Question/Poll for all you guys. 
1. Do you use FSS or scouting trips to determine potential in players?
2. Do you find that you recruit more to potential or a players current ratings?

I noticed a trend with my recruiting lately that I seem to be looking at players potentials more than their current ratings. The players ratings get them in the door but I recruit on potential. I just finished recruiting in Knight, I had 6 schollys to fill with only 1 big on my roster. I signed 4 big men but only one of them has  LP that i would even consider giving some distro to. The rest all have High potential but who knows how things will turn out.
Here are the 4 big men in question, is it as bad as I think it might be?

Name

Pos.

A

SPD

REB

DE

BLK

LP

PE

BH

P

WE

ST

DU

TOT

Michael Keith

PF

42(A)

27(H)

30(A)

48(A)

24(H)

16(H)

1(H)

19(L)

22(A)

46

54(H)

86(L)

415

Kenneth Matthews

C

63(A)

19(L)

52(H)

36(H)

35(H)

19(H)

1(L)

10(L)

25(L)

45

63(A)

30(H)

398

Christopher Wicklund

PF

27(H)

39(L)

37(H)

29(A)

26(H)

27(H)

16(L)

42(L)

42(A)

34

72(H)

57(L)

448

Maynard Zingg

C

34(H)

12(L)

68(H)

22(H)

62(L)

47(A)

1(L)

11(A)

16(H)

41

60(H)

42(H)

416

Any comments or sugestions would be appreciated.

Not a big fan of Keith, but the other 3 look ok.  Not spectacular, but ok.  If they could block the Cs would be solid.

Not that I'm an expert.

1. Do you use FSS or scouting trips to determine potential in players?

I use both. Unless you do a lot of scouting trips, you may miss some skills. However, using FSS by itself will not tell you if the High that you see is an average High or a Sky's the Limit High. That said, there are many times I do not use FSS. I explain my reasoning below.

2. Do you find that you recruit more to potential or a players current ratings?

I do both depending on whether I need the player to play right away or I can wait and groom him for a season or two before giving him significant minutes. I have a lot of preferences that I use to filter down certain skills and then distance, GPA, and FT% are also factors that I consider. Quite often, this only leaves me a couple of players to choose between. At that point, what their potentials are is often irrelevant to me and any average or high potentials are simply a bonus. If I need the player for significant minutes right now it doesn't matter what his potentials are. If the player will ride the bench his freshman season, then I am more likely to look at potentials. In the latter scenerio, I am more likely to spend on FSS.

Regarding the 4 bigs you signed, I would probably have only signed Zingg. In my opinion, the other 3 will never become serious shooters. The reason I say that is that even High potential can only improve a player so much. High potential generally means about a 21-25 point improvement. So, Keith and Matthews are likely to cap out at around 40 and Wicklund may cap out at around 50. The big exception is the magical "Sky's the Limit" feedback from the scouting trip. That can mean as much as a 30-60+ point improvement. The scouting trip feedback is the only way to learn that.

Other coaches will probably have differing opinions but that's how I look at the FSS/ scouting trip issue.

Obviously my resume doesn't stand up to Weena's, but I don't see how you can hope to compete in D3 without paying attention to potential and/or only recruiting JR/SR JUCOs and transfers.  Those guys, when decent, typically cost extra to bring in, so I don't see how you could build entire teams from them.  Typical D3 recruits/dropdowns/pulldowns have overalls of 450 and lower.  Tough to compete with a whole team of role-players and subs.  That's pretty much what they are if they don't grow significantly.

I use FSS to get a pool of players that I'm interested in, and then use scouting report to differentiate the players that I choose from FSS.

It is very inefficient imo to scout individual players to see their overall potential as you probably need 2-3 scouting trips to get all their attributes, which costs the same and possibly more, as scouting a state. 

1) Pre-change, I used to FSS maybe one state or two, but mostly I would use scouting visits.  Now, I scout more states and I only recruit guys from those states because there is much less average potential and much more low or high potential.  The chance of getting a bust is much higher if you don't use FSS and with SVs you'll find that out eventually, but you might have put in 3 or 4 SVs and possibly more than 1k into a guy.  If you miss on 4 or 5 guys at d3, you are in serious trouble.

2) I try to get get guys who have good ratings and good potential, but I usually try to take a project player every year or two.  These are guys who are high potential in almost every category with good work ethics, but they'll take a while to develop.  It'd be hard to make a team out of these guys because they can't contribute their freshman year or much their sophomore year, but by their senior year they're monsters.  

As for your guys, I don't like Keith.  It doesn't seem like he could contribute because he doesn't do anything well.  Matthews will be a very good rebounder and a pretty good defender; a guy every team needs.  Wicklund could probably be a pretty studly SF and could really help your team's overall rebounding.  Zingg has the best name of all your recruits along with being the most talented.

Thanks for the comments guys. I agree about Zingg, I considered him my "prize," recruit. Not that he is off the charts good, just by comparison he has the best ratings/potential combo of my bigs.

Tkimble I do the same thing with FSS. I usuall scout 3-5 states depending on where I see the players with the best ratings, then I mostly just stick to recruiting from those states. It can make it hard to find players that I want though.

Depending on which states you're scouting, don't be afraid to scout more states. Scouting 7 states can really help in finding those diamonds in the rough. A quick trick I use for d3 is search for recruits in scouted states, put the minimum we and def at 30, and sort by WE. You'll find the high WE high potential guys right away.

EDIT: my personal preference with a low prestige d3 team is to find the one or two guys (depending on class size) that will be program changers. Battle for them, promise them anything, and blow 9k on them because in three seasons that player will be able to singlehandedly bring you a B prestige, at which point you do it all over again.

1. FSS

2. A mix of both...if a guy doesn't have decent cores, it'd be hard to pick him up regardless of the green cats he has...though I have gone after and gotten guys with high WE and 6+ green cats.

1) Both. I would not consider signing a player without seeing his potential, except in d1, for the small handful that are so close to maxed that even terrible potential guarantees they are awesome. I use scouting trips all the time to break ties between the best available targets, to decide who to actually go after.

2) I recruit primarily based on how good a player will be when they are an end of year junior or end of year senior. Generally, freshman suck anyway, and even though sophs are meaningful, I rarely start them. So I mostly don't care if one guy is a little behind younger if he will be better older.

1)  FSS.  I use scouting more in D1 on a regular basis or to help get a guy to consider me.  In D3, I use scouting to differentiate between players who seem equal on FSS or for a potentially great looking player in a state I didn't FSS for whatever reason (usually a close by state where I don't like very many recruits)

2)  I recruit first on current ability, but will remove any Freshman who has low potential in any core category that needs improvement.  If it's a larger class (4+) or an upperclass laden team, I will take a flyer on a high-high potential player with good WE but subpar ratings to see how they pan out with a RS.

1. FSS almost entirely.  I rarely use scouting trips except if I'm interested in just one player in a big state (NY or PA).

2. I just add 10 pts to each high rating, and subtract 10 pts from each low rating and then evaluate the player on his adjusted ratings.

That's not a perfect system, but on average, normal potential generally improves 10 points more than low, and high improves 10 points more than normal, so that is a quick and dirty adjustment that gets you pretty close.

Since potential was first introduced two years ago, each recruiting period I do a search based on my minimum criteria (by position), dump all the data into a spreadsheet, manually adjust all the reds (-10) and greens (+10), apply a formula I developed, and sort by my personal "overall" rating.

I end up with four lists of players sorted by my overall rating for PG, SG, SF, and Post (I ignore their listed position and go strictly on rating).  I then look at the top 20 or so players on each list and pick who I want to go after based on team needs, distance, likelihood to have a battle, etc.