Not gonna pay for it when I don't even know what it does.

Posted by skinzfan36 on 5/12/2012 7:33:00 PM (view original):
Not gonna pay for it when I don't even know what it does.

Not a very good reader, are we?

 "This tool will grab all of the recruits in your standard recruit search and put them into a spreadsheet file.  It gets all the columns from both the general and ratings search.  It also includes potential columns for when the ratings search shows colored ratings (l=low, a=average, h=high)."

Yeah, I read that. Don't really see how that helps out so much, am I missing something?

Posted by skinzfan36 on 5/12/2012 7:39:00 PM (view original):
Yeah, I read that. Don't really see how that helps out so much, am I missing something?

It's most useful to people that already use spreadsheets for recruiting.  I don't know how common this is in HD, but it's extremely common in GD.  People like to be able to make custom formulas for rating players, and a spreadsheet is a very effective way to do this.  The most time consuming part is just getting the players into a spreadsheet, so this would speed up the process considerably.

 Are there any formulas available to give each player a numerical ranking, like in GD?  Anyone willing to share theirs via PM?

I just do "paste special" + "unicode text"

I know that doesn't show the potentials, but it gets the raw data in a spreadsheet...

You can only do 10 recruits at a time, as you have to put them on the 'recruiting compare' list to get the raw data in spreadsheet format.

That said, pretty slick use of excel.... esp if it shows the color coded information.

brianxavier - If you use google chrome it will copy the color values for potential.

i don't see what the fuss is about, over the 10 dollars. if his collection of tools improves your experience, an experience most coaches pay hundreds of dollars a year for, whats 10 more dollars? ive written the same tool for myself, effectively (i don't use excel, it scrapes recruits for a program i wrote that i used to use to rank recruit), but i am way too lazy to take the time to package and give it to someone, if they wanted to pay me 10 dollars. and id MUCH rather have paid 10 dollars than spend a couple hours writing it myself. considering he also offers other tools, and your spending 10 dollars would help incentivise him to make other tools, which he would offer you (a donor) freely, 10 dollars sounds pretty damn reasonable to me!

to the OP, im sure u get ignorant post responses like this all the time. im glad you don't take them seriously enough to stop doing what your doing. i don't know why some people are so negative (if you don't want to pay the 10 dollars... simply, don't pay the 10 dollars. sheesh). i haven't paid the 10 dollars, but still.

LOL I've been arguing his case, but I'M not even a donor. I plan to change that soon though. Good points gillispie.

Posted by yatzr on 5/11/2012 2:02:00 PM (view original):
Hello HD coaches!  A lot of people have asked me to make some tools for HD.  Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of time to do that, but I had so many requests, I decided to at least do this.  This tool will grab all of the recruits in your standard recruit search and put them into a spreadsheet file.  It gets all the columns from both the general and ratings search.  It also includes potential columns for when the ratings search shows colored ratings (l=low, a=average, h=high).  It takes about 30 seconds to run with 8 threads.

The tool requires your username to be on my donor list in order for it to work.  This is the same donor list that I use for GD, so anybody that's ever given me a donation for GD tools can use it now.  Anybody else that would like to give me a donation of $10 or more can do so from my paypal link at http://www.gdreports.com/tools/yatzr/ .  As always, once on my donor list, you're always on my donor list for anything WIS related.  That said, I'd recommend waiting until others give a review of its usefulness before giving me any money.  I don't play HD, so I'm still unsure of just how useful this is.

If there's a lot of interest in this, then I'll continue adding features and whatnot.  If anybody finds any issues with it, or has any simple feature requests, please let me know.

Here's the tool
http://www.gdreports.com/tools/yatzr/yatzr_hd_recruit_scraper_1.0.jar

This is incredible!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you, and as a donor I will be using the S H I T out of it. Any plans to just add a basic formula that we can adjust to rank recruits?

Posted by nauds3000 on 5/14/2012 1:34:00 AM (view original):

Posted by yatzr on 5/11/2012 2:02:00 PM (view original):
Hello HD coaches!  A lot of people have asked me to make some tools for HD.  Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of time to do that, but I had so many requests, I decided to at least do this.  This tool will grab all of the recruits in your standard recruit search and put them into a spreadsheet file.  It gets all the columns from both the general and ratings search.  It also includes potential columns for when the ratings search shows colored ratings (l=low, a=average, h=high).  It takes about 30 seconds to run with 8 threads.

The tool requires your username to be on my donor list in order for it to work.  This is the same donor list that I use for GD, so anybody that's ever given me a donation for GD tools can use it now.  Anybody else that would like to give me a donation of $10 or more can do so from my paypal link at http://www.gdreports.com/tools/yatzr/ .  As always, once on my donor list, you're always on my donor list for anything WIS related.  That said, I'd recommend waiting until others give a review of its usefulness before giving me any money.  I don't play HD, so I'm still unsure of just how useful this is.

If there's a lot of interest in this, then I'll continue adding features and whatnot.  If anybody finds any issues with it, or has any simple feature requests, please let me know.

Here's the tool
http://www.gdreports.com/tools/yatzr/yatzr_hd_recruit_scraper_1.0.jar

This is incredible!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you, and as a donor I will be using the S H I T out of it. Any plans to just add a basic formula that we can adjust to rank recruits?

If there's a good set of formulas for the different positions that most people like, I can probably set it up to include those as extra columns in the csv.  I've never tried having formulas in a csv file though, so I don't know how well excel (or other spreadsheet software) is able to pick up on those.  Another piece that may need to be updated is that only grabs the recruits that show up if you don't change the division dropdown at all.  I had always heard about how HD has "dropdowns" in higher divisions, but I don't know how that plays into recruiting.  Would people actually want to grab all of the recruits from higher divisions too?

I'm really tempted to just try to make a watered down version of the GD recruit tool for HD.  It probably wouldn't take very long if I excluded a lot of the features (seeing coach names, scholarship numbers, other school distances, mass recruiting, etc), but it'd still be way more useful and easier to use than this scraper tool.  The only hard part is finding the time to do it.

Posted by yatzr on 5/14/2012 11:22:00 AM (view original):

Posted by nauds3000 on 5/14/2012 1:34:00 AM (view original):

Posted by yatzr on 5/11/2012 2:02:00 PM (view original):
Hello HD coaches!  A lot of people have asked me to make some tools for HD.  Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of time to do that, but I had so many requests, I decided to at least do this.  This tool will grab all of the recruits in your standard recruit search and put them into a spreadsheet file.  It gets all the columns from both the general and ratings search.  It also includes potential columns for when the ratings search shows colored ratings (l=low, a=average, h=high).  It takes about 30 seconds to run with 8 threads.

The tool requires your username to be on my donor list in order for it to work.  This is the same donor list that I use for GD, so anybody that's ever given me a donation for GD tools can use it now.  Anybody else that would like to give me a donation of $10 or more can do so from my paypal link at http://www.gdreports.com/tools/yatzr/ .  As always, once on my donor list, you're always on my donor list for anything WIS related.  That said, I'd recommend waiting until others give a review of its usefulness before giving me any money.  I don't play HD, so I'm still unsure of just how useful this is.

If there's a lot of interest in this, then I'll continue adding features and whatnot.  If anybody finds any issues with it, or has any simple feature requests, please let me know.

Here's the tool
http://www.gdreports.com/tools/yatzr/yatzr_hd_recruit_scraper_1.0.jar

This is incredible!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you, and as a donor I will be using the S H I T out of it. Any plans to just add a basic formula that we can adjust to rank recruits?

If there's a good set of formulas for the different positions that most people like, I can probably set it up to include those as extra columns in the csv.  I've never tried having formulas in a csv file though, so I don't know how well excel (or other spreadsheet software) is able to pick up on those.  Another piece that may need to be updated is that only grabs the recruits that show up if you don't change the division dropdown at all.  I had always heard about how HD has "dropdowns" in higher divisions, but I don't know how that plays into recruiting.  Would people actually want to grab all of the recruits from higher divisions too?

I'm really tempted to just try to make a watered down version of the GD recruit tool for HD.  It probably wouldn't take very long if I excluded a lot of the features (seeing coach names, scholarship numbers, other school distances, mass recruiting, etc), but it'd still be way more useful and easier to use than this scraper tool.  The only hard part is finding the time to do it.

HD has a dropdown for all divisions - division 1, 2, 3. in the highest division, d1, you really should only be looking at d1 players. however, a major part of HD that is dropdowns - for example, a player who originally seems like a low end d1 prospect, but then becomes available to d2 schools later in recruiting. these recruits can also be forced to drop early by spending a bunch of money, its a risk/reward proposition. i think thats all you really need to know about it, from a logical standpoint.

anyway, in the olden days, as much as 95% of recruits for say, a high end d3 school, came from their d2 pool. i would even go so far as to say, you could just pull d2 for d3, and d1 for d2, back then. however, in the new age of HD, there is so much variance in the quality of recruits, that teams recruit significantly from their division, and the one a division higher. if you are pulling off the current screen they have up, it would be useful to grab that division field, so that when a coach finds a recruit they like (in the excel sheet), they know how to find that recruit straight away. that division can change, as players drop down, just FYI.

the sort of "ultimate" scraping tool, for example, for a d3 school, would be to do the searches yourself rather than having to pull off the current screen. not sure how that would play out in however u r doing it in whatever language you are using. but basically there are maybe like 1500 recruits per division, and you have to scout the states around you, to get more info about the players. however, it would be useful to be able to see top scouted recruits, and top unscouted recruits, which would help coaches both identify who the best recruits were in their scouted region, as well as which states may be most beneficial to scout next. honestly its probably more effort than its worth, just kind of wanted to explain it, because im not sure how different GD and HD recruiting are, and figured it might give you a better idea how HD recruiting works.

as far as formulas, if you get to that point, i'd be happy to provide you a list of stock formulas. i guess i am in the camp that for coaches to try to optimize and then give those formulas out, is not great, just because that is kind of revealing too much. however, its pretty straight forward to provide a generic, not-too-sophisticated set of formulas (like, a simple, rating X is worth Y points, when in reality, the "ultimate" formula would at least have cross products of ratings, like low post is more valuable if you have athleticism, and really it can get significantly more complex than that). i think that would be a good middle-road, where you basically would end up with a rating system where a recruit with 800 points is obviously better than one with 600 points, but when you look at the top 20 recruits in say the 740-800 range, you'd have to eye ball them yourself. i guess i just feel like the point of the formula is to eliminate the bad recruits, not necessarily order the best ones - because that is a skill that has a big impact on the success of coaches, etc... i wouldn't want the tool to provide a formula that could rank recruits better than non-rookie coaches could do themselves...

it would be sweet if in your tool, coaches could manipulate the formulas, because in my experience, that is an *incredibly* valuable experience. for a coach to sit there and think, for a scoring type point guard, is 1 speed worth 1 passing, or is it 1 to 1.2, or 1 to 1.4, etc, it just bring on a new dimension of analysis. so like, if the stat weights were fields in excel, that people could adjust and see the rankings update, that would be sweet. im not an excel expert, so im not sure - do you envision the list of recruits having an "overall" field or whatever, and they are automatically sorted, or do the coaches have to be smart enough to go in and call the sort on the overall or ranking field, every time they import new recruits, or tweak the field? just curious, im not sure it particularly matters

Hey gillispie1, there might be some confusion over what this tool actually does.  It doesn't pull recruits off the current browser screen like some people do with excel.  It's a java program that uses an http library to actually log into the WIS site as you, go to the recruit search page, run a bunch of searches to find all possible recruits, record all the information for those recruits, and then dump all that information to a .csv.  All you see during this is the little java program and a progress bar.  The idea is that you can quickly get a spreadsheet of all the recruits and then do whatever formulas and sorting you wanted.  Right now, if you're a D3 school, it's not running any D2 searches, but it kinda sounds like it should?  I still haven't grasped how dropdowns work?  They just show up in your D3 search after a few days of recruiting?  Is there anything about them to make it obvious that they dropped down? Are you only able to recruit players after they dropped down?

My GD recruiting tool is a much larger java program that sort of acts as a spreadsheet after you've downloaded the recruits.  It makes it much easier to sort recruits, filter or hide recruits, and to flag the ones you're interested in.  It also includes columns where you can enter in whatever equations you want based on the recruits' attributes.  I believe most people end up using the GUESS equations that bhazlewood has published, but I know several people that just make their own.  I fully agree with you on the purpose of equations being to eliminate the bad recruits.