Hi everyone,

I was in HD a number of years ago and had quite a bit of success and I am 3 games into a new season with what I consider to be a pretty good team and I am 0-3 and left scratching my head. Can anyone that has a second let me know if I am making some glaring error? 

http://www.whatifsports.com/hd/TeamProfile/Ratings.aspx?tid=12504

Thank you,
Julius

Nothing you can do about it at this point, but your team defense and passing are major problems.  The ratings are ugly and show in the stats - 18.5 TO/game and you're allowing your opponents to shoot 49%.

Also, its not as if you lost to three bottom feeders.  THey had comparable or better talent.

Since you haven't played in a while, I find it necessary to ask: are you familiar with Future Stars Scouting?

You're definitely going to want to use FSS to identify your recruiting targets. In D3, in my opinion its best to scout just your home state and 1-2 surrounding states, depending on your budget.

But going back to your team, the main thing that sticks out for me is youth. You have a young, inexperienced team which will make it tough to hang with some of the better teams out there. However, there is definitely some talent on your team and I would expect your team's performance to improve as the season goes on

I use it to get my list together, but also do scouting trips, since they give a little more info, and they also are a recruiting tool. You will want to read about drop downs and pull downs, and check out some of the players from Division 2 who might consider you a backup option. The other advice would be to recruit as close to your school as possible because it gets expensive to go very far.

It looks like your team is improving a lot already. Your PG needs to be a better passer, but has gone +3 in passing in 4 games, so if this continues, that will help a lot. Your low post guys would be better if they were more Athletic, but again, with a young team they may improve in that area substantially too.

Posted by chapelhillne on 10/24/2011 11:37:00 PM (view original):
I use it to get my list together, but also do scouting trips, since they give a little more info, and they also are a recruiting tool. You will want to read about drop downs and pull downs, and check out some of the players from Division 2 who might consider you a backup option. The other advice would be to recruit as close to your school as possible because it gets expensive to go very far.

It looks like your team is improving a lot already. Your PG needs to be a better passer, but has gone +3 in passing in 4 games, so if this continues, that will help a lot. Your low post guys would be better if they were more Athletic, but again, with a young team they may improve in that area substantially too.

I consider scouting trips to be a luxury at D3. Unless you're in a super-conference (or have numerous open schollies) there just isn't enough money to scout every player you're interested in individually. For me, I use FSS to create a list of recruits I want, then use scouting trips as a tiebraker if I can't choose between 2 recruits.

Don't get me wrong, scouting visits are a valuable tool; they can tell you the difference between a good player and an elite one. However, like Chapelhillne said, they can get expensive, especially for non-local recruits.

Thanks guys, I believe almost all the guys I recruited this off season were pull downs or drop downs, which is what could have cost me so much money because I was scouting their games.

Appreciate the help!