Posted by darnoc29099 on 9/14/2017 7:24:00 PM (view original):
I've built Mercer, a D+ baseline team, into an A- prestige team (which includes a championship game appearance) and just finished my second recruiting session at C- Stanford, where I landed the #2 center in the country. This is gonna be long but here's my advice.
1) Location, location, location. When I took over Mercer (in Georgia) the SEC and ACC were only about half full. It was a lot easier to recruit those high potential guys when the B+ and better schools around me all fought for the studs. I landed 3 and 4-stars my second season while the Dukes and UNCs were fighting for the 5-star studs. While location matters less in 3.0 it's still important to know how many humans are within about 300 miles of you when you pick a team in D1 as you'll find most teams still don't recruit more than 300 miles away from them.
2) If you're in a small conference look for guys that don't have the "strong conference" preference and even better, find ones that lack "strong conference" but want playing time. If you're in a relatively empty conference you can afford to offer starts + minutes to everyone you recruit, a luxury big 6 schools don't always have. Then, as others have said, the more preferences you can match the better.
3) If you're early in a rebuild and don't really have any aspirations to make the post-season, do your scouting/recruiting early and find guys you like with lots of preferences. If there are two guys near you that you both want flex/zone and you're running triangle/man then I'd recommend running flex/zone that season to better your chances. Again, you aren't making the post-season anyway so might as well try and land some studs while you can and worry about IQ later. Similarly if, for example, you're guard heavy and need some bigs and see some with the "paint offense" preference, then I'd try and make sure I'm "very good" on that preference when recruiting starts.
4) Every season you should try and battle bigger schools for a stud that you shouldn't otherwise land and hope you land a kid like that about 1/3 of the time. Don't compromise the rest of your recruiting to do this-make sure you're also bringing in other useful players. Using billyg's old model EVERY player on your team should do AT LEAST two things extremely well, and ath and def count as one entity.
5) At Stanford I try and find guys that have the "strong conference" preference as it'll give me edge over the other humans on the West coast that aren't in the PAC-10. My first recruiting session was a disaster because I was horribly unlucky and lost 4 battles where I was at least 65% favorite and the kid I did sign I was only about a 30% favorite to do so. So dumb, but that topic has been discussed ad nauseum already. The second season was much better. I found a PG with lots of high potentials that'll develop in a couple of seasons and a JUCO G that could shoot. Both will be 80+ in ath, sp, def, per, bh, and p when they graduate. No one challenged me on these kids and so I went all in on a stud big. Now, I was insanely lucky and landed the #2 C (again, at C- prestige), but that's EXACTLY what this game is designed to do now-give the little guy a fighting chance. I only had a 17% chance and beat out A+ UCLA and A San Diego St but I knew I could max out and throw a ton of APs at the kid because I wasn't being challenged on my other guys. As a lower prestige school I think you have to try and land a stud every season because those guys are program changers.
Good luck.
Yeah Darnoc is right, location is really more important now than it was before. I took on Alabama in Tarkanian and it's been hell. SEC is full, ACC is the strongest division, and so on. I have trouble getting solid recruits with all the battles I get into each seasoon.
Location, location, location.