So after talking with multiple coaches about study hall minutes, I'm clueless about the overall outcome of Study Hall minute use in the practice plan.

My method, i always start at 10 for freshman (for a big quick boost) until midterms come out. Then i drop significantly. Sophs start with 3 and then drop. Jrs and Srs always get 0s. To ME, i play it safe. I never have had a player ineligible, and it's important to me that it stays at NEVER. But, I've heard some wild things.....

One experienced coach that has a lot of seasons played, says that every player, every season, gets 0.... like their whole career. ZERO! And never had an ineligible player in hundreds of seasons. This same coach did say that if one of his students gets the yellow stripe when grades come out, he'll bump all the way up to 15 until the next term, then back to 0 the rest of his career. But it's a rarity that he gets the yellow stripe.

One coach said he uses 0s forever until he gets a yellow stripe and then does something similar with minutes as i do (mentioned above).

The problem i have with this, is that i get the yellow stripe sometimes myself. And i use 10 minutes! I also get chewed out by most of you here for using 10 minutes, but again, I'm cautious early.

What I'm getting at, if these methods I've mentioned really work, is it possible that WiS just decides that a certain player will be ineligible, and certain ones won't.... regardless of what's invested in study Hall? I don't know any other way to explain a coach with hundreds of seasons having players with 0s in SH their entire career, as a standard! And not a fluke.

Insight please.....

if you leave it on 0 minutes, you will get guys failing out pretty often, often enough to see one every 2-3 seasons or so - i mean if you leave it on 0 and never change it. study hall clearly correlates with GPA.

that said, you are wasting a ton of minutes. i mostly 0 everyone and adjust at midterms. on occasion, with a freshman with real crap highschool gpa and we, i might put in like 5 minutes.

one thing im fairly confident in - midterm grade, like real life, are meaningfully under 50% of your total grade. in college i found it was typically 30%. i never studied it in HD but i'm guessing that about holds, that the SH after midterms is worth about 2:1 the SH before midterms. i think this is why it is so easy to just 0 it out and adjust if needed.

Ok but did you read any of what i just said?
1) i start with 10 min from start of season until midterms and still get guys that are below the 2.0. Often.
2) a coach with hundreds of seasons never gives minutes and never has ineligibles.

How can this be explained? Don't get me wrong, i generally agree with most of your post. But you didn't address either of those two situations, and it's what I'm curious about. It doesn't make any sense at all. I will share examples as time goes on.

In one of my CC's, a fellow coach asked yesterday about SH minutes. He has a D3 and D2 team. He had a player become ineligible on BOTH teams, using 10 minutes in SH from the beginning of the season! (I didn't tell him to do it, guess that is just his method as well). These situations are all over the place with no rhyme or reason

Here's an example..... my freshman guard, Billy Anderson at Coker in Naismith..... 10 minutes of SH the minute he arrived on my roster. When mid terms came out, he was failing. So i bumped him up to 12. He passed with a 2.4 first semester. I left it at 12 until the next midterms, they just came out today and he's a 2.2 with the yellow stripe.

How is that possible if I'm supposedly wasting practice minutes? Help me understand this please

The guy with zero minutes is either recruiting players with really high HS GPAs or he is lying.

This is a solid thread as I’ve often wondered the same things as you, Top.

I’d like to add two more questions to the list and it’s embarrassing I don’t know the answers.

1) If I have a freshman that is yellow-striped at midterms but is ABOVE 2.0, is there ever a reason to increase his SH minutes?

2). What about a sophomore that started the season at 2.5 and is 2.1 at midterms-would you bump his minutes?

I’m certain I’m also in the camp of coaches that waste WAY too many minutes on SH.

I start freshman at 10, bump them up or down based on their mid terms. I'll generally drop them 2-3 per year. By the time they are seniors they are generally maxed out on most categories so it doesn't matter if they have 1 or 5 minutes of SH. Perhaps I use too many minutes. However, I'm skeptical of an owner who reports playing hundreds of seasons, uses zero SH minutes and rarely gets a yellow stripe. I've gotten warnings for players with 10 and a high school GPA around 3.0.

I'm lazy, plus I have several teams, so I don't want to be spending time adjusting SH all the time. I set them at 4-6 to start based on their GPA. Then only adjust when I see the dreaded yellow line.

Posted by darnoc29099 on 8/3/2019 10:45:00 AM (view original):
This is a solid thread as I’ve often wondered the same things as you, Top.

I’d like to add two more questions to the list and it’s embarrassing I don’t know the answers.

1) If I have a freshman that is yellow-striped at midterms but is ABOVE 2.0, is there ever a reason to increase his SH minutes?

2). What about a sophomore that started the season at 2.5 and is 2.1 at midterms-would you bump his minutes?

I’m certain I’m also in the camp of coaches that waste WAY too many minutes on SH.

I will start my post in reply to these two specific questions by noting that I always start the season with zero SH minutes for all players. At midterms, I will add minutes only to guys with the dreaded yellow line. That basically answers the two questions by darnoc, but I will add some color.

1. Freshmen in particular are in danger of going ineligible. If above 2.0 but yellow at midterm, I will add between 5 and 15 minutes depending on HS GPA and WE.
2. Sophomores or other upperclassmen get minutes too if they are yellow. The number of SH minutes is dependent on cumulative GPA and WE.

For the record, I have had players go ineligible. I am not the coach to whom Top was referring

Ok so, so far I've learned two things..... 1) when i say i use 10 early on and everyone yells at me, I'm actually not the only one that does it. The rest of you just don't wanna get yelled at, too. So you just keep quiet! And 2) every answer will be completely different. Which puts us right back at square one.

I would think the difference between starting with 10 for freshman, or starting at 0, would create such a staggering difference, that it wouldn't even be a debate topic. But apparently that's not the case.

I start freshmen at 10. I adjust each marking period. Down if they are doing well, up if they trend down below 2.7 ish. I go up more if the kid moves down significantly in a marking period.

I also look at HS GPA and the kids WE. If the kid has low GPA and low WE coming in, I may start him at 12

I tend to end up with all my guys at 3.0 or better so I am wasting some minutes. Maybe I'll cut back....but Dean Wermer says he really wants good academic results

I start everyone at 3. When grades come out and i have anyone at 2.3 or less I adjust up. If the guy was an ineligible the season before I start him out at 6 then adjust up if needed.

Posted by mg050369 on 8/3/2019 12:40:00 PM (view original):
I start freshman at 10, bump them up or down based on their mid terms. I'll generally drop them 2-3 per year. By the time they are seniors they are generally maxed out on most categories so it doesn't matter if they have 1 or 5 minutes of SH. Perhaps I use too many minutes. However, I'm skeptical of an owner who reports playing hundreds of seasons, uses zero SH minutes and rarely gets a yellow stripe. I've gotten warnings for players with 10 and a high school GPA around 3.0.

i play 0 SH minutes to start the year and basically always have. its not that the yellow stripe is so rare, its that if you respond to the yellow stripe, starting with 0 minutes, you almost always skate through. very slightly lower % than if you started at 10.

i have always been a proponent of hyper optimized practice plans, pushing lows to 0 (back when such a thing was considered uncouth) and such. i get what you guys are saying - you still get yellows with 10m. yeah, i know - that's EXACTLY why i don't waste the 10m. i get barely more yellow stripes with 0m than you do with 10m - we both get a decent amount. so why burn the 10m?

to be frank here, i've been running 0 sh for about 10 years. this is 101 level stuff. if you haven't tried it yet, i'm not sure what you are waiting for.

Posted by topdogggbm on 8/3/2019 3:57:00 PM (view original):
Ok so, so far I've learned two things..... 1) when i say i use 10 early on and everyone yells at me, I'm actually not the only one that does it. The rest of you just don't wanna get yelled at, too. So you just keep quiet! And 2) every answer will be completely different. Which puts us right back at square one.

I would think the difference between starting with 10 for freshman, or starting at 0, would create such a staggering difference, that it wouldn't even be a debate topic. But apparently that's not the case.

here is what is actually happening -

you - man i run 10m for my freshman for study hall and it really doesn't work that well, i still get a bunch of yellow stripes.

me (for the last 10 years) - yeah, that's why i stopped wasting the 10m. if you run 0m, you get marginally more yellow stripes.

to re-iterate - you 'I would think the difference between starting with 10 for freshman, or starting at 0, would create such a staggering difference, that it wouldn't even be a debate topic'. me - 'No'

there is basically no difference, just like running 7 minutes on a low buys you almost nothing over running 0. those 2 myths have been around as long as i've been playing, and i have little patience for them. too many threads, just try it already. it works. go try it and there will be no need to debate, you'll see its just the right answer.

I had a fresh go ineligible a few seasons back after 5 minutes the first cycle and a bump up to 8 minutes when his midterms were at 1.9. He finished with 1.8. Never have had anyone since or before go down at midterm with an increase in minutes. Very strange.

I'm usually on the low end with minutes but I guess I should have gone up to 12 or 15 at midterm. He came in with a 2.3 hs gpa.