How do some of you more experienced coaches like to spread out your scholarships in order to make your program more consistent, but also maximize the potential of any given team?

I would imagine 3/3/3/3 gives you the most consistency, but for a program like mine that's never recruited a full class at anything higher than a C+ prestige, it would be hard to really increase your prestige by making a big run with only 6 combined upperclassmen. Right now, I have 4/6/0/2 at St. Johns(one of the freshmen is a walkon), and so many upperclassmen is helping me have a really awesome season. Of course, the tradeoff is that I won't be nearly as good next year.

After a handful of seasons, I have a basic idea of how to build a talented team at DIII that's filled with upperclassmen. How do I turn a very good team into a good program that's a yearly tournament team? Thanks for any advice.

It's about patience and requires at least 4 seasons.  Every good season improves your prestige, making it easier to get better players.  Your current team is B- prestige. If you can make a decent NT run, your could be B+ or A- when you recruit.  This should make this recruiting class better, as seniors,  than your graduating group. So, in 4 seasons, your goal is to be better than the last time you had the same class breakdown.

thanks al. would you suggest signing all the kids I can while my prestige is high(er), than using redshirts to try to balance out the classes? or keeping it the way it is?

It's ultimately your choice, and there's no incorrect answer, but I'd stay the same and redshirt one freshmen each season

I was trying to experiment with a class rotation of 6/0/6/0 the thought being that we would always have 6 jrs or srs - of course the jr/fr years would probably be slightly down from the sr/so years, but I thought NC schuduling might be able to balance the difference and at least ensure a string of NT appearances, with occasional runs depending on how good the sr/so years were...

thing is by the time I finally recruited my first class that put everything in place I'd been there a while, and I got qualified for some D I gigs and moved on - in retrospect I wish I'd have stayed, but that's a different story.

Im trying to sort out in my mind how to go from having two good years and two bad years to being a consistent tourney threat. I don't think that right now I'm a good enough coach or have a high enough prestige at St johns for it to matter yet, but I'd like to have an idea of how to transition.

I like going 2-4-2-4.  We'll always have six juniors/seniors and we'll always have a decent number of incoming freshmen.  I've been unable to use this at my DI school in Smith, but at my old DIII dynasties in Allen and Knight I utilized 2-4-2-4 as often as possible. 

Sometimes having 5-6 seniors is nice though; it all comes down to the talent you sign.  Sometimes you'll have no players you want to redshirt, sometimes you'll have a freshman you want to redshirt, sometimes you'll have an upperclassman you want to redshirt.  Sometimes you'll have two open scholarships, but instead of signing two freshmen, you'll see one very talented senior transfer and you'll sign him instead. 

It's hard to maintain the same balance per class every season, so you really just have to go with your gut and determine what's best for your team's success.  

with my barton team i'm trying to even things out still (not working well)

but sheperd with my other ID (different world, no worries) i have the 3/3/3/3 thing going, and i always RS a player so really its 1/3/3/3/2... so that gives me 7 upperclassmen every year, which is plenty, and i still get to recruit 3 every year.

My exact distribution ends up changing constantly based on redshirting / the occasional walkon, but I think the most important thing is that you have at least 6 guys with good IQ's playing every season. For me, that means usually SR + JR + redshirt SO, because I expect all of those guys to be at least B+ in their off and def IQ's, and most of them in the A levels. So, right now I've got 3-2-2-5, but one of my sophs and one of my frosh are already A- in their IQ's. If you have 6-8 strong-IQ players, I think you can build pretty consistent success.

i used to try for unbalanced classes - like 5/5/2/0 or something to that effect, to give you a really strong year, to maximize your chance of winning the NT that year. but i now feel like its pretty much a waste to have more than 10 non freshman, as you rarely use those 11th and 12th men anyway, so i prefer to have something more balanced. not perfectly balanced, as i enjoy the challenge of less upperclassmen and the strength of more. ideally i would have either 4/4/2/2 or 5/3/2/2 or something like that.

I'm just the opposite gillispie.  I used to try for balanced classes but now I just wing it.  Once I started signing (or attempting to sign) inelligibles it threw the numbers off.   If I have a thin upper class coming in I will look more closely at transfers.   The one area I watch closely is PG.  I try to sign one every couple of seasons so I don't end up with a true frosh starting there.

Currently my team has a class breakdown of 2/3/3/3 with 1 redshirt freshman.  If the only goal is to win the NT, is there any benefit to actively trying to unbalance my classes in order to maximize my upperclassman in any given season?

I played a lot with it when I had a lot of teams and several usernames.  I thought the perfect setup was 3-3-3-3.  That got me into the NT every season but I couldn't get past the Sweet 16.  I have two teams now and I set the one up as 5-1-5-1.  It took a few seasons to get to this and I have only been doing it for 4 seasons but I really like it.  When I have the 5 SRs I am making deep runs, but no title yet.  But last season when the class of 5 were JRs we made it to the Elite 8 so we should have a chance for a title run this season.  I like this setup because the SOs get plenty of playing time and as JRs 4 of the 5 start.  The IQs improve very quickly.

My other team, with this username, is setup as 4-5-1-2.  It was 4-5-2-1 and I need to switch it back.  I redshirted a guy and I wish I hadn't.  I don't want 2 SRs taking up minutes from my 4 JRs and 5 SOs.  I thought about switching to the other formula but you can't argue with success.  I have been in 2 Championship games with the class of 4 and we are in the Final Four this season.  You would think with 4 SRs and 5 JRs you would be very strong.  The funny thing is the class of 5 SRs has won three titles.  That's where the 2 JRs coming off the bench helps.

I just think a strong class of 5 SRs give you the best shot at a title, at least at D3.  I no longer do D2 or D1.

BTW, I threw away 4 recent seasons with the engine change and this season is the first SR class recruited for the new engine.  It may not have hurt some people but man did it screw me up! I'm just getting back to where the program was.

4-4-3-1 no doubt in my mind on this one.  It allows for you to compete for a championship twice out of four years (the 7 and 8 upper classmen years) and the one year you have only one senior you have a class of four juniors and four sophs so you'll be able to be competitive.