Naismith-Roanoke College

Two Exhibitions and only one regular season game; BUT I GOTTA ASK!!!

Is my roster that bad, or do I just stink (or both)

Will take any and all critque, reviews, observations, and suggestions. This team less my recruits only won two games last season, and averaged only mid 40 point range, but really.

Thanks, and I have thick skin, so you can be honest.

THe roster is 'just that bad' YOu need to get a good recruiting class in with those seniors when they graduate.

If you are looking for a better record, I would set your starters to 'getting tired' - otherwise, I would almost consider starting some of that bevy of sophomores and seeing if they can improve with PT. What are their potentials? If they have some potentials then GOss, Kennedy and WAshington might turn out ok. . but you DESPERATELY need some rebounders. That is where I woudl be focusing my recruiting attention next year. Presuming that one of either boyd or Oneil, who are both starting, is starting at SF< you have either a t
wenty or 18 rebounder starting at PF. . and that is scarily low.

Of your sophomores I like Kennedy, Goss, and Servais. Collins would be decent backup at SG but, with a '3' REB, can't play at SF.

Of your 2 freshmen, Boyd will never be decent with that 20 REB. Card might be OK if he's high potential for REB. If he's average or low, forget it.

I'd write off this year, starting Gross, Kennedy, Servais, Byrd and Card. I'd cut O'Neill at the end of the season and recruit a good 4 or 5-man class next year.

give the majority of your distro to goss and vadnais. bump up team practice to 25/25 for triangle/press. your rebounding is beyond god awful, try a -4 and a +2 and see what works better for you, and go with it. if you can't rebound, it doesn't matter if you can do much else, hence the -4 suggestion. but your rebounding might be so bad it might be fairly insignificant, so in that case, a +2 might have more benefits. maybe you can get some steals and your speedy guards (relatively, at least) might get some fast break points. don't run uptempo though. try to play the 20+ reb guards as much as you can, that will give you a much needed rebounding boost.

not to be harsh, but some of those freshman you recruited are really bad (not unlike my 1st recruiting class). you are better off cutting them than continuing. like, boyd and oneil have to go. use 50 reb as a hard minimum for bigs when the guy reaches his potential (figure guys will gain 2 for low, 13 for med, 25 for high, assuming decent (30+) work ethic).

also, if you want to stick it out and rebuild that team (which is about as bad as they get) for the challenge and starting from nothing, thats great, go for it. i started at a complete rebuild and am glad to have done it. but you might want to consider picking up a complete rebuild that is a little less bad.

good luck! :)

here are a tips to get you prepared for recruiting next time around. there are some "core" categories for each player, that are way more important than the other categories. focus on those, and you should be alright :) first, i will touch on 3 special ratings that are unlike any others -

work ethic. this helps a guy improve, nothing else. if a guy has less than 20 work ethic, ignore him completely. after that, work ethic isn't that important, unless a guy has a LOT of room for improvement (lots of high potential core categories). even then, its never as important as cores, but still probably about the 6th to 8th most important category.

stamina. stamina is its own beast. for a bad player, stamina is irrelevant, because the guy is bad anyway. but as a player gets better, stamina matters more. consider two good players, one with 70 stamina playing 20 minutes, one with 90 playing 24. in those 4 minutes, the 70 sta guy is sitting, so either his backup is getting the 4 minutes, or more likely, his backup's backup is getting them. so you have to average that backup's quality with the original 70 sta guy to compare him to the 90 sta guy in terms of how productive he will be for your team. does that make sense? the take away is, for role players, 70s and 80s for stamina is fine, but for your prime targets, you really want guys who will end with 90+ stamina. keep in mind also stamina and work ethic numbers are on totally different scales than the other categories, so if 90 is good for stamina, it surely doesn't mean 90 is the bar for good speed.

durability. durability is basically useless. ignore it completely.

so, here are the player types and the core categories you should focus on. these figures are for triangle/press, it might be different for other systems (in particular, defense is more important in man defense). i will not mention stamina, durability, or work ethic again.

pg: cores - spd, pass, bh. ignore - lp, sb.
sg: cores - spd, per, bh. pass is also pretty important. ignore - lp, sb.
sf: cores - reb, spd, ath. offense is optional. tough to find a good true small forward, often, a reasonably quick big man or a guard (preferably with some rebounding) is your best bet. sf is definitely the toughest, so for now, don't worry about them as much - if you get your guards and your bigs, and use a over for your sf, that will work fine.
pf: cores - reb, ath. also important - lp, sb, def, spd.
C: cores- reb, ath. also important - lp, sb, def, spd.

if you just focus on the cores up front, and ignore everything else, that is a good start. don't try to do too much early, just try to do a good job at a piece of the puzzle. as you grow as a coach, you will add more and more pieces.

Thank you for the great input....I will start at once with implementation.