I don't think a complete recruiting overhaul is needed...the bigger the change, the more opportunity that WIS has to mess it up, and I'd rather fight with the known enemy.

Whether it's needed is distinct from whether WIS will screw it up. 

In any event, I said "if implemented properly."

I'm a little late to the party here, but it seems like a couple of things that have been much discussed on these forums might help get recruiting where we all want it to go:

1. Give promises a much higher weight in a recruit's decision than they have now; on the flip side, increase the punishment for those coaches who break promises.
2. Decrease the likelihood--drastically--that a top-15 recruit would be willing to ride the bench for a season or two.

What about having a small "luck" factor involved.  What I mean is, say I am at TCU and I recruit the 55th rated PG.  After he gets to school something seems to click and all of a sudden his IQ jumps quickly or his perimeter game is better than you thought or his ball handling potential is actually high rather than average.  I am not saying to do this with everybody, but with something like 5% of the players.  Isn't that kind of the way that mid major teams end up with studs? They end up with a Hayward (butler), Freddette (BYU), Leonard (SDSU), Faried (morehead st.) etc..... On the other side you could also have 5% of the players turn out to kind of be busts.  So maybe that stud Center never really develops at Kansas like they thought he would.  I do think this would reflect real life.  There are diamonds in the rough and there are flops all the time.  In theory it would be about every 4 or 5 years that you end up with a bust or a surprise. 

Agreed about the bench part.  Transfers should be more common, which would reduce stockpiling.  There should be an elevated risk of transfer for a hotshot recruit who does not (1) start; (2) play significant minutes; or (3) get enough shots.

Also, one reason we don't see more battles is because coaches keep their powder dry in an effort to never lose a ton of money in a losing battle.  One way to fix this (and to be more realistic) would be to have rapidly diminishing returns after a certain amount of effort.  Once you "max out" on somebody, the kid's own personalities should make the pick.  The hometown school and high-prestige schools should normally then have the advantage, but some kids won't be into certain schools. If you are going to have the "favorite school" detail in the game, it should be much stronger and more logical than it seems to be.

I think you have to keep in mind though, is any system that tries to be as realistic as possible is going to favor the big schools.  What exacerbates this problem is that the ratings/potential system is too accurate and too knowable, so that there isn't enough room for the diamonds in the rough. 

To a certain extent I think some of us complain about recruiting because there is such a close relationship between recruiting and success on the court.  Too much correlation.  I know a while back seble "fixed" the engine to reduce upsets, and that is another thing that swings too far in the "fixed" direction.  There have to be more upsets in the tournament than there are now - it's just almost all Big Six in the sweet 16, every year.  I know there are disputes about realism vs. "whatif dynasty building," but when there is less parity in the HD tournaments than there is in real life, I think it's obvious that the actual engine results are skewed too far toward the better team winning.

Finally, why is it that UNC gets all the money in recruiting, yet they are playing all their games on the road.  You could take care of RPI-fixing a little bit if you either tied revenue to home games, or simply forced higher prestige teams to schedule more home dates.

good point, uwrjl - instead of blue numbers meaning that there is a 100% chance a guy has high potential, why not make it a 50% chance.  Make the kid's future a little more opaque.

It's kind of what we get with internationals right?  In fact, I find it odd that it is so hard to get information on internationals.  In 2012 there are cheap ways to evaluate players from overseas.

I think the issue that would really solve all the problems would be to have more second tier players that have star potential but need to work to get to that level and not more elite impact players that can impact the game immediately. what the game is missing is the ability to create star players but that they would not impact until about their senior year. if mid majors could have the ability to develop talent then you would start to see the parity that happens in real life. I think this is the problem that admit is having to deal with but refusing to accept on most mid major there is at least 1 solid impact player and all of the teams that make the n c a a tournament they have more than 1 solid impact player that are usually seniors. if we had more players that took about 3 years to develop this game would become a lot more realistic.

Posted by uwrjl93 on 5/18/2012 3:30:00 PM (view original):
What about having a small "luck" factor involved.  What I mean is, say I am at TCU and I recruit the 55th rated PG.  After he gets to school something seems to click and all of a sudden his IQ jumps quickly or his perimeter game is better than you thought or his ball handling potential is actually high rather than average.  I am not saying to do this with everybody, but with something like 5% of the players.  Isn't that kind of the way that mid major teams end up with studs? They end up with a Hayward (butler), Freddette (BYU), Leonard (SDSU), Faried (morehead st.) etc..... On the other side you could also have 5% of the players turn out to kind of be busts.  So maybe that stud Center never really develops at Kansas like they thought he would.  I do think this would reflect real life.  There are diamonds in the rough and there are flops all the time.  In theory it would be about every 4 or 5 years that you end up with a bust or a surprise. 

You do right now; a high potential could be anything from 20 to 50 something. An average potential could be anywhere fom 7 to 19 points. A guy with avg potential in everyting but dur could improve anywhere from 70 to 190 points. If he stared at 450 you could have anywhere from a 520 to a 640. When you include high plus potential, the range on a single player can be even wider.

I didn't really think about that.  I guess the concept would be that a player that was expected to be a "mid to mid major" contributor could every once in a blue moon turn into a stud (or vice versa).

Posted by girt25 on 5/18/2012 2:08:00 PM (view original):
I'm not a huge fan of all these artificial methods ... let's just get a recruiting system that works and doesn't have to be artificially jerry rigged and propped up by a whole bunch of tricks.

whats artificial about it? im suggesting making an aspect of recruiting like real life, to get a real-life effect. in real life, there are only a small group of recruits that are clearly and markedly better than everyone else. and they are recruited for nationally, in a big way, by lots of big schools. if there is going to be a team full of them, like kentucky this year, at least its only going to be a team or two! our problem is, we basically have 15 kentuckys per year, except some of the guys actually stay. scary, if you ask me!

and, really the notion of "let's just get a recruiting system that works and doesn't have to be artificially jerry rigged and propped up by a whole bunch of tricks" is like saying, lets make the game good, guys. yeah!! im not sure ive ever heard anything less actionable in my life :) not to bust your balls, but seriously, what the heck does that mean? its not like its obvious what kind of recruiting system "works". and i think the characterization of jerry rigging and artificially propping up, is baseless, IMO. could you be a bit more specific?

Let's assume a team like Washington wins three straight championships plus the Pac 10 gets 6 NT bids/3 PIT bids but suffers some early exits and only brings home $25k per team in recruiting cash.
Washington, for the first time in 10 seasons has the top recruit in the country right in their backyard.    What are the odds of Washington signing him?  Today about 100%.

But with no recruiting distances, Washington would stand no chance against a 6-10 ACC team that games the RPI rankings by scheduling 10 non-conf road sims, ends up 16-11 overall and a first round loss in the CT and NT.   They also possess a conference inflated A prestige and a warchest of $50k from the conf postseason run.

I really can't imagine how this would help any team outside of the conference(s) bringing in the most tourney cash. 

billyg, I think some of your thoughts/ideas are good, and others not so much. The ones that are very artificial (make the top five guys not have a distance factor) are largely the ones that I would be very much against. If you have a system that actually works, you don't need all the artificial BS, with recruiting slapped together like some sort of Rube Goldberg contraption.

I do like your idea of having better and more varied second and third tier players, which is something we've long agreed upon. I think most (not all, but most) of recruiting would be fixed with this alone. Couple that with seble's intended change to make prestige more related to on-court performance and not so tethered to baseline prestige, and I think we have a nice, viable DI system again.

Posted by girt25 on 5/19/2012 6:55:00 PM (view original):
billyg, I think some of your thoughts/ideas are good, and others not so much. The ones that are very artificial (make the top five guys not have a distance factor) are largely the ones that I would be very much against. If you have a system that actually works, you don't need all the artificial BS, with recruiting slapped together like some sort of Rube Goldberg contraption.

I do like your idea of having better and more varied second and third tier players, which is something we've long agreed upon. I think most (not all, but most) of recruiting would be fixed with this alone. Couple that with seble's intended change to make prestige more related to on-court performance and not so tethered to baseline prestige, and I think we have a nice, viable DI system again.

it's a computer simulation girt, everything is artificial BS.  you say that removing distance factors for top 5 recruits is slapping things together.  but distance factors already exist, so you aren't adding artificial BS, you're just making adjustments to the BS that already exists.   just improving recruit quality at the 2nd and 3rd tier (which I approve of) doesn't mean that there isn't anything "artificial" about recruiting.

lets say Duke coming off a nat'l title needs a PG, and the one they love grew up in california.   right now, there is virtually no chance that duke gets that player, even if Duke is his favorite school.    or if the #1 C grew up in Maine.  right now, he's playing at syracuse, uconn or BC, that's pretty much it.   making the truly elite recruits be truly national recruits would increase the odds of battles, which would benefit everyone.  you shouldnt get a 5 star recruit for 2,000 just cause he grew up 20 miles away and people are afraid of battling because of the distance advantage

Posted by abitaamber on 5/16/2012 12:42:00 PM (view original):

I'll review the logic that determines whether a given underclassman will enter the draft.  I'll likely end up reducing the odds that a highly projected player will come back to school.

Say what?  There needs to be less players leaving early, not more.

Disagree, by comparison there really aren't a ton of EEs. But I think the only thing that really needs to be done is increase the odds guards leave early, and leave the odds bigs leave the same, and it'll be perfect.