Video Blog Series - DIII to DI - Recruiting and Scheduling

I know that this post has been long overdue, but I did not want to be like Coach Spud and just read off ticker news and play by plays, I do that in my own time and not on yours. I probably should have done this video right when recruiting had begun but I didn't think that it would have fit enough of the information and would have been too short of a video. For those that have been missing this video series, I have returned. Check out the latest Recruiting Basics and Scheduling Basics video.


**Please Comment on the Video or on here regarding your thoughts on moving after this season up to DII already or stay and Nazareth and develop the DIII team into something special.

Happy Coaching

Video Blog Series - DIII to DI - Gameplanning

Check out the latest video on game planning. This was from the beginning of the season and has been a  little lack luster. It has not gone well. I will have an update here soon on the Nazareth progress.

Hope that this helps some and I did only go into basics and not the extra more complex stuff(The stuff that really makes your team great) Which basically means this should help you out generally. The complex stuff can take a long time to explain and a long time to implement and I really do not have enough time to be able to do that unfortunately. Maybe in a future episode.

Happy Coaching

Video Blog Series - DIII to DI - Scouting

Check out the latest video in the series all about recruiting. This video is very long so I apologise in advance. I hope that this gives you a great overview of how to play the game in the scouting world which is only part of the battle at Hoops Dynasty.

If you want to see the blog post on this topic please click here!

Video Blog Series - DIII to DI - Depth Chart

In this video it is important to note that your Depth Chart is how you will determine who plays, starts, and really how your team will play in the long run. If you want to see the original post on the depth chart check below:

Click Here for Depth Chart Post!

Enjoy the Depth Chart Video and again post any comments or things you would like to see.

Video Blog Series - DIII to DI - Practice Plan

This post is all about the practice plan and getting the most out of your players. To check out the post that this video follows please click here!

Happy Coaching!

Video Blog Series - DIII to DI - Selecting a Team

When finding the right team there is a lot to think about rather than just selecting the first team you see or an alma mater or otherwise. This is something that I wished I would have known prior to selecting my very first team in Fisk in the Knight World. In this first video post for this series, I take you into the in's and outs of why I am selecting the team of Nazareth.

Top Reasons:

1. Class Structure
2. Location, Location, Location
3. PRESTIGE!
4. Conference

From these reasons, Class Structure will not follow my blog post on class structure. Class structure is what you should strive for, but to get wins early on having Juniors and Seniors will only help your team to be better in the long run. 

The location is HUGE when it comes to recruiting if we as a video blog stay at Nazareth for more than one season this will help in the recruiting trail. 

Prestige factor helps with recruiting and if you want to recruit at a high level then you will want to have a team with a high prestige value. Nazareth is an A. 

Conference selection boiled down to the number of humans and how many wins I want to have. I selected a conference in which I am going to be the only human coach. 

I hope that you enjoy this video series and explanation that I have below: 

If you want to see the actual blog post that I followed for this video please click here. 

User Interview - benrudy

The very first interview of this Hoops Dynasty Blog is for user:

benrudy

A quick look into benrudy's history at Hoops Dynasty.

1147-497(.0698) Overall Record
26 Conference Championships
1 National Championship

Q: Why do you play Hoops Dynasty?

A: I have a strange obsession with sports simulator games. I have been playing Football Manager 2008 for way too many hours. Whenever I play Madden, I simulate the whole season in dynasty mode and just do team management. I've always wanted a college basketball simulator, and this was the most detailed game that I could find.

Q: What got you started in Hoops Dynasty?

A: I was told about the game by a friend and colleague StrikeMike. he told me to just give it a try for one season. Before the season was over, I had already signed up for a 2nd team. 

Q: You have had a stellar DIII career at various schools, what contributes to your success at this level?

A: Stellar is a bit of a stretch. I have good success but spread out across many different programs as I take on rebuilds. I think I have two skills that drive my success: non-conference scheduling and recruiting game theory. With rebuilds, I can schedule sims who aren't a challenge to a quality human coached team and still land in the top 20 SOS. With recruiting I don't over commit to battles - I'd rather take 2 B players uncontested and fight for the A+ than, fight for 3 A- recruits. 

Q: How do you scout and recruit at the DIII level?

A: Scouting is the most important part of this. I try to cover a few players, but in as much detail as possible. I use assistant search and scouting service. At DIII, I'd say I spend 3/4 of my budget on DI and 1/4 on DII. With DI, I stay close to home, but at DII I go all over the map. I'm still experimenting to see the optimal way to scout, especially as a DIII school scouting DI where I have to deal with all the top 100 recruits in the area who I stand o chance at.

A: Recruiting, it's all about the APs. I use my recruiting budget when I am in a battle, but I'd guess that 90% of the players who I sign are signed exclusively through AP. I almost always have some recruiting budget left over at the end which I had been saving just in case I get a surprise contender for one of my uncontested players during RS2. 

Q: What is the MOST important thing you look for in a player when recruiting? 

A: My recruits must both meet the minimum requirement (around 45) in Athleticism and Defense, and must fulfill one other skill - passing, scoring, and rebounding. I tend to overvalue perimeter and 3 point shooting - the efficiency which a 99 PE player scores at DIII is very tough to overcome as an opponent. 

Q: What is your Offense and Defense preference for the DIII level? 

A: So I fully recognize the Press Defense is the best at DIII. Something like 60%-80% of DIII champions run a press defense. But I only play man or press. I have more success with Man, but I want to see if I can win a championship with a zone. I enjoy having the extra flexibility of being able to double team players when I'm not running a press defense. With the zone, I can get more imperfect players which is an advantage at the DIII level. On offense, I tend to do either motion or flex, but I am not particular on that end of the ball.

Q: What has been your favorite rebuilding team?

A: The one that was the hardest to leave was my alma mater. Trinity College (CT) in Tarkanian. The easiest to leave was Chestnut Hill in Rupp since I stayed in the conference with Hood. 

Q: What is your favorite college basketball team?

A: Oh boy, I don't really have one. I have family ties to a couple of big programs, but I grew up out of the country and went to a DIII school. I watch whenever a team has the most NBA prospects - so lately I have watched the most Kentucky, but I tend to cheer against them.

Q: What is your favorite sport to play in real life?

A: Rugby was my favorite sport to play before I graduated college and decided to stop. I especially enjoyed the strategy of Rugby, and for suck a physical game I thought the culture of respect was fascinating - everyone addresses the referees as "sir" and once the game is over, the home team invites the away team over to hang out after the game.

Q: What position would you or do your or did you play in that sport?

A: I was the scrumhalf of my junior and senior years. That position links between the small players (backs) and big players (forwards), calls some plays, and largely determines the tempo of the game. The way I played, it was more of a mental game that a physical one - I'm a remarkably un-athletic player, so I had to rely on my understanding of the game.

Q: What position would you play in Hoops Dynasty?

A: Bench? I suppose PG since I am short...but I can't pass or shoot.

Q: What would your rating be for that position?

A: I'd probably be your typical DIII walk on - most of my ratings would fall in work ethic and durability. I'd be on there to help with morale support.

Q: You are very good at the DIII level, what would you attribute that success?

A: I think trial and error drive my success. I like to try new strategies and see their payoffs. I evolve slowly, but I am constantly trying to improve what I do. I try to pick one area of the game and work on that. Efficient scouting, developing a long-term vision for the team, game planning with a man or zone defense are all examples of things I've worked on before. There are always coaches who do it better than I do, so I try to emulate what they are doing. I remember in 2.0 seeing how mfnmeyers at Dickinson (in every world) got SO many guys on their considering list and seemed still had enough funds to battle me for a recruit who was across the country. I worked out that he was offering a start and a scholarship to everyone on his list in order to scare off opponents, then would retract the scholarship from his backup options when signings began. I emulated that strategy and was able to improve my recruiting reach. 

Q: You seem to like changing jobs and rebuilding teams in just short turnaround times of 4-5 seasons, what do you look for when you do this and how are you so successful?

A: The idea when you take over a school is to get your players in there as quickly as possible. That means I will go for schools with lots of juniors and very few already signed scholarships during recruiting session 1. There is a glitch in the game that makes the already signed guys appear to be your signings, which makes them harder to cut, and lots of juniors means when the world rolls over you will have as many open spots as possible so your hand-picked recruits can come in and take over the school from the sim players. In addition, you should look at the benefits of the school itself. How many other schools are in the area? How populated is the area? If you can get a Colorado College or Palm Beach Atlantic at DIII, you can be in a great spot.

Q: What advice would you give a brand new player at Hoops Dynasty?

A:

1. Stick with it! The first season can be rough when you are using someone else's, players. Just stick with it. Find a friend who will join with you and then you can discuss strategies. 
2. Ask questions - the other coaches in your conference will want you to succeed. 

Upcoming Updates

I have personally realized that I have neglected some areas in some posts that I have made, also I have made some errors that I want to fix to help others. Look for updates in some sections relating to:

• Rebuild vs Successful - Rebuilding a Team or Taking over or having a successful one. 
• Offense and Defensive specific information and guidelines. 
• Scouting and Recruiting - Updates and Strategies
• Others that I have not thought of or you might see changes or updates needed. 

Upcoming Series - User Interviews - Information

I have been looking into doing monthly user interviews and have been thinking of some questions to ask the user during this interview. I have been thinking about either attempting to make it a podcast style where you can listen and I also have a transcript of the interview or just making it a text based interview for all of you to just read.

Interview Type

Podcast

This would be an audio based recording of the interviews with the users on Hoops Dynasty. If you would prefer this style please comment on this post. 

Text Based

This is fairly explanatory but again non-audio but just text with the questions and answers from the users. If you would like this style on this blog please comment with your response.

Questions

This is an area that I have some ideas for questions but I am asking you the users of Hoops Dynasty to assist in coming up with questions that you would like the answers to regarding Hoops Dynasty. Please comment the questions that you would like to see in the interviews. I am going to attempt to create a template of questions for all interviews. 

Sample Questions: 

• Why do you play Hoops Dynasty?
• What is your offense and defense style preference and why?
• What is MOST important for you when you are recruiting players to your team?
• How do you scout at your Division Level?
• Do you have any users that you really enjoy chatting with on WIS? Why?
• What is your favorite sport to play? (In real life)
• What position would you play if you were in Hoops Dynasty?
• What would your rating be for that position?
• What advice would you give to a brand new player at Hoops Dynasty?

Users to Interview

I have a few users that I would enjoy interviewing, but again that list is not very long and to be able to do this once a month I would like to hear from you on the users you think I should interview or if you would like to be one of the users to be interviewed. 

Qualifications for Interview

• Must have at least 10 seasons of HD under your belt - may include multiple usernames
• Willing to answer the questions that are asked to the best of your ability and within your understanding
• Have an overall winning record above .500 preference will go to those users that have a .750 record or better. (I want to make these interviews helpful for those reading)

Please post comments to this post so I can get a better idea of what you the reader want to hear and see on this series on my blog. I want to better assist you and help you become a better player. I want this series to be fun as well as informational for all involved. 

How To: Creating a Non-Conference Tourney

Non-Conference Tourney Creation

This is one of the most difficult aspects of all Hoops Dynasty, getting users together to schedule games against one another. It is fun to create and implement but it requires a lot of time and effort in regards to keeping track of those involved and ensuring that all games are scheduled properly because even the slightest mess up will destroy the conference tourney.

Number of Teams/Conferences

This will depend on the interest of the tourney. Who is interested in participating and what their commitment level. It is better to have slightly more conferences and teams available. I have personally done it with 4 conferences before with 5 teams from each conference. This worked okay when the members actually were interested enough in getting everything setup and the games set correctly. The LEG work for this as the person in charge is very difficult. 

Team Composition/Rating the teams that are invited

This is vital, you need to know which team is the best team available in the conference to give them a higher seed with easier games to win. In my template I had the following: 

• Senior Player Rating * 3
• Junior Player Rating * 2
• Sophomore Player Rating * 1

I took the number I received from adding all of these together by the total number of these players. This made the score even for all teams and gave me a great indication of those teams that were higher rated. Now, this system is not flawless, but it does give a semblance in terms of ranking the seeds. 

This gave a pretty good indicator of which teams were going to be good the next season because let's be honest teams that have more juniors and seniors are going to do better each and every season. 

**Look for an update to this section when I am able to determine a different and better rating system**

Seeding/Scheduling Games

This relates to the composition of the teams and once you have the best team per conference and their seed in the tourney you will then need to schedule the games. This is what I did each time. I labeled each conference with a letter and each seed with a number. I followed the following schedule: 

As you can see from this picture I scheduled the highest seeds against each other from each conference to boost their RPI and also allow them to have an opportunity to win the games. Now again this is not perfect but as you can see by the rank, the sum of the seeds they play) this made the games fair for those that were lower on the totem pole in terms of rating of the team. Now to schedule this in terms of home and away games I used the following: (Note that this was for the last time I actually did a conference tourney)

As you can see above this gave away and home games for all involved and was connected to the participating teams seed sheet in the excel document. This allowed for all involved to be able to schedule their games and for me to determine who won and who lost as indicated in the sheet. The Draws were those that did not schedule the game correctly. 

Summary

In summary, it is a huge undertaking but can be beneficial for all involved as well as to see which conference is the best conference. I really actually enjoyed doing this and currently because of this post am thinking about doing it again this coming season in the Knight World DI, DII, and DIII because I can at least set it up for all involved or those that are interested. 

I hope that you enjoyed this post and if you would like any additional information I would be happy to update this post for the future. 

How To: Scheduling - Rebuild vs Successful

Scheduling

For a Rebuilding Team

Team Composition

This is vital for your team's success in order to rebuild your program appropriately. You will want to find teams that you can beat or have an advantage over, but you also want those teams to win most of their games as well. So when you are rebuilding your team you want to schedule more Sim AI teams that have a good balance of players in terms of Seniors, Juniors, Sophomores, and Freshman. When you are looking for this team you will not look at the current Seniors as they will be leaving, unless one is going to be a 5th-year senior. I generally do not care about 5th-year seniors for the most part. So look at their current Juniors, Sophomores, and Freshman. You want to look at their ratings to ensure that you are going to be able to be better at almost every position the following year.

This means that you will need to know your own teams composition and strengths as well as possible weaknesses. Is your team fast and athletic with little defense or are your players' defensive menaces? basically, you need to know how you are going to attack the team the following season, especially during a rebuild since you will have either young players because of cutting players or dealing with the Sim recruited players. Essentially you need to know before you schedule how you are going to try to win those games.

You also want to schedule for the most part away from home to boost the RPI and SOS from scheduling against the Sim AI coaches. In other words, it is vital to help yourself get to the postseason and get as many wins as possible. Now you do not want to just blanket schedule those games away from home because maybe that will hurt you if you lose most or all of those games. Remember it is a balancing act with scheduling when you are rebuilding with winning games at home as well as winning games away and winning games to boost your team's prestige faster as well as make the NT or PI.

Researching Available Teams

This is very important and will probably take you the most amount of time when rebuilding. Like I stated above you really want to win these games and research the teams you are going to be playing the following season. RPI and SOS do not matter when rebuilding, play teams that are going to be not as good so you can get the wins. In this case winning is slightly better than RPI or SOS specifically when comparing it to successful team scheduling. So schedule these games in order for you to win and research them specifically for you to win the game based on their composition as well as their ratings to ensure a game that you are going to win no matter the location. I know I stated above to schedule away for the most part, but that is only to boost RPI and SOS, the MOST important part for you as a rebuilding program is to WIN and win RIGHT NOW! So research teams that you WILL beat not ones that you think that there is a possible chance.

Home vs. Away

Remember to schedule away if you can to boost RPI and SOS, am I starting to sound like a broken record yet, good! Schedule games you can win away from home to boost RPI and SOS in order to get to the PI at least and win as many games as possible otherwise, you will not increase your prestige. 

Summary

Rebuilding a program can be fun, and rewarding process and remembering this and scheduling properly can help you achieve the rebuilding process faster as well as increase your chances of becoming a perennial powerhouse quickly and getting into the NT quicker. Also, remember that recruiting is essential for a rebuilding program to prosper faster. I will be posting a specific recruiting process for rebuilding programs that I think will assist them in developing faster into a powerhouse program, I personally have not done this as of yet at my time at Hoops Dynasty. I think it could be neat and a process to undertake but I am not made of cash and have not been able to make a splash at this time. 

For a Successful Team

An important aspect in Hoops Dynasty! If you want to make the NT or PI you will need to schedule very carefully and I ALWAYS schedule as tough as possible with lots of human coaches, sometimes this backfires but it is all about how you view the teams. I almost always come out of non-conference play with a minimum of 7 wins sometimes more and sometimes less but most often 7.

Researching Available Teams

I always wait until the RPI numbers come out because you will notice the teams that are always near the top every season and these are the ones that you usually want to play against usually in the top 40 RPI each season. You will figure it out after every season. 

Team Composition

This is HUGE, this can either make or break your RPI and win possibilities. You generally want to schedule against a team that will have a lot of underclassmen if you can. Otherwise, find a team loaded with Sophomores or Juniors who will be good but not good enough to beat you, this will take a few seasons to figure out. Always base it on your own team. 

Home Vs. Away Games

Schedule games based on the impact on the Team Composition from above. If you KNOW you can win the game, schedule it AWAY that way you get a boost to RPI when you do win, otherwise schedule at home to get a boost in productivity from your players.

Summary

When I schedule I generally schedule very hard because I know that my teams can handle a difficult schedule and come out in a decent position afterward. If you are new with the team DO NOT SCHEDULE like I do. This will ruin your season and will not help your RPI or rebuild. You should always schedule as difficult as your team can handle to win the most amount of games. Do not schedule easy just to get wins, that will hurt your RPI and SOS in the long run. Find teams that will give your team a challenge but you can win. You need to play teams that have a good chance of winning their other games so that they have a high RPI and SOS to boost your RPI and SOS. 

This will take the most time to get correct but will pay off in the end as it will help you to make good decisions in scheduling in order to make the PI and NT every single season. It also takes the most amount of time for me especially because you have to take into account recruiting and Early Entries into the NBA draft because that will affect the team you are playing and make them easier or more difficult. 

If you have any additional questions please post a comment or if I missed something I would be happy to add it to the post. 

Looking to Start a Series

DIII Start to DI Series

Do you want to see a series of starting at Hoops Dynasty from DIII level all the way to the DI level with recruiting, game-planning and all the steps in between? 

What is it all about?

I will start from the DIII level in a world of my choice and post a video on the blog about it once a week providing all the information from the blog with my commentary and reasons for selecting certain areas. 

Why?

I personally feel that a lot of Hoops Dynasty rookies and veterans would benefit from something like this to give them something to assist them and learn. It also will be fun because you the readers of this blog will be able to help make decisions each and every week. You will be able to post a comment on each weeks video in order to have a chance to be featured every week with that specific decision. 

What do you need to make this happen?

Unfortunately I am not made of cash and money and Hoops Dynasty costs money to play each and every season so I would need some support in this endeavor related to seasons at Hoops Dynasty. If you would like to support this endeavor please let me know or send me some credits. Once I have enough credits to start a single season at Hoops Dynasty I will start this series and record live sections that follow the How To tutorial that I began on this site. Allowing you all to see first hand how this works within a real program.

Input

Want to be part of this series please comment on the video posts related to this series and I will be sure to include your comments in the next video along with ideas. 

How To: Gameplanning

How To: Game planning

Each game is slightly different because of the team dynamics, makeup, strengths and weaknesses for both your opponent and your own team. It is important to note that if you have not looked at the Depth Chart post I highly suggest taking a look as it relates to game planning. 

Player Distribution

This area is quite controversial depending on which coach you talk to in Hoops Dynasty. Some coaches and rather successful ones use the 0-3 system, which I will discuss a little later after this and other also successful coaches say that it is better to use a system that equals up to 100 total on the player distribution tab of the game. 

0-3 System

In this system, you determine which of your players are the scorers usually a Senior or Junior and set them at a distribution of 3. Then the backups or guys that could score but are not elite get a 2. Then the players that are backups at their position but are just average get a 1 and the guys that are complete trash get a 0. I will say that even a guy that has a 0 will attempt shots every once in awhile just not very often. 

100 System

In this system, you again determine your players in terms of elite, average, good, great or whatever you determine and then you give the highest number to that player taking into account all the players on your team to equal a distribution for all players combined to 100. This from what other coaches have told me allows them to control more of the outcome of the game in terms of possessions for that specific player when they take a shot and do not leave anything up to chance so to speak. 

Team Play Style - Per Game or Season Long

This section might get rather long but please do not disregard this section as this is probably the most important section you can read if you even read this post. It is important to note that relates to the Strengths and Weaknesses sections below. 

Every game you play you will end up changing something in terms of how you play. Let's say you look at the other team and they generally shoot a lot of 3 pointers and do rather well with that but do not take many inside shots in comparison, you will change your setting on defense to a + value generally do not go above +2 as that will allow too many inside shots and those are higher percentage shots. 

On the flip side, let's say they do not shoot outside at all or maybe up to 10 total a game, you would want to defend inside. In this case, you would put a - setting. Up to -5 now putting a -5 would defend inside consistently but this also creates an issue - FOULS. You will foul more when you defend on the interior which could be good or bad depending on the other team free throw shooting. This is more of a preference in terms of where you set the interior, I generally do not go higher than -3 but usually, go between -2 and +2 when I set my defence setting. 

There is more to go into in this section, but I ALWAYS set my preference of style Motion, Man to Man etc based on my practice plan setting or overall team ability in a certain area. So if you just took over a team but want to change the defence do not change the setting in the game plan until your team has developed the skills necessary to effectively use that Offence or Defence. This means utilise practice time for a full season prior to setting it as your offence or defence. Your assistance coach will get mad at you but it will help to not lose a ton of games right off the bat that season by changing everything right away. 

Find Strengths

Determine your team's strength. Is it stamina? Is it outside shooting? Is it taking high percentage shots and slowing the game down to decrease possessions? Whatever the strength you need to exploit it against the team you are playing. For most of my teams, it is going to vary each year and against each opponent, but generally speaking I usually plan one way for the entire season unless I see something or somewhere against a specific team that I can exploit. 

Find Weaknesses

Determine your opponents weaknesses. Is there a single player that they play that has low defence, speed, athleticism? Or something in between. Also, most coaches do not look at their own team often enough. Look at your team determine what you would do against your own team if you were the opposing coach to attempt to win. This way you can change your depth chart or adapt the player distribution to adapt to what they might try.

If you liked this post please check out the next post on practice plans!

How To: Practice Plan

Practice! Practice! Practice!

Every coach in their right mind would say practice makes perfect. This is no exception with Hoops Dynasty and the number of options may be daunting. Follow this guide for some great tips on how to maximize your practice effort and get the most out of players. 

Team Practice

As a team it is important to note that you must be proficient in your type of offense to be formidable or at least decent in a few to be able to keep up with other teams. This part, when I started Hoops Dynasty, had my frazzled a bit since when I watch teams on TV they tend to change it up based on who they are playing and do not play just one style of defense in particular. Their offense kind of stays the same, but is more fluid so this part of Hoops Dynasty I am not a fan of. However, you will need to pick your favorite Offense and Defense. Now the number of minutes put into each needs to be at a minimum of 20. I do know there are diminishing returns after this number but I am sure that 20 is the sweet spot. 

I actually put 24 minutes in my own teams no matter what, I personally feel that this gives me a slight advantage when changing types of offense or defense as well as increases my players ability a little earlier than another team. I do not have any data on this but this is just a personal preference. 

Individual Practice

This is vital for your players and your team. This past two seasons I have had the best improvements overall for 2 of my players almost 100 point increase for both. This is huge because it makes an impact on the team right away as well as with that player and increases your teams overall ability. 

Potentials Matter

You must look at your players ratings and colors. 

• Green = Very High Improvement
• Blue = High Improvement
• Black = Average Improvement
• Orange = Low Improvement
• Red = Very Low Improvement - Basically NO improvement in this area

This will dictate your practice plan ALWAYS!

Study Study Study!

Players year in school is important as study hall is part of the practice plan. Your players if you are in DI and DII need to maintain a specific GPA. It might also be true in DIII but I have not played in DIII in a long long time, so I cannot remember, but I think that DIII is much lower than DI so if you follow my rules to this you will be fine. So with study hall I follow these principles and I have never had a single player be ineligible in over 20 seasons at DI.

**Update** I received some feedback from this area and am updating my personal findings as I tested other's information and it worked perfectly and allowed for greater improvement in my players. 

Follow these rules!

1. All players set at 0 Study Hall Minutes
2. If a High School recruit has a GPA below 3.0 for every 0.1 point below 3.0 add 1 to their study hall minutes. 
3. Check Mid-Term Grades, if any are low update their Study Hall Minutes accordingly, meaning add a few to each 2 usually maybe 3 depending on how low they are.
4. Once final grades have been posted - Put all Study Hall minutes to 0. This allows for optimal growth after they have finished their year and will not change their GPA whatsoever. 

**Note** That if you have a player with a low GPA coming in from High School this might change a bit and it always has to be fluid especially if you get to mid terms and someone is lower than they should be. Now if they are close I have never change their practice plan and by the end they were fine. Basically I only worry if at mid-terms they are below the required 2.5 GPA. If they have a 2.7 they will generally end with a 2.7 or higher and still be able to play. For some data here are the current GPA's of my team at the start of season 103 in Knight. 

As you can see all my players have a 3.1 and above GPA. So I never have to worry about them not being eligible to play. 

Recruiting the RIGHT players.

Ensure that you are looking at your players you are recruiting for the colors stated above. It is important to find players with a lot of green as well as what you need as a team. This plays into the next section in terms of each players individual ratings in each area. 

Please note that in HD 3.0 they have an optimize button - I personally tried it once and thought their ideas of putting in minutes was complete CRAP. But if you want to make it quick and easy click the optimize button. 

For me personally I generally put a lot of effort into green areas with the exception of PER and LP. This will depend on if they are a Guard or Big Man. Basically I do not care if my big man can shoot three pointers. The only exception to this rule would be if your Big Man has orange or red in all other categories and a Green or Blue in PER. This I would then focus on to make him more dynamic and shoot three pointers against other Big Men that cannot guard him on the perimeter. 

Summary

In all it will depend on your personal preferences however it is important to increase your players ratings as best you can in order to be able to improve your team to make the NT and PI each and every season. Again I am not perfect at this but I have learned from some of the best players in HD history including chapelhillne, who just recently had a user interview with WhatIfSports.

How To: Depth Chart

Here we go again, another season and yet another time to determine which player you want to start. There is no right or wrong here, but there are some things you can do to determine who is your best player at a specific position as well what strategy you want to use on a regular basis.

Offensive Ability

This has it's own section because you need to score in order to win games. Now this is important but would you give up defensive ability for an offensive menace? Probably not if you are a smart Coach. Determining offensive ability needs to be specific to guards and big men, because what is good for a guard is not good for a big man. 

Important Skills Guard: 

Athleticism - This is not as important but definitely helps all players. Not as necessary for guards as big men. Basically low numbers here make the player a slasher. 

Speed - Vital component of ability to get around other players. 

Perimeter - This is how well they are able to shoot jump shots, the higher the number the better shooter the player will be.

Passing - Ability to pass the ball to other players on your team. The higher this is the better they can assist other players in scoring. 

Ball Handling - Are they able to dribble the ball down the court without losing the ball. 

Important Skills Big Men

Athleticism - Vital skill for being athletic, jumping, squeezing between defenders etc.

Speed - Not IMPORTANT at ALL. These players do not need to be fast, it helps but doesn't matter.

Perimeter - Not important because they are interior players, however having a guy that can hit a jumper can be beneficial depending on strategy. 

Low Post - EXTREMELY Important, are they able to layup, make dunks, etc Basically can they shoot while down low. 

Rebounding - You MUST have this ability in terms of offensive rebounds as well as defensive. 

So while these skills are important, I personally would never put a guy that was an offensive menace in that had a low rating in Defense. I would give up scoring for a player that has a higher rating in defense because along with scoring I need to keep the other team from scoring as well. So these skills are vital but if I have a guy with lower ratings in these categories but a high rating in defense I would put him in over the offensive menace due to the fact that the offensive menace would either foul out, or allow more points against him. I would put the offensive menace second on the depth chart because it would allow him to go against their number two's or when the other teams players are tired so he can score more points. 

Defensive Ability

The main ability to look at here would be Defense for obvious reasons. The higher the rating the better the player is at defense. However you also need to look at Athleticism and Speed. These ratings are important to be able to get in front of other players and the ability to not draw fouls. This helps mostly with the guards but can be beneficial for the big men as well. 

I am not going to talk much about blocking or rebounding as those are somewhat separate, but having abilities in those categories will only bolster the devensive abilities for rebounds as well as blocking shots, but are not a major part of what you should look for when determining defensive ability overall. 

Always start players with high defense, athleticism and speed. These guys will do the best at their respective positions when it comes to defending, now if the other team has a guy that you can exploit in terms of offensive ability I would exploit that and change my lineup to have a guy that has the better offensive ability knowing that I will not lose out on the lower defensive ability of the player that I am attempting to exploit. 

Determining Who to Start - Strategy Matters Here

This is one of those sections that is going to utilize your own personal strategy. There are ways in which you can do well without using the offensive and defensive abilities above. However it is important to note that if you cannot stop the other team from scoring, YOU WILL NOT WIN, that is the plain and simple fact of the matter. I would give up scoring production to keep the other team from scoring. 

Utilizing a mixture of the above defensive and offensive abilities I would determine the best players at their respective positions edging on those that have better defense unless one players has huge offensive upside and is only slightly lower than the guy with better defensive stats. This also is based on position as well. 

If you like this post watch for the next post about game planning.