So... First season & I screwed up and blew all my scouting budget before recruiting started. I'm "in" on a few of my targets, but need more targets in case I lose any of those guys (6 openings!).

I'm curious if anyone has suggestions?

One crazy thought... has anybody "scouted" with high school stats, or are those totally meaningless? I'm looking at a D3 player no one is recruiting, and his HS ppg is 17. Without being able to scout him, I'm curious if there is totally 0 relationship between HS stats and actual abilities, or if I can use the HS stats as a proxy for talent since I can't use $ to see actual talent.

Actually somewhat glad I learned this the hard way this season, as I will definitely handle my scouting budget better in the future! (I also made the noob mistake of scheduling probably the easiest non-con slate in World Tark for next season, but with the way my recruiting class is shaping up that might actually be a good thing!)

As far as I know the HS stats are totally cosmetic and don't mean anything (someone correct me if I'm wrong).

Sounds like quite the conundrum as far as scouting. I guess my recommendations would be:

1: Try and hit the transfers hard. At some point in RS2 you'll get messages from Transfer players saying they're interested in playing for your squad. While the transferring players won't be on the "Roster" page of the team they're leaving, you can see their ratings (not potentials though, sadly) by clicking on their current team's schedule and clicking a random box score. From there, you'll see the guy who is transferring out and you can click on them and see those ratings. Again, without potentials it's kind of a crapshoot but it's the easiest way to see players for $0.

2: The only other suggestion I'd have as a D3 school is to try and track through the "Considering" page who may be a realistic option for you to come in and steal. If you see a few other D3 schools on a player with preferences that are worse you may be able to pirate some good players without having to scout. The issue is you'll be completely blind to the actual ratings but by hashing out where the decent user coaches are looking you should, theoretically, find some players that can take up a roster spot.

Hopefully this makes sense/is helpful.

I'd plan on taking at least 2 walk-ons and rolling some of those 6 openings over to next season when you can get a better look at who you're chasing.

Very helpful, thanks A_B_G!

Thanks, dw! I will have 3 seniors next season & 3 underclassmen I didn't recruit who I think I should release (didn't want to release them this season with 6 openings already). I guess I can compare the walk-ons to the 3 crappy underclassmen and decide which to release.

Posted by bigham23 on 2/9/2021 10:24:00 AM (view original):
So... First season & I screwed up and blew all my scouting budget before recruiting started. I'm "in" on a few of my targets, but need more targets in case I lose any of those guys (6 openings!).

I'm curious if anyone has suggestions?

One crazy thought... has anybody "scouted" with high school stats, or are those totally meaningless? I'm looking at a D3 player no one is recruiting, and his HS ppg is 17. Without being able to scout him, I'm curious if there is totally 0 relationship between HS stats and actual abilities, or if I can use the HS stats as a proxy for talent since I can't use $ to see actual talent.

Actually somewhat glad I learned this the hard way this season, as I will definitely handle my scouting budget better in the future! (I also made the noob mistake of scheduling probably the easiest non-con slate in World Tark for next season, but with the way my recruiting class is shaping up that might actually be a good thing!)

In case you haven’t seen this, some good ways to scout are discussed on this thread.

Thanks, shoe3!

How do you find Transfers? I checked my scouting services and do not see any way to search for them. Is this just an upper division thing for D2 and D3?

@beebster it looks like *after the season is over* (and at the beginning of the 2nd recruiting session) you will be contacted by some number of transfers & can scout them at that point (or, as I plan to do since I don't have enough scouting $$$ left to do anything with, use A_B_G's approach above to find the players' ratings).

Another way to get more information on recruits scouted to Level 1 and 2...

Look at the considering list. There could be a successful coach or multiple successful coaches at Very Low on a recruit, meaning they gave that recruit some AP but haven’t yet pursued to unlock a scholarship. This can tell you that while you don’t have needed information to know whether to offer a recruit, chances are the dude is going to be better if other coaches have taken a look at him over no one having shown him any AP.

Also keep in mind during the second session that there could be schools in your division or even D1 who show VH on a recruit but don’t have an opening to offer a scholarship. The coach would have to cut someone to get that player to sign. It’s a risk, but sometimes coaches will even offer more scholarships than they have openings and the unsigned players go overlooked until the very end.

You can see how many openings any school has in the Class Rankings in the recruiting tab.

i would take at least a 4th walkon before signing a random unscouted player.

scratch that, i forgot they force you to take dumb players instead of walkons now. i would by a huge margin take that 3rd walkon before signing some random dude. but may as well sign a random dude instead of the almost guaranteed terrible player they will sign for you for that 4th walkon. doesn't matter a ton, either way you are probably cutting them for next season. but at least with a random dude, its only perhaps 90% you cut them, as opposed to say 99% with the guy the sim forces you to sign.

we generally call everything but FT% from high school stats (if it even still shows there) window dressing because the information you get from ratings is infinitely more accurate, and is complete on a relative basis (in the presence of known ratings, the high school stats provide zero additional value). however, in absence of ratings, i wouldn't call high school stats 100% irrelevant. this is a pretty obscure edge case, almost never would you want to evaluate off high school stats in lieu of taking a walkon. however, if i was a betting man, i would take the guy with better high school stats.

however, note that for sure, those high school stats DO NOT include potential / maximum ratings. if they are correlated to anything (which i think some are), its starting ratings only. so we are talking very fringe value here. still, if you are tossing a coin based on nothing otherwise - i'd probably use them? however, i do think what other folks said, finding players that had some interest, etc, are more useful than the high school stats. i didn't think you could see the considering list or preferences (almost definitely not preferences? scouting level 2?) without having scouted the guy somewhat though. so i'm not entirely convinced any of that is a real option for you (except the transfer comment - that is legit - you should be able to find the ratings for all transfers as long as you can find their prior team), but the finer points of 3.0 recruiting are beyond my range of intimate understanding so i'm really not sure.

Since you are in your first season, you can cut some sim signed players after the season and get more scouting money for them. There are some real turds on your roster, so I’d definitely look into that. The trick is, with six open scholarships, you’ll need to sign players first. The system won’t let you cut players to have more than six open scholarships at once. But once you sign a couple guys, I’d be cutting Geib and Stephens for sure, and maybe Ries too. You can cover a fair bit of scouting ground in the second session using the method in my link above. In your position, I’d be looking for D2 pool jucos in the second session.