How important is work ethic for a player to reach his max potential? I'm looking at a DII recruit who has High potential in 7 categories and average in 4 other categories. Guy looks like he'll be a stud.

How will his 16 work-ethic affect him? Should I bother going after him? 

Most people agree under 25 WE is useless unless you are happy where his stats are now. Some people go even higher.

At 16 you will not see him max out in those 7 categories, as great as he seems I'd pass

if you are in a position where you can start him as a freshman and play him as many minutes as possible then he might come close to maxing out, at least in the cores. how's his gpa?

Posted by dacj501 on 2/24/2012 8:28:00 PM (view original):
if you are in a position where you can start him as a freshman and play him as many minutes as possible then he might come close to maxing out, at least in the cores. how's his gpa?

Agree with dac. If you can start him right away and have him play 20+mpg, he can max out in most of the core areas. 

3.1 GPA.

I could start him as a freshman-- he's listed as a SG, but with a 58 LP and 46 PE rating, along with 49 ATH/SPD, 64 DEF, 21 REB. B/H and Passing are in the mid-20s.

High potential in Perimeter, B/H, Passing, Speed  & Rebounding

Just took over this team and we don't have much talent, so I could certainly start him at SF or SG this year.

I was wondering about one of my signees, who also has very low WE (9)

Joshua Smith 

His Athleticism is high potential (I used 4 STs and I didn't discover if High-High or High-Low)
His Rebounding is Low-High potential
His Shot Blocking is Low-High potential
His Defense is High-High potential
His Perimeter is High-High potential

He also has average understanding of the press.

Is he deserving of starting over James Hung? 

I'm still relatively new to this game, but I wouldn't start Smith over Hung. Hung will have better formation IQ, better rebounder and better scorer. B/H is secondary for bigs, but 31 vs 13 is no contest IMO. But with his 62 stamina I'd probably try to get him 20-25 MPG and give Smith the rest.

I believe 20-25 minutes is too much for Hung, that might happen later in the season when his stamina is higher because I think he has about 15 points to improve in stamina still. I'll probably give some time to my PFs at the C position, as basically all my bigs don't have high stamina (Batts: 69, Hung: 62, Smith: 65, Fisher: 55 and Mansell I don't play on playing the C position: 71).

Smith should start for sure. Get that WE up and that guy could be a real stud.

Posted by m4284850 on 2/24/2012 9:33:00 PM (view original):
Smith should start for sure. Get that WE up and that guy could be a real stud.

problem is that WE wont go up much at all even if he starts him all 4 yrs. My guess is at best that WE would get up somewhere around 20-25. And he wont be improving much at all in the meantime. 

i agree with skinz.  i usually ignore all recruits with a WE under 40.  give them the best chance to improve.  i think offseason improvement has a lot to do with WE also

the lowest guy I ever recruited for WE was a 22. But he was going to be a monster. I wanted to redshirt him, and then start him all 4 years, but he never took it. So I was able to only start him for 3 years and I think his WE ended up somewhere between 40-45. He was able to reach close to all his potential but not all.

Based on that I would only take a guy with 20 WE (never lower) unless he was going to be great and I knew I would be able to start him all 4 seasons. Otherwise, I would say go after guys with about 35+ WE.

Posted by skinzfan36 on 2/24/2012 9:51:00 PM (view original):
the lowest guy I ever recruited for WE was a 22. But he was going to be a monster. I wanted to redshirt him, and then start him all 4 years, but he never took it. So I was able to only start him for 3 years and I think his WE ended up somewhere between 40-45. He was able to reach close to all his potential but not all.

Based on that I would only take a guy with 20 WE (never lower) unless he was going to be great and I knew I would be able to start him all 4 seasons. Otherwise, I would say go after guys with about 35+ WE.

I do try to recruit guys with at least 25 WE. In my two seasons at West Chester so far, 7 of 10 players I have signed started with 50+ WE.

However, I was tempted to recruit Smith and Kevin Kubiszewski (started with 19 WE) because they have potential to be great defenders. 

Kubiszewski improved 43 points last season, even with his fairly low WE, and I expect Smith to improve a lesser amount. I will just have to wait and see what happens.

Posted by yanks250125 on 2/24/2012 9:46:00 PM (view original):
i agree with skinz.  i usually ignore all recruits with a WE under 40.  give them the best chance to improve.  i think offseason improvement has a lot to do with WE also

Yanks, I can understand where you're coming from, but in my opinion, you can go lower than 40 and be okay.  You may be ignoring a potential stud by using that high of a cutoff.  Personally, I tend to go down to around 25, but that's also in hopes that I can redshirt the kid, get his IQ up enough that season that he can get some major minutes beginning with the following season, and still get a few "bonus" points worth of improvement that redshirt season, but to each their own, I guess. 

Generally under 30 is where improvement really slows down but its still a mistake to totally ignore kids in the 20-30 range. I have a guy on my Lock Haven team, Ryan Dean, who started at 25 WE and now as a senior after 3 years starting is up to 42 and is my 2nd best player.