I thought I’d create this post and throw in some unsolicited advice.

A little over a year ago, I won 2 NT’s (a few weeks separating them) and think I’ve discovered the key to both of those wins. Luck!

Haha. Jk… but luck definitely did play a factor. When I think back to those rosters, I believe the key to winning a NT is roster construction.

Recruiting… is essential to do well. And game planning too. Building a roster, though, is less frequently discussed on here.

A piece of this is knowing how to develop players. Yes, we all want to reach max potentials. But, for example, growing a player’s ath/spd (usually at all positions) earlier in his career pays big dividends.

I am interested to get a robust conversation going from other successful coaches on tips to building a behemoth roster.

Personally, for me, I gravitate towards recruiting highly athletic rebounding giants and highly speedy point guard distributing kings. Next, I ensure to have a balanced scoring attack between perimeter and low post. If my roster has these bases covered, the rest seems to be gravy.

Both of my championship teams, for what it’s worth, had at least one athletic guard who was exceptional at drawing fouls and shooting FTs.

How about you guys?

"When I think back to those rosters, I believe the key to winning a NT is roster construction.

Recruiting… is essential to do well. And game planning too. Building a roster, though, is less frequently discussed on here."

- agree 100%. team building, team planning, roster construction, whatever you want to call it - #1 key to success in my book. oldresorter (the undisputed GOAT for many years, and at a bare minimum still a top candidate today) used to say the same thing.

big talent gaps between teams will trump anything else, and i am not disputing that. but arranging your talent well, building synergy, and then having a good team setup to capitalize on that (which tends to flow very naturally if you did a lot of team planning up front), is the most important part of this game. i feel like that base team setup stuff, its really more about roster construction - or team building - i consider game planning to be more the game specific changes, not the entire set of settings. so that semantic or way of thinking difference, does drive some of why i value team building so highly, compared to some other folks.

when you are learning, and climbing from the bottom up to borderline top 25, maybe borderline top 15 or so, you are leap frogging over so many severely flawed teams that just getting good talent and a decent composition in the door, will give you the quickest gains. but competing for championships against other robustly talented teams is more about the team building stuff. i often felt my best teams were 80% or even better, to beat their similarly talented peers, because of the synergy.

Synergy on the roster… well stated, Gill.

So how limiting is recruit gen on roster building? There are times when my team is lacking in specific areas, but if the recruits aren't there, then I'm just looking at the best player available that I can realistically grab. And with how competitive recruiting is now, I would say settling like that happens more often than not.

I'm excited to read about the various ideas on here. I've found a little success at D3 and D2, but have failed miserably each time I've attempted D1. Especially my current attempt that is in a full and very good conference. I've been a doormat and even struggled beating SIM coached OOC opponents.

My most recent roster is one I'm excited about. I've put a heavy focus on ATH and DEF for a flex/zone team. I'm toying with making it a zone/HCP defense and possilby use that as a segway into a full press D, but that's another topic. The team is very young (1 senior and 2 juniors), so I have time for them to grow and develop. I've sacrificed passing in a big way to get the recruits I was albe to land.

My first build was an attempt to get speed and 3PT shooting. It was a miserable failure. I'm hoping this new philosophy works out better.

Posted by Baums_away on 10/19/2022 6:17:00 PM (view original):
So how limiting is recruit gen on roster building? There are times when my team is lacking in specific areas, but if the recruits aren't there, then I'm just looking at the best player available that I can realistically grab. And with how competitive recruiting is now, I would say settling like that happens more often than not.

I don’t think I usually focus on “my team needs xyz” so much in recruiting unless I only have 1-2 open spots.

The best answer I have to this question is to have a long list of backup targets. Finding the very best available players is an important first step, but rarely do I sign the first on my list.

One season I signed a dude who wasn’t a prime match for what I had in mind. My team might have suffered that season, but as he developed his slashing, passing, and FT skills… he ended up being far more valuable than what I thought I needed to find.

“My first build was an attempt to get speed and 3PT shooting. It was a miserable failure. I'm hoping this new philosophy works out better.”…

I would say great ath/def are the first corner stone, rebounding the second, guard distributing/ball handling the 3rd, and 3 Pt shooting (balanced offense) the 4th.

For a good team you can maybe be missing one of the four. For a great team, must have them all.

Posted by Baums_away on 10/19/2022 6:17:00 PM (view original):
So how limiting is recruit gen on roster building? There are times when my team is lacking in specific areas, but if the recruits aren't there, then I'm just looking at the best player available that I can realistically grab. And with how competitive recruiting is now, I would say settling like that happens more often than not.

fairly limiting. i haven't played much d2/d3 lately, i used to feel you basically had it much easier down there because there were lots of players available in the higher tier of talent, and composition was key. but i'm not sure how true that is anymore.

i think the best way to counter act the realities on the ground, if you will, which are recruit gen plus what everyone else is doing, is to be looking out 2-3 seasons. which is super important. ideally before seriously pursuing a recruit, you've roughly considered his role at NT time every season for the rest of his career, plus his EE trajectory. but especially his soph and junior year NTs, those are the super critical ones. if you see these team needs coming well ahead of time, its much easier to deal with it when the on the ground reality thwarts you for a season. dice rolls play a big part here too, obviously. recruiting freshman based on team needs that season never made any sense to me, freshman aren't really good enough to fill holes, except simple warm-body / depth chart stuff where its like, any 4th big is better than no 4th big.

its really a judgement call, when the recruits aren't there - there's usually a guy you can stretch for, now that distance disadvantage is less. when do you totally sell out for a certain role (even if that just means a dice roll at filling a spot), versus when do you take what the defense gives you so to speak? it depends on how critical those seasons are, the title hunt seasons matter more, and how critical it is to fill the role in question, in general and relative to the team you'll have then. its near impossible to just have your way with it in d1 these days, it seems to me, but if we are weighing this stuff for teams 2-3 seasons out, i think we have a much better chance to manage the necessary imperfections and lost dice rolls and such.