What I have learned so far

[Your_Imaginary_Friend]

This is what I think happens in recruiting preferences:

In general, preference categories are on/off switches. So matching a preference is good, the stronger the better. Missing out on one hurts, but not fatally. It is important to remember that the opposite is NEVER true. I'll comment on that below.

So what do they mean?

Academics: Each school has a rating. If a recruit has a preference for academics, the higher your school's rating, the better. Fairly simple.

School and Conference Prestige: Your school has a rating for prestige. The higher the better. Not having a preference does NOT mean the recruit WANTS to go to a lower tier school, merely that those schools won't be penalized when the recruiting preferences are summed and totaled. You can improve these ratings by winning.

Coach Discipline: You, the coach, have a rating for this. Whether or not the discipline ratings of your staff come in to play, I don't know.

Location: How close is your recruit's hometown to your school on Google maps? Remember that not having a preference for location does NOT mean he wants to play on the other coast. Simply that far away schools won't be penalized.

Facilities: Similar to Prestige, your school has a rating. Only a Board request can improve this.

Lastly is Playing Time. This is the most nebulous category in that you cannot promise a kid playing time. So what does it mean? I think it means the same thing as in other college games, and that is simply, does your team have a Senior starter at the recruits position. If it does, that's good. If not, it is a zero. What this means is that a school graduating a player will have an edge trying to replace like-for-like.

To summarize, each category is totaled up by multiplying the the strength of preference and your school's score in the category. Zero is as low as you can go, there is never a negative score.

How the game totals up interest is unknown to me. It likely keeps track of the recruit's Top Ten and adjusts for the interest shown by those schools--that is recruiting time spent. Most importantly scholarship offers are added in. It seems that should a recruit have a 100% MUST-HAVE category that you are not meeting (such as location for a distant player) it will take time for him decide in your favor, time during which a school that can fulfill that need can strike and snatch him up.

[Your_Imaginary_Friend]

August 7 is the first time recruit rankings change.

[PointGuard]

Facilities can and do decline over time.

Playing time--If that is of high importance to a recruit, do you think that if your team already has very strong player (Fr/So/Jr) at the position the recruit plays, that could be a negative? Seems reasonable to me.

[Your_Imaginary_Friend]

Facilities can and do decline over time.

Playing time--If that is of high importance to a recruit, do you think that if your team already has very strong player (Fr/So/Jr) at the position the recruit plays, that could be a negative? Seems reasonable to me.

Thanks for the tip about Facilities. I haven't played long enough to notice.

Your 'strong player' thought, while reasonable, would be hard to program, so I think not. It's hard to gauge what a strong player for each level is, and at lower levels a better player will start, so I think the simple 'Senior good' is what happens, without regard to quality. I think it is mostly there for the AI recruiting--to let you know an AI team with a graduating star is going to have an edge on this player. And that is good enough.

[Your_Imaginary_Friend]

I think my assumptions/plans for recruiting are correct so far. My season four class of five recruits landed me the #33 ranking nationally--mostly due to having 5 players, I think. However they are all good. This season I decided to get more ambitious and was rewarded with 3 top tier players at around 75-100 nationally. All chased by Villanova and/or Duke. I doubt either offered to these guys and that is why I landed them. I think I switched off 2 players who did get offers, it seems.

[Your_Imaginary_Friend]

The next subject I'm exploring is the Strategy page and the way players learn the schemes. This year I have only four players with decent experience and 3 with okay (Sophs). So I have 8 blank tablets to train.

First, I'm rethinking my coaching choices, although it is too late to do anything for this season. For season 4, I hired specific skill coaches, rated low 60's in Scouting, Recruiting and Player Development. Now I think that PD is likely more of an overall, combined rating, while the Offense and Defense ratings of the practice coach (plus Facilities!) is important for training schemes. How coaches and facilities blend together I doubt I'll ever figure out, but certainly higher is better.

A year such as this with few returning veterans means less knowledge to lose, so this is a year to re-evaluate and come up something I think should work.

Time to choose the schemes!

[Your_Imaginary_Friend]

These answers have scratching my head. This is a 7-1 C whom I like a lot (and he likes me). From his recruiting notes:

•Edmond seems to be primarily a slasher. (6/26/2023)

•Edmond seems to avoid the post on offense as much as possible. (7/9/2023)

•Edmond just doesn't look good or comfortable putting the ball on the floor. (7/16/2023)

•Edmond rarely ever looks to put up a jumper. (7/17/2023)

So how does he score 15.1 PPG? A slasher who can't put the ball on the floor, avoids the post and doesn't have an outside shot?

[PointGuard]

These answers have scratching my head. This is a 7-1 C whom I like a lot (and he likes me). From his recruiting notes:

•Edmond seems to be primarily a slasher. (6/26/2023)

•Edmond seems to avoid the post on offense as much as possible. (7/9/2023)

•Edmond just doesn't look good or comfortable putting the ball on the floor. (7/16/2023)

•Edmond rarely ever looks to put up a jumper. (7/17/2023)

So how does he score 15.1 PPG? A slasher who can't put the ball on the floor, avoids the post and doesn't have an outside shot?

LOL...yeah sometimes the notes can seem sort of whacko. I look at them as mere IMPRESSIONS gained from various sources (with some sources being suspect)...maybe gleaned from seeing him once, getting second hand information, an uninformed perspective, a rival coach trying to throw you off, etc. Sometimes they may be accurate, other times they may be totally wrong...and as you can see sometimes they can be contradictory.

Of course, since this is a 7-1 HS kid, maybe he's mainly scoring on tip-ins/put-backs and lobs inside for easy lay-ins and dunks (and the "avoiding the post" comment and not comfortable or good at putting the ball on the floor comment go hand-in-hand). Who knows?

I'd say if you like him and he seems to have good stats and ratings and he likes you, then go after him. I think stats and ratings are more indicative of the recruit's abilities than the comments (which can be viewed as icing on the cake).

[Your_Imaginary_Friend]

The recruits came in, and he looks like I expected. The interpretation of the messages look pretty clear:

1 Slasher = high Drawing Fouls rating
2 Avoids the post = for a center 50/50 between post and jump shot on his pie chart.
3 doesn't look good putting ball on floor = Crap handling rating
4 rarely put up a jumper = puzzling. Both his pie charts are 50-50 splits. My assumption is that he will set up outside and drive, not shoot. This likelys result in a turnover or missed FT, since he is crap at the line.

His inside rating is a 7/6 (I've seen a few of these higher actual than potential and don't know what to make of those yet) and outside 4/4, so he knows enough not to take an outside shot, I hope.

[Your_Imaginary_Friend]

I got bored with Richmond and decided it was time to try a lower ranked school. Big mistake, I'm not ready for that.

What went wrong:

1) I enabled bribery, yet retained my Dudley Dooright ethics. I think that made trying to bribe not work well, if at all. In any event, players gave me the 'Tweeting' response or otherwise did not understand what was happening.
2) Louisiana (and UL Lafayette is now officially 'Louisiana' according to the Sun Belt website) is average in facilities and academics. I have yet to parlay that into anything, however I have some ideas I'll get to later.
3) Recruiting was bizarre. Many players had me ranked '+++' but none outside Louisiana would visit, even when they had ULL at the top of their list, and February changed to March.
4) I forgot to pay attention to grades and lost my bSG. That hurt.
5) Home court advantage in DDS College is huge. At first I thought too much so. However last year of the 361 schools in D1, barely two dozen had losing records at home. So I concluded this is realistic. Still, if you lose a home game it is truly a disaster as you will not be likely to make up for it.
6) Recruiting was boring. I went with the basic for both the Southeast and Central--to get Texas where ULL really gets its players. In this game, however, no one from Texas had the slightest interest in ULL, so that was a waste. Instead of cultivating interest in players I wanted, I found it extremely hard to even get '+++' players outside of LA to even visit. Even when they had ULL at the top of their list, they still would not visit. I had a guy with top of the list interest and gave him a scholly and he still would not visit or commit. He still replied, "Your number one" every phone call. That killed my interest in playing normally, so I skipped everything but recruting to see if I could force him to sign. Bribes, in-person scouting, calls--all as much as I could. Still nothing. then finally the NCAA and NIT ended and the game progressed and signed a LOI--still having not visited. I did not save, so I reloaded and changed the scholly to the highest remaining recruit on my board. He also did not visit, and lo and behold, he showed up signing a LOI as the game progressed. In fact, he turned out to be the highest ranked recruit any team in the Sun Belt signed.
7) Recruiting never had enough information available to make meaningful decisions and then when I acted on what I did know, it made no difference. This was bad.
8) My players tanked in academics because I ignored that. Big mistake, however nothing in the game told me Dec 31, and apparently April 30 are the big dates. Nothing tells me what to expect from studying or tutoring (that is, which is better) nor what the players are skipping because they are studying. I still don't know if players who are on academic probation at the beginning of the season can get their grades up and be reinstated on Jan 1. It looks like they cannot due to the injury report where the days of suspension are close to a year. If so, I think that is wrong.
9) When my bSG got suspended, I wanted to remove a redshirt to play and I could not. I think that is wrong, real coaches can do that if the need is there.