I do have one gripe with your post tho shoe....

25 seasons????? You have 25 seasons with EACH team you have! You have multiple IDs! You have a TON of seasons and 6 titles. And I don't care to compete either. That's not the point. Saying you have 25 seasons is ridiculous tho!

Edit.... you said "25 seasons of 3.0". So maybe I'm mistaken. I really don't know. Because when I came back to HD, 3.0 had already kicked off and i have no idea how far back it began in each world. So if your numbers were accurate.... bravo

Posted by topdogggbm on 12/19/2019 3:42:00 PM (view original):
I do have one gripe with your post tho shoe....

25 seasons????? You have 25 seasons with EACH team you have! You have multiple IDs! You have a TON of seasons and 6 titles. And I don't care to compete either. That's not the point. Saying you have 25 seasons is ridiculous tho!

Edit.... you said "25 seasons of 3.0". So maybe I'm mistaken. I really don't know. Because when I came back to HD, 3.0 had already kicked off and i have no idea how far back it began in each world. So if your numbers were accurate.... bravo

25 seasons with 3.0 D2. Last 10 seasons of Knight, and then ~15 seasons in Naismith, going back prior to season 104. The other ID has been retired for over a year now, I think. Never played anything but D1 in 3.0 on that one. I’ve played mostly D1 since 3.0 on this ID, too.

I could be off a few seasons, I don’t know exactly when 3.0 started in the history list. I am pretty certain that 2 of the Abilene Christian titles were 3.0 players, but the first one may not have been.

“As far as you saying you don't like to use the color chart and the number chart in the pinned thread, because it takes too long. That isn't true. Especially for YOU. You've been around long enough to where it's basically memorized. And everyone here posting is likely the same. It may take a new coach a season or two to adjust his eyeballs to that chart. But it's like riding a bike. After you learn it, it's just programmed.”

Nope. I actively avoid charts and formulas. I didn’t know there was such a chart, until you mentioned it. You can tell, because I got the grade/number correspondent wrong (12 is apparently F-, not F; I didn’t know there was such a thing as F-, or if I did know, I forgot, because I rarely ever even look at guys at L3). Don’t give me that much credit. There’s a lot of stuff I don’t know, and don’t care to know. I’m lazy as hell when it comes to things I do for fun. That’s a big reason I scout the way I do. Building the pool takes 5 minutes, unless I’ve chosen to do a camp. Most of that time is spent waiting for my 5 year old iPad to reload. Then I can spend whatever time I want on something that is fun for me, prospecting and projecting.

Agreed. All scouting takes 5 minutes. I consider the color chart, number chart stuff, to be recruiting. Because I'm not even looking at it until recruiting is going on.

My scouting consists of 200 D1 players in my private camp, FSS'ing the local states, and going to sleep for 3 weeks until I get the message that says you can now contact recruits.

I've also motioned that recruiting is my most hated part of HD. And it's not even close! I wish I could just have the same 12 players for each team forever. Even if they were mediocre. I just enjoy game planning and the in season stuff. Recruiting is a chore, feels like work. Especially with 7 teams. I KNOW that I'm in the minority. Most coaches like recruiting best of all

Posted by topdogggbm on 12/20/2019 6:25:00 PM (view original):
Agreed. All scouting takes 5 minutes. I consider the color chart, number chart stuff, to be recruiting. Because I'm not even looking at it until recruiting is going on.

My scouting consists of 200 D1 players in my private camp, FSS'ing the local states, and going to sleep for 3 weeks until I get the message that says you can now contact recruits.

I've also motioned that recruiting is my most hated part of HD. And it's not even close! I wish I could just have the same 12 players for each team forever. Even if they were mediocre. I just enjoy game planning and the in season stuff. Recruiting is a chore, feels like work. Especially with 7 teams. I KNOW that I'm in the minority. Most coaches like recruiting best of all

360 recruits with camp recruiting while color chart number chart remains top priority meanwhile I have a deep at bat system that hasn't broke yet.

Oldave, I have no idea how you believe this is the real wardo. It's not even close to the way that OG wardo talks

FYI - You can star this thread in the top right corner where the blue box is. Then you can access it under "my forums" tab at any time without searching the forums.

I've been back doing this now for a couple of months now, with a dozen teams over two separate IDs. Here is what I have learned:

1) Scouting should not take a few minutes, especially at DIII where you have to make every dollar count. The good news is that in one-a-day worlds, you have a few weeks to get the scouting completed. You do not have to get it all done in an hour or in a day - that's where you make mistakes. You can make scouting mistakes and still get lucky in recruiting, or those mistakes can cripple you. Take your time.

2) There is no one perfect scouting method - certainly not one that applies to every school or even every DIII school. Hell, a single scouting methodology does not apply to one school year-over-year. You must take into consideration:

• Where geographically is your school? If it's on a coast or near a border your private camp and asst coach search goes in three directions; if you are on both a coast or a border it generally goes in two (yes, I know about Canadian and Mexican recruits - there ain't many of them).
• What schools close to you geographically are filled with humans? If you are at DIII, you need to know this at DII and D1 levels as well as DIII. Extra credit: know which of the schools rival you in recruiting (this can take multiple seasons), understand what they look for in recruits, and know how many scholarships they have available.
• What is your prestige level? If it's lower than every human around you in DIII know that you are at a disadvantage from the jump, and you'll likely need to target a little lower level player than those teams with much better prestige. If it's higher than everyone you'll be able to challenge teams worse than you as well as poor teams a full level (D1 or DII) above you.
• How much scholarship money do you have? This doesn't matter as much at D1, but it sure means something at DIII when an extra $2K can mean the difference between 100 players scouted to level 4 or 130 players scouted to level 4.
• Can you limit your search this season to only PG/SG or PF/C? If so, you can get almost twice as many potential recruits for you dollars.

A few other points:

• Get to level 4 - At DIII you are usually looking at the scraps left by D1 and DII teams. You really need to know if you are going to end up with a senior that will be a 600 overall, or one that could top out at 700. For that you need that actual numbers and need to be able to discern between green and blue potential.
• Private camps - They can be useful at DIII because they do maximize your dollars, but you probably should not invite 200 players. Even with perfect camp and state-by-state scouting overlap, you will not be able to bring 200 players at DIII to level 4 in scouting. At DIII, if I am using a private camp, I would top out at 100, unless I have like six openings and the accompanying scouting budget. Using a private camp can bring a recruit to level 4 for $135 - as cheap as possible. The difficult thing about private camps is that they bring in recruits from up to 500 miles away in all directions. You might end up with a lot of states to scout to maximize your efficiency.
• Foregoing private camp - If you have a loaded conference on one side of you, the value of recruits your private camp brings in might be diminished. In that case it might be best to scout states in another direction and settle for the $195 recruits.
• Evaluate after a set of recruiting actions - If you run a private camp, see how many players you have in camp from each state, and compare it to the number of recruits in each state. That way you'll know how many will cost you $135, $180, or $195, depending on further scouting actions. Check to see how many players are 100, 200, 300, 400 and 500 miles away. Always check the remaining scouting budget vs. the number of cumulative player-levels left to scout to level 4. Re-evaluate your options at every step of the way.
• Check out the top 100 - The most difficult part of recruiting D1 players from a DIII team is that you'll have to scout players already on your list in the top 100 that you will never ever get. You want to minimize the number of Top 100 players you scout, whether it is by figuring out their states, the distance from your school, or simply waiting until later in recruiting to scout them.
• Look at the best teams - I believe gil has already said this, but look at the top 25 teams. See what their freshmen recruits look like, noting their individual category values and their original recruiting rank at their position. See how many walkons the best teams take.See who they schedule. See who they redshirt, Look at the PBP in their games to see how they set up their offense and defense. Reading the forums is OK - you'll run across some good advice. But actually looking at what the best teams do is invaluable.

I think the aapproach cbriese lays out is generally solid; the big drawback is that it’s more time and labor intensive. And for folks like me, who don’t enjoy this part of the process much, don’t feel like any of this stuff is necessary to get very good, competitive classes that will allow you to compete. But like I said way up top, if this is part of the game you enjoy, by all means do the extra steps and absolutely maximize your level 4 pool.

You can actually get some recruits for $100, if you do the local public camp and a private camp. You just don’t have any control over who you get that way. And to get the cheap $15 report by FSS, you might need to take in a lot of D1 and D2 states. If you’re in a season where you only need a player or two, and if you can limit asst search to pg/sg or pf/c, this could be an extra efficient way to get a few more recruits in your pool. But it does complicate what you can do outside of the guys who don’t show up to that public camp. It will work much better in some locations (mainly out west) than for schools with a lot of recruits, and more, smaller states in their 500 mile radius.

Agreed on the value of some public camps - if you are going to be scouting everyone within 500 miles, might as well wait for the public camp to run. It'll save a little money - they seem to run about $45-50 per D1 recruit. That said, I have only used them in the west and the northeast.

I actually came to this thread to learn because after talking to a couple other coaches they scout extremely differently than I do. What I've learned so far is there is no right way to scout and this up to how you want to do it. cbriese makes a lot of points that I consider but typically I have a quick and fast method that has worked for me, in D2.

1) Identify my needs by position.
2) Scout service the various states nearby and typically one or two out there a little (been going to the NE recently from Georgia).
3) Drop my assistant filter to D1, the positions I am scouting, and then roughly 200-300 miles from campus.
4) Click until I have scout everyone in that filter.
5) After that I assess the players and decide if I have enough to go into session one recruiting (I try to spend about two thirds to three quarters of my scouting money then)
6) With about 2-4 rounds of recruiting left in Session 1, I go back to the assist coach, extend my range or position filter and use the rest of my money. The goal here in D2 is to find anyone slipping through the cracks I can sign super cheap.

There are downsides... I mean I scout a lot of bad players to level 4.

I guess my question for the group is, are there any ways I could make this more efficient with my scouting $?

I'll make a video on this.

I'm in the camp of thinking if you're going for efficiency, there are better ways than others whereas others don't think so.

If you're in the east coast, or midwest or any relatively dense area with less than 5 openings, the best strategy is to do an only D1 private camp (200 players), FSS the states where players in the camp came from (if a state has unlocked only 1 signable player, you know that a player is signable because they're not ranked top 150, or not F DEF or ATH or whatever, and has 15 total players, dont upgrade. It should be about 10% signable players out of the total state FSS number and you FSS that state), upgrade to L4 from L3 with indivual after a cycle or two (save for players that D1s rescind or dont end up offering), then use the rest of the money to FSS, then assistant to L3/L4 (if L3 use indiviual to L4).

If you're in a less dense area, like a coastal area (like about 225 D1 players in a 500 mile radius around you), or have 5-6 openings in a mediocrally dense area, the best strategy is to do a D1 private camp, FSS every state with 10% rate of players attending camp to total players, then assistant within 500 miles, then continue to FSS and assistant further until you run out.

The final strategy only works in like coastal California, and maybe other corners of the country (never calculated it for southern florida or northwest or Northern Minnesota or stuff like that). It's a private camp for D2 and D1, then FSS, then public camp (if it works for the area, like the western LV camp works well for Cali), then assistant, and continue widening FSS and assistant range.

These are the most efficient methods I have calculated (though if you have a more efficient method, say so) for D2 and if you have any questions about how I came to these conclusions, you can ask.

This is so hard to answer because there are so many different factors. How many players in within 500 miles? How many resources do you have (1 scholarship or 6)? Are the public camps worth it based off of cost per recruit? The way I recruit at d3 cal tech is much different than d3 yeshiva in New York. I use private camps when I can (you don't mention that you do) but sometimes they aren't worth it.