My squad just saw a major drop in draft board status of two players in one day, and I am curious if others have seen such a drop and if it is related to a conference tourney loss or what other reason it could be. I have had a great season but lost in the first round of the conference tourney, and I have a so who was 44 on the board before that game and and fell to the 80s after the loss, and I have a senior who was around 120 who fell off the board after the loss. I have never noticed such a major drop in one game. Is the reason because of blowing that first conference tourney game? What are people's thoughts and experiences on/with this?

Two other players on the board stayed at about the same spot.

the conference stuff had no impact. nothing along those lines has impact. its only the ratings of the players.

my theory, which isn't proven but which i think a bunch of coaches have come to accept as i have (this was a theory i didn't accept for a long time, i probably shared this idea for the first time 8 years ago, but its only the last year or so i felt confident this is happening)... is that basically there are a handful of formulas. more or less, you can think of them as positional formulas. the formula to calculate a pg's score is not the same as a center's score. but they need to be ranked on the same big board! so i think basically HD tries to normalize the different positions to a score that can be relatively fairly ranked on the same big board.

the 40 spot jumps and drops on the board - which are not super common, but not super rare - seem to be a player changing from one position to another. i think the game basically looks at the player ratings and decides which formula to use. maybe on day 1, it thought your guy was a sg, but now he grew a bit and that tipped him over to a sf, and by the sf formula, he ranks lower (or higher).

this is somewhat controllable, i have gotten to the point where i have players higher than i expect, or lower than i expect, and i will imagine they are likely on a border. i'll adjust practice minutes accordingly. sometimes i have a guy jump 40 spots and a few games later, i get him back down by emphasizing the ratings to push him into the formula i think he had when he was ranked lower.

its far from an exact science, but my ability to predict and control the phenomenon is good enough that i am now fairly confident in the overall premise.

That's interesting stuff. I am not sure how much it applies to these guys of mine. The senior sf was maxed in all categories. His lp might make him a big, and his speed might make him a sg, but then his reb keeps him being a big and his per from being a sg. And he was those ratings basically the whole season. The soph is a C, and I guess he could be considered a sf. But again I have not seen these 40 point drops in one game. It seems like it's tied to the conf tourney, which to your point is maybe when a reevaluation occurs.

Just to clarify, Gillispie, are you theorizing the formula considers players' ratings at all possible positions or just the one designated to them in the system?

I have wondered this before because it's not really uncommon to see an elite PG or SG, SF or PF, and PF or C in HD that could succeed in HD or NBA regardless of position designation between those two binaries.

I've wondered in given draft classes, if the formulas recognize the scarcity of positional designation and then pull the best players onto the board in more general allocations like Guards, Forwards, and Bigs.

Posted by WarLeagle on 11/4/2022 10:07:00 AM (view original):
Just to clarify, Gillispie, are you theorizing the formula considers players' ratings at all possible positions or just the one designated to them in the system?

I have wondered this before because it's not really uncommon to see an elite PG or SG, SF or PF, and PF or C in HD that could succeed in HD or NBA regardless of position designation between those two binaries.

I've wondered in given draft classes, if the formulas recognize the scarcity of positional designation and then pull the best players onto the board in more general allocations like Guards, Forwards, and Bigs.

it does not consider them at all possible positions - if it did, we wouldn't see 40 spot jumps/drops. what we'd see is faster or slower rates of rising depending on the formula 'in the lead' at that time, but we wouldn't see the discontinuities where it suddenly jumps 40 spots.

it feels to me like a distinct 2-step process. step 1, it takes the player ratings and tries to decide what position the player best fits. step 2, it applies that 1 formula to the player resulting in the big board score. its when the outcome of step 1 changes that we see the big jumps.

Posted by cal_bears on 11/3/2022 8:14:00 PM (view original):
That's interesting stuff. I am not sure how much it applies to these guys of mine. The senior sf was maxed in all categories. His lp might make him a big, and his speed might make him a sg, but then his reb keeps him being a big and his per from being a sg. And he was those ratings basically the whole season. The soph is a C, and I guess he could be considered a sf. But again I have not seen these 40 point drops in one game. It seems like it's tied to the conf tourney, which to your point is maybe when a reevaluation occurs.

re-evaluation occurs after every practice. my theory is just a theory, but the idea that the conference tourney outcome impacts big board rankings, to my knowledge, is known to be false.

I have seen gil express this theory and over time it has seemed to fit what I observe

doesnt prove that it is what happens, but it is an okay working assumption

of course, the example here doesnt cry out as fitting - but maybe a small change move the position assumption for the Big Board algorithm

Are there external factors in the equation? Such as a players stats and awards?

Posted by PaulConstant on 11/6/2022 7:58:00 AM (view original):
Are there external factors in the equation? Such as a players stats and awards?

AA awards and i think perhaps NPOY, i forget but its only some big time national awards. i think they only impact draft picks and never show their impact on the EE board, but if they do, that is during the NT anyway. player stats don't impact the draft (except perhaps indirectly through national AA awards). stats used to drive the rankings but were too easily manipulated

Maybe that position evaluation factor you are foregrounding gillespie happens, but happens at certain benchmarks in the season, like when the ct starts in my case. Maybe such a re-evaluation happens two or three times a season, and that's why the jump/drop can be so big. It still doesn't really explain my sf who hasn't changed much, but do you think this could be an issue?

Posted by cal_bears on 11/6/2022 2:37:00 PM (view original):
Maybe that position evaluation factor you are foregrounding gillespie happens, but happens at certain benchmarks in the season, like when the ct starts in my case. Maybe such a re-evaluation happens two or three times a season, and that's why the jump/drop can be so big. It still doesn't really explain my sf who hasn't changed much, but do you think this could be an issue?

all you need is a 0.01 point increase in a rating, really 0.000001 for it to be enough to tick over. guys go up and down the board without showing ratings changes all the time.

sometimes i will have a guy go up the board 40 spots, change his formula, and then he'll drop again a game or two later.

I had a post player jump about 40 spots once from mid 70s/80s to low 30s if I recall correctly. I spoke to CS about that crazy jump and it turned out that his ratings improved in particular categories that shot him up the board.

I believe his PER/BH/Passing all went up and then he shot up. Or his rebounding/defense passed a certain threshold that turned him into a surefire draft pick. It happened a few years ago, as I don't see the ticket in my CS requests.