I am new to HD.  I took over a D III program and had to recruit 6 players with needs at every position but PG.  I tried to focus on the core skills for each position, but I can tell already I made a couple of mistakes in recruiting.  I have a young team (5 FR, 3 SO, 1 JR and 3 SR), so at this point I am more focused on developing my young guys than I am winning games.  I'm trying to figure out the best way to set up practice for my young guys to develop them.  Should I focus on just 1 or 2 categories at a time and try to develop core skills for the various positions quickly or would I be better off putting 12-14 points in as many categories as possible and trying to develop well rounded players?  My team is set up to play a motion offense and a full court press defense, but I am playing mostly halfcourt press/zone defense right now since I am playing so many young guys to try to hide some defensive weaknesses.

So, what is the best way to develop young guys?

Name	Yr.	Pos.	A	SPD	REB	DE	BLK	LP	PE	BH	P	WE	ST	DU	FT	TOT
Glenn Fincham	Jr.	PG	50	49	5	33	15	26	39	42	70	28	74	86	C	517
Thad Kemp	So.	PG	2	72	2	2	2	1	70	66	48	47	81	74	B	467
Timothy Brown	Fr.	SG	19	49	11	20	1	14	71	36	20	82	67	39	C	429
Leon Edmonds	Fr.	SG	29	43	8	33	6	37	30	42	31	44	68	28	C+	399
Clifton Lopes	Fr.	SG	44	51	6	32	1	1	29	52	31	38	77	71	B-	433
George Keller	Sr.	SF	35	42	45	44	24	44	33	54	25	58	82	38	D+	524
David Winfree	Sr.	SF	33	54	55	49	18	28	40	24	39	58	71	35	A	504
Ricky Franklin	Fr.	SF	13	46	37	12	24	29	37	38	28	58	65	33	D+	420
George Brown	Sr.	PF	44	32	59	44	42	32	15	35	22	64	95	57	B-	541
Michael Elem	So.	PF	42	37	31	40	11	27	1	38	54	53	72	46	C-	452
Jeffrey Mackey	Fr.	PF	36	20	37	34	34	65	23	25	12	23	46	73	C-	428
Ralph Ngo	So.	C	16	26	74	23	70	42	2	9	27	41	73	63	C+	466

Focus on winning.  This hopefully will be your worst recruiting class ever (most 1st classes are) and if you're like most coaches you probably are going to have some of your current freshmen lapped on the depth chart by the time they are seniors.  The most important thing you can do to build your team is to build prestige.  This is doubly so for you since you have a B level prestige instead of C-.  Keeping the prestige at B is going to be tough given the young roster.  But you're much better trying to prevent the B from dipping to all the way down to C- compared to improving the development of players you might not start as seniors.

I'd probably ditch the combo defense.  I don't think anybody would recommend it for new coaches.  I'd pick either zone or press.  Zone is easier but a really good press team is tough to beat.  You don't see many combo press/zone defenses at the D3 level even among the veteran coaches so I wouldn't worry too much about just sticking with one.

As to your practice plan, I'd recommend making sure that you give minutes to your players in all their core categories.  Guards: conditioning, defense, perimeter, ball handling, passing.  Small forwards: everything.  Posts: conditioning, rebounding, defense, low post.  Any non-core category that is high potential should get minutes too if it is something that you want to fully develop before graduation.  For example, I normally don't practice rebounding in a guard as a freshman unless the category is high potential.  (Although high potential categories that have starting ratings in the single digits probably won't fill the potential even if you do give practice all four seasons.)  If you run out of minutes due to a need to give study hall minutes and/or practice too many categories, don't be afraid to give zero minutes to practice a category with limited potential.  There isn't much room for growth and zero minutes typically won't result in a rating decreasing my more than three or four points and often less than that.  And that can be especially helpful when you are trying to practice everything for a small forward and also give the guy enough study hall to stay eligible.

Thanks KU.  I didn't know if I need to give ball handling and passing minutes to my posts or not.  It sounds like I shouldn't.  FYI, the guys I recruited were the 5 FR and Elem, the SO PF.  Edmonds (SG) was the biggest mistake.  Tim Brown is improving quickly (he is already up 13 points) and has good core skills except for ATH and DEF.  As long as I am starting him, I think I need to stick with a zone.  He and Kemp both start and neither one is a good defender.  Should I start some of the FR and SO or go with an older more experienced, but undersized linup?  Right now I start Kemp at PG, T Brown at SG, Keller at SF (I'm probably going to go with Winfree over Keller in the future), G Brown at PF and Ngo at C.  I need Ngo in there for defense (he is a good shot blocker and and isn't much worse than Elem or Mackey in the DEF category)  rebounding in the post.  If I take Kemp and T Brown both out I would have a very poor shooting team.

One thing that I have noticed is that Bigs can be more effective at scoring than you would think if they have good ATH, even if their LP is lower than I would normally like.  Same with Guards/SF and good SPD.  It seems that good ATH/SPD can make up for some LP/PE and DEF deficiencies.

Some of the other coaches can certainly add more to this concept than me ... I am just starting my detailed look into this area, but there are lots of threads discussing SPD/ATH advantages.  I think these have been somewhat diminished in the new engine, but they still exist.

Posted by hughesjr on 10/28/2010 9:31:00 AM (view original):
One thing that I have noticed is that Bigs can be more effective at scoring than you would think if they have good ATH, even if their LP is lower than I would normally like.  Same with Guards/SF and good SPD.  It seems that good ATH/SPD can make up for some LP/PE and DEF deficiencies.

Some of the other coaches can certainly add more to this concept than me ... I am just starting my detailed look into this area, but there are lots of threads discussing SPD/ATH advantages.  I think these have been somewhat diminished in the new engine, but they still exist.

this is very true.  last season i had a PG at D3 with 40-something ATH and 98 SPD.  His LP was in single digits and his PER was 18.  He scored nearly 1800 points in his career (over 300 more than anyone else in the 45 years of the program).  he shot 48.3% for his career, and also finished 6th in assists, and 1st in career steals (4th on the NCAA Records list for D3 in that world) despite having a DEF rating that was sub 20 for most of his career, and just crept into the low 20's at the tail end.