I might be wrong, but I think the coaching assistant also factors in game results a bit too. That plus the effect on training results makes them a priority for me. So I generally go hardest after coaching assistants and recruiting coordinators.

Thanks for posting that. It was neat to see all the teams and coaches side by side

I think you hit the nail on the head. We all play differently, and each of us has different strategy and thoughts about things. Its fun to see who values what and how it affects a conf.

I think what you said is very true, and it depends on the program and person.

I wanted as much recruiting cash as possible out west because there are a lot of different teams, and I wanted fall back guys scouted if my top guys weren't there. I think (and its a big I think) I have a handle on recruiting out west and since I think that, I am comfortable trying to address the OFF/DEF coach with the way the budget is for USC

Other guys (Radi clearly being one of them) have a feel for what they look for and are comfortable trying to land them based off stats and rankings and don't want to spend money on a scouting coordinator. I think Radi is playing it perfectly, as at the moment he can basically get any guy he wants recruiting wise, and it makes sense to try to develop his guys the most he can.

I personally like scouting for both big programs and small programs, but that's juts me. I try to have a balance because I get paranoid about my recruits coming in the way I think they should.

You aren't wrong, they do :)

I expected to struggle a lot more in recruiting, mostly based on my prestige being so far below the upper echelon of the PCC; as such, I definitely paid as little as possible for my staff. Since conference prestige pretty much nullified my supposed discrepancy, I intended to rectify that this offseason...then I forgot to export for round one of hiring. We'll see who I can snag in round two, but there's not much out there that I'm really excited about anymore.

I don't generally place a lot of emphasis on scouting either. It's handy for some attributes (per/post D), but for just about everything else I feel like I have a good handle on what their ratings should end up around based on their stats and their ranking. If a guy is a 'B' potential in one area, I live with the fact that he might be a 'C', and so forth.

Thanks for the comments everyone. I guess for me I always try to play these games realistically, moreso as I get older(I'm much less of a metagamer than I used to be). In that vein, chance that a top school offers a scholarship to a player without a scouting trip playing a significant role in the evaluation: basically near zero. Therefore it's near zero for me.

I hope that rankings and stats aren't that determinative in the game, but if they are, that's my loss in the competitive sense I guess :). One of the reasons I love this league is that I feel minimal pressure to be supercompetitive.

This is the way I look at it Brian, which I think makes it fun because there is strategy to it. Some guys offer blindly (AI does too) to get a jump on recruits without scouting, however, if you scout and don't offer, one of your other guys might not have an offer and might actually be better than the guy that got offered already.

On the other hand if the guy offers and the scout doesn't come back exactly what it should be, the other guy needs to make a choice. Does he drop off that recruit and basically have no shot at him again (which means he just wasted time and money) or does he keep on a kid and accept his flaws. Either way you make out in that deal. A prime example of this occurred last year with the Number 12 recruit in the nation Charles Pugsley (he didn't sign with anyone btw). His ratings weren't were they should have been and nobody really wanted him.

So ranking and stats don't always tell the entire story. Sometimes they do, but other times they don't. Groundhog said it earlier when he said he lives with a guy that should have been a B but is a C. It's about what you can accept and what you cant accept. I think you and I are similar in that respect. I can't accept that, so I scout, and rarely offer without seeing what my scout thinks of the guy.

As far as realistically goes, I have friends who are head coaches (D-2) that trust scouting service reports (they pay for them) and will offer quickly based on that report (because they want to say they offered first), and then they go see the kid in person later. There isn't a doubt in my mind that some smaller D-1's do that to get jumps as well. So if that helps :)

I'm personally having a blast in the league due to how much activity there seems to be, and because of who all is in it. I want to be good, but its not the end all be all to see Vince and Stanford, or Kirk in Washington beat up on me. I'm having fun losing all the same and being able to read your reports and everybody elses. I think we have a good thing going.

Oh, I evaluate everyone, absolutely. I occasionally make offers during the 1st recruiting stage when I'm also evaluating everyone, but I consider it to be a fairly huge risk to do so. If you drop a scholarship on someone, they're done with you. So if you offer a guy w/o scouting, and he scouts out to be decent, but other guys scout better, you've got a really tough call to make. Go after the better guy and risk losing out on both, or settle for the one you chose to jump on. Ick.

So I do scout everyone, I just prioritize recruiting coordinator (get higher rated guys more easily) and coaching assitant (better development and whatever on court improvement that gives) over scouting. In real world terms, consider me an arrogant jerk of a coach who doesn't trust my scout and goes over his head all the time based on my own gut feeling about the player :)

I do rather frequently choose to recruit a guy in the 40-70 range over a top 10 or top 20 guy based on scouting + stats + the ratings/abilities I prioritize for my players. Its definitely not all blind, I just do it knowing that my scout has a wider margin for error and I make adjustments for that.

Yeah, I agree - it's not that I don't scout players or don't value scouting. But given that even with 20/A+ scouting ability you still have some margin for error in scouting reports, I put a higher priority when it comes to coaching payroll and head coach attributes on recruiting and offense/defense. I can get a decent sense of a player's ability in the offensive categories, passing, steals and shot blocking via their stats. Where the scouting really helps is defense and athletic ability.

This is just a hunch, but it seems to me that the rankings rate athletic ability too high - at least compared with the difference it seems to make on the court. I tend to find that a lot of the guys in that 5-25 range end up being athletic but not as multi-dimensional as the guys you get in the bottom half of the top 100. It makes a big difference if you have early declarations enabled too, because a lot of these guys end up sticking around until their junior or senior years.

Going back to the scouting discussion... NC State scouted more than a couple top 25 prospects in this class to have orange or yellow potential. I'm going to save my scouting info and revisit next season when actual ratings are revealed.

I did try to hire a slightly better scout. I had a 30k guy with a scouting rating of 2, I offered some scouts with ratings of like 7-8 for 40-50k, but didn't get any of them and ended up with a 40k scout rated 3 heh.

I am placing less and less value in the 'color guide' as time passes. It's still useful as a general guideline, but I've been finding that the devil is in the details -- I've seen 'red' players better at their position than 'yellow' players, at least in my opinion, based on what things they were actually good at.

I agree, though the color guideline is a good quick reference. You're not going to see many Orange future potential guys who you're excited about their future, even in a league like the Ivy.

I've got scouting info from all my recruiting classes so far (both years for Stanford and Dartmouth...most years with WAY too much money at Stanford), let me see what kind of info I can pull on them now that they're in the league. My scouts are 9 and 8, and I've had them all three season so far. I don't track coach ratings (I should, just lazy), so I can't say they've always been there.

Speaking of tracking these things - is there an easy way to search for a player?

Yeah when making actual decisions I have ratings I care about for each position (probably similar to everyone else, maybe with slightly different priorities on some guys, I dunno), but, in this case, a top 25 recruit scouting with orange potential is downright strange. So I'm curious if my scout is so bad that the result is essentially random, or if the guys I'm scouting as the worst ones are going to end up as the weaker of the top rated recruits and my scout is just exaggerating things to some weird extreme.

In my case, a Top 25 recruit is kind of like Bigfoot: might as well not exist :). I get excited about Top 250 recruits. The landscape looks a bit different in that way.

Probably the easiest way is to export player ratings (tools->text reports->Player Ratings Report) and to search through the CSV output file. In a single player league, or if you're the commish/have the commish password, you can use the "Edit Current League" option within Tools and get an alphabetized player list that way.

I had a guy ranked something like #115 overall with Very High interest in Idaho and got pretty excited about that. I had to drop him after the first sim, he loves everyone apparently, not just me, and I can't compete. :D

So if I'm not the Commish, this is going to be hunt-and-peck? Oof. That might be difficult. I should really brush up on my programming skills and just crank out something that scans the HTML so I can at least find which teams the guys I've tracked are on.

Simplest thing to do is to add them to your watch list during their recruitment. Then you can access their player cards from submenus on the head coach page.

So THAT'S where the damned Watch List is. That is good to know.

What this guy said... It probably why I get 50 emails on guys training notes after the camp sim.

I actually add to my watch lists everyone that I offer a scholarship to (or want to but don't have the numbers to do.) I should be culling information and making some good insights by now, but I haven't made the time to do it.

Yeah, I've been manually going to their pages and removing them from my watch list every year. Being able to click 'next' on each one is huge for that now. I add all my potential recruits to my watch list, it's how I sort them. With the huge recruiting budgets I've had for Stanford the past few seasons, I have way more people I'm keeping tabs on than my 20 person call list. So the watch list has been invaluable.

Had no idea you could see your watch list on the head coach page, very neat.

What I find to be the easiest way to keep track of anyone that you've scouted or have on your call list is the "Contacted" option from the players drop-down in the recruiting screen.

Its time I dusted this stuff off again and give some updates, as we are well into the season.

The standings so far in the PCC


Washington and Cal are huge favorites once again in the conf and are showing it.

I like Cal to win it this year as Washington doesn't have the depth Cal does.

Oregon State is an interesting case this year. They have the talent, but they might be one of the streakiest teams in the country this year. They will go as far as Super Senior Gordon Miskin takes them (see below). If he gets hot they can compete with anybody. If he is average or subpar in a game Oregon State is going to be in some trouble. Will be fun to see how they do this year

As far as me and USC goes, I am beyond bummed. I thought we might have the talent to make the tourney this year. If not def the NIT. This was going to be the year we make some kind of jump and then my best post player David Clausen goes down 15 mins into the first game with a Torn Ligament. This might not have been huge if I didn't decide to Red shirt Freshman PF- Michael Fanning, but I did. I tried to get by skimpy and got burned. So we wait 34 more days till Clausen gets back (and we will wait all 34 days, none of this playing at 88% crap). He will miss the first Conf game against Washington, but will be back for the 2nd against Stanford.



In the end I should be thankful he is coming back at all, but this sure was a blow to the high hopes of the season

Hope isn't totally lost however.

Freddie Nation, is quickly becoming my favorite player on this team. He can do a little bit of everything and guides us from the PG spot. I have been pleased with C-Dante Douglas coming right in as a freshman and starting for Clausen, but he needs another year before he becomes big time.

Overall, we have depth at every other spot with the exception of the post. I like how we look, and the future looks ok. Just need to get over this injury hump.

Our RPI is terrible because of who I scheduled. Hopefully, some of those wins against those teams jumps up 1 slot above to help us out. honestly, it might have been a mistake, however now with the injury to Clausen it works out for us. We need the wins, vs. the competition. We would be getting destroyed by half decent teams with his injury. Our rebounds and FG% are good, but we need to foul less and hold onto the ball more.

Recruiting wise for us has been good. We keep landing guys that will fit in with what I eventually want to be able to do. How that will stack up against CAL, Washington, and Oregon State (who are all out recruiting me) only time will tell. I honestly like our chances though, and I explain that in a bit.

We landed 3 guys this year. 2 posts and a guard.


First up is Center- Darrel Slone. I love that he is 6'10. He will be able to score at will in the post, and will develop into a nice shot blocker for us. He will give me 2 guy's that will be 6'10 on the roster. There are only 4 guys in this conf 6'10 or above and 2 of them are Juniors this season. Both of mine next season will be sophmore's and freshman. I like where that is heading.

Next up is PF- Michael Ruth

Michael is smaller than I would like to put in the post. However, I quickly realized that the talent level in this years class was down. I needed another post due to my lack of depth (AGAIN) so I needed to jump on him. He can't play a lick of offense, but he can crab some boards and play some nasty defense down low. I doubt he develops into a starter, but I can see him playing some quality mins for us off the bench, and if that's the case, this defensive demon is exactly what I want.

I got too cute with the offense this year. Going to try the CPU suggestion now to see how that works out but our lack of bigs is hurting the Beavers this season.If there would have been a conference tournament I think we would have had a shot but Brodie's rupture achilles from the NIT last year cost this team the season. He should be back for the Seattle/Portland games right before conference play. When he comes back we are going full 23 ft jumpers .

The 3rd guy we landed and are extremely grateful for is SG-Sanford Crabb.

I love some of my guys names on this team. (Benito Lightfoot, Freddie Nation, Hernando Hernandez and now Mr. Crabb) I am gonna go for the All Name team here shortly.

But back to Sanford. I was hoping Washington wouldn't jump on him. He was a gamble for me. He wasn't qualified right away, and I thought that Washington would rather play it safe and go after some higher quality talent. My gut was right, however, I didn't realize the higher quality that Washinton was going after was top 10 talent. God help me there, but that is another story for another time.

Sanford is another All-American coming to USC that can play some ball. He is going to be another Freddie Nation (who I love) that can do a little bit of everything, and is athletic to boot. What I like about him is that he is another bigger guard to the roster. At 6'3 he will be the smallest guy that I start at guard. The smallest guard on the roster will be 6'2, and the biggest guard will be 6'4. Hopefully, by having the biggest team in the PCC and one that will be able to compete athletically, ill be able to combat some of the better talent coming in to the CAL's and Washinton's. If it doesn't at least we have some cool names to watch out on the court.

I am floored Crabb got qualified. I was watching him with all three of my teams...those high school stats were out of control. My scout didn't like him as much as expected, but he should be pretty great for you.

The sneaky team this year is UCLA. I say sneaky because they haven't played to anybody's expectations the past 2 years.

Senior Tyler Williamson has been a huge disappointment, however seems to have gotten it going of late. His stats are below


Juco transfer Mark Lorenzo has come in and helped stabilize an offense needing some help, and actually replaced PCC Freshman of the year Jean Becker in the starting line up. So that's saying something about him.



And don't forget they still have Center Derick Busby who doesn't put up gaudy numbers but just comes with his lunch pail everyday and puts in work. He isn't sexy, but the former All-American and 44th ranked player in the nation boards and is a force on the Defensive side of the ball. He is averaging a steal and 2.6 blocks a game in the paint.

If they can keep up what they are doing, and with the guys that have, they might just be the team that makes it into the tourney this year as the 3rd PCC team. They have #13 Arizona State next, so that game will be telling on where the Bruins season might be heading.

It was a huge gamble for me. I didn't like where I stood recruiting wise and if he didn't qualify I had no idea where I would have gone. You had a lot of the guards liking you more than I did. Heck, Alvarez didn't even want to give USC a look. I was kinda in no mans land this year with USC

I am hoping Crabb and Nelson should be a nice combo for me in 2 years (in theory anyways).

With Brodie, you guys are certainly a different team. That was a killer.

And if anybody is Curious about what I meant about Washington and their recruiting class this year.

They land the #2, #9 (Both All-Americans) and #29 kids in the nation....... Seems like the Kentucky, NC State, Kansas and Kansas State thing with recruits is going dwindling a bit. Washington has just announced "Hello, move the heck over, cause we are going to be at this party from now on".

Not a good look for USC nor the rest of the PCC

Kansas just swooped on top-30 recruit Timothy McHugh and took him away from Stanford, so Kansas is still a thing. And annoying.

Yeah, he was far enough away with his test score I was highly skeptical he'd qualify. I loved his numbers, scouted him and put him on my call sheet at the outset figuring I'd monitor him in the unlikely case he managed to qualify. When he did the very next month I was shocked.

I don't know how much you can trust my scout, but the silver lining for me in not getting him is that his defense looks like a real weakness (same reason I bailed on the other in-state stud Steverson). Obviously the steals are terrific, but he appears to be a rather poor perimeter defender otherwise:


Defense aside, I think my scouting report is short-changing his offense and passing. I suspect he's going to make me look bad in future seasons by pouring in a ton of points on the Huskies...

Heh, I saw that. I'm glad I stuck with Scurry for MSU and didn't try to land McHugh.

Kansas is still very much a thing. They're right there with Indiana for the top class - #1, #5, #20 & #29 vs. #3, #14, #15 & #21.

Moving up in prestige is certainly helping. I'm also getting more aggressive with my recruiting. I needed to land a top class like this because my first two classes were not measuring up to the rest of the conference. You, Cal and Oregon State were all recruiting higher rated classes, so this one is a small step toward trying to catch up.

I'm really hoping my guys can break through this season and advance past the first round in the NCAA Tourney, and hopefully that would be enough to get my coaches some improvements and prompt our AD to upgrade our training facilities.

Your classes weren't that far off. Also if Oregon St. doesn't have a top 20 class this year there is nothing to worry about the following year as we have 0 juniors right now and will not have a scholarship to offer anyone in next season's recruiting.

Yeah, with the top teams initially all being midwest/southeast (including indiana plus the four you mentioned), the first team or two from the west coast to put themselves in a position to land top 20 recruits from the west is going to quickly join that top tier.

We didn't finish at Washington level but I'm feeling like Oregon State will end up with a top 10 class this year.



Dagostino is a JUCO that will start right away and with the depth at PG Smith will take a redshirt. Biggest question next season is who will play SG. It seems like Kutz (#14 recruit last year) will start at SG with Pastor still running the point.

I'm expecting Purdue to be top ten as well, if not top five.


All three are likely to be starters from day one, though there's a chance Noriega redshirts - I've got three guys I like at SG, and while none have the ceiling of Noriega, at least two of them will probably be better than Noriega upon his arrival.

Not sure how the class will be ranked since there's only two of them, but I'm pretty pleased with Stanford's class as well:


With stud PG Bingham graduating and freshman recruit Mohler disappointing (4.6 points on .391 shooting in 15 minutes per game as our 8th man off the bench) we definitely needed a Point Guard. Other freshman backcourt recruit Stan Dyer has been impressive as our starting 2-guard all year, with 9.6 points, 5.6 rebounds and a .464 shooting percentage...but he's also the only other guard on the roster worth a damn after Bingham leaves. So we needed two guards out of this class. Alvarez, with his insane offensive numbers (11/A, 14/A, 13/A, 9/B per our scout) will probably start at SG over Dyer (who should make a tremendous 6th man), while Mathewson will man the point with his better passing (12/A). Mathewson struggles creating his own shot, but has phenomenal range (10/B jumpers and 16/A three pointers), and between the two incoming guards and standout redshirt freshman Erik Plant (averaging 13.7 points on .514 shooting), we should be able to keep up with any team in the nation on offense. Unfortunately, we're going to have a glaring need at Center in next year's recruiting, as behind Andreas Fontes (a senior next year) we have very little in the way of talent that can hang in the PCC. I'll probably try to see if I can find a JuCo transfer worth his salt while also recruiting a younger guy at the same time.