Posted by gillispie1 on 11/15/2020 7:45:00 PM (view original):
Posted by topdogggbm on 11/15/2020 6:15:00 PM (view original):
Posted by gillispie1 on 11/15/2020 5:59:00 PM (view original):
there's been a handful over the years, i've never had one myself. i know rails had one in the early days of his w chester pa tark program like a dozen years ago, i don't know that was the first one ever but i know by the time i started or shortly after when i started paying close attention, he'd already done it. man his teams were good. i've still never seen a talent gap over the field like that. he wound down his legendary d2 tark 8 titles in 9 seasons run right as i was getting started. my first d2 1 seed got smacked by his 9 seed team in the 2nd round, shortly after his run and shortly before he kinda retired from things (i think it was too easy). i remember being like - how are they a 9 seed - i thought i might have the best team in the country and was objectively favored to lose this game. which was frustrating because i was facing a s16 cliff i was struggling to overcome, and when i lost it was back to the drawing board. a handful of seasons later, i started perhaps the 2nd best lower division run up to that point in history, behind rails's, but still - his talent gap is something i have never seen elsewhere, and never came close to matching myself. the degree to which he was building teams head and shoulders above the competition astounds me to this day.
How big of a gap? And judging by what? Numbers or performance?
i guess by awesomeness? or both of the things you said? its a little bit fuzzy in my head, not really because of the 12 years that have elapsed but because i was so new when he was winning that run, i was like in my first season and he has like half way through or something. i was a quick study though. my 2nd ever d3 class i thought was competitive for the best in the nation despite my junk prestige (which used to matter substantially), and they did easily pull a 1 seed as seniors so it seems a fair assessment (lost in the 2nd round to a -5 slowdown zone with a DT on my lone elite 3 point scorer - lesson learned). so its not like i was clueless, i was good enough after 2 months to where if i had stopped improving, i could probably build a+ programs without too much trouble and pick up a title here and there like a lot of folks. that is the head i was working with when i evaluated his team the first time. i remember people making claims like, i think rail's team could make the elite 8 in d1, and i remember looking and being like, yeah it actually looks like it. also most d2 coaches recruited from the d2 pool then - like 90% - so the actual organic competition was insanely minimal. if you took out the top 5 teams per year, it would be like taking a quality but not great b prestige d1 team from today against a good but not great (and definitely not elite) d3 team. the top 5 teams per year were more like, great d3 teams from today? i don't know exactly. its hard to compare across times, but it was a big wide ocean of talent that separated him from the best d2 teams back then.
to TRY to be specific, during my run shortly later, i'd be like 650 overall on my best teams, barely better than the next guy, if that, on raw talent (i was much more of a coach than a recruiter back then, and really, always). nobody was really beating 650 by much in those days, even poorly crafted, you'd see some 660s on occasion (overall ratings are much more all over the place now for high end d2/d3 teams). i had just one 670ish team a year later (or perhaps i did get a 2nd, not 100%), a giant of a d2 team, that i thought was 80% to win the title (4:1 over the field going into the NT i mean, not like once you reach the title game, and i was very conservative in these matters, its a safe bet that 80% figure was either on point or selling that team short). i'm pretty sure he was high 600s throughout the run and i would guess he broke 700 (i'd throw out having seen 714 or so as a guess but it just seems so mind blowingly impossible i'm questioning my memory on the specifics), i think he did but fuzzy - i never cared about overall rating then, its a bad measure, so i'm not sure... but for incredibly elite teams, its always a bad measure, so like comparing his teams to mine, its probably fair to say he made recruiting teams +40-50 overall on mine, as well crafted, look easy? thats comparing his teams to mine from a year later when things had changed some, d1 was fuller for example so it was a lot harder to pick up quality 2 stars players and other insane things he was allegedly doing. but still. i broke a lot of records with that program, it was one of the best ever, and i didn't think i was coming close to rails's marks on talent gap. i thought i was achieving it on odds of winning titles with my best teams compared to his, i was a really good coach pretty quick, but i didn't even pretend to myself that i was near his marks on talent. let alone suggest it to anyone else!
i will say this also - during rail's run, there was no question really, oldresorter was the GOAT, not rails. rails, i thought, had the game's best run (i was in the minority then, but with the added perspective of time, i would say i was right), but if so, then 2 and 3 were both OR, and he had done his d1 work (first d1 3peat and 5/8 titles) at a time when tark was the only new world since the beginning, the only 2/day world, and when most of the whose who of d1 coaches were duking it out to be the first to the elite d1 programs and all that. OR pretty unambiguously showed himself to be the best of the bunch - you know, by a truckload. but when i looked at ORs teams, they looked attainable - but not rails's. my 2nd recruiting class, that first 1 seed caliber class i got, that was in ORs world of dominance (and he had the best d3 program ever when i started, right there in d3 tark). so i was comparing my teams to one of his great programs from the very beginning. rails was just different, he had this talent gap that made his teams clearly unlike any others.
I asked because I had this......
https://imgur.com/a/4hWg2LI
That season coincides with the #2 rpi ever in D2 on the records thread. As you stated, overall isn't a good barometer of team talent. But 45+ points differential from the rest of the field was a large gap. Which I why I was asking, as maybe you were referring to overall rating. That team was every bit as good as the difference shows. Was so disappointed I wasn't able to take the top spot. But in reality it really wasn't that close. I find it hard to fathom either of those top two spots getting passed soon. I feel like there are more QUALITY coaches now as a whole. I've seen higher than 730 at D2. But I've always felt that team could hang with any D2 team ever assembled.
While I'm living in the past and reminiscing, I remember i was able to beat a ranked A10 team and a ranked Big10 that season in exhibition, both by 20+ points. (Of course those were meaningless preseason rankings. But they still represented very solid human controlled D1 teams)
The good ol days.... and yes I know this has nothing to do with drafted D2 players. None were drafted from that team. But the conversation led me here. I'm sure everyone has their favorite HD moment(s) that they hang on to. That team happens to be mine
11/16/2020 5:38 AM (edited)