Miss St at A- has enough of a prestige advantage, that you need to figure they can lock you out if they really want to. Under 2 full prestige levels difference, and you can usually give yourself a shot if you are *all the way in*, regardless of what the other guy does (unless you have preference disadvantages, in which case, why waste your time and resources?).

You don’t see the odds until after the battle is over, and then only if you were within range, at high or very high. If you laid off and dropped down below high consideration, you won’t ever see odds, because they were 100% - you weren’t in signing range.

So how important is preference? I got a target I like now, but close to home is Bad and strong conference is Bad everything else is neutral or good. So will that hurt even battling teams like Alabama since his close to home will be bad as well?

Posted by Alabama_Lege on 8/13/2019 12:21:00 AM (view original):
So how important is preference? I got a target I like now, but close to home is Bad and strong conference is Bad everything else is neutral or good. So will that hurt even battling teams like Alabama since his close to home will be bad as well?

Look at the overall picture. Battling a team like Alabama, you are going to start out deep in the hole on prestige. You need either 1) a sizable preference advantage (example, look for wants rebuild guys), or 2) a guy those top teams are using as a backup, and don’t plan to really battle seriously for.

Posted by Alabama_Lege on 8/13/2019 12:21:00 AM (view original):
So how important is preference? I got a target I like now, but close to home is Bad and strong conference is Bad everything else is neutral or good. So will that hurt even battling teams like Alabama since his close to home will be bad as well?

Preferences and prestige amplify any action you take. For example, a team with a better prestige will get more credit for a home visit. Usually you want to be within a letter grade to compete in prestige (B- to A-, C+ to B+, etc). You can also look at the recruit's preferences to see how well they match up with the other team. Does the other team run the preferred off/def, do they shoot a lot of 3's, etc.

Then you can look at number of open scholarships (seniors + walk-ons) to get an idea of how much money they have to spend. More experienced coaches will usually find out if the other team is in several battles, and if they'll have enough money to compete with you.

It's usually a bad idea to go after "late" preferences. The big dogs who lost recruits in the 1st recruiting period will go after their backup choices. Also they'll receive more money from the new open scholarships left by early entries into the nba. Many times you'll be the leader on an average recruit only to have a high prestige school swoop in and take them in the 2nd period.

Mostly, it's just trial and error, and you'll learn with experience. Good luck.