Posted by yatzr on 5/14/2012 2:37:00 PM (view original):
Hey gillispie1, there might be some confusion over what this tool actually does. It doesn't pull recruits off the current browser screen like some people do with excel. It's a java program that uses an http library to actually log into the WIS site as you, go to the recruit search page, run a bunch of searches to find all possible recruits, record all the information for those recruits, and then dump all that information to a .csv. All you see during this is the little java program and a progress bar. The idea is that you can quickly get a spreadsheet of all the recruits and then do whatever formulas and sorting you wanted. Right now, if you're a D3 school, it's not running any D2 searches, but it kinda sounds like it should? I still haven't grasped how dropdowns work? They just show up in your D3 search after a few days of recruiting? Is there anything about them to make it obvious that they dropped down? Are you only able to recruit players after they dropped down?
My GD recruiting tool is a much larger java program that sort of acts as a spreadsheet after you've downloaded the recruits. It makes it much easier to sort recruits, filter or hide recruits, and to flag the ones you're interested in. It also includes columns where you can enter in whatever equations you want based on the recruits' attributes. I believe most people end up using the GUESS equations that bhazlewood has published, but I know several people that just make their own. I fully agree with you on the purpose of equations being to eliminate the bad recruits.
cool, i quickly misread your original post. that is definitely useful, im curious, whats the name of that HTTP library? the main program i had written was a dynasty ranking program that reads all teams and spits out dynasty rankings, but thats mostly math, and reading pages that *you don't have to log in to see*. ive never taken the time to figure out how to log in from java, and would like to at least know where to start looking, should i want to do anything in the future? with recruiting, my program came along post-potential, when there were only a couple pages of recruits to look at (less than 10 at least), so i just copy pasted the HTML 5 times in 30 seconds and then was at the same place, i meant to make it automatic some day, but never did. mostly i just wanted to play with the formulas, thats the interesting part of this whole thing anyway :)
if you are a d3 school, yes, it should pull in d2 recruits. with d2, you should pull in d1 recruits, but could exclude for convenience any recruits ranked in the top 100 or so... it would be best if the division of those recruits was saved, so coaches could view it, but with the understanding that over time, it could be out of date.
dropdowns, just think of it like this. HD has 3 hour recruiting cycles. after a handful of cycles, some d2 recruits will think, man, i haven't gotten much attention, and just magically move to a d3 pool. then, players will continue to drop down until a few cycles from the end of recruiting. these recruiting pools are different for different teams - every team has a prestige. so for example, an A+ school may start with 1600 players in d3, where a B+ school starts with 1500 (just making up those numbers, but its probably not terribly inaccurate). those 100 players show as d2 for the b+ school, and will be the first to drop down.
so to answer your question, yes, they just show up in your d3 search after a few days of recruiting. at that time, there is no way to know they dropped just from the search results. however, you can send d2 players a phone call - just one 10 dollar call, which you see referenced in posts here. the player will respond with a bunch of garbage that boils down to "hey, i will drop to you eventually" or "go to hell". in the later case, nothing you can ever do will get that player to your school. in the former case, the player would drop to you at some point, except that someone may sign him before that happens (signings start like half way through recruiting, the player may have been willing to drop to you 1 day after signings). however, you can send him a bunch of scouting trips, and get him to drop immediately. also, the player will phone call you back when he drops, so you are aware of it.
so, let me summarize what recruiting looks like for a great number of people in d3 and d2 (using d3 as example). cycle 1 - maybe find a player or two in d3 you like, and recruit them. find like 100 players in d2 who are better, send them a phone call, and wait. cycle 2 - go through the phone call responses, identify who is viable. then, strategys part ways. many people will immediately pull down a couple players they really like, and hope to hold on to them. that probably is the norm in d3, in d2, you get raped by d1 schools so often, that many people just wait. but regardless, that first cycle is the same. if you had a macro - send a phone call to all players rated above X, in certain states, in the division above, that would be great.
about that macro - heres the thing. in d3, its like really hard to say who in d2 won't talk to you. i could probably pick out a decent number of recruits who wouldn't without checking, and be 95% or more accurate, but that would only include me picking like 20% of recruits. there is no ranking system and overall rating is a poor indicator of if a player will drop to you. so for d3, you almost may as well spam the whole local d2 of players who are good enough to consider recruiting.
in d2, for a lot of schools, basically the whole "unranked" d1 body is viable. lower prestige d2 schools that is not the case. higher prestige d2 schools, it is. but then there are 200 ranked players at every position. its always like this - if the 150 ranked center will talk to you, and the 149 ranked center won't, then guaranteed, 148 and higher won't talk to you, and everything under 150 will. that cutoff changes every season. so, for a d2 school, here would be the ultimate tool for me and many coaches (i would pay the 10 dollars so fast its not even funny, even though i wrote and stopped using something similar to the GD tool you described). if you could scrape that whole d1 pool, rank the players by some rating value, and then let me enter cutoffs for each position, say 150 for PF, 110 for SG. then, any player ranked less than that, or unranked, who is over a certain rating (also specified, based on the rating computed on whatever formula, which is hopefully editable, even if not cleanly), send them a phone call. that would have to be for scouted players only. or maybe by a list of states or something.
basically in HD you can't see the whole country - you can, but not their potential, which makes all the difference in the world. so in IL, i might scout IL, MO, IN, etc etc, say 10 states in all. well, i really just want to send phone calls to players under certain ranking (HD's ranking), over a certain rating (your tool's rating). but then i might not have found a player, and i might scout a few more states. so it would be great if you could do the phone call thing in stages.
hopefully that makes some sense, aside from the few mindless ramblings. that phone call sending is the most time consuming and least enjoyable part of the whole game of d2/d3 recruiting. you'd still have to process the phone call responses (unless you did that too, in which case, you'd have to charge at least a hundred dollars because that is just way too helpful to sell for 10 dollars, although honestly, its really not that difficult once u are already logged in. there are maybe 10-20 messages you would have to interpret and i would be happy to supply them to you, with their translation, although its pretty damn obvious. if this was PRE potential, youd have to charge more like a thousand dollars, because so many coaches had to recruit nationally and spent like 5-10 hours a season doing this same mundane BS over and over, and after like 100 seasons... 1000 dollars sounds pretty damn good, for saving 500-1000 hours of wanting to shoot yourself in the face. i am only 50% kidding about that, i wouldn't pay the thousand dollars, but i'd have had to think about it, seriously, it was that long and boring to recruit *correctly*). d1 is different, you really don't have to send phone calls, just the basic tool that important and ranks players would be nice, because then you don't have to spend the time to look through every single player, just the ones who have a chance of being worth anything. it would be bad for the game in a way though, because the coaches who are willing to look for the diamond in the rough will often find it, because not all coaches are looking for that diamond in the rough, because they are higher prestige and/or lazy or whatever :)