Trying to compile a giant FAQ hopefully it could get stickied. I'm just posting a lot of topics, I don't have the answer to everything so please correct me or help fill in information if you can that would be awesome! This will be a work in progress too. Saving before I accidentally delete this thread and shoot myself. Pink means it is something I posted but need confirming or an answer from someone who knows! Also feel free to message me or post here information you think is important so I can add it in, as I still do not know this game 100% and would also help me not spend hours upon hours on this.
Also I love talking about this game and I believe in the time that I have been here I have become the top poster(mostly questions and frustrations) and while I'm not the most qualified I am good enough to answer your beginning and some intermediate questions, or refer you to better players who are capable of helping you more.
I'm going to do my best to not make this a "guide" on how to do well but rather a giant bank of knowledge and how to use that knowledge for players starting off and how to actually play this game. If you prefer a guide on how to succeed read THIS GUIDE made by one of the most successful HD players aejones.
Starting Off:(Picking a team)
Hopefully this will help people make informed decisions on how to choose a school best for you so you don't end up in undesirable spots stuck with 9 sim recruited freshmen. Basically they are 3 main things to look for in a school.
It's important to make sure you don't get stuck with an all sim recruit team especially if they have 8+ freshmen or sophomores as they will make it a very long and drawn out process of getting a decent squad of your own recruits. If you are not able to grab a school that had a previous coach, I recommend grabbing a team with a majority of its players seniors and juniors as that allows you to get the quickest rebuild done and more options as you can work on a struture if you want by grabbing juco's and transfer, or have a balanced structure like 4-2-4-2 or 3-3-3-3 if that's how you prefer to build your teams.
Depending where you plan to coach will affect mainly just recruiting, obviously grabbing a school in Iowa is going to be a bit harder recruiting than a school in New York City based on the amount of recruits nearby. If you are new I'd recommend taking a school is an easier area to recruit such places like the New York City area, near Boston, Texas, California, North Carolina, and the Great Lakes regions are usually stocked full of recruits. Here is the official CS response to recruit generation:
"To generate recruits, we first determine the total number to create, which is based on the projected openings in that world. As we generate the necessary number of players, they are assigned to a particular state. The odds for each state are based on the number of schools in that state. Once a state is selected, a high school from that state is randomly assigned, which determines the player's geographical location. From season to season, there will be variance in quantity and quality in a particular area due to these factors."
Another big thing is the type of conference you want to end up in. You can join a very full conference and work through a brutal conference schedule or join a empty conference and rack up the wins sacrificing your sos. It depends, if you are inexperienced I wouldn't recommend joining a super tough conference right away unless you think you are a quick learner and are willing to have a few bad couple of seasons. If not I'd look for a more open conference where you can beat up sims even when you aren't stacked with upper classmen. Another thing to note is the conference boards in a full conf are usually more fun, than talking to yourself in an empty conference. I'd say the best aspect for choosing a more open conference is that in your "down" years you still have a good shot at a NT bid by breezing through conf play and grabbing the CT crown whereas that same team in a full conference would probably struggle to hit .500 because of its toughness. The best apspect besides having other coaches around in a full conference is the rpi/sos boost you receive as its super easy to have a great sos by just having a tough conference schedule. Conference rpi does matter a bit come tournament seeding too. Another huge factor is post season recruiting money which comes from the # of post season games your conferences plays. The stronger the conference the more post season games you play in and bring in more money. Top conferences can gain a huge advantage in recruiting by having enormous recruiting budgets.
HERE is the link to maps of all D1, 2, and 3 colleges thanks to ldhmnh
Recruiting:
1st thing, disregard overall player rating as a method of determining how "good" a player is. It does not affect the game play in any matter it is only useful for determining your shot of pulling down a player(later on) and not actually how good he is. AGAIN OVERALL RATING DOES NOT AFFECT HOW GOOD A PLAYER IS. Yes you expect good players to have high ratings, however if you look closer at a lot of recruits you will realize some were trying to trick you by having great WE/DU which for the most part is not that important for gameplay. HERE is a link to the knowledge base describing how each rating impacts the game. I will go ahead and say a few things about ratings. Overall ath/def are important at every position. For guards Speed, ball handling, and passing are key. For big men rebounding, and shot blocking are important. I will go in depth on player ratings more, but remember to key on ath/spd/def. And you will have a decent team.
2nd thing, Buying Future Stars Scouting (FSS) is the single most important tool, you can't recruit a good team without knowing potential, however do not blow all your money on FSS otherwise you won't actually have any money left to spend on recruits.
How recruiting works overview: Recruit will start at 6 PM and it depends on when the world opens, usually 1/2 day to 1.5 days after you join and lasts for 5 days all working in 3 hour cycles with the first being a 2 hour cycles: 6pm-8pm 8pm-11pm 11pm-2am 2am-5am 5am-8am 8am-11am 11am-2pm 2pm -5pm 5pm-8pm and continuing.
HERE is how your budget is determined.
There are 2 big dates after the start, the signing period at the 8pm cycle 2 days after the start and then closing 5 days later at midnight.
Finding Player Potential
To help determine how good a player is we need to look at what the 3 most important ratings are: guards I'd go ath/spd/def and for your big men ath/reb/def. Recruiting on just those 3 skills will net you a decent team, however to truly elite team will have great ratings elsewhere as well, and later on we will go in-depth on how to build a top team depending on the strategy you have chosen.
Now there is this handy tool Future Stars Scouting (FSS) which allows you to find the ratings potential for each recruit in a state you scout. FSS is by state so you pay for each state based on the number of recruits, the more the costlier, I believe in my last recruiting session New York was one of the most populous and was ~$1,300 and the lowest any state will cost is $200. I believe aejone's guide states about 20% of your recruiting budget on FSS remember their is discounts for the amount of states you buy 2-4 gets 10% off 5-7 gets 15% and 7+ gets 20% off. Personally I scout about 3-5 with a small budget and 7+ on a larger budget generally about 15-20% of my budget is used on FSS. Now that we know what FSS is and how it gives us potentials here is how they are labeled.
Potentials are the max rating a player can achieve from where he is divided into 3 colors, red/black/blue each one responds to a certain number value(blue has two)
High Blue 28+
Low Blue 20-27
Black 8-19
Red 0-7
FSS will give you these player potentials, and to determine between High Blue and Low Blue you will need to send Scouting trips and based off your assistant coaches messages you can determine by looking at this google doc of message responses here courtesy of dacj501
Free throw rating is a little different, you can see a recruits HS FT% and that converts to a rating based on this scale thanks to porkpower and I don't know how potential works, I think Blue means at least 1 letter grade increase, black is up to 1 letter grade increase, and red is not more than 1 increase?
oldwarrior's Recruit FT Chart:
A+ 87.1 +
A 84.1 87.0
A- 81.1 84.0
B+ 78.1 81.0
B 75.1 78.0
B- 72.1 75.0
C+ 69.1 72.0
C 66.1 69.0
C- 63.1 66.0
D+ 60.1 63.0
D 57.1 60.0
D- 54.1 57.0
F - 54.0
Now you need to know how to search for players in the state you scouted, heres a huge tip once you click search in "scouted" states change results view to "ratings" compared to "general" this will make it easier and speed the process up of finding good recruits: PIC
Heres what a search looks like without FSS and HERE is what the search looks like with FSS, making it much easier to decipher which players you want to recruit.
Here is an example of a single player's potential's after using FSS HERE
Now I will add up the players potentials by adding the potential's number scale, I like to copy and paste into a google doc to make it easy(I always estimate the lowest for each scale red-0 black-7 and blue-20) Example
Now you see how to find player potential! The biggest factor in this game is recruiting you have to be an elite recruiter to succeed and knowing how to use FSS is the first step.
Remember a guy with 40 ath but blue potential will end up with more athleticism than a player with 50 ath blue only red potential that is a key, the best players at the moment might be surpassed by players with greater potential.
Now that you know how to FSS states, find players, and calculate their potentials lets talk about:
Recruiting Methods
Here is a quick reference guide for costs of recruit by distance (thanks to pureh21)
|
miles
|
10
|
200
|
200
|
360
|
360
|
1400
|
1400
|
|
Scouting Trip
|
$150
|
190
|
265
|
300
|
530
|
660
|
700
|
|
Home Visit
|
$300
|
340
|
415
|
450
|
745
|
875
|
1215
|
|
Campus Visit
|
$800
|
825
|
1025
|
1050
|
1260
|
1445
|
2020
|
- Here is a breakdown by hughesjr for cost/effort value
What is most effective based on distance:
| 0-360 |
HV |
CV |
ST |
Letter |
| 370-1400 |
CV |
HV |
Ltr |
ST |
| 1400+ |
Ltr |
CV |
HV |
ST |
And effort/cost in a more detailed breakdown HERE
- Here is a effort per recruit action compiled by TJ:
Phone call= 2
Letters =3
ST= 60
HV= 150
CV= 350
Scholarship= 250
Promised Start= 250
Promised minutes= 5 * minutes promised
And it takes about 400 "points" for a recruit to consider you.
- Phonecall/Letters "40/40 method"
Good for grabbing recruits from a far distance where hv/cv are expensive to send. Basically send 40 calls/letters and a scholarship offer. You can only select up to 10 at a time so do 10/10 then 10/10, 10/10, 10/10 with scholarship. This works best at D3, at higher levels it usually takes more than 40/40 to get a recruit considering, however there is also the chance you send to many and **** a recruit off.
Good for local prospects under 360 miles or up to ~500 miles before the 40/40 method is better costwise. To get a recruit to consider you that is in your division you only need 2 HV + scholly or 1 CV and a scholarship, more effort may be needed if he is already considering other schools, however that is enough to get a recruit to consider you the majority of the time. This is great for local prospects as you can get someone to consider you for 600-800 bucks depending on how close he is.
- Start/Scholly "$110 special" + redshirt.
Good for when you have low money and need to sign someone cheap. Just send a scholarship offer and start. This is usually enough to get a recruit to sign if he isn't considering other schools. You can void the guaranteed start by informing of redshirt the next cycle, however it is risky and you also might need to accompany a hv/cv.
- Guarantees to Ineligibles
You can send guarantees of minutes/starts to ineligibles without having to carryout on the promise since the player won't be able to play his first season and the promises don't carry over to his next season. Only risk is if he passes his SAT's making him eligible and any guarantees would need to be honored.
Pulldowns: You can recruit higher division prospects, to do so you must send a coaching call and receive a positive response. Once receiving a positive response you "pulldown" a player by sending Scouting trips and a scholarship offer. At D3 it is generally 10 ST and a scholarship offer. However it may take much more. And during a pulldown even if successful run the risk of a higher division coming in and taking the recruit as higher division schools will beat you in a battle unless you spend a super high amount. Pulldown guide by ethan66 and dacj501
What players can I recruit or pulldown, must send phone call to receive positive message to make sure as not every player is able to be pulled down.
D1
- B+ or higher everyone is recruitable right away
- B- needs to pulldown the 5 star players(but realistically impossible to land them without taking 4/5 walkons anyways)
- C Up to 3 stars are immediately recruitable (30 rank, 650 rating max)
- D- schools can get up to the 65ish ranked players and overall ratings of about 575(however both of these might be pulldowns) Also just because a player is ranked 79th doesn't mean you can get him right away he might have a overall rating of say 585 which is usually too high to grab
D2:
- A/A+ Up to 80 ranked players within 70 miles, 90-110 within close distance. 120+ is more often
- B- to B+ around players under overall of 525ish and 150+ rank
- C+ or lower
D3:
- D1 players within 70 miles while at A/A+ prestige are able to be pulled down when their overall is under 515.
- D2 prospects are recruitable if you call coach and receive a positive response, a player will automatically send a message later if he has "dropped-down" and is then immediately recruitable.
Also a bit out of spot, but HERE is a link to D1 baseline prestiges, however the CAA seems to have a C- baseline and not a D baseline as posted.
Similar to pulldowns however instead of sending scholarships and a start, you wait for a player to notify you that his first choices didn't pan out and would love to chat. The player will do this on his own if he receives no attention from higher level schools and you don't have to do anything to get that message, once you get that message you can recruit him normally.
Ineligibles are players who have not met the SAT requirement and are not able to play their 1st year at D2 and D1 but are able to play right away at D3. They don't develop their basketball ratings in their ineligible seasons and D1/2 and you should just put all the practice time into study hall for these players.. This turns off a lot of people and you can probably grab better recruits with little struggle from other coaches who do not want to deal with an ineligible. It is important to know the risk of an ineligible as even if you sign one the recruit has the option to not report to campus and instead attend a juco college. There is no set way to make sure a ineligible recruit shows up and attends your school, however it is believed that the more money you spend the higher a chance you have of the recruit showing up.
Besides your tradition freshmen you can recruit transfer players as well as Junior college recruits. These can either help your team a lot by grabbing a developed player ready to step in however they may not be coached in the offense defense you run and basically are just developed freshmen and can actually hurt you if you start them or give them a lot of minutes when they don't have IQ, which is a mistake I see a lot of new people make. Calling a coach of a juco recruit will usually give you the offense and defense they run for $10. Sometimes they might only tell you one so you need to send another. Scouting also tells you their IQ but costs more. If a juco recruit doesn't have your offense/defense you can attempt to notify of a redshirt in cycle along with about 2 hv to reduce the negativity of being told your to be redshirted. This gives you 3 years of a juco and enough time to increase their IQ in your offense and defense. Transfer players you are able to see their IQ's by looking at their previous collegiate profile. You can also see in which skills they developed and can guess their potentials from their, as transfer players are not covered by FSS.
States with few colleges means there aren't many colleges close enough to have an advantage in a battle and will turn off a lot of coaches who don't know how to scout farther away. Look at CO, NE, KS, SD for example. CO has 1 school in D3 same with NE whereas KS and SD have no D3 schools, sometimes you can find a good to decent player in these states(sometimes not).
Recruiting Battles:
When their are other schools going after the same prospect their a few facts to consider:
- Who has the most cash(who has the most open scholarships eg. someone with 5 spots would have more money than someone with 2 open scholarships) as well as postseason recruiting cash.
- Distance, the closer a recruit is the cheaper it is to recruit him.
- Prestige it is less important in lower levels but a higher prestige school has a slight advantage in battles.
- Divisions, a D2 school will usually win a battle against a D3 school unless the D3 school puts "an absurd" amount of cash into a recruit
- Are their other prospects equally as good? You could go after a different prospect who noone else is going after instead of fighting for someone else and spending more money.
- Are you willing to take a walkon?
Scholarship Messages:
Reading scholarship messages can help determine how well a recruit likes you and how you stack up against the competition, tarvolon has a thread posted HERE showing each scholarship message and how it relates whether you are ahead, behind, etc. And HERE is an organized chart by carl and some other numbers
Word on the Street (WOTS):
Included in your FSS is the word on the street of a player helping show which way he is leaning it is pretty clear through the messages, it is important to note that when it says "struggling between Team A and Team B" Team A currently has the slight advantage. WOTS updates every 12 hours at 2 am and 2pm so effort put in at 5 pm will not be reflected right away.
HERE is a link to WOTS messages and what they mean(in progress)
Player Development:
What determines my player development?
Determined by a combination of factors: WE, playing time+starts, and amount of minutes each category has in the practice plan. It's very common for players to not reach their full potential generally from having a low WE, or a mid WE but potential in many areas. WE can both increase and decrease based off playing time, potential, and the fulfillment of promises(starts/minutes)
Redshirting:
RS is a great way to make sure a player will reach as many maxes as possible. However not all players will accept a RS, and it's even possible to RS players that are not freshmen but they are more likely to reject the RS. When a player rejects a RS his WE drops in 2 ways, one is a significant drop where a players sends you a very angry e-mail, there is also a chance the player will leave at the end of the season. Or a more disappointed message followed by a slight WE decrease. A player accepting a RS will not see a change in WE. If a player does reject a RS you can undo it, however redoing the RS in the same season drops him to a 1 WE and his is very likely to leave. If you undo a RS one season you can try again the next season, it is still most likely to be rejected but you don't have to worry about him dropping to a 1 WE and threatening to leave.
My player changed potential without gaining a point!
Player ratings have decimal's you can't see so for example he went from 40.0 to 40.4 and that means he has ~20 full potential points left and will end up near 60 in that skill.
Practice Plan
HERE is what your practice plan looks like this is where you assign minutes to certain categories both team and individual:
- How much time do I spend in each category for category.
To maintain a current rating 3/4 is all you need for LP/PER all others take 7/8 to keep the same or grow 1/2 points a season. It is good to note diminishing returns start at 20, however it is worth it if you have most of you ratings maxed to put the remaining minutes into a few categories even if above 20. Generally my seniors end up with 25-35 minutes to devoted to 1 category since everything else is red.
Study Hall
Since this is college basketball we must account for students going to class and maintaining a good gpa to remain eligible to participate in basketball. During the course of a season we have 2 semesters each with 1 midterm update and 1 final grades. Players who do not keep a 2.0 GPA will become ineligible after final grades until the next semester or season that they meet requirements.
Once the final grades have been released a SECOND time you can put SH to 0 for the remainder of the season and put those points into other categories without worry of players being ineligible.
For study hall this is how I manage my minutes, some might like more some less, but I've only had 1 player go ineligible and after midterms he had 10 minutes in study hall and still didn't pass.
Fresh 5 Soph 4 Junior 3 Senior 2
I've started testing 4,3,2,1 and seeing how it works, but only have a few semester in, but noone so far has been ineligible, but 2 players have been highlighted after midterms.
players with high HS gpa's could manage with less and players with low HS gpa's might need more. You get midterms so if a player is below 2.0 it is wise to increase his study hall minutes.
Team IQ:
Here is a rough guide on how many minutes is required by Iguana1 and at the end I added some rough calculations, diminishing returns start after the 25th minute: GoogDoc of IQ guide.
Team Styles/Strategies D3:
Here are some few "different" but very effective team strategies to try and recruit for in D3. Both are running the fastbreak, fullcourt press combo, but rely on recruiting 2 different types of guards.
The first is an athletic heavy team, where you sacrifice for the most part speed, ball handling, and passing, in return for having elite athleticism. Here is an example of a coach famous for using this with great results: mfnmeyers at Dickinson HERE is a screenshot for the future. As you see this team has elite ath/def while coming in low for contenders in spd/bh/pas. Also LP would probably be a bit more favored than PER. This team didn't make a single 3 pointer and went to the final four. The 3 core reasons he wins are:
- Very high ath advantage, at D3 you can score well by simply being more athletic.
- Forces an insane amount of turnovers in a super strong defense.
- Gets to the line and shoots a high number of free throws due to the fastbreak and heavy ath advantage
This means he is getting to the line by being more athletic and running the fastbreak. And he is also getting more shots overall(FG+FT), while
limit opponents offense by causing turnovers and not giving up easy shots. Looking at the team from Wooden the one I linked here are the stats to back it up:
2nd in points(93), highest LP is 57 and highest PER is 44
49.5 average Free throws attempted. (opponents averaged ~21)
6th in steals
64 ppg allowed for a FB/FCP is really good.
1st in opponent turnovers
1st in opponent shooting %
Now here is a very different version of the fastbreak fullcourt press which the offense is the focal point in overcoming a weaker defense. I think is a little more common to see, and anavrin is a coach that utilizes this variant very effectively. Screenshot. As you see its nearly a 360 degree difference compared to Dickinson. With Spd, bh, and passing being very important and forfeits some ath/def to achieve that. Here are the 3 core reasons they win:
- High speed advantage makes scoring easy even without lp/per. As well as making up for a lack of defense as the press uses speed and speed causes turnovers.
- High ball handling means they are not turning the ball over a lot, especially in a press where it is super easy to turn it over. This means they are still able to take a lot of shots
- High passing means they are getting wide open looks and therefore shooting extremely efficient.
Heres the stats to back it up
1st in points (98)
2nd in assists (24)
8th in steals (13)
2nd in FG% (54.3%)
14.8 turnovers a game is pretty good for fb/fcp
10th in opponent turnovers. (24)
Now thats just guards, however I believe it is the most important key in those offenses, and heres a quick breakdown of how they utilize big men. In the ath heavy fastbreak, you guessed it ath is important, however rebounding and shotblocking are also favored a lot. Whereas in the other variant speed is important as well as low post offense. Here is a comparison of ratings to show:
Dickinson big men: 56 ath 22 spd 78 reb 60 def 69 sb 37 lp
Menlo big men: 50 ath 39 spd 71 reb 43 def 63 sb 79 lp
12/15/2015 6:48 PM (edited)