Dear esteemed vets of the hardcourt:

Please weigh in on the following practice plan concepts.

Plan "A"-- when players are younger put as much time in team practice as possible. This allows them to achieve the "A" rating fastest. Then, once the "A" rating for IQ is achieved, you can stop team practice altogether because they cannot drop IQ points. And now you can work on maxing out individual categories, beginning with the core attributes.
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Plan "B" -- when players are younger put as much time into individual practice as possible. This allows them to have individual ratings points skyrocket when they develop the most. Younger players won't reach their ceiling in year one or two. Then, once they start maxing out core ratings areas as upperclassmen, you can switch to maximum team practice because after a player maxes out, they can still improve their IQ at multiple offenses/defenses.
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Neither is a good idea
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Both work very nicely

Thanks for your consideration,
JRNY

How can A even work? You intend to some years never have young players? I don't think that is possible nor is it a smart thing to do to have a yearly competitive team.

Quote: Originally Posted By zhawks on 12/10/2009
How can A even work? You intend to some years never have young players? I don't think that is possible nor is it a smart thing to do to have a yearly competitive team.

I know that A was a popular method for superclass teams. I'm not sure there is still the utility with the class size limits, although maybe if you had 2 6 person classes.

Quote: Originally posted by zhawks on 12/10/2009How can A even work? You intend to some years never have young players? I don't think that is possible nor is it a smart thing to do to have a yearly competitive team.

This is a great question. Thank-you for allowing me to clarify.
If I had a class of 4 followed by a class of 4 followed by a class of 2 (one role player, and one redshirt) and another class of 2 (one role player, and one redshirt) The development of the role players would be sacrificed for the improvement of the 8 "superstars" (for lack of a better term). Yearly competitive is not as much fun as having 2 teams with a chance to win the whole enchilada every few seasons... maybe?

with a low frosh team (say 1 or 2), I tend to work on team stuff (jr and sr are maxed out or near max), with hi frosh numbers (say 4 -6), I tend to work on what I can individually (because sh gets in the way of team stuff)

I am answering - B or C depending on how you interpret what I said about SH, A is worse than B however with frosh, if u ramp up team time combined wiht SH time, the ind skills won't develop at all

Quote: Originally Posted By jrnyfan01 on 12/10/2009

Quote: Originally posted by zhawks on 12/10/2009
How can A even work? You intend to some years never have young players? I don't think that is possible nor is it a smart thing to do to have a yearly competitive team.

This is a great question. Thank-you for allowing me to clarify.
If I had a class of 4 followed by a class of 4 followed by a class of 2 (one role player, and one redshirt) and another class of 2 (one role player, and one redshirt) The development of the role players would be sacrificed for the improvement of the 8 "superstars" (for lack of a better term). Yearly competitive is not as much fun as having 2 teams with a chance to win the whole enchilada every few seasons... maybe?

Great way to show that then you'd have 4 srs and 4 fr also one year, what do you do then? As I stated before you'd have both situations and the plan would break down if you are really trying to do something that simple.

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if you are really willing to scarifice consistency for the possibility of a great team once (or maybe twice) every four years... why not 6srs. 6jrs, 0sophs, 0frosh?

not saying i would go that way. but if that floats your boat why not go whole hog?

one way to look at the question (and maybe this was the intention all along?) is that, sometimes we will find ourselves with heavily underclassmen. when that is the case... should we shift our Pracplans and go heavily to team practice (definitely not ,,, see OR's logic) or heavily into individual practice (maybe)

Quote: Originally posted by oldave on 12/10/2009if you are really willing to scarifice consistency for the possibility of a great team once (or maybe twice) every four years... why not 6srs. 6jrs, 0sophs, 0frosh?not saying i would go that way. but if that floats your boat why not go whole hog?

I certainly considered this approach. However, there is a chance that a really good recruit is in your backyard. With zero schollies and zero money, you would miss a great opportunity.

Quote: Originally posted by oldave on 12/10/2009one way to look at the question (and maybe this was the intention all along?) is that, sometimes we will find ourselves with heavily underclassmen. when that is the case... should we shift our Pracplans and go heavily to team practice (definitely not ,,, see OR's logic) or heavily into individual practice (maybe)

Yes. It does seem as though the prevailing opinion to this point is that heavy team practice when you have a large number of underclassmen is a bad idea because it restricts the individual ratings growth in core attributes. Good stuff. Thanks everyone.

I honestly think it is a horrible Idea to always do something in HD. You need to be flexible. Yeah there might be 1 year when you have 8 underclassmen you decide bumping up that team practice is going to make you a better team, faster. To that I would agree but to say that you are always going to do it, imo, isn't a good idea. Every year many different things could change a good coach is flexible in his willingness to change things to keep winning.

Just tryin' to put together a plan... that's all.
I appreciate the advice/JRNY.

Quote: Originally posted by jrnyfan01 on 12/10/2009

Quote: Originally posted by oldave on 12/10/2009if you are really willing to scarifice consistency for the possibility of a great team once (or maybe twice) every four years... why not 6srs. 6jrs, 0sophs, 0frosh?not saying i would go that way. but if that floats your boat why not go whole hog?

I certainly considered this approach. However, there is a chance that a really good recruit is in your backyard. With zero schollies and zero money, you would miss a great opportunity.

In that case you can always cut a guy - its a reputation hit, but so what unless you are planning to move up right away...

Plan "A" is exactly what I do with my DII Western New Mexico team in Crum - we generally have classes along the pattern of 6-0-6-0 or 6-0-5-1. This is easily my most successful team, (out of 3 DII teams) and we've been to the final four 2 of the last three seasons (obviously the 2 6 Sr. class seasons) - so it's definitely not an obsolete option.

We are competitive as well for the other seasons, - right now, we've got around a 20 RPI, and 2 seasons ago, we made it to the 2nd round of the NT.