I have a JUCO guy that i signed and promised 25 minutes. He has low stamina and complained about playing time. When he complained, he was at 21 minutes and i have managed to get him up to 23 minutes with one regular season game and the conference tournament left. I am on the bubble for the NT at Baylor and will make the PIT for sure. Should I bite the bullet and play him all out? The question is, will he stay at 23 minutes or do i need to get him to 24. Had a guy leave at Notre Dame that was 2 minutes shy of his promise, not sure how it works in the new engine?

Play him on Tired or even foul trouble only! Ok St sucks! You'll crush them with or without a tired big!

If you are talking about Blanton, his WE had gone up +5 this season. I don't think you have to worry about him leaving unless his work ethic is going down (by a lot).

Thanks guys! I missed this message 2 days ago mixed in with recruiting messages.

Coach, you sold me on not only a program but on you as a coach. I have no regrets on either - you promised me playing time and you're giving it to me. Hope I'm not letting you down.

hmm, this is good to know. if 25 minutes apparently doesn't really even mean 25 minutes, it's a lot easier to go all in on that promise! honestly, you would think promises would actually be a little more strict than that since they seem to make such a huge difference in HD3 recruiting.

Bath : shhhhh... Smile

Had a few more questions on this so figured I'd bump it. So is this confirmed that the minutes guarantee isn't really a strict guarantee? Does a minutes guarantee "stop" at the beginning of the conference tourney, or if you don't play a guy in the CT or post-season and his minutes average falls below the promise will he get upset?

Promises only cover the regular season, although sometimes what is done in the CT can help turn an unhappy player back to content. For most players, getting between 80-90 percent of the promise time is "good enough" to avoid major negative repercussions. Each player's "trigger" is unique to them and you have no way of knowing what it is unless/until the complaints start to roll in.

agree with rednu

1. after regular season, you can ignore the promise
2. sometimes, playing time in CT can help you meet a promise
3. Players vary - some are okay at 80%, some not - i cant say that I have had a guy leave at 95% but it could be that that is a possible but rare event
4. If you carefully watch for complaining emails and changes in WE, you can take remedial action
5. one small fix that WIS could make in the 3.0 environment is that it is easy to miss a complaining email if it comes during recruiting - A an easy help would be to have recruiting emails in the usual green but give a different color to other unread emails (grades, complaints, scheduling)....

Good thoughts.
My observations...
i have two guys I promised minutes to...
one- I promised 20 and he was averaging 16. He complained... I played him much more, and he's up to 18.4 & sends me the happy email (thanks for being a man of your word).
Two- similar. Thought I promised 20 & actually promised 25. Oops. Complained. Maxed him the next 4-5 games to raise him up. When he got to 23.5 he thanked me,

I thought that interesting.
I know with starts, they need to have started around 80+% of their games or they will complain, but I've also seen this number varies by the recruit. My rule on starts is that I won't bring them off the bench more than 5 times a year and I'll always start them 8-9 of the first 10 or I'll hear from them.

Conclusion- rule of thumb...
promised starts- start them a lot at the beginning and you can cheat a few keys games late in the year and tourney time,
promised minutes- keep them above 85%. Max them a game or two if needed and pick one easy win or certain loss to max them out for a game. Don't have them shoot while maxing them and it hurts you less.