Slew of Newbie Questions - Hoops Dynasty

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I've really enjoyed HBD the last few years so I thought I'd give HD a try. I signed up for a Smith and am trying to get prepared for the first recruiting season. I have done my best to read as much as possible but I still have some questions before I start tomorrow. I apologize if you all have answered these questions a million times! Thanks in advance!

1. Some of the readings suggested I should wait for DII players to drop to DIII. Does this apply to even the newest of owners?

2. I'm sure their is variance and alot has to do with practice/playing time/etc, but on average how much would a player with high/medium/low improve over a 4 year career assuming decent work ethic? Is it better to sign a player with a "core" attribute of 65 with low potential or 25 with high potential?

3. My school is located in east(ish) Texas so I purchased FSS for Texas and Lousiana. I'm considering Oklahoma too. Is that overkil/a waste of money? I looked and there are few DIII Oklahoma players but a fair amount of DII...

4. I read that I should call players that will be alittle bit of a reach for me and wait to see who drops. But of those DIII players that I can already pursue, how hard/how should I go after them?

5. I have 5 open scholarships, do you recommend that I fill all five? Or if I got three solid players would that be sufficent?

6. Any last few words of advice?

Sorry for asking a bunch of questions, I'm just trying to be prepared!! Thanks for you help

6/12/2012 10:51 PM

tdiddy3

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1. I've only had a few D3 teams in recent years..... my team with a C- prestige didn't seem to see players drop down that were worth signing. So my advice is if you have a C+ or better prestige, wait for drop down players, and if you have are C or C- and see guys worth signing without a recruiting fight go for it.

I'll skip 2 and 3 because I can't give you a fair answer

4. Drop down players will drop down regardless of if you call them or not. Phone calls will let you know when they drop down so you can get them faster and hope that someone else doesn't grab them first. It also helps you determine who is the drop down players once they do. You can sign a player with 10 calls, 10 letters, 10 coach calls and a home visit. (possibly less but that's usually what I start out with). It all depends on how badly you want the player.

5. I usually try to sign all 5, but make sure that I leave no more than 2 open scholarships. Some people like to use their extra scholarship money to get better players with the extra cash and take a walk on or 2 each season. I tend to try and fill the scholarships so that I can always have a deep roster.

6. Don't get emotionally attached to a recruit when you're trying to get them. It's easy to keep spending and spending on a player and ruin your team because you can't fill other scholarship needs. You can almost always find a player of similar talent if you keep looking. If a team is going nuts getting a player, let him go and get someone very similar. It's better to have a slightly lesser talent than to have no talent.

6/12/2012 11:03 PM

ike1024

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I'll answer 2.

65 low > 25 high in almost all ratings, high/high per and lp ratings being the only real exceptions. (you can determine whether the player is "high/high" or "low/high" from the messages in the scouting reports - see page 4 this thread: http://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?TopicID=329367&Page=4&TopicsTimeframe=30 to decipher the messages)

6/12/2012 11:11 PM

dacj501

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1. in general drop downs/ pull downs are better quality players - in general. There are always a few players on the list for your level that are almost (if not fully) as good.

Read this about drop/pull downs:

2. Each ability has a unique set of descriptors that you can learn from scouting evaluations during recruiting. There is low-low (1-3 pts imrpovement), high-low (3-6), average (7-19), low-high (20-27) and high-high 28+ Growth in these depends on practice plan and WE among other things. Here is a link to which high message is which for each ability

3. At D III you generally want to recruit locally. Try not to spend too much of your budget on FSS; of course, FSS is a very valuable tool. For more insight into recruiting and all aspects of D III play, please aejones' guide.

4. I believe jonesey's guide will assist you here.

5. If you are running full court press (FCP) defense you may need more players on the roster. Other defenses can often be successful with less than 12 scholarship players. 9 and 10 man teams are common. More in jonesey's guide

6. read the guide, keep asking questions, have fun!

6/12/2012 11:25 PM

pepwaves

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Posted by tdiddy3 on 6/12/2012 11:03:00 PM (view original):
1. I've only had a few D3 teams in recent years..... my team with a C- prestige didn't seem to see players drop down that were worth signing. So my advice is if you have a C+ or better prestige, wait for drop down players, and if you have are C or C- and see guys worth signing without a recruiting fight go for it.

I'll skip 2 and 3 because I can't give you a fair answer

4. Drop down players will drop down regardless of if you call them or not. Phone calls will let you know when they drop down so you can get them faster and hope that someone else doesn't grab them first. It also helps you determine who is the drop down players once they do. You can sign a player with 10 calls, 10 letters, 10 coach calls and a home visit. (possibly less but that's usually what I start out with). It all depends on how badly you want the player.

5. I usually try to sign all 5, but make sure that I leave no more than 2 open scholarships. Some people like to use their extra scholarship money to get better players with the extra cash and take a walk on or 2 each season. I tend to try and fill the scholarships so that I can always have a deep roster.

6. Don't get emotionally attached to a recruit when you're trying to get them. It's easy to keep spending and spending on a player and ruin your team because you can't fill other scholarship needs. You can almost always find a player of similar talent if you keep looking. If a team is going nuts getting a player, let him go and get someone very similar. It's better to have a slightly lesser talent than to have no talent.

I've never heard of someone doing what you describe in #4.

Would you be willing to explain why you choose to use coach calls/calls/letters instead of home visits or a campus visit?

6/13/2012 12:29 AM

tdiddy3

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pep..... i do a home visit along with the calls. players may not accept the visit if they don't know anything about the school, so it's better to do the calls and letters and the home visit.

6/13/2012 6:36 AM

hughesjr

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I would also say that for #2, there is Low, Average, and High ... designated by Red, Black, and Blue for the attribute when you use FSS.

dacj501 has split them up into Low (low-low(1-3), high-low(3-6)), Average(7-19), High (low-high(20-27), high-high(28+)), which you can get from Scouting Visits.

If you get yatzr's recruiting tool for HD, which I highly recommend, you can have a value for the generic potentials (i use 0 for low, 10 for average, and 25 for high) and enter formulas to rate players, if you like this approach.

6/13/2012 7:01 AM (edited)

texashick

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Tons of great advice. Thanks so much everyone!!

6/13/2012 9:05 AM

dacj501

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just another thing to add - I strongly recommend looking at that pinned article about mentors and choosing someone on the list to sitemail for more in depth help. The game has a sort of steep learning curve at the beginning, and there are a lot of fine folks listed there that can help the initial rough patches.

6/13/2012 1:45 PM

pjbrankin

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Posted by tdiddy3 on 6/13/2012 6:36:00 AM (view original):
pep..... i do a home visit along with the calls. players may not accept the visit if they don't know anything about the school, so it's better to do the calls and letters and the home visit.

wait..what? I've never heard anything like this before?

6/14/2012 12:20 AM

texashick

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Alright, so I'm now a day into recruiting and I have a few more questions!

1. The one recruit I really like and is interested in me appears to be a grade A knucklehead. Low GPA, likes tattoos and his mom is in AA, but he is clearly the best recruit Im looking at. He got good work ethic (67), so can I pound him with study hall and turn him around? What happens to players like this?

2. I'm the top choice on the dufus right now. If you recommend that I do continue to pursue him, should I keep pumping money into him or wait for a challenger to appear?

3. I am "back up" options on a some DII players. A few of them have are considering AI DII schools. Will those DII schools always trump my attempts? My prestige is a C+.

4. Should I be throwing scholarships at those DII players?

I realize at this point I am asking for more personal strategy than hard facts, but I would love some advice! Yall were extremely helpful before and I appreciate that!

6/14/2012 11:18 AM

jsajsa

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1)Of the things you mentioned, the only thing that matters is GPA. That and work ethic combine for how fast he learns your offense and defense, plus players need to earn a 2.0 so he may need a few more SH minutes. Don't worry about it.

2)If you are winning, you don't have to spend any more money on him. You can, but probably better to save that money for later in case someone does try to jump on your players - then you'll have what with to defend yourself.

3)No, but I'm guessing you don't have the money to pry them away. Staying really general on this one. It can be done (in fact I just did), but the question can't really be answered for a specific case without more info and I don't suggest you provide that in a public forum.

4)Not unless you are trying to take them from the sim with a lot of other recruiting efforts.

6/14/2012 11:31 AM

dacj501

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agree with jsa^2; will add that it is harder to pull players down when they are already considering another school, so it will usually take a lot more scouting evals if you try to do that. Be careful with trying that yet. Most of the things about the tattoos and AA and whatnot are vestiges of when the game had dilemmas and a kid's character had bearing to that... If the D 2 kids gave the backup message, they still may drop down on their own, and then you can use home or campus visits (that wouldn't likely be accepted until after a drop) to pry the kid from the D 2 school if you have the cash (still not necessarily something I'd recommend to a new coach)

6/14/2012 3:00 PM

texashick

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Y'all have been super helpful, can I ask one more quick one? The players guide says I should see midterm grade reports after game 6. Game 7 simmed this morning and I still have not gotten an email. Is there a screen I am missing? Thanks so much!

6/26/2012 9:23 AM

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