I'm coming back to HD after about a 10 year break, was a 1st yr DII coach this past season. New version is all new to me, last time I played I had to send letters and whatnot.

I'm trying to balance coaching my Motion-Man team IQ up while also maximizing my player development as quickly as possible. My 1st yr in DII I fluctuated between 25-20 and 20-25 on O-D, trying to keep IQ generally even. Frosh jumped to B- in each, basically, w/o that being their preference. Most of my team is currently B+ Motion and A- Man currently.

First and foremost, I'd love to hear experienced coaches' general thoughts on how to best spend my practice minutes in general. I expect to be in DII for a little while, need to focus on that for now.

Here's my conundrum - I should be fine this year, but after this season I have to recruit 6 freaking players. How would you experienced coaches suggest I adjust my practice minutes next season, between O & D and individual improvement, once that inexperience comes into play?

Any suggestions are very welcome, I hope this helps other new coaches too...

Thanks in advance!!

Although it varies per team for me depending on class size and sometimes even the O/D scheme I'm in the 23/23 camp for the most part. It's not the A+ IQ guarantee of 25 minutes but most kids will hit A+ by their senior year and you still get a few extra individual practice minutes to leverage per player.

I'm kinda pushing for them to be smarter quicker, but finding that balance can be difficult. I want better players, but smarter players may be better by default IMO. I'm glad to see my O/D practice minutes total is in line with yours though. Thx Sol!

My big problem is next year, I'm trying to plan ahead (and learn). When you have a large incoming freshman class, what's the best way to handle O/D practice minutes vs individual practice minutes? I need to reload, not rebuild, LOL...

I do 25/25 on offense and defense.

green gets 15 minimum
blue gets 12 minimum
black gets 10 minimum
red and orange are 5

i say minimum because sometimes i push green up to 20-25 just to get them maxed faster and let other categories that don't matter as much to the player stay lower until later in their career. has worked for me.

Posted by fletch1313 on 12/21/2020 8:50:00 AM (view original):
My big problem is next year, I'm trying to plan ahead (and learn). When you have a large incoming freshman class, what's the best way to handle O/D practice minutes vs individual practice minutes? I need to reload, not rebuild, LOL...

This to me, is all about knowing where your team fits in the discussion...... I'm a big believer in IQ. I feel like IQ has a strong edge when it gets down to the E8 and beyond, where most of the time, all 8 are at least "capable" teams. And potential champions. If your future does not have that type of peak yet, I'd maybe focus on the attributes a tiny bit more than IQ.

I use 25/25 every team. No exceptions. But that's because I feel like eventually I'm going to contend for deep NT runs. So I need those IQs to be ready to go.

If you're a coach that's still trying to break through, maybe looking for your first E8, the attributes are going to get you there faster. So maybe 20, 21, 22, 23 will be fine. It'll give you extra minutes to distribute throughout, so your players develop a tad faster

Posted by fletch1313 on 12/21/2020 8:50:00 AM (view original):
My big problem is next year, I'm trying to plan ahead (and learn). When you have a large incoming freshman class, what's the best way to handle O/D practice minutes vs individual practice minutes? I need to reload, not rebuild, LOL...

Depends heavily on the potential and work ethics of the guys you're bringing in. If they've got a lot of room for growth (a lot of blues and greens) and solid work ethics (all 45-50+) you can get a way with lowering their practice minutes by a minute or two and still getting solid growth, investing that extra minute or two into their IQ's. It also depends on their incoming IQ's (recruit mostly kids who already know your O/D and they're already off to a solid D-C range start).

I've seen a few teams at the D3 and D2 level make the NT running a 4-5 freshman lineup. It requires some depth and decent upperclass talent on the bench, but IQ isn't the end all be all. However, not gonna lie, being a little bit hypocritical, any time I come into a new program and sign 5+ new kids, I do tend to flex to the 25/25 split for a season.

Practice minutes aren't black and white. For example, say you run man-to-man...what's better heading into a kid's senior year: A+ M2M / 55 DEF or A- M2M / 70 DEF ? The answer, I'd say, varies.

There have been a number of crazy experiments with IQ in this game (including coaches not practicing O/D at all and others going 30+) with mixed success. The general consensus is to leave it between 20-25. If you do have a ton of young guys and you plan on building a top heavy class, you could go 25/25 and eventually drop to 20/20 once they're A/A+ as juniors. But you could also do the inverse and focus on attribute growth up front, then get their IQ's up later if your goal is to make a couple deep runs their junior & senior years. One of the big reasons I prefer 23/23...is that I'm lazy. It means I don't have to change the O/D practice minutes season to season and I still wind up with mostly A+ seniors unless I've got a kid who starts with an F and has a really terrible HS GPA.

Posted by fletch1313 on 12/21/2020 6:15:00 AM (view original):
I'm coming back to HD after about a 10 year break, was a 1st yr DII coach this past season. New version is all new to me, last time I played I had to send letters and whatnot.

I'm trying to balance coaching my Motion-Man team IQ up while also maximizing my player development as quickly as possible. My 1st yr in DII I fluctuated between 25-20 and 20-25 on O-D, trying to keep IQ generally even. Frosh jumped to B- in each, basically, w/o that being their preference. Most of my team is currently B+ Motion and A- Man currently.

First and foremost, I'd love to hear experienced coaches' general thoughts on how to best spend my practice minutes in general. I expect to be in DII for a little while, need to focus on that for now.

Here's my conundrum - I should be fine this year, but after this season I have to recruit 6 freaking players. How would you experienced coaches suggest I adjust my practice minutes next season, between O & D and individual improvement, once that inexperience comes into play?

Any suggestions are very welcome, I hope this helps other new coaches too...

Thanks in advance!!

note that preferences have no bearing on IQ or IQ development. players have 'starting IQ', which can be different than the preference. it often is - whether a player is more likely to prefer m2m if he knows m2m, i'm unsure - i haven't paid enough attention - but bottom line, if you know the player's starting IQ, from a development standpoint, the preference is irrevelent.

fyi, the growth of IQ is based on 3 things - practice minutes, work ethic, and high school gpa.

agree with the general consensus of 20-25. 30 doesn't buy you enough and there aren't talented enough d1 teams in 3.0 to really even consider it (because of 3.0, not knocking coaches). anything under 20 is pretty tough to sell, you can justify like 20 offense and a tad under 20 in one defense if you run a second, but generally speaking those things should be undertaken by folks who have mastered player development / practice planning. hcp is not generally considered to be a super powerful strategy, not saying its useless, but i am saying i would stay away from 2 defenses until later.

so long story short - 20/20 minimum, 25/25 max, and i often cheat on my defense if i'm under 25-25 (say 22-24 motion/press on a low d1 team, or something). especially if its press! the extra 5m is worth pretty much, but its more important for championship seekers than everyone else, and it is generally considered less important than meaningful core growth. if you are recruiting a lot of high potential players, its very reasonable to struggle to grow them with 25-25. however, if you feel you are still struggling at 20-20, or just making it, you are probably not aggressive enough in your practice planning. you want to aggressively hit high growth cores and not sweat lack of growth or drops in low priority categories. a lot of folks settle into 20/20 long term, which IMO is a mistake, because they aren't aggressive enough in practice planning. almost every practice plan i've ever seen, i tell the coach to be more aggressive, you really have to push it to make the most of it. so i would consider 20-20 training wheels, and 22/24 (or 23/23/) to 25/25 to really be the main line strategy for A+ prestige programs.

Lets look at those practice minutes

green gets 15 minimum - need to look at green and blue and consider NEED for that skill. Lets say a center is blue in REB and ATH but green at 8 in BH. Put 7 in BH because you dont need it and it will grow slowly. Go 20 each if you can in REB and ATH
blue gets 12 minimum - see above
black gets 10 minimum - I think you can maintain with 7 - go higher if there are not other better places to use the minutes
red and orange are 5 - dont do that - zero out your reds - generally zero out your oranges - or at most say 3 unless you dont have other places to use the minutes

Posted by mamxet on 12/21/2020 12:42:00 PM (view original):
Lets look at those practice minutes

green gets 15 minimum - need to look at green and blue and consider NEED for that skill. Lets say a center is blue in REB and ATH but green at 8 in BH. Put 7 in BH because you dont need it and it will grow slowly. Go 20 each if you can in REB and ATH
blue gets 12 minimum - see above
black gets 10 minimum - I think you can maintain with 7 - go higher if there are not other better places to use the minutes
red and orange are 5 - dont do that - zero out your reds - generally zero out your oranges - or at most say 3 unless you dont have other places to use the minutes

+1

need based practice planning is super valuable, i think practice planning is something a lot of people look at as sort of boring and not that important, but it makes a huge difference, especially in end-of-season sophs. you can usually size up a program by looking at their sophs come NT time - if they can manage to consistently put together sophmore classes who are ready to complete in major roles (not as star starters - usually - but as other starters or key backups), then they are probably going to be a really good program year in and year out. other folks will fall into great teams as recruiting pans out and they have a bunch of sr/jrs, but a consistent theme from folks who can regular build great teams is that they do the planning and the work to make sure their sophmores are ready for prime time come post season.

Posted by gillispie1 on 12/21/2020 2:34:00 PM (view original):

Posted by mamxet on 12/21/2020 12:42:00 PM (view original):
Lets look at those practice minutes

green gets 15 minimum - need to look at green and blue and consider NEED for that skill. Lets say a center is blue in REB and ATH but green at 8 in BH. Put 7 in BH because you dont need it and it will grow slowly. Go 20 each if you can in REB and ATH
blue gets 12 minimum - see above
black gets 10 minimum - I think you can maintain with 7 - go higher if there are not other better places to use the minutes
red and orange are 5 - dont do that - zero out your reds - generally zero out your oranges - or at most say 3 unless you dont have other places to use the minutes

+1

need based practice planning is super valuable, i think practice planning is something a lot of people look at as sort of boring and not that important, but it makes a huge difference, especially in end-of-season sophs. you can usually size up a program by looking at their sophs come NT time - if they can manage to consistently put together sophmore classes who are ready to complete in major roles (not as star starters - usually - but as other starters or key backups), then they are probably going to be a really good program year in and year out. other folks will fall into great teams as recruiting pans out and they have a bunch of sr/jrs, but a consistent theme from folks who can regular build great teams is that they do the planning and the work to make sure their sophmores are ready for prime time come post season.

Has anyone ever studied practice minutes on individual players with great detail? I don't have any data, so this is more about me "asking" than anything.

I'm just starting to wonder if practice minutes AREN'T that big of a deal. And again, this isn't fact, just a hunch.

So for example, has anyone had 2 players on the same team with similar WE and similar growth potential in a chosen category, and maybe given one player 20 and one player 8 (minimum growth target number) and see how it played out? Because I try to always do the best I can with practice minutes but one season I forgot to change a players minutes and he had basically all 8s in everything. And he developed awesome that season. Sure it could've been better if I had 20 in an attribute, but how much better?