

Player A:
Ath 35 with average potential
RB 55 with high potential
LP 55 with high potential

Player B:
Ath 55 with hi potential
RB 40 with average potential
LP 40 with average potential

now all of a sudden, player B in a pressing defense is going to be a 80-85 ATH at some point in his career, that would get me thinking a bit

Players in the 1st example are not anywhere close... OR in your example player B wins imo.

Agree OR, although I'd LOVE to find a DIII big like player B... they are not around much anymore

At the risk of hijacking and especially self-promoting, I'll point out my Thomas team in D3 Allen. Quality of competition in D3 Allen is pretty bad but I do have 11 wins (out of 12 attempts) against human coaches that are going to the NT.

And I'm winning with almost no rebounding and truly no low post. My four post players have average athleticism of 73.5 (and speed of 51.5). The average rebounding is at 50.5 and the low post rating is at 35.5.

With a solid SOS (19) I'm somewhat surprised that I'm outrebounding my opponents by 6 a game. I'm almost always facing teams with an average rebound rating much higher than mine but I typically win the battle of the boards.

What blows me away is that my post players are shooting 52.4% from the field. My *best* low post rating is 39 but I'm pretty unstoppable in the post.

I've known for a while how important athleticism is in big men. I didn't really get it until this team which I thought would be borderline top 25 is currently ranked #1 in both the poll and RPI.

So getting back to the original question, or at least the one that oldresorter suggests, I think player B wins. My team of B's has been beating a lot of teams with A's.

kujayhawk, actually I'm not all that surprised that winning the battle of the boards, 73.5 average athleticism for D3 is amazing, and the 50.5 rebounding average can't be too far off the average D3 big man at this point.

I'd go w/ Player 1 from l_e's comparisson, however I've been meaning to do a survey of sorts amongst the top teams in D3 Wooden to figure out what the "average" senior looks like at each position to get a better handle of what is good and what is below average in this post potential world. I've been too lazy to do it the last several seasons and have thusly been flying a bit blind on the recruiting trail, anyone have a good handle on this?

I've been trying to study the super-successful coaches (the top 10 or so guys) to see what I can do to move to the next level. And the only thing they seem to have in common is that they never sacrifice athleticism and speed, period. If they can't find a guy with good speed and athleticism for their position and division who also have acceptable cores, they take a walkon.

That having been said, I think the talent gap in the example is so large that, if forced to choose, I would join everybody else and pick player A.

switching it up a bit, assuming avg potential on all skills, and equal at all spots except ath and sp in d1, would you rather have:

A 60 ath/50 sp

B 70ath/40 sp

b

Assuming OR that this is for a big man...it is close for me but I'd say 70 ath... but at DI and with avg potential I think by the time they leave they may be about the same and so then the starting advantage in speed may offset that.

Quote: Originally Posted By oldresorter on 10/12/2009
switching it up a bit, assuming avg potential on all skills, and equal at all spots except ath and sp in d1, would you rather have:

A 60 ath/50 sp

B 70ath/40 sp

neither of those guys... but i'd take ath>spd barely in a big.

I would usually take B, unless I have say a zone or press team and I want my PF to have some speed, then I might take A.

One area I think that sorely needs tweaking is that ath for big men does not translate into nearly enough trips to the foul line.

Nice work, kujay. What I really wonder is if something like that could transfer over to the DI level (not with 39 lp, obviously, but something comparably low for the level). I tend to think no, because you simply wouldn't be able to enjoy the sort of ath advantage inside at DI as you do over your current DIII opponents. Maybe at low DI?

I don't know, I really think its balance. I mean, sure, in big men, the order of skills goes like ath>reb>LP/sp/def/sb or w/e. But I don't think you can get a big man who is super high in ath and not good in anything else and expect to have success.

For instance, you wouldn't take an ath 80 big man with 65 rebounding over an ath 65 big man with 90 rebounding. I mean, Is ath slightly more important than rebounding? Maybe. I had a guy who was 22 ath/22 speed or something but was in the 80s in rebounding, sb, and 70s in LP. He was our conference POY in the best D3 conference in the country when my team was top 5 rpi, and averaged something like 11pts/9 reb/2 blocks. I almost never recruit low ath big men unless they are just ridiculously good at skills.

So, it's a tradeoff. There are going to be a million threads like this where people are getting an idea, but I don't know that anyone knows exactly how much more important one skill is than the other. It's a give and take and balance type thing.