The answer is entirely dependent on your prestige, your AP investment, and how well you stack up against rivals in a preference matchup. So a qualified “yes”. If you have B level prestige or above at D1, you have a reasonably good preference profile, and you are continuing to invest attention, you *should* be able to at least stay in signing range against almost any late charge, unless a high level team just blows you out with AP, and/or is a significantly better preference match. As sportsbulls says, there is no considering credit, so you don’t have an advantage to early vs late effort (except the wants to play preference modifier, which increases the value of all subsequent effort for players who want to play, so it does pay to offer minutes to those players early rather than a last resort).