I only have two HD teams, so I don't have a ton of experience with other human coaches and their strategies, but it seems like there are very few D3 coaches who are recruiting at the “Projected DIII” level. The vast majority of human coaches at D3 schools are constantly trying to feed off the scraps of D1/2 schools, who have a significant built-in advantage going after recruits at their own respective levels. However, there is a whole flock of Projected DIII players that almost no human coaches are looking at. We occasionally do see D3 sim-coached teams with excellent players recruited out of the Projected DIII pool, but obviously the sims are rarely going to be intelligent or lucky enough to field an entire team of these excellent Projected DIII players.

This fact was the impetus for my Crum D3 Pacific team, where I attempted to figure out just how good a team could be assembled while recruiting exclusively at the Projected DIII level. The hypothesis was that if one is able to identify and essentially hand-pick the very best players at the Projected DIII level, that team might be able to regularly compete with the types of DI/II recruits that most D3 human coaches pull in.

I experienced some decent success with this strategy. After twelve seasons of Projected DIII recruiting, I was able to reach the NT eight times, going 12-8 in the tourney over that period with three Sweet 16 appearances and one Final Four. The Final Four team was probably a fluke, having recruited two of the best players I’ve ever seen from the Projected DIII level in consecutive seasons, and a few players that ended up outperforming their potentials beyond my initial projections (I probably also pulled out a couple lucky wins that season as well, but that luck is harder to evaluate). Outside of that season, I feel like I was able to reliably achieve an RPI somewhere in the 30's and perennially make and win a game in the NT, but I'm always gritting my teeth on whether or not I can actually do any major damage in the tournament after Round 1.

I believe that Crum Season 110 will be my last season Projected DIII recruits exclusively. I think I have achieved about as much as I can at that level, and I'm looking for a new challenge.
Some of my conclusions:

• Only about 5-7% of recruits at the Projected DIII-level will ever be able to reach a skill level that can compete with other D3 humans recruiting at DI/II, and that actually might be a generous estimate. It's pretty desolate out there, folks.
• The silver lining on that is that, at least in Crum, I had very little to no competition for this 5-7% of recruits (the sims can be pesky at the start, but can be consistently overpowered), so I think I was able to confirm that the strategy can work if applied correctly (and maybe with a little bit of luck).
• Given the two facts above, having a very large Projected DIII recruiting pool is absolutely critical. Since Pacific is in the relatively sparsely populated northwest of the country, it probably wasn’t exactly the best team to employ this strategy. A team in the densely populated northeast of the country, with many Projected DIII recruits in the team camp radius, might have been more successful.
• Because there is essentially no actual competition for Projected DIII recruits, this also means that Projected DIII recruiting is pretty boring; I typically find the guys I want within a few hours of scouting, and I almost always end up signing the players I wanted. This is obviously a feature of the strategy, not a bug, but still made the game a little less fun.
• The biggest difference between the types of Projected DI/II recruits that other D3 coaches bring in vs. Projected DIII recruits is that these highly-selective DIII recruits are almost always far worse in their first few seasons, but have high enough potentials such that as juniors and seniors they can become pretty solid players. This unfortunately means that even if Pacific’s juniors and seniors were very competitive with the upperclassmen on other D3 teams, I typically had a bench far worse than my competitors, making it very difficult to consistently compete at the highest levels.
• Redshirting does help with the above issue, but the limit of one RS per season means it’s just not enough. Stacking my players into only a handful of classes might have also worked, but the limited scouting resources available at D3 schools makes it such that even finding five very good players in a given season was typically very difficult, and if your five-man class happened to coincide with an unusually shallow talent pool it could be disastrous. Spreading out my classes spreads out the risk.
• This also made my margin for error on individual player talent evaluation very slim, since any time I signed a DIII-level recruit that didn't meet their expected potential, the player would end up about as valuable as a third backup option from recruiting at the Projected DI-level. So, even though the top 5-percentile of DIII-level players can be very good, I’m quite convinced that a coach recruiting at the Projected DI-level could completely ignore the first couple recruiting cycles, exclusively go after the players that have no human or sim targets on them at the time, and those players would be about as good as the top 5-15 percentile players at the DIII-level.
• On average, I would say that my roster would typically be made up of:
  • Five players were talented enough to compete with some top D3 human coaches
  • Four underclassmen that would eventually be good as Jr./Sr. but were underwhelming options as freshmen and sophomores
  • Two players that either did not meet their expected potential or were just the best I could find in a shallow recruiting pool,
  • One Redshirt freshman.

Overall, I'm glad I gave this strategy my best shot, but I think it's time to move on. I know others have tried the exclusive Projected DIII recruiting before; has anyone else had better success with this or found other strategies to make it work better? Has anyone else tried and failed, or found it too boring?

I found this post extremely interesting, thanks for putting it up. The amount of work you put in was awesome...I'd actually try this as well.

LTF, what you have done at Pacific is as impressive a D3 coaching accomplishment as any I have seen.

Posted by ltfuller on 2/22/2020 8:58:00 AM (view original):
I only have two HD teams, so I don't have a ton of experience with other human coaches and their strategies, but it seems like there are very few D3 coaches who are recruiting at the “Projected DIII” level. The vast majority of human coaches at D3 schools are constantly trying to feed off the scraps of D1/2 schools, who have a significant built-in advantage going after recruits at their own respective levels. However, there is a whole flock of Projected DIII players that almost no human coaches are looking at. We occasionally do see D3 sim-coached teams with excellent players recruited out of the Projected DIII pool, but obviously the sims are rarely going to be intelligent or lucky enough to field an entire team of these excellent Projected DIII players.

This fact was the impetus for my Crum D3 Pacific team, where I attempted to figure out just how good a team could be assembled while recruiting exclusively at the Projected DIII level. The hypothesis was that if one is able to identify and essentially hand-pick the very best players at the Projected DIII level, that team might be able to regularly compete with the types of DI/II recruits that most D3 human coaches pull in.

I experienced some decent success with this strategy. After twelve seasons of Projected DIII recruiting, I was able to reach the NT eight times, going 12-8 in the tourney over that period with three Sweet 16 appearances and one Final Four. The Final Four team was probably a fluke, having recruited two of the best players I’ve ever seen from the Projected DIII level in consecutive seasons, and a few players that ended up outperforming their potentials beyond my initial projections (I probably also pulled out a couple lucky wins that season as well, but that luck is harder to evaluate). Outside of that season, I feel like I was able to reliably achieve an RPI somewhere in the 30's and perennially make and win a game in the NT, but I'm always gritting my teeth on whether or not I can actually do any major damage in the tournament after Round 1.

I believe that Crum Season 110 will be my last season Projected DIII recruits exclusively. I think I have achieved about as much as I can at that level, and I'm looking for a new challenge.
Some of my conclusions:

• Only about 5-7% of recruits at the Projected DIII-level will ever be able to reach a skill level that can compete with other D3 humans recruiting at DI/II, and that actually might be a generous estimate. It's pretty desolate out there, folks.
• The silver lining on that is that, at least in Crum, I had very little to no competition for this 5-7% of recruits (the sims can be pesky at the start, but can be consistently overpowered), so I think I was able to confirm that the strategy can work if applied correctly (and maybe with a little bit of luck).
• Given the two facts above, having a very large Projected DIII recruiting pool is absolutely critical. Since Pacific is in the relatively sparsely populated northwest of the country, it probably wasn’t exactly the best team to employ this strategy. A team in the densely populated northeast of the country, with many Projected DIII recruits in the team camp radius, might have been more successful.
• Because there is essentially no actual competition for Projected DIII recruits, this also means that Projected DIII recruiting is pretty boring; I typically find the guys I want within a few hours of scouting, and I almost always end up signing the players I wanted. This is obviously a feature of the strategy, not a bug, but still made the game a little less fun.
• The biggest difference between the types of Projected DI/II recruits that other D3 coaches bring in vs. Projected DIII recruits is that these highly-selective DIII recruits are almost always far worse in their first few seasons, but have high enough potentials such that as juniors and seniors they can become pretty solid players. This unfortunately means that even if Pacific’s juniors and seniors were very competitive with the upperclassmen on other D3 teams, I typically had a bench far worse than my competitors, making it very difficult to consistently compete at the highest levels.
• Redshirting does help with the above issue, but the limit of one RS per season means it’s just not enough. Stacking my players into only a handful of classes might have also worked, but the limited scouting resources available at D3 schools makes it such that even finding five very good players in a given season was typically very difficult, and if your five-man class happened to coincide with an unusually shallow talent pool it could be disastrous. Spreading out my classes spreads out the risk.
• This also made my margin for error on individual player talent evaluation very slim, since any time I signed a DIII-level recruit that didn't meet their expected potential, the player would end up about as valuable as a third backup option from recruiting at the Projected DI-level. So, even though the top 5-percentile of DIII-level players can be very good, I’m quite convinced that a coach recruiting at the Projected DI-level could completely ignore the first couple recruiting cycles, exclusively go after the players that have no human or sim targets on them at the time, and those players would be about as good as the top 5-15 percentile players at the DIII-level.
• On average, I would say that my roster would typically be made up of:
  • Five players were talented enough to compete with some top D3 human coaches
  • Four underclassmen that would eventually be good as Jr./Sr. but were underwhelming options as freshmen and sophomores
  • Two players that either did not meet their expected potential or were just the best I could find in a shallow recruiting pool,
  • One Redshirt freshman.

Overall, I'm glad I gave this strategy my best shot, but I think it's time to move on. I know others have tried the exclusive Projected DIII recruiting before; has anyone else had better success with this or found other strategies to make it work better? Has anyone else tried and failed, or found it too boring?

Are you getting drafted into summer league Nc rival?

ltfuller, we salute you! Thank you for contributing to the rest of the HD community with a thorough and well-presented summary of your project. I only wish you had had the success of a National Title for your efforts. You clearly gave it your best and gave the project ample time to reach some evidence-based conclusions.

Super interesting write-up. If I may ask, how did you scout there? Like what procedure did you use? thanks again for this write-up, truly a great accomplishment what you did there.

Posted by Sportsbulls on 2/23/2020 1:06:00 AM (view original):
Super interesting write-up. If I may ask, how did you scout there? Like what procedure did you use? thanks again for this write-up, truly a great accomplishment what you did there.

I don't really have a scouting strategy that would drastically differ from recruiting a Projected DI/II player. I would say the only major difference is that the pool of players that I really like is so small (maybe 5 recruits per season), that I typically have to have a "beggars can't be choosers" mentality and take what I can get, which limits the amount of strategy I can even take.

• By not scouting Division I recruits, I do benefit from not wasting resources on Top 100 players, so another silver lining! For Season 110, after FSS and camp, 121 of my 135 recruits reached Level 3 or 4 after the school camp and assistant searches. This would have been higher if Pacific was located in a denser part of the US.
• Pacific plays Motion/Man, but really the only special consideration I give for this is that with Motion/Man I only need to play about 10.5 players a season, so I will always redshirt someone and I don't worry too much if my worst freshman is really really bad, since he's probably only getting around 120 minutes that season.
• I have certain weights I give different skills for different positions, but after giving a weighted score for each player and removing players with very low WE, I don't really do a lot of nuanced considerations between players. Again, beggars can't be choosers.
• My weights probably aren't that different than most coaches, and in fact are mostly based on a Google Sheet file that someone on the forums linked to a few years ago, making some small changes over the seasons. My SF is typically just a guard-type that might have higher REB/LP, but sometimes not, depending on what players I was able to find.
• There is literally no strategy once I find the hand-picked players I like, since the competition to sign these recruits is so weak from the Sim AI. I load up my AP on those guys, unlock scholarships after the first one/two cycles, offer, and then it's over.

Makes sense!

I congratulate you for the effort. I hate to say this, but you might have been the only Human recruiting D3 level guys. I wonder how long I could compete at D3 doing the same.
Question though, how did you schedule your NC games. Did you avoid the guys recruiting D1?

Posted by wvufan76 on 2/23/2020 5:43:00 PM (view original):
I congratulate you for the effort. I hate to say this, but you might have been the only Human recruiting D3 level guys. I wonder how long I could compete at D3 doing the same.
Question though, how did you schedule your NC games. Did you avoid the guys recruiting D1?

Pacific is in the Northwest Conference, which in Crum is incredibly strong. Because of this very tough conference schedule, I almost exclusively schedule the very best Sim AI teams I can find for non-conference, though if a human coach does ask to play me in non-conference play I typically accept the offer just to be a good sport. My SOS rank has averaged about 14 over the last nine seasons, so I think I've done a pretty good job finding very good Sim AI teams.

Well.. A couple Sweet 16 appearances. I would say it is a valid method to recruit.