The dumbest part of HD... EE's... not the EE's per se, but the real strategy of top teams of deliberately tanking the ratings of their sophs and juniors that are listed high in the Big Draft Board... it's asinine, and it's a major strategy.

Solution should be either that during recruiting, players announce how many years they will stay in school... or... the Big Draft Board shown in preseason *stays the same* all year long.

Top teams literally try to lower the skill of their players to try to get an additional season out of them. It's insane.

Past seasons i've resisted using this strategy cuz i want to win a ring. But with only 5 schollie players this season at Crum UConn, i tested the waters. After the national final late Saturday night, i'll see if this strategy has paid off.

Lauderdale has dropped on the Big Board from like 16th to 30th... Floyd Jones has dropped from 56 or so to around 88 or so.

This is probably common knowledge for veterans, but there might be some HD players that are unaware.

I don't think there's a problem here, ie the practice isn't harming coaches, it isn't providing anyone with an unfair advantage, it's not unrealistic (it might appear unrealistic, and in absurd cases might be kind of, but really isn't, more on this below), and there is a good gameplay choice involved here. I suspect quite a few folks are *bothered* by it for some understandable reasons, but those reasons are not really valid from a gameplay perspective, they are just personal preference aesthetic issues, akin to folks being bothered by Eastern Washington and Delaware St being powerhouse programs in Tark. It might look odd, on the surface, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't happen.

Player development is one of the areas coaches have most direct control. That's essentially what this boils down to - how fast to develop a player, what you can live with in a given season. It's a risk/reward choice, and a pretty important one. Take it away, and you're removing a pretty significant portion of a coaches actual influence, in a game already dominated by RNG and outcomes that often feel - because they largely are - pre-determined.

I'm sure I'll get push back on the realism aspect here, but I would like folks to think about this past the surface a bit. The game was designed during an era when far fewer players declared. So we almost never see freshmen declaring, and relatively few sophs. So right off the bat, we are not dealing with a game that mimics the contemporary game. And that's probably good for gameplay and user satisfaction. Beyond that though, I'd argue there really aren't many coaches/programs in the country that go balls out on development for EE caliber players in real life. As I've said in other threads, very few teams ever have more than a couple future NBA players on their roster at a time to begin with, probably way fewer than most of us playing this game would think. And whether it's the NCAA or WIS, the point is to put together teams capable of competing for championships year after year - it's not to develop all your players fully, or quickly. The latter can sometimes serve the former, but it can also work against it. Making that determination is and should remain one of the tough choices we make as fake coaches of pixel-players.

I will say, if developers ever got to the point where they thought this was a gameplay problem, the way to "fix" it is to make the playing time preference more intelligent. And no, I don't mean 4 year promises. But players who come in wanting to play should have a built in skepticism toward loaded rosters, especially ones with players potentially blocking them. I've always petitioned for a "pro-ball v academic" preference. Players who want to play (or coach, for lower divisions) professionally should be impressed by fast development of other players, and by D1 coaches who send players to the NBA. And the other avenue to take is just to make potential more prominent in evaluating Big Board status. But it should not be the sole determinant, nor should it be static throughout the season.

Posted by npb7768 on 3/3/2023 1:00:00 PM (view original):
Past seasons i've resisted using this strategy cuz i want to win a ring. But with only 5 schollie players this season at Crum UConn, i tested the waters. After the national final late Saturday night, i'll see if this strategy has paid off.

Lauderdale has dropped on the Big Board from like 16th to 30th... Floyd Jones has dropped from 56 or so to around 88 or so.

With Jones, you probably did increase your chances of keeping him pretty substantially. With Lauderdale, it depends on class. If that's a sophomore, 16 to 30 is a good move for next year. If a junior, you lost a year of development for basically nothing - you're still going to have to get very lucky to keep him, because he's still projected in the first round, and will have the "likely going" applied once the draft gets to him, regardless of what the big board tells you right now (unless, of course, NO players ahead of him choose to stay, and a player or two currently behind him jumps up during the offseason after the last Big Board - but that's pretty much an impossible scenario).

Good points, thanks Shoe. Just want everyone to be familiar with this strategy.

I've had 2 freshmen across all worlds declare EE. Yes, hoping i get lucky with Lauderdale !!

I am also of the view that this is a good gameplay "feature" and not a bug. I say that because I like a game that gives players more choices. One thing that I think often gets lost in this conversation is that holding players back does affect on court performance (often significantly). One of the coaches I chat with currently is Cjok. I'd say we generally recruit similarly talented players. He *generally* develops his players fully, I *generally* prefer to hold them back. When I look at his roster, he commonly has players that are a lot better than mine and gets noticeably better player performance. When he gets lucky with EE entries, his roster looks incredible and destroys mine. The flip side is my rosters tend to be deeper as I have fewer early entries. That is not to say the players I hold back aren't good as is, or I never have EEs. I have just taken a gameplay strategy that's results in fewer EEs, but often not maxed out players. Some years that's helpful, some years it prohibitive.

I do certainly agree that its worthwhile to bring this topic up every so often so new coaches aware this is an choice available to them. I do also understand your opinion NPB, just have a different stance. The one thing I would suggest is, if there was ever a very strong majority that a change was needed, I would much prefer the big board to be calculated based on potential and age, rather than a known deterministic outcome at the recruiting date.

Thanks Texas

I think something that also falls somewhere in this debate is the choice between developing skills and developing IQ. As far as I am aware there is no max on IQ (I think this is debated though), so with elite D1 players I tend to end up putting a lot of minutes into IQ because I see it as a way to improve players without raising their EE chances - similarly, LP and PE seem to be highly important for the big board, holding those rating back is often enough to keep a player stagnant or slightly decreasing on the board. I will often try no LP/PE development first and if this isn't moving/keeping the player where I want them, then switch to no/very little development at all.
So, roughly, in prioritizing development on a Big Board type player:
1. IQ
2. FT
3. All skills except PE/LP (and to a lesser extent BH/PA and REB for guards/bigs respectively)
4. PE/LP

Yeah by far dumbest part of this game is how brutal EEs are (especially for B+ to A level schools) and how the best strategy is to make your own players worse...

Posted by bpielcmc on 3/4/2023 6:32:00 AM (view original):
I think something that also falls somewhere in this debate is the choice between developing skills and developing IQ. As far as I am aware there is no max on IQ (I think this is debated though), so with elite D1 players I tend to end up putting a lot of minutes into IQ because I see it as a way to improve players without raising their EE chances - similarly, LP and PE seem to be highly important for the big board, holding those rating back is often enough to keep a player stagnant or slightly decreasing on the board. I will often try no LP/PE development first and if this isn't moving/keeping the player where I want them, then switch to no/very little development at all.
So, roughly, in prioritizing development on a Big Board type player:
1. IQ
2. FT
3. All skills except PE/LP (and to a lesser extent BH/PA and REB for guards/bigs respectively)
4. PE/LP

Yeah, this is close to how I proceed. FT and some conditioning that first year (some players that are truly at risk for leaving after 2 seasons will get just maintenance conditioning too, but that's a last resort). Then pivot to positional skills slowly in their soph season, with an eye on the big board. If LP and per are up close to 70 and still black or better, I won't even touch them until later in the junior season. Some exceptions though, specifically if I desperately need that scoring. And importantly, I'm not usually concerned about losing juniors. I just want to avoid losing sophs. Since I don't take walk-ons routinely, and usually have a couple high IQ backups ready to step in in case of emergency, losing a junior on the big board, especially one I'm expecting, is not a big deal. Just no sophs, and hopefully not multiple, if I can help it - but that's more of a recruiting strategy than anything else.

Does this make my players worse? No. I'm not trying to drop any categories, and I think that's generally a pretty bad approach in every case. I'm just focusing early development on things that won't raise their draft stock (much). I don't typically need players to score much until their junior season anyway, so there is not a lot of harm in holding sophs to around 70 in their scoring until I need it. Some players could be a little better if I went for fast development, but that puts them at risk for leaving. As others note, I am giving up *something*, and keeping them lower on the big board is not without a downside. It's a calculated risk when I decide to let a guy move up the board. But I do that a lot, too. The main thing I want to do is keep players away from the cusps of likely going - keep sophs below 25, keep juniors below 40. So toward the end of the season, I'll quite often try to move them up a bit too.

I had no idea that lots of coaches still actually did this. I just can’t break myself to do it. It just seems weird to keep players from developing. I don’t pay close enough attention to other teams unless they’re on my game planning tab for that night, but I only ever noticed piman doing Things like that. I haven’t really noticed others. And the only reason I noticed him, is if I play against him, I’ll notice he’ll have some big board upperclassman with like 30 points of growth in PER or LP and he’ll have 0 growth anywhere else on that player.

obviously it must be helpful when it works out right. But it’s difficult for me to mentally say “ok I’ll just compete with what I got. I could use this extra 90 PER guy to put me over the top. But Meh, I’ll wait till next year”. I wanna be the best I can EVERY year personally. To each their own

I mean, at the minimum, tanking BH/PA in bigs and REB in guards, PA in elite scoring SFs... just beyond obvious how insanely positive this is.

Posted by topdogggbm on 3/4/2023 3:56:00 PM (view original):
I had no idea that lots of coaches still actually did this. I just can’t break myself to do it. It just seems weird to keep players from developing. I don’t pay close enough attention to other teams unless they’re on my game planning tab for that night, but I only ever noticed piman doing Things like that. I haven’t really noticed others. And the only reason I noticed him, is if I play against him, I’ll notice he’ll have some big board upperclassman with like 30 points of growth in PER or LP and he’ll have 0 growth anywhere else on that player.

obviously it must be helpful when it works out right. But it’s difficult for me to mentally say “ok I’ll just compete with what I got. I could use this extra 90 PER guy to put me over the top. But Meh, I’ll wait till next year”. I wanna be the best I can EVERY year personally. To each their own

It's not really about wanting to be the best every year or not - it is about allocating risk. If I develop the guy fully, I am allocating risk to the next season (because my post-season chances might be diminished by not having that player's skills). If I don't develop the guy fully, I am allocating risk to this season (because my post-season chances might be diminished by not having that player's extra skills). And from there you have to make the decision.

And the consideration of EE management, to me, should use at least a two-season window of thinking (arguably more often more). So what you are doing here is allocating the risk to the future season and then limiting the window of consideration to one season, the current - this makes it appear like your aiming for the best every year but actually you are habitually adding risk to every future season.

Finally, and this might not matter as much at A/A+ baseline prestige, but the fact that the prestige calculation takes into account the past four seasons means that 3 good seasons in a row can help your program much more than 1 great season and 2 average-to-mediocre ones.