Posted by kujayhawk on 7/21/2010 1:08:00 PM (view original):
I'm probably not the best person to be asking, but I will anyway. My only team is a one-a-day in Allen so I don't have a lot of experience with the new game. So take what I say with some salt.
I get the right side of the bell curve for player development. Once you reach a certain point, the returns on investment are minimized until you finally max out where no amount of practice is going to make you better. I get that.
I'm not sure the left side of the bell curve makes that much sense. I suppose that one could be so bad at something that practicing will show almost no gains for a long while but I'm having a hard time reconciling that theory with the players who are known to have high potential in those categories.
Right now my team in Allen has a freshman player with 85 work ethic that has high potential in a few categories. After 9 practices, he has developed a 56 category to 59 and a 38 category to a 40. But with the same amount of practice minutes, his two categories of 1 are still stuck at 1. (And that includes a perimeter rating that I believe still requires less minutes to maintain.)
I have two other freshmen with high potential in speed. With the same amount of conditioning minutes, a 42 work ethic has turned a 66 to a 69. But a 51 work ethic hasn't been able to budge the 1 rating.
I realize it is just 9 practices, but with the stunted development of underclassmen in the new game, I'm assuming that the categories that have starting rankings of 1 with high potential are quite likely not going to come close to maxing out. Even once the rating gets to the point where it might be able to take off, the change in how players develop will probably prevent that. And that would make sense to me if the left side of the development bell curve also made sense. But I am not sure it does. I can't see how this would apply to real life. I never took a piano practices in my life so my starting rating is 1. But if I were to devote some time every day to practicing the piano, I feel quite confident in saying it wouldn't take long before I could play the hell out of "Mary Had a Little Lamb". My potential might max me out before I play anything of true difficulty but I wouldn't still be hitting random keys after a few practices.
From my vantage point, the new batch of recruits has many, many, many more recruits with starting rankings of 1 and also have high potential. Maybe these are just teases that can't fully be developed and utilized but I'm guessing that isn't the intent.
Thoughts?
I just searched myself to find another post and came across this one.
Those of you in the two-a-day worlds probably don't need this post but an update might be helpful for some folks in the one-a-day worlds.
The players I mentioned in my original post are now almost halfway through their junior campaign. (I actually redshirted one as a sophomore so technically midway through season three.)
As a reference point, I'm going 20/20 for team practices.
My 85 work ethic player (now 89 WE):
Incoming Rebound rating of
56 with high potential:
67 by end of freshman season, 85 by end of sophomore season,
87 currently as junior and I've been waiting for the max out message for a few days
Incoming Perimeter rating of
1 with high potential:
3 by end of freshman season,
8 by end of sophomore season,
13 currently as a junior
Incoming Ball Handling rating of
1 with high potential:
2 by end of freshman season,
7 by end of sophomore season,
11 currently as a junior
When I signed this player I thought he could be an interesting small forward for D3. Not sure he's going to get there although he's finally starting to develop.
And my other player with 51 work ethic (now 53) and a high potential speed rating of
1 has seen growth to
3 after the freshman season,
9 after a redshirt sophomore season, and now
15 as a sophomore.
The speed rating suggests that is is possible to get reasonable growth in a somewhat reasonable time frame. I am putting in a moderate level of conditioning minutes and seeing growth. But I still find the 89 WE player discouraging. When I'm forced to put in minutes to all categories as I am in this case trying to develop a potential SF, the growth rate isn't all that much. And that is with the tremendous WE. I'd find the growth rates to be a bit more acceptable if his work ethic wasn't off the chart.