Posted by craigcoug on 4/29/2013 4:22:00 PM (view original):

Posted by trobone on 4/29/2013 4:11:00 PM (view original):

Posted by craigcoug on 4/29/2013 3:59:00 PM (view original):
I'm a pretty new coach, bhansalid and maybe I'd advise newbies to avoid these battles the first couple of times. But if you pay attention, there are definitely battles worth fighting.

I think it's smart to avoid battles when possible, especially at DIII and even DII. Too many similar players to waste $ on a battle.?

Not if you're planning your team right. If you're looking at the exact hole you need to fill there will be 2-3 options to BEST fit that hole. You'll only get one out of those 2-3 options and if you have to get in a battle that you have a good chance to win, do it!

Avoiding battles is a good rule of thumb. But if you recruit to avoid battles always that is playing not to lose. You'll get decent players with decent abilities when you could have battled for a player that could carry you in a NT.

I'm not sure I agree with the 1st part of your post.  Most D3 recruits fill a need, yes.  But there are dozens of rebounders to go get.  There are dozens of high ath/def guys (with nothing else redeemable) to get.  Etc.  To battle for a piece just isn't worth it.  Now, the superstars?  Definitely dump your money into those.

If you are in an ultra-successful conference (e.g. the ACC in Phelan), where you are routinely getting close to $50K a season in bonus money, it lends itself to strategically not recruit against your conference mates. Not as collusion, but because of the leverage factor.

a.) You know you won't have any real financial leverage against a fellow team in your conference that also has $50K bonus money, and likely significant carry-over. So getting into a battle would be extremely costly.

and

b.) You have the financial resources to go outside your natural geographic area and beat out all the other Big 6 conferences that are only getting $20K in bonus money.

At that point it just doesn't make economic sense to pick a battle in-conference, when you know you can go out and get (almost) your pick of players from elsewhere. I'm overstating that a bit, but you get the point.

I, coaching at Michigan St., frequently battle in-conference. Take a look at the map. East Lansing is smack dab in the middle of Big 10 territory with nothing but water and Canada to the north. With the exception of tiny pieces of Kentucky, New York and West Virginia, the vast whole of my 360-mile radius is in-conference territory. If I'm going to recruit locally, I really have no choice but to battle conference mates. That said, I will lean towards non-conference targets when there are viable gettable options available. And I also try not to pick on the same coach multiple times in a given time-frame. So those things do get some real consideration, but if push comes to shove and I really need/want a player, I'm still going to do what's best for my team.

I know this topic is very old now but as I was rereading my post, what I meant was I was against "initiating" a battle with a conference mate who was already on a recruit. If we had both jumped on him the same cycle, then that changes things.