Hey all -- couldn't find the answer to this after a quick forum search. How high should I be reaching as a D prestige school in D1? I'm new to D1 and I've scouted/targeted a few guys in the 40s/50s for their position who would be a good fit on my team. Is that too high?

Thanks for any help.

There isn't a chart or anything, you can try for anyone. It's more about knowing when to not waste resources at low D1.

Generally speaking, you have a real hard time to even getting to HIGH against anyone a full letter grade above you if the player is a primary option. You can do it but you need to max out, heavily invest AP, and have significantly better preferences. What you can do is attack teams backups or find guys in a battle with few openings and try to catch them when you can drop 20 HV's and they can't.

Thanks TJ. Good luck this season. Don't beat up on my old team too bad.

Also, it's less about their WIS ranking and more about what they are projected to become. A while back there was a SG that projected to 90/90/09 ATH/SPD/DEF had decent guard skills (75+) and high enough LP or PER (iforget which one ) to be a capable scorer. I think he was like the #173 SG. There was like 30 schools on him, all human, all three levels. I forget where he signed but I think it was like a B+ D1 school.

I've seen D2 schools sign 3 star players who pretty much sucked. The WIS ratings are okay but they aren't a perfect predictor of where someone will sign.

To sum up, if he's really good you probably aren't getting him at a D prestige. Look for guys with cores in the 80's and an occasional 90 as opposed to guys with cores in the 90's and an occasoinal 80.

I just left SE MO St (Phelan) for Texas Tech. In 5 seasons went from D- to C+ prestige. Disclaimer: OVR is a sucky way to recruit and assess players. In reality, I found anything above about a 640ish was a hard recruit at a D- prestige. Much like TJ says, I was looking for limited attributes that would pop -- like a "guard" with 60's ATH but 80 SPD, a "big" with 60-70's ATH but 80-90's REB/DEF. I also scoured the D2 market for high growth players -- like Hoops Dynasty – College Basketball Sim Games - Jose Lopez - Ratings - Phelan - Hoops Dynasty Basketball | WhatIfSports who had greens (if I recall, still greens even after RS FR, so 4 more years of growth) in the "guard" attributes -- SPD/PER/BH/PA.

Preferences also play a huge role in going against higher prestige teams. I’ve beaten out A+ teams as a C or C+ prestige at D1 when both schools went all-in on the recruit when preferences were heavily in my favor. As TJ says, it’s important to figure out when to spend resources as you don’t want to send 20 HVs to a kid you have zero chance to land.

One thing that makes sense to me, that I've heard benis say in the past..... OP said he was new to D1. Well if you had any type of success at D2, you know what type of players you were recruiting then, and I assume you dealt with D1s coming in to take your targets away (we all experience it)..... go for those players! If you've taken over a team that was all sim recruits, you'll notice that they are worse than some of the D2 teams you were facing in deep NT runs.

As a starting point, it seems to make perfect sense to just build a "dominate D2 team" with your first D1 rebuild. And as your career continues, you'll get better and start to see the level of talent that is within your reach. And from what I see happening to me consistently, you can easily steal all your players from D2 coaches that are leading on a player. And build your team that way!

Posted by topdogggbm on 2/6/2020 8:41:00 PM (view original):
One thing that makes sense to me, that I've heard benis say in the past..... OP said he was new to D1. Well if you had any type of success at D2, you know what type of players you were recruiting then, and I assume you dealt with D1s coming in to take your targets away (we all experience it)..... go for those players! If you've taken over a team that was all sim recruits, you'll notice that they are worse than some of the D2 teams you were facing in deep NT runs.

As a starting point, it seems to make perfect sense to just build a "dominate D2 team" with your first D1 rebuild. And as your career continues, you'll get better and start to see the level of talent that is within your reach. And from what I see happening to me consistently, you can easily steal all your players from D2 coaches that are leading on a player. And build your team that way!

That’s a starting place. But you don’t want to just target the same guys you target at D2. You can strategically reach higher, and you should. Absolutely a good idea to target some of those lower D1 recruits who are likely to be chased by top D2 teams. But they don’t need to constitute your high priority players. Use them as fallbacks, or lower priority project players, and take some calculated risks on high reward guys. Also, understand your advantage when battling D2 teams. If it’s a player who wants to sign in the first session, that D2 team needs to blow you out of the water to have a shot - all you have to do is sneak into signing range before the end of the first session, and the guy is yours.

40s and 50s by position is fine, but you can probably reach higher on a couple guys per year. Look to fill your team with those kinds of players, and take some shots at “wants rebuild” players higher up the board. Preferences are a premium feature at low D1. You can be close to even footing with a high D1 team for a recruit who wants a rebuild, provided you aren’t giving up significant ground in other preferences.

Posted by topdogggbm on 2/6/2020 8:41:00 PM (view original):
One thing that makes sense to me, that I've heard benis say in the past..... OP said he was new to D1. Well if you had any type of success at D2, you know what type of players you were recruiting then, and I assume you dealt with D1s coming in to take your targets away (we all experience it)..... go for those players! If you've taken over a team that was all sim recruits, you'll notice that they are worse than some of the D2 teams you were facing in deep NT runs.

As a starting point, it seems to make perfect sense to just build a "dominate D2 team" with your first D1 rebuild. And as your career continues, you'll get better and start to see the level of talent that is within your reach. And from what I see happening to me consistently, you can easily steal all your players from D2 coaches that are leading on a player. And build your team that way!

That's some damn good advice Top!

Posted by Benis on 2/7/2020 5:40:00 AM (view original):

Posted by topdogggbm on 2/6/2020 8:41:00 PM (view original):
One thing that makes sense to me, that I've heard benis say in the past..... OP said he was new to D1. Well if you had any type of success at D2, you know what type of players you were recruiting then, and I assume you dealt with D1s coming in to take your targets away (we all experience it)..... go for those players! If you've taken over a team that was all sim recruits, you'll notice that they are worse than some of the D2 teams you were facing in deep NT runs.

As a starting point, it seems to make perfect sense to just build a "dominate D2 team" with your first D1 rebuild. And as your career continues, you'll get better and start to see the level of talent that is within your reach. And from what I see happening to me consistently, you can easily steal all your players from D2 coaches that are leading on a player. And build your team that way!

That's some damn good advice Top!

I'll elaborate why this is such good advice especially to people new to D1

1. D1 is a bit of a different animal and rebuilds are much harder than at lower levels. One reason is maybe because there are 100+ coaches at D1 and only ~60 at d2/d3 so making the tourney is more difficult. Slow and steady wins the race for a d1 rebuild.

2. if you're new to d1 then you are probably not used to the sheer number of dice rolls you will be in. Not only will losing these rolls be frustrating but could really set back the rebuild. Chances are you will be lower prestige with poor preferences so you will likely be the underdog in these rolls so statistically you will lose more than you win.

3. Frankly, most people playing this game aren't very good at it and will struggle at any level. If you cant win at d2 then you're not gonna win at d1. One thing that could MAYBE help is if you build a d1 team that is a championship level d2 team by taking guys that elite d2 teams are going for. You will easily make the d1 tourney if you have an "elite d2 team". If you're not even able to do that, you either need to get a mentor to understand how to play this game or just give up. Or just be fine with getting destroyed at D1 every season.

I appreciate all of the responses. Good stuff here -- I didn't want to be overambitious but appreciate the insight here on how I can make more calculated risks rather than gambles when it comes to "reaching" for a recruit.

Posted by topdogggbm on 2/6/2020 8:41:00 PM (view original):
One thing that makes sense to me, that I've heard benis say in the past..... OP said he was new to D1. Well if you had any type of success at D2, you know what type of players you were recruiting then, and I assume you dealt with D1s coming in to take your targets away (we all experience it)..... go for those players! If you've taken over a team that was all sim recruits, you'll notice that they are worse than some of the D2 teams you were facing in deep NT runs.

As a starting point, it seems to make perfect sense to just build a "dominate D2 team" with your first D1 rebuild. And as your career continues, you'll get better and start to see the level of talent that is within your reach. And from what I see happening to me consistently, you can easily steal all your players from D2 coaches that are leading on a player. And build your team that way!

One question here... How does an "A" D2 team compare to a "D" D1 team with the same preferences?

Posted by Cackalacky on 2/7/2020 5:56:00 PM (view original):

Posted by topdogggbm on 2/6/2020 8:41:00 PM (view original):
One thing that makes sense to me, that I've heard benis say in the past..... OP said he was new to D1. Well if you had any type of success at D2, you know what type of players you were recruiting then, and I assume you dealt with D1s coming in to take your targets away (we all experience it)..... go for those players! If you've taken over a team that was all sim recruits, you'll notice that they are worse than some of the D2 teams you were facing in deep NT runs.

As a starting point, it seems to make perfect sense to just build a "dominate D2 team" with your first D1 rebuild. And as your career continues, you'll get better and start to see the level of talent that is within your reach. And from what I see happening to me consistently, you can easily steal all your players from D2 coaches that are leading on a player. And build your team that way!

One question here... How does an "A" D2 team compare to a "D" D1 team with the same preferences?

1 full letter grade, plus a division bump. The difference is significant. The *biggest* advantage is that D2 teams can’t sign D1 pool players until the second session. So you can get the level of player Benis and dogg are talking about without spending resources a lot of the time. That’s why his advice is decent as a starting place, but is not the whole picture. You can do all that *and* use your resources and advantages to take shots at selected higher level recruits, guys even elite D2 teams have no business investing in.

Posted by Cackalacky on 2/7/2020 5:56:00 PM (view original):

Posted by topdogggbm on 2/6/2020 8:41:00 PM (view original):
One thing that makes sense to me, that I've heard benis say in the past..... OP said he was new to D1. Well if you had any type of success at D2, you know what type of players you were recruiting then, and I assume you dealt with D1s coming in to take your targets away (we all experience it)..... go for those players! If you've taken over a team that was all sim recruits, you'll notice that they are worse than some of the D2 teams you were facing in deep NT runs.

As a starting point, it seems to make perfect sense to just build a "dominate D2 team" with your first D1 rebuild. And as your career continues, you'll get better and start to see the level of talent that is within your reach. And from what I see happening to me consistently, you can easily steal all your players from D2 coaches that are leading on a player. And build your team that way!

One question here... How does an "A" D2 team compare to a "D" D1 team with the same preferences?

No one knows for sure but its substantial. For awhile the forum dummies didnt even believe this division multiplier exists but I think everyone agrees now.

I treat it as roughly 30% between A+ D2 and D- D1.