The aejones guide is a bit outdated. Here is mine.
Player Evaluation
The first thing to realize is that this game is complex, the overall rating a player has means about nothing, and ath/de are really important. It's best to evaluate a player looking at each rating separately.
I urge you to think of players as having 4 major ways they can contribute: scoring, defending, rebounding, and playmaking/distributing (not turning the ball over + setting up teammates).
Scoring can be either Perimeter based or LP based. Other than PER, Spd/Bh/Pa (in that order) are really important for shooters. Other than LP, Ath/Per/Spd/Bh are really important for interior scorers. Note that guards can score better down low with lower LP than bigs. If a guard has 30-35 LP with good ath/spd/bh they will be a super strong scorer. Bigs can pretty much never score well with 30 LP.
Defending is based off of the rating "DE" but Ath/Sb are really important (in that order) for Bigs and Spd/Ath are really important for guards.
Rebounding is about 70% reb and 30% ath based.
Distributing is primarily PA, secondary BH, and also a little bit of Ath/spd.
If you want to think of players more rating by rating instead of skill by skill, here is a good list:
PG: Primary Ratings (really important): Defense/Passing/BH Secondary Ratings (still super important):Spd/Per/Ath/Lp
Complimentary Ratings (don't worry about these too much):SB/REB
SG: Primary Ratings (really important): Defense/PER
Secondary Ratings (still super important):Spd/PA/BH/Ath/Lp
Complimentary Ratings (don't worry about these too much):SB/REB
SF: Primary Ratings (really important): Defense
Secondary Ratings (still super important):Spd/PA/BH/Ath/Lp/Reb/Per
Complimentary Ratings (don't worry about these too much):SB
PF: Primary Ratings (really important): Defense/Reb/Ath/Lp
Secondary Ratings (still super important):Sb
Complimentary Ratings (don't worry about these too much):Spd/Per/BH/PA
C: Primary Ratings (really important): Defense/Reb/Ath/Lp
Secondary Ratings (still super important):Sb
Complimentary Ratings (don't worry about these too much):Spd/Per/BH/PA
This is a good read from a legendary coach named
aejones:
The most important thing in recruiting is player evaluation. I frequently scratch my head at some of the guys that are signed, players that I wouldn’t touch on my D4 team with a 10 foot pole. Why would you ever sign someone who won’t get to 30 in athleticism? Why would you ever sign someone who won’t get to 30 in defense? There are, of course, exceptions to the rule (to the former, you could find someone who is like a 90 speed/25 athleticism guard with good skills, he could definitely be serviceable; to the latter, you could find someone with low defense who you planned on being an offensive force off the bench, but you might be in some trouble if he ever had to start); but they are exceptions for exactly that reason: the rule should be that everyone has to be athletic and be able to defend.
But, there are many strategies to win, and it takes all types. If you recruit a team full of athletic defenders, you won’t have anyone to score, and scoring is half the battle. To combat this, guards with good speed/perimeter/ball handling is essential. Bigs with good athleticism and low post moves are nice as well.
Most importantly, it’s about taking what is available to you and maximizing talent. If I’m really searching for a defensive minded PG but I find one who is a decent defender but boasts excellent perimeter shooting, I’m not going to pass up having another offensive option just to fill a “need.”
Overall, it’s important not to have needs. Don’t pay attention to positions. Recruiting versatile players is key. If you recruit a SG who happens to have 25 rebounding, you can likely slide him to either wing position if you find a guy who happens to be pegged into the SF (like a low perimeter role playing type) or SG (a guard with a 1 in rebounding, for instance) position.
Don’t be afraid to recruit role players. Nearly 50% of the players I recruit are defensive players, rebounders, passers or some combination of the 3 and will never be a viable offensive option in their entire career. I am fine with that, because a player like this won’t hurt me, whereas a marginal offensive option who struggles on defense will typically foul too much and allow too many points to be scored on him. You’re only as good as your weakest link on defense, because an opponent can always target the position or player you’re weak at and up his distribution to reflect your weakest defender.
Work ethic! I will devote an entire paragraph to work ethic, because I believe it is paramount. I like to get the most out of my players. If someone has a 50+ work ethic, you will never have to worry about his development. He will frequently be nearing his caps around his junior season, and will almost always cap out in everything by his senior year. If someone has 40-50, he may struggle to get to his caps until the end of his senior year unless he is aided by starting his sophomore year or redshirting a year. If someone is in the 30-40 range, he will typically need just a little bit more of a nudge. If he has a good HS GPA or has a few categories that are already low potential (therefore allowing you to put more practice time into his categories with good potential), he will likely develop fine, but if he doesn’t, he will probably struggle to reach his caps until the end of his senior year. I rarely recruit players who are under 30 in work ethic, although I will make an exception if they are very talented and I can get them a redshirt, some starts early in their career, or they have very few categories to actually improve in. If a player is under 20 in work ethic, he will barely improve over the course of his career (that doesn’t mean you can’t find some that are reasonable because they are already very strong in core categories). If a player is under 10 in work ethic, he will always be too busy playing Halo in the offseason to make him a worthwhile player, and will therefore lose any progress he made in the last season in the offseason “improvements.” Getting a player to his caps as soon as possible should be your goal to maximize your chances of winning.
A more specific guide to what I'm looking for my players to get to in terms of minimum speed/athleticism requirements. Note that there are exceptions to every rule, and these should only be used for a guide and not a steadfast rule. At d3, I am looking for my guards to be a combination of 120 in speed/athleticism; a PG to get to at least 70 speed/50 athleticism (or some combination very close to that), SG to get to 65/55, SF to get to 60/60. Again, if I find someone who is just under those marks but is spectacular in their skills, I can make exceptions. For bigs, I am looking for about 70 athleticism in my PF, 60 athleticism in my C. I value speed very little in bigs, but I value it slightly more in my PF than my C, where I don't value it at all (I might if I played the press anywhere). At D2, use all of the guides I just mentioned but add 10 to each number (so, a total of 140 speed/athleticism for my perimeter players). There are exceptions-- Edward Bradley is one of my better players on my SW Baptist team and he is only 65/64 in speed/athleticism, a total of 129 (11 under my recommended guide for D2 perimeter players). However, he is 76 defense, 89 perimeter, 83 ball handling, 76 passing, and 56 (and still growing) low post. Despite his marginal speed/athleticism ratings, he is able to get 15 PPG on 44%/40%/75% in 17 MPG off the bench. That is elite scoring efficiency against tough competition.
Potential
HD ratings improve until they reach their "cap" with practice time. Based on the color of a rating, here is how much that rating will improve before it "caps." Ratings with high potential develop faster, and ratings with low potential gain slower. A lot of players that starts with 30 WE won't even get ratings fully maxed (will come up a point or two short, since the last point or so is hard to get), since red/yellow ratings usually gain the most during the offseason.
Red: 0-3
Yellow: 3-7
Black: 7-21
Blue: 21-28
Green: 28+
Practice Plan
Team Practice:
For team IQ in D2 and D3, I do from 22/22 to 25/25 depending on how much potential my guys have. More potential I need more minutes in skill categories so I do 22/22.
You go from F to B- really quick during FR year then usually you get B- to B+ during SO, B+ to A- during JR and A- to A during senior. Players with a better Work Ethic/HS GPA combo will gain IQ grades faster.
Player Practice:
Green/Blue develop super fast.
Black develops decently
Yellow/Red barely develop during the season and these categories will usually max over the offseason
For minutes I try to stay 25 or below per category but my priorities are:
Green/Blue Core ratings
Black Core rating
Green/Blue less meaningful ratings
black less meaningful
yellow cores
yellow less meaningful
Scouting
- Scouting Info (credit to chapelhillne):
Each recruit's ratings/preferences are gradually revealed though these scouting actions. There are 4 levels of information:
Level 1: Very basic information. It gives combined letter grades for Physical (A, Spd, St, DU), Offense (LP, PE, BH, P), Defense (Reb, Def, Blk), WE, and FT. It does let you know the letter grade for WE and FT, so you can see which players have extremely low or high WE. It also gives an overall letter grade for the player.
Level 2: Gives a letter grade for each individual attribute.
Level 3: Gives a letter grade for each individual attribute, and color codes the grades, but only in black, yellow or blue. Yellow may really be red at level 4, and blue may really be green at level 4. It also extends grades to +/- to give more accurate information (e.g. A+, A, A-, B+, B, B-, etc.).
Level 4: This provides complete information with actual numbers instead of letter grades. It is even better than current HD because it has 5 colors.
POTENTIAL INCREASES:
Green is High High (28+ Points)
Blue is High (20-27 Points)
Black is normal (8-19 points)
Yellow is High-Low (4-7 points)
Red is Low Low. (0-3 points)
NUMERICAL EQUIVALENTS OF LETTER GRADES:
A+ = 85+
A = 80-84
A- = 74-79
B+ = 69-73
B = 64-68
B- = 58-63
C+ = 53-57
C = 48-52
C- = 42-47
D+ = 37-41
D = 32-36
D- = 26-31
F+ = 21-25
F = 16-20
F- = 0-15
Scouting Methods:
At D3, D3 projected players generally end up being unsignable, so most coaches tend to focus on scouting projected D1 players or projected D2 players. There are 4 viable ways to scout players on the East Coast: FSS, Assistant Search, Individual Scouting, and Private Camp.
FSS is the most efficient way to scout recruits ($15 bucks per level), but you can only get recruits up one level. So it can't be your entire strategy.
Assistant Search is great because it is cheap ($60 bucks per level) and you can use it to get guys all the way to level 4. It is especially good at scouting guys at a large distance because the $60 bucks is a flat cost that doesn't depend on distance.The downside is there is no flexibility and you can't scout specific types of players. You will spend a lot of money scouting guys to level 4 that you know are unsignable after you see their level 2/3 ratings.
Private Camps scout guys within 500 miles. They are very strong. They get each player 2 levels, so Private Camp + FSS gets players to level 3. The downside is that Private Camps are pretty inflexible, as you only get to choose the division of players.
Individual Scouting is pretty manageable budget-wise at a close distance, but gets ridiculously expensive fast. It is very very flexible.
Scouting Strategies:
So many different scouting strategies are valid! Every coach I have ever talked to does it differently. Part of the fun is playing around and figuring out what you like.
Here are two different ways coaches often scout players:
1. FSS+Assistant Search Combo (best for scouting all D2 players)
FSS D2 states. It is often good for them to be states around you. but you can also scout other states (at lost distances if you feel like it) if you think your local area is very difficult for recruiting.
Then Assistant Search these players to level 4 using the "scout further discovered players" option in the assistant search function.
Don't FSS too many states other wise you won't be able to get guys to level 4. Divide the total scouting budget you have by 195 to see how many players you can get to level 4 ($15 bucks for 1 FSS level and $60 for each assistant search level). So if you start with 28k in scouting cash, you can get 28000/195 = 143 guys to level 4.
2. FSS+Private Camp + Individual Scout/Assistant Search Combo
Draw a 500-mile circle from your campus
I use this website:
https://www.mapdevelopers.com/draw-circle-tool.php
FSS the states within this radius. You can do D1, D2, or a mix. Then you have to decide how many guys to FSS. Private camps cost $60 per 2 levels, which may seem awesome because it's twice as cheap as assistant search, but the downside is it forces you to scout within a very specific area (0-500), while assistant coach lets you scout wherever (0-100 and across the country if you want). Make sure you check the boxes for the same division of private camp guys that you FSSed. Then you can scout out everyone using the assistant search or use individual search to only get the guys you like to lvl4 (I prefer using individual scouting since a lot of players are just totally unusable.
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Depth Chart
The first thing I recommend you do is go to your depth chart, flip the substitution method to "fatigue" and forget it. 95% of coaches use fatigue, and nearly every top coach does as well. It is just better.
The #1 rule when setting your depth chart is to start your best players, but it's more complex than that. I always choose my PG first. I want players with high BH, and above anything else high PA at the 1. When deciding who to play at the 1 and who to play at the 2, I choose the player with better ball skills (BH/PA) at the 1 and the player with better offense/defense (PER/LP/ATH/DE) all other things being equal.
Next I'll choose my 2 starting big men. Generally, you want your 2 best ath/reb guys starting at the 4 and the 5, and the better SB at the 5 and the better SPD/BH/PA at the 4. DE and LP do not hurt, but these two ratings are just as effective at the 3 as the 4/5.
When choosing my 2/3, I really want some shooting in my starting lineup. I love high ath/de guys but I'm willing to sacrifice it at the starting 2/3 to get some shooting in. If you have anyone 70+ they should most definitely be starting if they are your only shooting option. If you run a zone, they will be hidden a little. If you run a man, you can use doubleteams to take defensive pressure off them. When choosing who to play at the 2 and at the 3, I mainly focus on SPD and ball skills, since I want my better ball skills/spd guy at the 2. If the speed and ball skills are similar, I'll put my player with better REB/SB at the 3.
Feel free to experiment this year with different lineups, it's a good idea and it;s instructive.
Team Gameplan Page
I'll take this time to talk about offensive/defensive sets, one of the more important decisions you'll make as a coach that crafts your team. The team you took over has "inherited" sets, which the previous coach or SIM AI has been using. Using the Team Practice function on the practice plan page, you train your players in a specific set so they develop IQ. IQ is very important and you can't run sets without any IQ for it and expect to succeed at all.
Offensive Sets:
With the exception of fastbreak, all offensive sets are considered to be pretty similar. Triangle values LP/PER a little bit more and ATH/SPD a little less than Flex/Motion. Flex/Motion are *really* similar, although Motion is generally considered slightly harder to have lopsided scoring with and the PG'S PA rating is slightly more important.
Fastbreak is very different, as it cannot be played at Slow Down tempo (defaults to Normal), naturally balances scoring, and focuses on taking quick shots in fastbreak situations, even off of made baskets or short rebounds. The downside of fastbreak is it makes your guys really tired and you need a super deep bench to run it (11 guys is best but 12 is ideal).
Defensive Sets:
Defensive sets are far more distinctive than offensive sets. I really don't recommend Zone for beginners, it's complicated and considered inferior (especially if the coach doesn't know what they're doing). The benefit of Zone is it saves your players' energy (you can run a super shallow bench) and since zone averages your players' ratings, you can hide weaker defenders that really contribute on offense. Zone is a very weak rebounding set, and SB is considered very important for your 5 (in a 2-3 zone) or your 4 and 5 (in a 3-2 zone).
Man is kind of the "default" defense and it's really easy to run. The plus of man is that you can match up your strongest defenders with your opponents' best scorers, but the negative is that your opponents can attack your weakest defenders. If you run man, it's best to move around your lineup a lot and to stay unpredictable. So weak defenders aren't attacked too easily, many man coaches have to choose to bench their best scorers who are weak defenders so they can play minutes at multiple positions so they can't be attacked as easily. Man values DE slightly more than Press/Zone.
Press is a great defense, as it forces a ton of TOs and allows your to generate offense from your defense. The downside is it gives up a lot of easy baskets as fouls a TON, especially if you don't have good SPD and ATH. SPD is a super important rating in Press, and Press teams can succeed with much less talent than Man teams. That being said, Press just drains your players' stamina and bench (because of foul trouble), so you need a lot of depth.
Postioning:
Under Defense -> Primary -> Positioning, you can play from -5 to +5. Generally, it is best to stay between -4 and +3 until you have more experience. If a team has no shooting, -4 is the best. If a team shoots 10-15 threes per game, I usually play -1. I'll go up to +3 if teams are shooting 25-30. You'll get a feeling for what works as you gameplan more.
I generally put auto-adjust positioning on losing by 5 or more.
Tempo:
I base tempo off of a variety of factors. The more of an underdog I am, the more I want to go slowdown (and vice-versa). The deeper I am as a team (or the stronger my bench is relative to theirs), the more I want to go uptempo (and vice-versa). Finally, if I play man or zone I am more likely to go slowdown and if I play press the more likely I am to go uptempo, just to accentuate the strengths of my sets. That being said, if I play Press and am worried about fatigue or foul trouble or something, I might be more likely to play slowdown to cancel out of weaknesses of my set.
I generally put auto-adjust tempo on never.
Late Game Settings:
Don't worried about these too much. These are the ones I use, feel free to copy them:
https://imgur.com/Ro4nqnh
Player Gameplan Page
Play Distribution:
This sets how often your players receive the ball. Try to evaluate how good your players are at scoring, and the better they are the more distribution it makes sense to give them. Try to make sure the efficiency of your players is pretty comparable. If someone is too efficient, you need to raise their distro. If they are inefficient, then lower it. Use a stat like EFG% to evaluate how efficient a player is.
3pt Frequency:
This depends on the division, and different people like to do it differently. Going for pure efficiency alone, usually, anyone at 60 PER or over you can put at -1 in D3 and they can shoot some. But since players that drive into the paint will draw more fouls, and this gets players in foul trouble and also causes so fatigue issues, generally most coaches will have their non-elite shooters mostly take 2s. If a guy is 90+ PER at D2/D3, or 95+ PER at D1, you're going to want to only have your player take 3s (+2). Elite 3pt shooting is the most powerful thing in the game any player can have.
Doubleteams: Double-teaming is an integral part of man and zone defense. If you aren't double-teaming at least one guy per game against humans, you are missing out. Don't think of double-teaming as a true sell-out where every time a player touches the ball they are doubled, but instead as a more intermediate form of defense. For example, double-teaming a big means a second guy comes down when they take a dribble/catch the ball in the post. And double-teaming a guard means hedging hard on pick and rolls so the guy guarding him can go above the screen in exchange for a bit of a scrambling rotation by your defense to recover. I will often even double two players per game against a human coach. It's important to align your doubles to make sense with your positioning. For example, if a team has 3 elite perimeter scorers and 1 elite LP scorer it makes sense to play +2/+3. But then it's very important to double the LP scorer to compensate.