In the recently completed Rupp recruiting session, I battled wronoj in D2 for a SG. My school has a B- prestige, and his had a C-. We both had 6 schollies of cash available to us with minimal postseason bonus money factored in. I was 160 miles from him, and wronoj was 300 miles away (it was either 300 or 340, so to be conservative I’ll go with 300). We exchanged sitemails after recruiting was done and he was cool with me posting this in the forums to get some feedback from other coaches.

Here’s how the costs of recruiting actions broke down for us:


Eval / HV / CV

Me: $182 / 332 / 804
Wronoj: $285 / 435 / 1037

So, an eval was 57% more expensive for him, an HV 31% more, and a CV 29% more.

I could post the exact recruiting breakdowns day by day for each of us but I’ll hold off for now so I don’t clutter things up too much. Plus, I just don’t think they’re vital in this case as I explain a little below. So in lieu of that, here’s the summary of each of our recruiting efforts:


Me: Guaranteed 15 mins
20 letters
6 calls / 3 coach calls
26 evals
20 HVs
0 CV’s
Total = $11,914


Wronoj: Guaranteed Start + 20 mins
0 letters
25 calls / 0 coach calls
15 evals
8 HVs
5 CVs
Total = $12,760



He began considering me in the early morning of the first full day of recruiting, and I think wronoj showed up a few cycles later. And from then on, the recruiting battle was always pretty close, and we kept flip-flopping him as expressed in the scholarship emails we were getting from him. The point here is that neither of us had a substantially earlier recruiting effort or a significant period where there was a big lead by one of us.

Now I obviously didn’t know how much he was spending but here was my thought process from the start of the battle. I had a FULL LETTER grade better prestige and had a slight distance advantage. From previous forum threads I’ve read, I remembered that a full grade makes it such that the lower prestige team almost has to spend double the amount as the higher prestige team. So I felt I was in good shape. And given the slight distance advantages I seemed to have, I felt even more convinced that there was no way I could lose this kid if I spent my full remaining cash balance on him, which at the time would put me with ~$13K in him if push came to shove, making him need ~$24K to reach my level of effort. Since we each started with just over $30k and he had some kids considering him and needed to fill 7 total schollies, I felt really, really good with the way the battle was going to end.

Skipping ahead to the last day of recruiting after I seemed to hold the edge for him based on his scholarship email to me, I felt wronoj was out of cash and it was just a matter of time before he signed with me. But it wasn’t meant to be, as I got a scholly email from him and I could tell I was behind. But by this point I was basically tapped out of funds and he signed with wronoj.

I tried to figure out where I went wrong. But when wronoj told me in sitemail what he spent on him, I was really, really shocked. He basically spent the same amount as I did, and even though I had a B- vs. his C-, that part really didn’t seem to come into play. So ignoring all the minor calls and letters, I tried putting all my efforts on an apples to apples basis with him. My mental recruiting conversion goes like this: I’ve gotten kids to consider me with just 5 evals before, and I’ve gotten them to consider with 2 HVs, and I’ve also gotten them to consider with 1 CV, so to me 5 evals = 1 CV and 2 HVs = 1 CV. If I’m wrong in my analysis, it’s probably in these assumptions.

But using these assumptions, my 11 extra evals over the 15 he spent = 2 CVs, and my 12 extra HVs = ~6 CVs. So it would seem I spent 8 CVs vs. his 5 CVs. Now he did promise a 20 mins vs. my 15 mins, as well as a start. I think it was a couple of months ago where I read on a similar recruiting battle thread on the forums that a start only seemed to be worth about 2 CVs of effort. So that would make 7 CVs for him + whatever the 5 extra minutes he promised above my 15 minutes gets him.

In summary, the way I’m figuring things here, I put in the same effort as he did….but shouldn’t my prestige advantage have made me the overwhelming favorite to sign this kid? My full letter grade didn’t seem to play a role whatsoever.

Does a full letter grade from a B- to a C- have the same relative advantage as an A+ vs. a B+? If so, it seems like I got jobbed here. Maybe some other coaches can tell me where I’ve gone wrong with my analysis….or if I have a real beef. Something just doesn’t add up here for me.

1. I too have seen people post that a letter grade difference makes you spend double. I have always felt this was an overexaggeration. I don't think a B- to C- would cause you to spend double.

2. Guaranteed start plus the extra guaranteed minutes is a clear factor.

3. This might show that campus visits are more powerful than you gave them credit for. Certainly I can tell you that you made a mistake in concentrating so much of your effort into evals. The HV and CV are superior.

4. Do not ever look at money spent. Look at effort put forth. So to boil it down: Apparently a promised start, an extra 5 minutes and five campus visits was enough to overcome 11 evals, 12 home visits, the prestige advantage and the distance advantage.

To be perfectly honest, that does surprise me. I would've thought that the combination of the distance and prestige advantage would've had to cause wronoj to put a lot, lot more effort in that you to win, and if I had simply looked at the numbers and had to guess, I would've guessed that you won the battle.

I guess the lessons here are that promises may be worth may than you think, and spending your money in the correct ways is also quite important.

Not much to weigh in as far as if you should've won the battle, but this is interesting because it seems CVs hold more weight than I ever imagined.

Just to clarify on the evals, b/c wronoj brought it up as well in the sitemails. The kid was D1, so the evals were an effort to pull him down. And believe it or not, after my initial blitzkrieg of 14 evals all in a single cycle, he still wasn't considering me (or anyone for that matter). So instead of monkeying around and dribbling some more evals out there cycle after cycle, I went for the early mover advantage and threw the other 12 out there all at once. After these 12, he was considering me. From then out I stuck to the HVs, as I felt this gave me the best bang for my buck given my better relative distance advantage. So it's not like I kept throwing the evals out there, I only did it to get him to consider me first and as fast as possible.

Maybe the 5:1 thing is off a bit in D2, but I know in D3 I've gotten a D3 kid to consider me with 5 evals. And of course they'll also consider you with just 1 CV as well, so the 5:1 ratio seems plausible to me. Sure a single CV vs. a single eval is no contest, but lob enough evals and you could attain the same underlying effort, no?

And I know it's not the amount of money spent by each but the effort, but in this case it just seems so contradictory to my recruiting experiences plus what others have posted that a start could overcome such a perceived disadvantage in prestige and distance. The extra 5 mins surely couldn't mean that much. And btw, when you promise a kid minutes, does he still send a response saying "Wow, playing time blah blah blah"? Because after I sent him 10 mins. and then 15 mins., I never got one of these emails, but my recruiting history doesn't show these promises as being rejected, but I'm wondering.

And I didn't mention it in the original post, but the whole pulldown thing seems a bit quirky as well. As I mentioned above, after 14 evals, he wasn't considering me. But looking at wronoj's efforts, it looks like he may have pulled him with just 13 evals. Here's the snippet of his initial day's recruiting effort he sent me by sitemail:

10/15/2009 phone call $10
10/15/2009 phone call $10
10/15/2009 phone call $10
10/15/2009 guaranteed starting spot $10
10/15/2009 guaranteed minutes - (10) $10
10/15/2009 scholarship offer $100
10/15/2009 scouting trips - (2) $570
10/15/2009 scouting trips - (3) $855
10/15/2009 home visits - (2) $870
10/15/2009 scouting trips - (8) $2,280

What's unclear to me is the 2 HVs sandwiched between his first 8 evals that weren't enough to get him considering and the next 5, which apparently were enough to have him being considered. But it would seem that the 2 HV's wouldn't get accepted until after the kid is considering him, which isn't until enough evals are thrown out there. So it would seem that the HV's influenced the kid earlier than I would've guessed (i.e. before he was really considering him from the first 8 evals). Or, if this isn't the case, then it appears that it took wronoj and his C- prestige 13 evals to pull him, whereas my B- prestige and my initial 14 evals weren't enough. So something seems a bit odd here as well.

yeah, after about 6 the evals are just wasted cash as far as signing the kid.

If you take out the excess evals he spent about 10k and you 8k, still should be close, maybe the start pushed him over.

You could have done 14 more HV or almost 6 CV for the money you wasted on Evals and they player would have been yours.

davey and Z, you guys are both saying I wasted the money on evals. But again, after the first 14 evals, he wasn't considering me, so if I had stopped there and switched to HV/CVs, he would've simply rejected them all, right? And I'd be with nothing to show. My only option was to keep using the evals to get him to consider me. I'd have preferred that he simply started considering me after 10 evals, but it wasn't the case, and if 14 didn't work, then would 15? 16? 17? I didn't want to mess around, so I simply dumped another 12 on him, figuring this would be enough and I'd get some more effort into him.

And how is it that evals are that useless in your observations? There has to be some underlying effort from them, certainly not 1:1, but for them to be absolutely, totally useless beyond a certain point seems incredibly misaligned. Why wouldn't this apply to excessive HVs or CVs? It seems like such an arbitrary and subjective statement to say this logic applies only to evals.

is there a way to get old recruiting information? I meant to save my recruiting info for a sf I lost last season after spending 98K on him but must have forgot.

Yes, jdno, you had to continue with the evals in order to pull him down and get him to consider you, so you didn't have much choice but to spend a lot of money on evals.

I think where you went wrong is by dumping the additional 12 on him all at once. Usually 15 is enough to do the trick, and in rare occasions maybe 20. I usually do an initial 10, and if they still aren't considering me I go in 5 eval increments.

zhawks/davey, if it was a pulldown, he had to overspend on evals. This isn't DI.

Quote: Originally Posted By fussyd on 10/22/2009
Yes, jdno, you had to continue with the evals in order to pull him down and get him to consider you, so you didn't have much choice but to spend a lot of money on evals.

I think where you went wrong is by dumping the additional 12 on him all at once. Usually 15 is enough to do the trick, and in rare occasions maybe 20. I usually do an initial 10, and if they still aren't considering me I go in 5 eval increments.

zhawks/davey, if it was a pulldown, he had to overspend on evals. This isn't DI.

I find it VERY hard to believe this kid was a pulldown if the lesser prestige school didn't have to do as many evals.

Quote: Originally posted by zhawks on 10/22/2009

Quote: Originally Posted By jdno on 10/22/2009davey and Z, you guys are both saying I wasted the money on evals. But again, after the first 14 evals, he wasn't considering me, so if I had stopped there and switched to HV/CVs, he would've simply rejected them all, right? And I'd be with nothing to show. My only option was to keep using the evals to get him to consider me. I'd have preferred that he simply started considering me after 10 evals, but it wasn't the case, and if 14 didn't work, then would 15? 16? 17? I didn't want to mess around, so I simply dumped another 12 on him, figuring this would be enough and I'd get some more effort into him.If this were the case you'd think he'd have to have used just as many, if not more due to him having a lower prestige.

And how is it that evals are that useless in your observations? There has to be some underlying effort from them, certainly not 1:1, but for them to be absolutely, totally useless beyond a certain point seems incredibly misaligned. Why wouldn't this apply to excessive HVs or CVs? It seems like such an arbitrary and subjective statement to say this logic applies only to evals. Yes, evals are essentially useless when compared to HV/CV, never did i say they have no effort but very very small amount compared to the most useful recruiting tools.

Z, trust me, the kid was a pulldown for both of us. And that's why I posted the part about wronoj being seemingly able to pull him down for a few less evals, as it seems like something was a bit off on that as well.

I understand that evals are relatively little underlying effort vs. a CV, but don't you think a 5:1 ratio is about right? And if so, then the cost of 5 evals for me was $910, and the cost of a single CV for me was $804 (and $1037 for him), so it's not like I really lost out by misusing a large chunk of my budget. If the 5:1 holds for evals:CV, then really all I did was throw away about $200, an inconsequential amount here.

Quote: Originally posted by Fregoe on 10/22/2009is there a way to get old recruiting information? I meant to save my recruiting info for a sf I lost last season after spending 98K on him but must have forgot.

Well, I save all the emails from recruiting, and I copied the recruiting history from the kid's page before recruiting ended. Beyond that, I'm not sure what else one can do.

Quote: Originally Posted By zhawks on 10/22/2009

Quote: Originally Posted By fussyd on 10/22/2009

Yes, jdno, you had to continue with the evals in order to pull him down and get him to consider you, so you didn't have much choice but to spend a lot of money on evals.

I think where you went wrong is by dumping the additional 12 on him all at once. Usually 15 is enough to do the trick, and in rare occasions maybe 20. I usually do an initial 10, and if they still aren't considering me I go in 5 eval increments.

zhawks/davey, if it was a pulldown, he had to overspend on evals. This isn't DI.

I find it VERY hard to believe this kid was a pulldown if the lesser prestige school didn't have to do as many evals

Well, you must not have read my post VERY hard, because as I said, jdno went overboard on evals by dumping 12 in one shot after having already used 14, giving him 26 total. As I said, he probably only needed 15, which is what wronoj used.

For you to say that he wasted money by using more than 1 eval was totally offbase since he probably had to use up to 15 to get him considering him in the first place.

fussy, if you look at that little snippet of recruiting history i posted above for wronoj, he only used 13 evals, plus whatever those 2 HVs sandwiched in between did for him (or maybe it's just the way it's listed and those came during the same cycle as the 5 evals). So 13 was good enough for him (a few cycles later than my efforts), but 14 wasn't good enough for me, so it would seem.