Hey all, apologies in advance for the long post, but any feedback would be very much appreciated.

I'm going through my first recruiting period after taking over a Sim AI team with a severe class size imbalance-- I'm about to lose 5 seniors, and will only have 2 upperclassmen (both seniors) next year. So, it seems pretty clear that my team won't be at all competitive next season and I'm treating it as a rebuilding year. I have a few questions about how to address this:

1. What are the implications of starting all underclassmen next year?

My 2 seniors will be 2 of my best players, though honestly not by that huge of a margin over their underclass counterparts. If I were optimizing for winning as many games as possible next season, I'd probably start them both. However, since I will likely have a very bad record either way, I'd rather start my most promising underclassmen to maximize their work ethic and ratings improvements. Are there any downsides to doing this aside from the probable prestige hit? Is players' work ethic impacted by the team's overall success (or lack thereof)? I assume the seniors won't be happy about not starting, but will that have any impact on the development of the rest of the team?

2. What is the impact of redshirting for a player without a playing time preference?

Most of my recruits want to play right away and I'm promising them minutes, but there are a couple who don't have a preference about playing time, and I'd love to redshirt one of them, partly to smooth out the class sizes, and also just to give them more time to improve. Does informing them of an intent to redshirt meaningfully impact my recruiting efforts with them? I've already unlocked all recruiting actions for the players in question, so how would I be able notice any change in their outlook? If there is negative impact, and I withdraw my intent to redshirt, will there be any lasting negative impact, or will things go back to the way they were before I mentioned it to them?

3. Would it be helpful to intentionally take a walk-on?

So far I think that I should be able to fill all of my open spots with solid recruits if I want to. I also have a couple of bad rising sophomores (recruited by Sim AI) whom I'm planning to cut in a year or two to smooth out the class sizes more. This year's freshman class will effectively have 6 players, because I didn't think this through earlier, and redshirted a freshman this past season. Even if I redshirt a freshman this year to bring it down to 5, that's a bigger class than I'd like. I've been thinking about intentionally leaving a spot for a walk-on so that I can move one of the spots to next year's class. On the one hand I don't love this idea because I'm running a fullcourt press and I'm already hoping to redshirt one of this year's freshman, so this would leave me with a roster of only 10 players. On the other hand, if I end up having the walk-on play a bunch of minutes, or let my main rotation play more fatigued, well... maybe we lose one or two extra games but it's not like we were going to the tournament this year anyway. Would this be a good approach for smoothing out class sizes?

Sorry for the super long post, and thanks in advance for any help or advice you can provide!

who comes in and just drops a page long question like this, an awesome one that is just begging for like a 5 page response? i have to ask, did someone pay you to troll me?

Hehe no, sorry-- I'm just excited to be back playing HD again and have a general tendency to be very long-winded

Posted by yodawg on 11/27/2020 2:45:00 PM (view original):
Hey all, apologies in advance for the long post, but any feedback would be very much appreciated.

I'm going through my first recruiting period after taking over a Sim AI team with a severe class size imbalance-- I'm about to lose 5 seniors, and will only have 2 upperclassmen (both seniors) next year. So, it seems pretty clear that my team won't be at all competitive next season and I'm treating it as a rebuilding year. I have a few questions about how to address this:

1. What are the implications of starting all underclassmen next year?

My 2 seniors will be 2 of my best players, though honestly not by that huge of a margin over their underclass counterparts. If I were optimizing for winning as many games as possible next season, I'd probably start them both. However, since I will likely have a very bad record either way, I'd rather start my most promising underclassmen to maximize their work ethic and ratings improvements. Are there any downsides to doing this aside from the probable prestige hit? Is players' work ethic impacted by the team's overall success (or lack thereof)? I assume the seniors won't be happy about not starting, but will that have any impact on the development of the rest of the team?

2. What is the impact of redshirting for a player without a playing time preference?

Most of my recruits want to play right away and I'm promising them minutes, but there are a couple who don't have a preference about playing time, and I'd love to redshirt one of them, partly to smooth out the class sizes, and also just to give them more time to improve. Does informing them of an intent to redshirt meaningfully impact my recruiting efforts with them? I've already unlocked all recruiting actions for the players in question, so how would I be able notice any change in their outlook? If there is negative impact, and I withdraw my intent to redshirt, will there be any lasting negative impact, or will things go back to the way they were before I mentioned it to them?

3. Would it be helpful to intentionally take a walk-on?

So far I think that I should be able to fill all of my open spots with solid recruits if I want to. I also have a couple of bad rising sophomores (recruited by Sim AI) whom I'm planning to cut in a year or two to smooth out the class sizes more. This year's freshman class will effectively have 6 players, because I didn't think this through earlier, and redshirted a freshman this past season. Even if I redshirt a freshman this year to bring it down to 5, that's a bigger class than I'd like. I've been thinking about intentionally leaving a spot for a walk-on so that I can move one of the spots to next year's class. On the one hand I don't love this idea because I'm running a fullcourt press and I'm already hoping to redshirt one of this year's freshman, so this would leave me with a roster of only 10 players. On the other hand, if I end up having the walk-on play a bunch of minutes, or let my main rotation play more fatigued, well... maybe we lose one or two extra games but it's not like we were going to the tournament this year anyway. Would this be a good approach for smoothing out class sizes?

Sorry for the super long post, and thanks in advance for any help or advice you can provide!

1. If you're rebuilding, you're not going to do well anyways. Start the young guns. When I take over a team, I'll start 5 freshman if I want to. Gotta play the long game with HD rebuilds. You won't compete with the best, because we're X seasons ahead in our builds. No shame.

2. Just don't use the button. There are times when it works. But you will see and read WAY more comments where the redshirt button is pushed, and the recruit completely drops you off his radar. Just sign the players and then try to redshirt them afterwards

3. While rebuilding take walk ons over mediocre talent that you're unsure of. Don't sign a player just to sign a player. Use the walk on situation to balance your classes if you choose to

Posted by yodawg on 11/27/2020 3:53:00 PM (view original):
Hehe no, sorry-- I'm just excited to be back playing HD again and have a general tendency to be very long-winded

You and gil will be besties

3. While rebuilding take walk ons over mediocre talent that you're unsure of. Don't sign a player just to sign a player. Use the walk on situation to balance your classes if you choose to

^^ This assumes your program will be improving over time so might as well recruit the larger classes once your prestige improves.

I never shy from playing fr ina rebuild year like that. You want them to grow and that’s the fastest way! Don’t be afraid of walk ons either. Welcome to HD!

Posted by gillispie1 on 11/27/2020 3:01:00 PM (view original):
who comes in and just drops a page long question like this, an awesome one that is just begging for like a 5 page response? i have to ask, did someone pay you to troll me?

Begin with a summarized response, and expound later

Another option to balancing classes is redshirting a senior.

As circumstances are, for one of my teams, I could be signing 4-5 exciting Bigs in one class. One will definitely get a Redshirt. When their 4th year hits, I could redshirt the player with the least potential growth opportunity and save him to play his Sr year with the Jr class. What you do is don’t play him for the full year and then wait to apply the redshirt at the end of the season. That way you get all the scouting/recruiting budget still in Phase 1 for that opening. Once you apply the redshirt, his WE will drop drastically... which isn’t important when he’s basically maxed out potentials.

The team I took over in Minnesota had 3 impressive bigs all graduating as seniors last season. They were all deserving starters and there were already solid backups one class behind them.

I redshirted Xie and it helped my recruiting plan for better position/class balance this season.

Walk-ons can be an advantage because you get the extra funds to spend. But in the event that you are on a recruit you’re excited about and want to fill your roster, even if it’s an unbalanced class signing, I wanted to share another option you can use.

Posted by craigaltonw on 11/27/2020 7:29:00 PM (view original):
Another option to balancing classes is redshirting a senior.

As circumstances are, for one of my teams, I could be signing 4-5 exciting Bigs in one class. One will definitely get a Redshirt. When their 4th year hits, I could redshirt the player with the least potential growth opportunity and save him to play his Sr year with the Jr class. What you do is don’t play him for the full year and then wait to apply the redshirt at the end of the season. That way you get all the scouting/recruiting budget still in Phase 1 for that opening. Once you apply the redshirt, his WE will drop drastically... which isn’t important when he’s basically maxed out potentials.

The team I took over in Minnesota had 3 impressive bigs all graduating as seniors last season. They were all deserving starters and there were already solid backups one class behind them.

I redshirted Xie and it helped my recruiting plan for better position/class balance this season.

Walk-ons can be an advantage because you get the extra funds to spend. But in the event that you are on a recruit you’re excited about and want to fill your roster, even if it’s an unbalanced class signing, I wanted to share another option you can use.

Oh wow, I never would have thought of the senior redshirting strategy but that's genius

1. No real negative implications for a team in your situation. Your team will be bad, there’s no getting around it. As you go through more recruiting cycles, you’ll probably want to cut some of these sim signed rising sophomores, as well. Barber and Whitfield are likely serviceable, the rest should be on the chopping block starting at the end of next season, if you can start securing some good recruiting classes.

**On that, make sure you’re scouting and recruiting from the D2 and even the D1 pools. Your competition will be living mostly in those pools, and there is not enough talent in the D3 pool, even if you get the cream of that crop, to keep up when your rivals are getting local D1 pool guys who fall through the cracks, and solid D2 international guys. Lots of good ways to scout efficiently, you can read though this thread to get some ideas (I linked to post on D3 specific).

2. As doggg hinted, general wisdom is don’t use the inform of redshirt option, unless it’s a player you don’t want on you team unless he takes a redshirt. If you would just take back the redshirt if he gets upset when he’s on campus, then don’t bother informing him, just give it a try when he’s on campus. But I am a big advocate of the redshirt. I try to redshirt a guy every year, I think of it like an investment. That IQ pays dividends when it’s spent on the right guys.

3. Unlike some others, I never *intentionally* take a walk-on. I guess I might if I played straight zone, because you can hardly get 10 guys enough minutes in straight zone, but with any other setup, I would always rather have the bird in the hand. For me, the scholarship resources aren’t valuable enough to warrant *planning* for walkons. But of course if you battle for some good players (and you should) you’re going to lose out on some guys; and sometimes even when you’ve tried to develop some backup options, they don’t work out. So a walkon or 2 (or 3, if you’re playing zone) won’t hurt much; it just raises the stakes for next years recruiting. So I look at walkons as acceptable outcomes when necessary; but if I can get them, I’d always rather get decent project type players I can redshirt, or cheap jucos who know my sets who can come off the bench and turn over the scholarship again quickly, or (at higher divisions) ineligible players.

I like always having a walk-on on the team, specifically for recruiting purposes. 11 players are enough to handle the minutes pretty easily. But I get an extra open spot's worth of attention minutes and recruiting budget to use on less players (e.g. 3 spots worth of points & money to use on 2 spots I actually plan to fill). It allows me to spread the points/$ around to more players if I'm keeping my options open, or give extra points/$ to each member of a more focused group.

I don't play FB or Press, so I can even redshirt a player each year (if I choose to) and have 10 players share the minutes. It all depends on my roster, both talent-wise and how my classes are spread out. Having 5-6 in a single class is a real pain IMO. An occasional JUCO can help spread out your classes too, of course.

Being able to take walkons is the greatest advantage of zone/man IMO.

Posted by cubcub113 on 3/28/2021 12:15:00 PM (view original):
Being able to take walkons is the greatest advantage of zone/man IMO.

i agree, but i think the team planning benefits are understated, too. i am a big proponent of the take walkons and battle like a madman theory, but i think its pretty legitimate to use those spots for more team building flexibility.

with team building being a really tricky part to master... if you are running a 10 deep roster year in and year out with m2m, you really need to be crushing it on the team building front. those players have to have been pretty intentionally arranged to be high end year in and year out. but if you are running 11-12 players and only using the best rotation you can come up with, it definitely gives some buffer, some wiggle room.

i look at either approach as very valid, using the m2m/zone depth for more experienced, more developed players, and a team planning buffer - or as walkons for recruiting resources. obviously i personally favor the latter, but that is mostly because most of my time i've only been a decent to good recruiter, at least compared to my coaching acumen, so that is where i needed the help. i think its perfectly valid for other folks to go the other way, especially if they are struggling with the team building part, or if they don't plan ahead too much.

To gil’s point, my UConn team just wrapped up recruiting in a cycle facing this kind of choice. I had 3 juniors on the fence in the top 60 this year, 2 guards and a SF, so I had some late guys lined up to swing at. I only lost one, so I had to make some choices. There was a 5 star that I could have taken a shot on, but it would have been a 3-way battle. I already have an ineligible and a guy I intend to redshirt signed for the year, so if I swing and miss, that means running with 9 (or playing a walkon) next season. Not impossible, but not ideal. So I chose a much more modest, sure-thing; the #88 sg in the country, who will end up 90+ ath, 70 speed, 80+ def, 75+ per, and 60-65 BH/P, eventually with 45+ rebounding to boot if I get to it. The other team who was on him had filled all scholarships, so I was pretty confident I could secure him. He’ll be much better than a walkon this year, and better than the guy I will redshirt (though that redshirt 2-star prospect projects better, he needs more PT). So he helps the team this year.

Sometimes my teams are in a position where I will swing for the 5 star instead. But having already signed an ineligible and a guy I want to redshirt, that was more gamble than I want to take on with a team I still plan to contend with next season. Those are the specific team building issues at play, in my thinking anyway.