What's your opinion of player classes?

6 Sr.'s, 6 Jr's? , but 2 down years?

6 Sr's 5 Jr's 1 soph?

Or like a 4 Sr, 4 Jr. 4 soph combo to keep a 3 year machine working with one down year?

3/3/3/3 or 4/3/3/2.  Down years suck.  That's seniors-freshmen.  If I've got a 4 and a 2 I want 4 juniors when I only have 2 seniors and I get the 4 seniors with only 2 freshmen weighing me down.

IMHO, I think its more important to have the right type of players for your system and have a balance of guards and big men.
I would try to shoot for at least 10 deep team, with 2 players at each position in order to be effective. (the more depth, the better.)

The best teams just reload every year. It seems that recruiting the right type of players is much more important than class sizes.
I would probably say that having 5-6 upperclassmen and 5-6 freshman/sophomores would be ideal if you want to have success every year.
Just my 2 cents.

Really is no correct class structure. If you go with 4-2-4-2, you have to know how to recruit when you only have 2 scholarships. Similarly, with a 6-6-0-0, you need to know how to be aggressive when you have 18k min to work with. 

i try hard to stay at 3-3-3-3... (i always redshirt a player though - so one senior is a 5th year, 1 junior a 4th year etc... and one frosh doesn't play.)

I've never paid attention to class structure in D3 or D2. In D1 mid major, it doesn't really matter there, either. Big 6 jobs are really the only ones where I think it truly matters (and those get destroyed by EE very frequently). 

the big thing I try to do is to get some balance among positions or types of players, for example, I try to keep a pair of center like guys on my roster, a pair of pg like guys, and a nice mix of wing type players, some who have more bh/pa/per and others who have more reb/lp.  As best I can, I try to keep my PG's and centers a year apart, like fr-jr or so-sr, and try to get a good solid wing or two in each class.

As far as 3-3-3-3 or 5-2-3-2 or even 6-2-2-2, I sort of let it happen & go with it.  I often try redshirting soph's if they would benefit in d2/d3, so even if I start 3-3-3-3, it ends up messed up anyhow.   In high level d1 with EE's and constant battling / losing recruit battles, having a set rotation like 3-3-3-3 is impossible, and it is much more important to have a plan to keep restocking the talent pool, regardless of what the class rotation is.

Posted by oldresorter on 4/11/2011 12:20:00 PM (view original):
the big thing I try to do is to get some balance among positions or types of players, for example, I try to keep a pair of center like guys on my roster, a pair of pg like guys, and a nice mix of wing type players, some who have more bh/pa/per and others who have more reb/lp.  As best I can, I try to keep my PG's and centers a year apart, like fr-jr or so-sr, and try to get a good solid wing or two in each class.

As far as 3-3-3-3 or 5-2-3-2 or even 6-2-2-2, I sort of let it happen & go with it.  I often try redshirting soph's if they would benefit in d2/d3, so even if I start 3-3-3-3, it ends up messed up anyhow.   In high level d1 with EE's and constant battling / losing recruit battles, having a set rotation like 3-3-3-3 is impossible, and it is much more important to have a plan to keep restocking the talent pool, regardless of what the class rotation is.

That's a good point. It's more important to balance out your PG/SG and PF/C so they are not graduating the same year. It's hard to be competitive when your starting pg or pf/c are FR and you have to rely on them to either dish the ball or grab rebounds. 

with the current landscape of DI, i think it is very important to structure your classes, especially if you are at a mid-level DI program. With the big 6 conferences receiving huge amounts of tournament money (in some cases equal to 3 or more scholarships), it is almost impossible to expect to land a decent player with one scholarship's worth of money. If you are at a low to mid level DI i think one of the ways to compete and get players is to sign 2 decent players with 6 scholarships worth of money, then get 2 role-players and 2 walk-ons.

I think its more important to have your guards and bigs in different years so you never have a huge hole to fill and need say,4 guards in one rec session.

Planning class sizes? We don't need no stinkin planned class size. The years of lucky recruiting when you sign your 5 available almost to easily are more than counterbalanced by the unlucky year when you need just 1 but end up with a walk-on.