Posted by noah23 on 2/26/2014 7:38:00 PM (view original):
I have not seen any evidence that outside of starting for four years that more then a 3 point different in guess rating can be overcome unless the recruit is a stl potential. 

At the D-III level, a 3-point lead is worthless and easily overcome by (before) the SR season if the player with the lead is "about reached his potential" with 30 WE, who's going up against a player who's "improve a lot" with that same WE. But let's say the 3-point-lead player has "average" potential. Then the "improve a lot" player would only have to have a WE of 35 to overcome that difference by their SR season.

That's to say nothing of recruiting players with high WE *and* high potential, versus low-WE, average-potential players, who would absolutely blow away a 3-point lead by their SR season. If your models are suggesting otherwise, I'm making a friendly suggestion to revisit and revise them.

This assumes everything else is equal - games played, starting time and practice plan.

As you ascend the levels, it gets more difficult to overcome leads like that, because attribute values are, on average, closer to the 100-point ceiling and, therefore, grow less rapidly. A coach can do very, very well for him- or herself recruiting classes full of the Top 1-5 recruits at every position, indeed. I'm not suggesting otherwise. But I'll take a growth-oriented classes with second-tier talent every time, over a top-tier classes with low WE/potential, especially at D-III.