Hi all, this is my first season in over 10 years of real time, and therefore my first recruiting cycle in the new system! I've found a recruit who has good ratings and per-rating potentials, and whose preferences match up well with my team. However, his work ethic is an F-. He has a preference of "wants to play", and I am in a position where I could reasonably promise him decent minutes. How much impact could I reasonably expect this to have on his work ethic? And what's the best case improvement I could reasonably expect from this player if his work ethic stays in the F range? He has blue potential in a number of ratings, and I understand from the 3.0 guide that that represents 20-27 points of upside, but with such low work ethic I assume I shouldn't expect anything near that amount.

Happy to be back playing HD, and thanks in advance for your help!

Not that this helps if you don't scout to fourth level, but I never go below 35 WE if he needs the blue and green to become a good player. And 35 is in the "D" range I believe.

It’s worth scouting him to level 4 if you can. An F- work ethic is 0-15. And you’ll see a difference if its 15 then say, a 2.

As for his blue in potential, some of those could actually be green. You won’t know until he’s at Level 4. I tend to not recruit poor WE players, so someone else can probably give you a better idea what sort of numbers growth to expect.

im struggling to imagine recruiting an F- WE being viable in d3. there are sometimes ridiculously high starting rating players with 1WE who will fall pretty far, but i feel like for a just-back coach, this is an edge case that can be ignored. even in low and mid d1, almost every good player is relying heavily on growth and decent WE is really important.

OP the problem is WE growth is so horrendous at the low figures. at 50 WE (the highest growth point for WE roughly), you might grow a 25 mpg starting freshman say +8 work ethic. even down at 25, 30 work ethic you grow pretty darn fast, at least +6. but if you are starting at say 13, you'll grow like 13->16 with that 25mpg start, then 16->19/20 ->23-25 after 3 years of starting full time. that is just too big an investment for so little return. a player with 13 WE will come nowhere near capping out. its still a lot better than a 1 WE guy - anyone in that 1 to 8 or so range, just assume has the same ratings as a senior as a freshman. at least that low to mid teens WE dude will grow a bunch, but it is REALLY limiting. maybe you get 60% of the growth, if you go on all in starting the player? the most common rule of thumb i've heard is 20 WE minimum and i think that is a really reasonable approach, viewing those 20-30WE somewhat skeptically.

Posted by craigaltonw on 11/24/2020 5:02:00 PM (view original):
It’s worth scouting him to level 4 if you can. An F- work ethic is 0-15. And you’ll see a difference if its 15 then say, a 2.

As for his blue in potential, some of those could actually be green. You won’t know until he’s at Level 4. I tend to not recruit poor WE players, so someone else can probably give you a better idea what sort of numbers growth to expect.

I've wondered about this. If a player is blue at scouting level 3 and turns green at level 4 is that an indication he's on the low end of green as far as expected growth? Conversely if a player is green at 3 is that an indication of high end green growth? Or is it all still just random chance?

Posted by boxxy1 on 11/25/2020 7:58:00 AM (view original):

Posted by craigaltonw on 11/24/2020 5:02:00 PM (view original):
It’s worth scouting him to level 4 if you can. An F- work ethic is 0-15. And you’ll see a difference if its 15 then say, a 2.

As for his blue in potential, some of those could actually be green. You won’t know until he’s at Level 4. I tend to not recruit poor WE players, so someone else can probably give you a better idea what sort of numbers growth to expect.

I've wondered about this. If a player is blue at scouting level 3 and turns green at level 4 is that an indication he's on the low end of green as far as expected growth? Conversely if a player is green at 3 is that an indication of high end green growth? Or is it all still just random chance?

At level 3, green doesn’t exist. You only know his potential is green once they get to L4.

Posted by darnoc29099 on 11/25/2020 9:05:00 AM (view original):

Posted by boxxy1 on 11/25/2020 7:58:00 AM (view original):

Posted by craigaltonw on 11/24/2020 5:02:00 PM (view original):
It’s worth scouting him to level 4 if you can. An F- work ethic is 0-15. And you’ll see a difference if its 15 then say, a 2.

As for his blue in potential, some of those could actually be green. You won’t know until he’s at Level 4. I tend to not recruit poor WE players, so someone else can probably give you a better idea what sort of numbers growth to expect.

I've wondered about this. If a player is blue at scouting level 3 and turns green at level 4 is that an indication he's on the low end of green as far as expected growth? Conversely if a player is green at 3 is that an indication of high end green growth? Or is it all still just random chance?

At level 3, green doesn’t exist. You only know his potential is green once they get to L4.

exactly.

when potential came out, there were 3 major categories - low, medium, and high. this has not changed. you could discover low-low vs high-low (pointless, mostly) and low-high (blue) vs high-high (green) via a special tool (scouting trips) that sent you back 'emails' you had to parse to figure out the answer.

in 3.0 level 3 was made to correspond just with the low-medium-high. you only see between those 3. when you get to scouting level 4, you get the full 5 colors (low low red, high low orange, medium black, low high blue, high high green) right on the screen - no more parsing weird 'emails'. so you are just getting more information at level 4. at scouting level 3 a blue (low high) is really an unknown high (21-90 growth left), so its kinda weird, but that is what is happening.

https://imgur.com/a/yhXmnDd

This is the best example of low WE, and handing the situation properly. 14 WE to begin with. I redshirted him as a freshman. He started every single game of his career. He has literally 1 day of growth left in his career. As tonight is the CT Final of his senior season.

The reason I like this example a lot, is because the way his ratings were setup to begin with. When you see a player with low WE and all greens, don't be fooled. You won't max them all. So you have to make the decision to forget about some ratings. In this case....... a wing with green ATH/DEF/LP/PER and blue ST. I ended up with basically 20s (practice minutes) in conditioning, defense and perimeter his whole career. Everything else I basically punted. That LP began so low it would've barely moved the needle. Sure I'd love to have a nice 30 LP with it. But not sure I would've made it very far.

14 is F-. So as another coach said, 14 is different than 2. I know some will argue against me, but this is why I personally never have signed a player at L3. Sometimes you can get lucky. But I just like to know exacts ahead of time

Thanks, all! This feedback has been super helpful. That most recent example is really impressive, and I think I'm going to go for it. I scouted to level 4 and it turns out they have 9 WE, but lots of green categories, and solid starting numbers across the board, so even with punting on a few categories, he can be really good by his junior year. Unfortunately he wants to play right away, so I don't think I can redshirt him, but I plan to start him from day 1.

Posted by topdogggbm on 11/25/2020 8:59:00 PM (view original):
https://imgur.com/a/yhXmnDd

This is the best example of low WE, and handing the situation properly. 14 WE to begin with. I redshirted him as a freshman. He started every single game of his career. He has literally 1 day of growth left in his career. As tonight is the CT Final of his senior season.

The reason I like this example a lot, is because the way his ratings were setup to begin with. When you see a player with low WE and all greens, don't be fooled. You won't max them all. So you have to make the decision to forget about some ratings. In this case....... a wing with green ATH/DEF/LP/PER and blue ST. I ended up with basically 20s (practice minutes) in conditioning, defense and perimeter his whole career. Everything else I basically punted. That LP began so low it would've barely moved the needle. Sure I'd love to have a nice 30 LP with it. But not sure I would've made it very far.

14 is F-. So as another coach said, 14 is different than 2. I know some will argue against me, but this is why I personally never have signed a player at L3. Sometimes you can get lucky. But I just like to know exacts ahead of time

this is great advice from dogg for how to manage these low work ethic players. about 6 months ago we signed a 14 WE player to an A prestige d1 program - so i am totally willing to do these myself, too - however, its generally a rare thing and the less experienced you are, the less these players make sense.

if you look at dogg's player, 2 important things to note - by the start of his 4th season, he was not nearly capped (the redshirt is part of that, but still), and also, if his green per was no so lofty, the eventual payoff for all those crappier earlier seasons would be much lessened. despite his insistence on being a knuckle dragger who just wings it, dogg knows whats up. he's a good coach - he knew the gamble he was taking, he knew his dude would be garbage, a waste of space, for a good long while. and he knew he could manage that, that he could afford to start him the whole way. or maybe he just guessed and got lucky :) i suppose i don't really know, but i'm banking on the former!

these are just high risk, medium reward type players in general, hence my advice to sort of steer clear in the beginning. smart coaches can manage the risk and maximize the reward, but even for someone like me or dogg, these players are almost never our first choice, and are not common occurrences on our teams (i am guessing a bit, i never coached with dogg so sort of generalizing, i've only checked in briefly from afar). its more like, a tool in the toolbox, and one we almost never reach for first.

i will say this to the OP. dogg runs m2m. if he ran press, would he give up that slot for so many seasons? perhaps not (the 14 WE guy i signed was with fb/fcp which is press on steroids but he was a high d1 player who started out good with like 90ath/def - so its a little different - outside of high d1 those types mostly do not exist - and therefore its less common to see worth-while low WE guys outside high d1). you run press, and almost definitely should not have signed the guy - but that's fine! there's only one way to learn for sure! also 9 WE and 14 WE are very different - it will take you approximately 1.5 seasons of starting to get up to 14WE. dogg's player was able to get to 38 WE - after 4 seasons of starting, your guy might get to 25 if hes lucky. its a lot more different than you'd think, without the experience this stuff is not obvious. just 2-4 points of WE at those low levels (under ~20 WE) puts a player an entire season of WE growth behind another - and mostly these guys are 2nd, 3rd, 4th choices for folks like dogg and me. so if you take the same guy who is our 2nd/3rd/4th choice, and drop a mere 3 WE, that is huge and often ends the discussion right there. we'll find someone else or take a walkon instead.

Thanks, gillespie-- those are really good points you make. I didn't think through it before, but what you said about the few extra points of work ethic makes a lot of sense-- since work ethic impacts its own improvement (at least up to a point), there's some degree of exponential growth at the smallest values. The depth requirement of a fullcourt press is another very good point. Fortunately this guy is decent enough with his base ratings (at least relative to my team) that I wouldn't feel *terrible* giving him 10-15 minutes off the bench, but it's definitely a bigger price to pay.

I drag knuckles now! But I got some big ol hands. I'm just trying to shave them down.

Yes I likely wouldn't have recruited him if I was press. If agree. And it's correct that he wasn't my first choice. But I was intrigued by a couple things..... one, if you look at my (pathetic) history in Iba at NKU, for some reason I'm setup on this "every other year" schedule. Unintentional class structure plays a part. Roll losses play a part. But for whatever reason, I'm almost feeding into it. I've started lots of freshman along the way. But I've been BEYOND confident in my teams each of those seasons. (Title, skip, championship game, skip, F4, skip, this season I'm a 5 seed and I truly believe I can make the F4. And I've believed that all season). So while I've lost lots of regular season games in the gauntlet of D2 Iba, I've had the team well prepared for post season after the freshman come out of those promised starts.

My last F4 while he was a Soph, I wrestled with benching him, but I stayed the course and stuck with it. And we'll see if it pays off in about 3 days

Posted by topdogggbm on 11/25/2020 8:59:00 PM (view original):
https://imgur.com/a/yhXmnDd

This is the best example of low WE, and handing the situation properly. 14 WE to begin with. I redshirted him as a freshman. He started every single game of his career. He has literally 1 day of growth left in his career. As tonight is the CT Final of his senior season.

The reason I like this example a lot, is because the way his ratings were setup to begin with. When you see a player with low WE and all greens, don't be fooled. You won't max them all. So you have to make the decision to forget about some ratings. In this case....... a wing with green ATH/DEF/LP/PER and blue ST. I ended up with basically 20s (practice minutes) in conditioning, defense and perimeter his whole career. Everything else I basically punted. That LP began so low it would've barely moved the needle. Sure I'd love to have a nice 30 LP with it. But not sure I would've made it very far.

14 is F-. So as another coach said, 14 is different than 2. I know some will argue against me, but this is why I personally never have signed a player at L3. Sometimes you can get lucky. But I just like to know exacts ahead of time

This is a great example, and it's why top is an elite coach. Punting everything but condi/defense/perimeter gave this guy *seriously* good dev.

The holiday season is bringing us together as a community! Me, gil, cub, kc, all coming together for the greater good of the game. Tis the season!

Posted by topdogggbm on 11/27/2020 9:30:00 PM (view original):
I drag knuckles now! But I got some big ol hands. I'm just trying to shave them down.

Yes I likely wouldn't have recruited him if I was press. If agree. And it's correct that he wasn't my first choice. But I was intrigued by a couple things..... one, if you look at my (pathetic) history in Iba at NKU, for some reason I'm setup on this "every other year" schedule. Unintentional class structure plays a part. Roll losses play a part. But for whatever reason, I'm almost feeding into it. I've started lots of freshman along the way. But I've been BEYOND confident in my teams each of those seasons. (Title, skip, championship game, skip, F4, skip, this season I'm a 5 seed and I truly believe I can make the F4. And I've believed that all season). So while I've lost lots of regular season games in the gauntlet of D2 Iba, I've had the team well prepared for post season after the freshman come out of those promised starts.

My last F4 while he was a Soph, I wrestled with benching him, but I stayed the course and stuck with it. And we'll see if it pays off in about 3 days

you started him all NT too? now that i am a little surprised by. why?