I have just returned to HD, and this is my first experience with 3.0 scouting and recruiting. I am trying to figure out the logic behind "Wants Success" and "Wants Rebuild" for recruits.

I have taken over a Northwestern team in Allen that has 28 consecutive losing seasons, the last nine of which the team failed to reach 10 wins. We are currently sitting at 0-6 this season, and could very possibly fail to win any games. And yet, any recruit with either "Wants Success" or "Wants Rebuild" is listed as Neutral.

I also have DIII Pomona Pitzer in Smith, where we have yet to even play an exhibition game. The Sage Hens have had two consecutive losing seasons, but did make a 3rd round PIT appearance four seasons ago. ALL recruits have already decided, however, that "Wants Success" = Bad and "Wants Rebuild" = Good. No one is Neutral on this.

My DII Humboldt State team in Tark has had two consecutive losing seasons (preceded bt an NT appearance) and everyone is Neutral on "Wants Success" or "Wants Rebuild". We have only played a single exhibition game there.

How do we explain this logic? Also, is it possible that, if Northwestern slogs through a winless season, "Wants Success" recruits will eventually change their mind and view it as Bad or even Very Bad? I have noticed that it took a few games for Offense/Defense and Perimeter/Paint/Fast Tempo/Strong Defense to change.

D and C level baseline prestige D1 programs can reach good for wants rebuild. I don’t know about any power conference schools with B- and up baseline.

D2 and D3 don’t have baseline prestige, and D3 teams will more easily reach very good for wants rebuild recruits than higher levels. This small advantage is far outweighed by divisional prestige differences though.

Wants rebuild as preference is best thought of (IMO) as a mitigation of prestige advantages for that specific set of recruits. It’s most meaningful when compared within a division. And it’s not powerful enough to completely swing the prestige advantage the other way, even within the same division. But it does give a D+ program that is truly rebuilding a way to compete for some recruits against higher prestige teams in their conference or region. Even if you can never get to good for that preference, your neutral gives you solid footing against top level teams, who will be very (very) bad, and heavily disadvantaged in that category.

that setting seems really dumb to me, you hit very good on success for mediocrity or worse. like first round losses over and over appears to get you there, its possibly the most HD thing ever (omg we added all these preferences but most of them or more are completely useless garbage that never meaningfully distinguish between two programs who might actually be battling for the same recruit). the only preferences that mean **** on more than an every once in a while basis, are O and D. occasionally far from home.

also yeah, it changes throughout the season. i believe its the time of recruiting action when it matters. also it is unclear that prestige change impacts session 2, a couple people seem to think it doesn't, and it seems like a credible point they raised. i don't have enough info to weigh in myself but figured in your currently rebuilding mode, you might run into that.

I've brought this topic up before and pointed out how it doesn't really make sense how it's working - especially with different criteria between D1/D2 and D3. I have no explanation why the same resume gets you VG for success at D2 but only gets you Good of success at D3.

So it's easier to get VG rebuild at D3 but nearly impossible to get VG success while the opposite is true at D1/D2. Why you may ask? Because: Seble

See thread here.

well, its probably no different from how prestige and resume qualification is a giant sliding scale across all divisions, not broken up by division. they probably just used some pre-existing mechanism like your success from a resume standpoint, where d1 NT appearance is vastly worth more than d3. actually, that is probably it - its probably the exact same values used in resume.

if you guys are almost getting to very good with d3 resumes like that, those d3 resumes can barely hit low BCS jobs. same with 4 crap NT1 appeareances in a low d1 conference, which feels like roughly where you start going from good to very good.

i don't know, it totally makes sense from this end - i don't agree with how it works, but it makes sense. even if its not using resume, this game has multiple values calculated on a sliding scale across all divisions, and this is clearly just 1 more of those.

Seems like that is exactly right. Thanks for all of the insight, guys.