Scouting trips during recruiting are your best bet, but even those aren't sure-fire. Let's say you are interested in a recruit, you've done FSS and can see where he has potential and doesn't. Do a scouting a trip, or two or three. Each scouting trip will provide observations from your assistant coach regarding attributes for said recruit. Let's say this recruit has high potential for growth in defense - your assistant will say to you, after the scouting trip, "It's like he's never been taught basic defensive fundamentals - I really think we could see massive improvement by his Senior year." That, to me, says the recruit has high-high potential. Just how high? Who knows. Also, each scouting trip, your assistant should evaluate four random attributes of that player - you do not get to choose which attributes to scout/look at. One scouting trip, maybe rebounding, defense, perimeter and low post are evaluated. Second trip, maybe it's defense, speed, free throw shooting and athleticism. As for how long the attribute itself will stay in the blue, there is no definitive way of knowing. I've signed guys who had attributes go from blue to black after the first exhibition.
I read on a recent thread that once the potential for an attribute changes from blue to black, that player has 21 growth points left for that attribute. Keep in mind, it will be very difficult to squeeze all 21 of those points out of the player.
3/8/2015 12:54 PM (edited)