I'm still trying to get the hang of recruiting in D1. I understood D2, where the goal was to land a few players that aren't quite good enough for a high D1 team's attention / players that slip through the cracks, but I'm really struggling thus far with D1.

I've ended up being "Low" in very battle for a major (3*+) player I've battled for, even after maxing out on CV/HV and 50+ points per session with ++ preferences. Granted, I've only got D prestige teams, but at what level of prestige should I be able to expect a reasonable chance of being included in the dice roll for top notch talent?

In my opinion you really need to get into the B's to have a shot at talent against A+ schools.

Take advantage of preferences.. If the preferences of a recruit don't line up for you find a recruit that does match up.

I would focus on potential until your team gets C or C+ once you get to C to C+ I have had success sticking to local recruits (500 miles or less) and having great preferences. Look for recruits that want a rebuild, even tho you might be listed as "bad" those big time schools are automatically "very bad" and if you have a preference where they "want to play" you can offer good minutes and start. Good coaches will automatically recognize that they are at a disadvantage with wants rebuild and you can offer a start that they cant. It will scare away coaches, allowing me to nab a few top 25 Positionally rated recruits that are panning out to 800+ players.

TLDR- Get to C Prestige, focus locally, and then target recruits with "want rebuild" and "Wants to play" If you find those in combo to your offense and defense you could be sitting on 1-2 Very goods with a preference that hurts good schools.

Even if your a A+ prestige its to the point now that if you want a top recruit you have to offer a promise start and minutes.

Posted by plague on 9/14/2017 1:10:00 PM (view original):
Even if your a A+ prestige its to the point now that if you want a top recruit you have to offer a promise start and minutes.

Yup.

Posted by bagger288 on 9/14/2017 12:56:00 PM (view original):
I would focus on potential until your team gets C or C+ once you get to C to C+ I have had success sticking to local recruits (500 miles or less) and having great preferences. Look for recruits that want a rebuild, even tho you might be listed as "bad" those big time schools are automatically "very bad" and if you have a preference where they "want to play" you can offer good minutes and start. Good coaches will automatically recognize that they are at a disadvantage with wants rebuild and you can offer a start that they cant. It will scare away coaches, allowing me to nab a few top 25 Positionally rated recruits that are panning out to 800+ players.

TLDR- Get to C Prestige, focus locally, and then target recruits with "want rebuild" and "Wants to play" If you find those in combo to your offense and defense you could be sitting on 1-2 Very goods with a preference that hurts good schools.

There's a lot of good thought there.

I didn't land a Top 100 recruit until C+ prestige. I actually built a PI Final Team and a 4 seed NT with my top ranked recruit at 129.

Posted by cubcub113 on 9/14/2017 1:42:00 PM (view original):
I didn't land a Top 100 recruit until C+ prestige. I actually built a PI Final Team and a 4 seed NT with my top ranked recruit at 129.

Definitely possible, I do see a lot of top 50 teams that fell off the ladder reaching farther now due to the higher competition for the top 100. I have a #88 PF im currently battling for against an A- SEC team. We will be going to the coin flip. The guy isn't rated over 600 and isn't in the top 100 overall recruits.

I've been able to land 5 Top 100 recruits at a C- and C prestige (separate recruiting years). Focus on local with good preferences. I would write off any 5 star recruits until you are B prestige. I have landed 1 4 Star recruit with the preferences I previously talked about.

Yeah, any battles I've jumped in on thus far have been within 250 miles with ++ preferences, but I guess it's just not in the cards with low prestige. I ended up with two walk-ons last season with Dartmouth due to chasing a recruit out of my league and having B6 schools snipe both of my backup options in S2, so I'll probably be playing it safer for at least the next few seasons.

Posted by mbriese on 9/14/2017 2:18:00 PM (view original):
Yeah, any battles I've jumped in on thus far have been within 250 miles with ++ preferences, but I guess it's just not in the cards with low prestige. I ended up with two walk-ons last season with Dartmouth due to chasing a recruit out of my league and having B6 schools snipe both of my backup options in S2, so I'll probably be playing it safer for at least the next few seasons.

One thing you can do is for a Big6 school for that coach to be competitive they need to have recruits with DEF over 80 and any top 25 school typically aims for a 90+ DEF. So what I did is I aimed for recruits with potential to have 70-80 DEF. If you look at Robert Jones or Ronald Church on my Texas Christian team both of them were top 25 Position ranked in the top 100 overall recruits. I was able to pull both of them without any battle or competition due to the fact the defense wasn't great. However both players are solid for a rebuilding program.

A lot of coaches will not take those players because they do not have NT level Defense. I took them in my first season and have been great for me.

Rebuild Rule #1 - avoid battles with human coaches. Lol, okay I know thats not going to get you to elite status, but Ive made a living off of it so far with my UNLV team and I target guys that are in the top 25ish range at their position. You may not reach elite status but you will at least be competitive enough to keep improving your prestige to a level where you can start competing for the top recruits. Sims are relatively easy to beat recruiting, so while you are building your program I wait a cycle or two to see who is going after what and then I go after the "under the radar" guys. You can still target a top guy to see if you can sneak in a win, but I wouldnt count on landing him or plan on it.

I've built Mercer, a D+ baseline team, into an A- prestige team (which includes a championship game appearance) and just finished my second recruiting session at C- Stanford, where I landed the #2 center in the country. This is gonna be long but here's my advice.

1) Location, location, location. When I took over Mercer (in Georgia) the SEC and ACC were only about half full. It was a lot easier to recruit those high potential guys when the B+ and better schools around me all fought for the studs. I landed 3 and 4-stars my second season while the Dukes and UNCs were fighting for the 5-star studs. While location matters less in 3.0 it's still important to know how many humans are within about 300 miles of you when you pick a team in D1 as you'll find most teams still don't recruit more than 300 miles away from them.

2) If you're in a small conference look for guys that don't have the "strong conference" preference and even better, find ones that lack "strong conference" but want playing time. If you're in a relatively empty conference you can afford to offer starts + minutes to everyone you recruit, a luxury big 6 schools don't always have. Then, as others have said, the more preferences you can match the better.

3) If you're early in a rebuild and don't really have any aspirations to make the post-season, do your scouting/recruiting early and find guys you like with lots of preferences. If there are two guys near you that you both want flex/zone and you're running triangle/man then I'd recommend running flex/zone that season to better your chances. Again, you aren't making the post-season anyway so might as well try and land some studs while you can and worry about IQ later. Similarly if, for example, you're guard heavy and need some bigs and see some with the "paint offense" preference, then I'd try and make sure I'm "very good" on that preference when recruiting starts.

4) Every season you should try and battle bigger schools for a stud that you shouldn't otherwise land and hope you land a kid like that about 1/3 of the time. Don't compromise the rest of your recruiting to do this-make sure you're also bringing in other useful players. Using billyg's old model EVERY player on your team should do AT LEAST two things extremely well, and ath and def count as one entity.

5) At Stanford I try and find guys that have the "strong conference" preference as it'll give me edge over the other humans on the West coast that aren't in the PAC-10. My first recruiting session was a disaster because I was horribly unlucky and lost 4 battles where I was at least 65% favorite and the kid I did sign I was only about a 30% favorite to do so. So dumb, but that topic has been discussed ad nauseum already. The second season was much better. I found a PG with lots of high potentials that'll develop in a couple of seasons and a JUCO G that could shoot. Both will be 80+ in ath, sp, def, per, bh, and p when they graduate. No one challenged me on these kids and so I went all in on a stud big. Now, I was insanely lucky and landed the #2 C (again, at C- prestige), but that's EXACTLY what this game is designed to do now-give the little guy a fighting chance. I only had a 17% chance and beat out A+ UCLA and A San Diego St but I knew I could max out and throw a ton of APs at the kid because I wasn't being challenged on my other guys. As a lower prestige school I think you have to try and land a stud every season because those guys are program changers.

Good luck.

Posted by darnoc29099 on 9/14/2017 7:24:00 PM (view original):
I've built Mercer, a D+ baseline team, into an A- prestige team (which includes a championship game appearance) and just finished my second recruiting session at C- Stanford, where I landed the #2 center in the country. This is gonna be long but here's my advice.

1) Location, location, location. When I took over Mercer (in Georgia) the SEC and ACC were only about half full. It was a lot easier to recruit those high potential guys when the B+ and better schools around me all fought for the studs. I landed 3 and 4-stars my second season while the Dukes and UNCs were fighting for the 5-star studs. While location matters less in 3.0 it's still important to know how many humans are within about 300 miles of you when you pick a team in D1 as you'll find most teams still don't recruit more than 300 miles away from them.

2) If you're in a small conference look for guys that don't have the "strong conference" preference and even better, find ones that lack "strong conference" but want playing time. If you're in a relatively empty conference you can afford to offer starts + minutes to everyone you recruit, a luxury big 6 schools don't always have. Then, as others have said, the more preferences you can match the better.

3) If you're early in a rebuild and don't really have any aspirations to make the post-season, do your scouting/recruiting early and find guys you like with lots of preferences. If there are two guys near you that you both want flex/zone and you're running triangle/man then I'd recommend running flex/zone that season to better your chances. Again, you aren't making the post-season anyway so might as well try and land some studs while you can and worry about IQ later. Similarly if, for example, you're guard heavy and need some bigs and see some with the "paint offense" preference, then I'd try and make sure I'm "very good" on that preference when recruiting starts.

4) Every season you should try and battle bigger schools for a stud that you shouldn't otherwise land and hope you land a kid like that about 1/3 of the time. Don't compromise the rest of your recruiting to do this-make sure you're also bringing in other useful players. Using billyg's old model EVERY player on your team should do AT LEAST two things extremely well, and ath and def count as one entity.

5) At Stanford I try and find guys that have the "strong conference" preference as it'll give me edge over the other humans on the West coast that aren't in the PAC-10. My first recruiting session was a disaster because I was horribly unlucky and lost 4 battles where I was at least 65% favorite and the kid I did sign I was only about a 30% favorite to do so. So dumb, but that topic has been discussed ad nauseum already. The second season was much better. I found a PG with lots of high potentials that'll develop in a couple of seasons and a JUCO G that could shoot. Both will be 80+ in ath, sp, def, per, bh, and p when they graduate. No one challenged me on these kids and so I went all in on a stud big. Now, I was insanely lucky and landed the #2 C (again, at C- prestige), but that's EXACTLY what this game is designed to do now-give the little guy a fighting chance. I only had a 17% chance and beat out A+ UCLA and A San Diego St but I knew I could max out and throw a ton of APs at the kid because I wasn't being challenged on my other guys. As a lower prestige school I think you have to try and land a stud every season because those guys are program changers.

Good luck.

Great guide. I might contest 4 a little. I was able to make a 4 seed in the NT with the highest ranked player on the team at 132.

Great scheduling can get you way over-seeded in the NT. I'm not saying that was the case with you cubcub but I think how far your went in the tourney is a bigger indication of team success than your seed.

Thanks for the notes, darnoc. Just bookmarked this thread to come back to at the start of S1 recruiting in Phelan next season.