Guys, a quick question. In Knight I've never really had the opportunity to rebuild (or even build) a program that's been historically downtrodden. I had a rebuild going on at D3 La Roche but left when my old school Oberlin became available. I have a bad habit of leaving there and finding my way back eventually.
Anyway, I want to return to D3 and I'm wondering if I should be looking for a team that has a lot of scholarships open (6+) or one that has a few? I figure the more open spots the sooner I'll be able to bring in my own players, but I know its difficult to recruit more than 6 players on a 6-player budget.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks.

Paul

unless you are taking over a school that another coach did a decent job of building (maybe they moved up) I would find 6 openings - and you can go more than 6 fairly easily in certain situations, but even without that you can always take a walk on or two if need be. Generally getting your own players in quickly allows you to shape the program the way you envision it more easily...

Thanks dacj501. That's what I was thinking...its always good to hear others' thoughts. Appreciate it.

I've done a few of these rebuilds.  Bridgewater State in Tark is my greatest success story. Took over a middling program that had 11 open scholarships. By the time that first freshman class graduated, we had an A+ prestige and were coming off a 32-1 season where our only loss was a Sweet 16 loss to the eventual national champion.

Here are the keys to rebuilding a team like that and managing to fill 9+ scholarships on a 6 scholarship budget:

-- Your freshman players have to be local guys. All of my freshmen came within a 250 mile radius of the school. You are going to need to be able to get guys cheaply (call/HV/scholarship in first cycle, get considered and hope no one battles you for them).  Your margins are so thin that you cannot afford any recruiting battles. 

-- Your biggest task will be recruiting jucos/transfers. The pool of these players is limited and there may only be a few that show up in states that you have used FSS for. The quality of the jucos that you get in the first class, IMO, is the key to having success with a rebuild like this. At Bridgewater, I got some great jucos, which made my team competitive by the second year. My failures have come when I had to take really crappy jucos just to fill out the class.

-- No matter how well you recruit, you will stink that first season. You will have a ton of guys who have low IQs. Focus on getting big improvement in ratings early on. Your team will be much more competitive in the back half of the conference season when most of your players have at least a B- IQ.

Posted by grimacedance on 2/9/2016 10:52:00 AM (view original):
I've done a few of these rebuilds.  Bridgewater State in Tark is my greatest success story. Took over a middling program that had 11 open scholarships. By the time that first freshman class graduated, we had an A+ prestige and were coming off a 32-1 season where our only loss was a Sweet 16 loss to the eventual national champion.

Here are the keys to rebuilding a team like that and managing to fill 9+ scholarships on a 6 scholarship budget:

-- Your freshman players have to be local guys. All of my freshmen came within a 250 mile radius of the school. You are going to need to be able to get guys cheaply (call/HV/scholarship in first cycle, get considered and hope no one battles you for them).  Your margins are so thin that you cannot afford any recruiting battles. 

-- Your biggest task will be recruiting jucos/transfers. The pool of these players is limited and there may only be a few that show up in states that you have used FSS for. The quality of the jucos that you get in the first class, IMO, is the key to having success with a rebuild like this. At Bridgewater, I got some great jucos, which made my team competitive by the second year. My failures have come when I had to take really crappy jucos just to fill out the class.

-- No matter how well you recruit, you will stink that first season. You will have a ton of guys who have low IQs. Focus on getting big improvement in ratings early on. Your team will be much more competitive in the back half of the conference season when most of your players have at least a B- IQ.

So, Juco's are a good thing on whatifsports? I don't really want to go into them but I guess I can scout some jucos to come to Chowan in Allen. So I have 20 scouted for next recurting cycle, should I add more?

Posted by CoachWard95 on 2/9/2016 12:01:00 PM (view original):

Posted by grimacedance on 2/9/2016 10:52:00 AM (view original):
I've done a few of these rebuilds.  Bridgewater State in Tark is my greatest success story. Took over a middling program that had 11 open scholarships. By the time that first freshman class graduated, we had an A+ prestige and were coming off a 32-1 season where our only loss was a Sweet 16 loss to the eventual national champion.

Here are the keys to rebuilding a team like that and managing to fill 9+ scholarships on a 6 scholarship budget:

-- Your freshman players have to be local guys. All of my freshmen came within a 250 mile radius of the school. You are going to need to be able to get guys cheaply (call/HV/scholarship in first cycle, get considered and hope no one battles you for them).  Your margins are so thin that you cannot afford any recruiting battles. 

-- Your biggest task will be recruiting jucos/transfers. The pool of these players is limited and there may only be a few that show up in states that you have used FSS for. The quality of the jucos that you get in the first class, IMO, is the key to having success with a rebuild like this. At Bridgewater, I got some great jucos, which made my team competitive by the second year. My failures have come when I had to take really crappy jucos just to fill out the class.

-- No matter how well you recruit, you will stink that first season. You will have a ton of guys who have low IQs. Focus on getting big improvement in ratings early on. Your team will be much more competitive in the back half of the conference season when most of your players have at least a B- IQ.

So, Juco's are a good thing on whatifsports? I don't really want to go into them but I guess I can scout some jucos to come to Chowan in Allen. So I have 20 scouted for next recurting cycle, should I add more?

Like everything else, jucos are not inherently good or inherently bad.  Jucos are a necessity if you have more than 6 scholarships available (max of 6 scholarship freshman on a team at any time). 

There are several other situations where you should consider jucos:

You should check out jucos as a way to help balance recruiting classes. If you have two juniors on your team and 5 open scholarships, using a scholarship on a junior juco can help you get to 3 juniors and 4 freshmen.  It is also a good way to make sure that you don't end up with, say, 2 freshmen PGs. It's better to have a junior PG and a freshman PG so that your PG position isn't turned into crap every fourth year.  A big part of this game is planning ahead for future classes.

If you need an immediate starter at a position, look at a juco. A good juco is always a better player right away than a true freshman.

Or if you have a specific role on the team (bench scorer, bench rebounder, etc) that you need filled, it is good to look to a juco.

As far as your current situation, I would stay away from jucos right now, CoachWard95. You only have two scholarships coming open and you should fill those with high potential freshmen. But after next season, when you lose that massive junior class, you should use jucos to balance out your classes.

I'd point out that a JUCO/Transfer is most valuable to you if they know your offense and defense already. Otherwise, it'd be hard (probably impossible) to get them to reach an A+ IQ by the time they graduate.

I'll throw out my rebuild success story that is still ongoing and that has another JUCO tactic that is mentioned in aejones's guide.

I took over Ramapo after they lost 9 players and hadn't had a human owner in like 40 seasons. They were just coming off a NT bid because of all the seniors so they had a B prestige to work with in recruiting... which was nice. Like grimace mentions, all the freshmen I got are from NY, so I stayed pretty close to home.

https://www.whatifsports.com/hd/TeamProfile/Ratings.aspx?tid=7649

Those freshmen are now seniors and are currently in the Elite 8 for the 2nd straight year. I definitely lucked out on some of them vastly exceeding my expectations on growth so I was pretty fortunate. But having 6 openings helped w/ the recruiting quite a bit.

As for my JUCO story. I got this guy- Joseph Seward during that same recruiting class as a JUCO. I actually gave him a RS since his potentials looked so good and knew I'd need more time for him to grow. FYI for those who don't know - you typically need to inform of RS during the recruiting period for jucos and you need to offset this by throwing a couple HVs his way. Anyhow- he was a KEY contributor to the team's Elite 8 run his senior season and I definitely wouldn't have been nearly as good if he had graduated 'on time'.

https://www.whatifsports.com/hd/PlayerHistory/Ratings.aspx?tid=7649&pid=3121420

Remember that for a total rebuild, especially one with more than six scholarships available, promised minutes and starts are your friend.  You can get some players on the cheap that way.

Posted by arssanguinus on 2/9/2016 4:09:00 PM (view original):
Remember that for a total rebuild, especially one with more than six scholarships available, promised minutes and starts are your friend.  You can get some players on the cheap that way.

Definitely. And your team will be awful that next season, so using minutes/starts on guys who don't deserve them isn't going to cost you a conference title or NT berth.

I consider myself a bit of a DIII rebuild specialist, and, while I do not disagree with anything said above, there is more than one way to play this game. I decided to join the DIII rebuild challenge at SUNYAC in Phelan, but was late to the party, and had my choice of only two remaining schools. I got C SUNY Potsdam with only two open schollies and a terrible location right up against the Canadian border in a conference with a bunch of other NY teams. I cut 6 guys that first season, leaving me with 8 ships to fill with only money for 2. I didn't do a lick of recruiting until after signings, and then didn't do any scouting trips. I just sorted through the remaining recruits on a nationwide basis and after I picked a few likely candidates then I purchased FSS for those states. I gave out starts and schollies for the most part, and signed six guys, taking two walkons. Long story short, with a bit of luck, that class of guys literally nobody else wanted ended up going to the National Championship game as seniors. Even though we are now an A+, I still do a lot of long distance recruiting as there are usually not more than one or two decent recruits in the vicinity. Admittedly, this was an extreme situation, but in a rebuilding gig, I would almost never advocate spending any money (including on FSS) until after signings have begun. With the drop downs, you will have better recruits available to you, and you will be less likely to lose them to D2 schools or higher prestige D3 schools.

Posted by rak on 2/9/2016 9:34:00 PM (view original):
I consider myself a bit of a DIII rebuild specialist, and, while I do not disagree with anything said above, there is more than one way to play this game. I decided to join the DIII rebuild challenge at SUNYAC in Phelan, but was late to the party, and had my choice of only two remaining schools. I got C SUNY Potsdam with only two open schollies and a terrible location right up against the Canadian border in a conference with a bunch of other NY teams. I cut 6 guys that first season, leaving me with 8 ships to fill with only money for 2. I didn't do a lick of recruiting until after signings, and then didn't do any scouting trips. I just sorted through the remaining recruits on a nationwide basis and after I picked a few likely candidates then I purchased FSS for those states. I gave out starts and schollies for the most part, and signed six guys, taking two walkons. Long story short, with a bit of luck, that class of guys literally nobody else wanted ended up going to the National Championship game as seniors. Even though we are now an A+, I still do a lot of long distance recruiting as there are usually not more than one or two decent recruits in the vicinity. Admittedly, this was an extreme situation, but in a rebuilding gig, I would almost never advocate spending any money (including on FSS) until after signings have begun. With the drop downs, you will have better recruits available to you, and you will be less likely to lose them to D2 schools or higher prestige D3 schools.

I would almost never (advocate) spending any money (including on FSS) until after signings have begun.

Advocate- a person who publicly supports or recommends a particular cause or policy.

Doesn't make sense how are you giving advice to people when you use words wrong? I am confused can you reword your post? I think you are trying to be helpful but chose the wrong word!

"Advocate" is also a verb, but I see the potential double negatives there, Sorry to be difficult to understand - let's try again. In a rebuild, I generally recommend that the coach not spend any money on recruiting until signings have started. It is difficult for me to be that patient, but it pays off.

Posted by rak on 2/9/2016 9:43:00 PM (view original):
"Advocate" is also a verb, but I see the potential double negatives there, Sorry to be difficult to understand - let's try again. In a rebuild, I generally recommend that the coach not spend any money on recruiting until signings have started. It is difficult for me to be that patient, but it pays off.

generally recommend!!!!! That's the right word, thanks for understanding your mistake I appreciate it!

I did the same in Transylvania, chose a team where I could get some recruits for myself only (Kentucky team) but really did not grab a lot of Kentucky players. It is probably because I got unlucky, the recruit générations weren't really nice in Kentucky. I ended up with that team in two seasons but decided not to go JUCO or TRANSFER, but only freshmen and built a 6-6-0-0 that I will disband once my rep is at B+...

This is what I did, as Rak mentioned, I scouted Oregon, Hawaii, Alaska, places where I felt I had a shot at getting players with a start and a scholly.

First season I got a recruit in WAS and others close to my campus. But I scouted a lot of states after signings to get the six players.
Second season, I got a recruit in OREGON and others close to campus. This time, I had an ok recruit in KY, signed him. The best state for me was Mississippi. In two seasons so far, I only went into one heated recruiting battle.

I am pretty sure my team is on the right track. But as a C- team, I could not get pulldowns or nice DII players.... So yeah rebuild, probably going to the NT next season and be ranked in two, but I doubt I am winning it.

I like JUCOS to balance classes. Some are really amazing players too. But when you rebuild, I prefer going freshmen. First season we grew 60 pts overall (6 freshmen), second season, the team grew as a whole (12 players) 60 again. And we have a lot more room to grow.

https://www.whatifsports.com/hd/TeamProfile/Ratings.aspx?tid=13475

Well, I took over a rebuild at D3 Alma College in Knight. I managed to fill 9 scholarships on a 6-scholarship budget with the help of 3 "$110 specials". I wanted to cut one additional player but decided against it. The program runs a fastbreak/zone and I was able to bring in 5 players that know the Fastbreak, so I lucked out there. The freshmen are a mixed bit. Lynch, Owenby and Friel will be pretty good by the time they graduate. Singh and Shatz will be role players. It was ranked the #5 class in the country, but I never pay attention to that. I'd give myself a C+ because I wasn't able to find a true point guard (Lynch is the closest I have right now)...that'll have to wait until next season. Changing the offense to either a Motion or a Flex but not sure about the Zone yet. We'll be running the Fastbreak/ zone this season and play the new set next campaign.