I am not the best coach on here, believe me. But I did have a knack for recruiting when I first started playing and wish there were a few things I understood when I first started.

I thought I’d share my number one tip to anyone just starting out...

The tip is team building (knowing which recruits to go after and why)... and HD doesn’t always parallel what you would expect from the real world.

The tip... go to your school’s records page. Look at the ratings of all-time assists leaders, look at ratings of all-time rebounding leaders, look at ratings for point leaders, FG%, 3pt Fg%, steals. And take notes.

This is a great way to inform yourself on how HD ratings affect game performance. Getting input from mentors is smart; however, every coach on here has an individual approach and you might jive with one over the other.

Historical data is all there for you to review with every school’s records tab. #yourewelcome

I think this is a great tip and a fun exercise for a new player.

However, I do want to point out that this is going to likely overvalue stamina a bit. Players that can stay on the court longer are going to rack up more stats, but this does not mean that they are necessarily more effective on an individual game/lineup basis.

I’d focus more on the players recruited by humans as opposed to the sim. You’re going to see bigs with 100 reb and 100 blk ratings rack up boards and blocks but have ATH and DEF ratings in the 30’s, and I wouldn’t touch those guys with a 10 foot pole, even at D3.

I agree. Human-recruited guys are a better sample.

I use the records tabs to evaluate my own players successes. In Knight I have a team on the 3 seed line going into CT play... with about 4 players hitting my records page. Two for assists, one for points, rebounds, another for fg%.

The records page can be used as a target for recruiting... finding guys who will land on it.

And here's a corollary tip: the stars of yesteryear that you find in your history can give you some idea of which star attributes result in starring performances, but if you just took over a rebuild or your team doesn't have very good prestige, those are NOT your recruiting targets now. Stars like that are likely out of your reach, but they give you an idea of the sort of player you might eventually go after. To start with, if your recruiting improves your team, you were successful. Repeat that success each season and soon you will be going after those stars. Good luck.

One thing I'd caution is not to forget about teams that run primarily slowdown offenses. It's very hard for them to get in the "counting categories" team records but they can and do have very effective players that will be overlooked simply by looking at the individual records page.

Good point emy. Also some humans change sets. So while a team may be triangle zone base, a human could come along and change to fb/press, inflate some numbers for a few seasons, and when they leave it goes back to triangle zone.

I've never thought about looking at the team records for talent. But I guess there are some factors that "could" be misleading. There's a few coaches here (won't name them!) that don't schedule humans.... EVER. So they might have inflated numbers over the long haul as well. Compared to a coach that plays a gauntlet schedule over the years.