Your recruiting resources are based on how many scholarships you have open and the division you are in. You're given separate budgets for each scouting and recruiting

Scouting:
Division 1: 35K + 4K per Opening
Division 2: 25K + 3K per Opening
Division 3: 15K + 2K per Opening

Recruiting:
Division 1: 5K + 3K per Opening
Division 2: 3K + 2K per Opening
Division 3: 1K + 1K per Opening

Recruiting Attention Points:
20 + 20 per Opening

Note: The max number of openings considered for resources is 6 open scholarships. If, for example, you have 8 open scholarships you would still receive the same amount of resources as if you had 6 open scholarships.

You only get half of the resources for a scholarship opened due to an unfulfilled promise. Also, you will not get resources for rescinding the scholarship of a player you recruited.

A player's reaction is based on the player's class, his recruiting position rank, and how he ranks on his team, (so if he's one of the worst on the roster, he's more likely to accept it).

Also, his reaction (whether he's upset or accepts it) will always be the same as it was the first try for a given season. So there won't be any benefit to removing and applying it multiple times. If you do apply the red-shirt multiple times, and he's not happy about it, his work ethic decline will likely be much more drastic..

Yes, a player's scholarship can be rescinded anytime after the conclusion of the job change period, and prior to signings starting during the following recruiting period. Note that you must have seasons remaining on your account before you can rescind a scholarship. Simply click on 'rescind scholarship' next to the player's name in the coach's office.

Keep in mind that rescinding a scholarship of a player who you signed for no fault of the player may make recruiting for your school more difficult in the future, as no kid will want to play at a program which isn't loyal to its players. You do not receive any additional recruiting money when you rescind a scholarship. Also, cutting a player could cause other players to leave as well.

The term "redshirt" is used to describe a student-athlete who does not participate in competition in a sport for an entire academic year, and thereby does not use one of his 4 years of athletic eligibility. Here are the rules for redshirting:

Any given player can only be redshirted once in his career
A player can have a redshirt year any of his four years
A player can be tagged as a redshirt if:

• The coach has seasons remaining on his account
• The player has not yet played in a game that season
• He has not already been redshirted at some point in his career
• No one else is currently being redshirted
• The National Championship game has not yet been played

This setting allows you to focus your defense on a particular area of the floor, such as tightly guarding the perimeter or packing the lane. Each has it's pros and cons. If you focus too much on the outside, you'll give their outside shooters fits and you'll probably be called for less fouls, but their low post players will have an easier time inside as will players that drive to the hole. You'll also be out of position for many rebounds.

On the other hand, if you focus on stopping the inside game, you'll give a good passing team many open outside shots, but you'll have more players in position to rebound.

This option give the sim permission to adjust your defensive positioning by up to +/- 2 based on the offense of the opposing team.

The amount of the adjustment is based on the percentage of points the opposing team is scoring from outside vs. inside. For example, if you set your defense to a -2 and the other team is producing a 20 of their 30 total first half points from the perimeter, your defensive positioning would be adjusted to a 0 to come out and help guard the perimeter.

Please keep in mind that there won't necessarily be an adjustment at halftime even if your criteria for adjustment are met. The sim will only adjust if you're adjustment criteria are met AND your opponent is scoring a significant percentage from the inside or outside relative to your defensive positioning. Sometimes you may be losing but you're applying the correct defensive positioning, so no adjustment will be made.

The offensive distribution settings allow you to distribute offensive touches to individual players by applying relative weightings. The offensive distribution settings are found on the player game plan page within your office. You can distribute points to each player (100 maximum total points) to indicate which players should get more touches in your half-court offense. This only affects who will have plays run for them in your offense based on the defense you are playing against.

Offensive distribution does NOT refer to shots that come from non-halfcourt offense - this includes offensive rebounds and transition baskets.

You can dictate who the offense will run through by allotting players distribution points. So if you have your starting 5 set to 18,18,18,18,18 all players will get a relatively equal number of touches/shots. If 4 backups come into the game, and you're at 18,1,1,1,1 (for example) - the player with the 18 would now be taking 81% (18/22= 81%) of the shots.

These are your ideal distributions - obviously the defense will be able to impact your offense when the game is played via defensive positioning (see above) and double teams (see below).

You can, and should, set your distributions for the 4 possible defenses you can face throughout the season (and even within a single game). Simply select each defense from the dropdown list to enter your settings for that defense. If a team switches defenses during a game, you will automatically switch to the appropriate offensive distribution and 3 pt. frequency settings that you've entered.

NOTE: If you leave all of the distribution points to zero for all players, the engine will determine the frequency at which players will shoot and their frequency of 3 pt. shots. This is not recommended as the computer only looks at your offensive skills - ignoring the opposing team and their defensive style completely.

There are several factors that determine how offensive distribution settings translate to shot attempts in a game. First, keep in mind that not every player possession ends up in a shot. The player may also turn the ball over or get fouled.

Also remember that the distribution points are relative to the other 4 players on the court during a given possession. For example if you set four players to a 1 and one player to a 10, the player with 10 is going to get far more than 10% of the shots while those 5 are on the floor. In fact, he'll get about 71% of the shots (10/14).

Second, you have to look at minutes played. The more minutes he plays, the more shots he'll get - So FGA should be looked at on a per minute basis, not on an absolute basis. You also have to factor in offensive rebounds and steals as both can lead to shots that are not part of the normal offensive sets.

Additionally, play-by-play should be looked at to determine how many possessions that particular player was fouled without resulting foul shots, as well as how many possessions led to turnovers. These are all possessions that will not yield FGA.

You also have to look at double-teams. When one or more players are double-teamed, that will lead to (normally) less shots for the double-teamed players, and more shots for the non-double-teamed players.

Next you need to look at FTA. A player who is fouled does not get charged for a FGA. So if you see a player who had 10 FTA, that's roughly the equivalent of 5 more FGA.

Finally, there is just random chance. On each possession your offensive distribution weightings are evaluated and someone will take the shot based on those numbers - But that is done on a possession by possession basis, which over the course of a season will balance out, but may lead to more or less shots in an individual game.

The individual 3-point frequency setting allows you to adjust the frequency on a player-by-player basis against each type of defense.

The possible 3-point settings are:

• +2: Always look for the 3-point shot first
• +1: Take more 3-point shots than normal
• 0: Take a 3-point shot as part of the flow of the offense. That is determined based on numerous factors, including a player's position, skills, the style of defense, and the positioning of the defense.
• -1: Take less 3-point shots than normal
• -2: Never take a 3-point shot unless it's a desperation shot

Target minutes allow you to provide a range of minutes you'd like to see each player receive during a normal game. Obviously, in close games or games which go to overtime, you're more likely to see your starters receive more playing time than your backups and vice versa.

In addition to providing a range of targeted playing time, you can also designate players to a 'mopup' role. This means that they'll play when the game is out of hand (or in case of emergency situations due to fouls, injuries, ejections, etc.). The other option is to designate a player as 'rest'. This option is only available for players who were injured and are not yet 100%. They will NOT dress for the game.

Double-teaming a player will put more defensive pressure on the player selected, reducing his shot attempts/efficiency and possibly forcing more turnovers.

On the other hand, if a player is double-teamed, that means somebody is open - giving the open player(s) more open shots than they'd normally see.

Setting a player to 'always' will result in an attempt to double-team him when he has the ball. Setting a player to 'leading scorer' means that you will only attempt to double-team him if he is the leading point scorer for his team.

Keep in mind that the defense won't be able to successfully execute the double-team on every possession.

These settings allow you to insert backups into the game once the outcome has been safely decided. There is a separate setting for when you're winning and when you're losing. The SimEngine will then give your 2nd string players more precedence to come into the game.

You may want to use this option if you want to help protect your starters from injury and/or to provide valuable playing time to your younger players. If your team is already young, you may not want to use this option so your players will get as much experience as possible regardless of the score.

• team defense played (zone, man, press)
• defensive positioning (inside v. outside)
• player's defensive ratings
• player's defensive IQ
• speed
• athleticism
• home/away
• opponent's offense played
• opponent's 3 pt setting (more 3s = less fouls, less 3s=more fouls)
• opponent's offensive ratings (low post, perimeter)
• opponent's offensive IQ
• opponent's speed
• opponent's athleticism

At a high level, prestige is a reflection of a school's recent success in all areas. It is updated at the end of each season. That update is determined differently in DI compared to DII and DIII.

An important thing to know about prestige is that the visible letter grade actually represents a range of numbers. For example, a B- might cover the number range of 250-400 (these are not the actual numbers). That's important to know because prestige may be improving or decreasing within that range without the visible letter grade changing at all. On the flip side, if the prestige number is right on the edge between two letter grades, a slight change in the number could also change the letter grade.

So, where a school's prestige falls within that range is important. The downside to this is that since you can only see the letter grade, you may not see any evidence of a change, when in fact there could have been a relatively significant change taking place. Rest assured that even if you can't see a change in the letter grade, the number is changing appropriately. And most importantly, the number (not the letter grade) is what we actually use in the game to affect recruiting and other things.

In DII and DIII, prestige is updated at the end of each season based on the following items:

• Current prestige
• Team winning percentage
• Strength of schedule (SOS)
• Postseason bids/wins (National Tournament is worth more than PIT)

In DI, prestige updates work a little differently. We look at the past 4 seasons and put a different weighting on each season. Basically, the further back the season is, the less weight it gets, and subsequently the less impact it has on the current prestige. Each season's success is based on the following items:

• RPI rank
• WIS rank (the system used for the Top 25 rankings)
• Whether the team was conference champion
• Whether the team made the PIT
• PIT wins
• Whether the team made the National Tournament
• National Tournament wins
• Whether the team won the National Championship

• Current prestige
• The school's traditional power (does not change)
• Success of the school's conference relative to the average in the world
• Success of the school (as described above) relative to the average in the world

Also, if a school has one or more players drafted, that will give an additional boost to prestige - the amount depends on the number of players drafted and where in the draft they were picked. The higher the pick, the bigger the boost. This change won't be seen until the draft is completed, and is not reflected in the prestige that you see in your team history page within your team profile.

A couple of important notes about prestige:

• It's tempting to compare prestige between schools, but that can be difficult and misleading due to all the factors that are involved.
• As noted above, just because the letter grade you see doesn't change, that does not mean your prestige didn't improve. It just wasn't enough to move to the next letter grade.
• There are times where a school's prestige may drop even though they had a good season. That is normally caused by other successful seasons becoming older, and thus weighted less in the past 4 season success calculation. Or it can be caused by a weak conference.
• One or two average to poor seasons in that 4-season window can have a significant effect on prestige, so they can't be overlooked.

Between seasons, home court advantage is reset based on traditional fan loyalty of the college, and the success of the team in the previous season.

The RPI (rating percentage index) is a standardized formula based on winning percentages, and the Top 25 rankings are a simulated media poll.

More information about RPI can be found in article #349. More information about the Top 25 rankings can be found in article #804.

Yes, the jobs are limited based on the number of schools. In Division III, there are 384 jobs - once those are full, no new coaches would be able to signup in that world. As coaches are successful and accept jobs in Division II, their old jobs would then be available to be filled by new coaches. The same would be true of a coach who decides not to play in a subsequent season (see "What happens if I don't renew my team?" below) - his job would then be open for a new coach.

If all of the jobs are taken in a World, you will see a note that your name has been automatically added to the wait list. When jobs open up as other coaches accept positions at other schools, the coaches on the wait list will be emailed regarding the job opening. Jobs are filled on a first come, first served basis.

• Lose opening round game: $3 in credits
• Lose second round game: $5 in credits
• Lose Sweet 16 game: $10 in credits
• Lose Elite 8 game: $15 in credits
• Lose Final Four game: $20 in credits
• Lose Championship game: 4,000 reward points
• National Champion: 6,000 reward points

When you purchase seasons for HD, they go into a pool of available seasons. The pool of seasons is then used for renewing your team.

To manage renewal settings for each world, click the "Manage Renewals" link under the Office menu. From there, you have two different ways to reserve a season for a particular world, ensuring that you won't lose your team.

The first way is by clicking the action link on the right to immediately reserve a season from your available pool for that world. You can also undo a renewal by clicking the action link for a world that already has a season reserved for it.

The second way to renew is to set that world to auto-renew. Then, just before the renewal deadline for that world, the system will automatically reserve a season from your pool. Note: you must have available seasons in your pool at the renewal deadline for the world or the auto-renew will fail and you'll lose your team. Auto-renew will never purchase new seasons for you with your credits or credit card.

The prestige of the school may go up or down based on the prestige of your last job. If you're moving up a division, then the school prestige will drop, and if you're moving down a division it may go up. When you're moving within the same division and you are coming from a higher prestige school, your new school may get a small increase in prestige. If you're coming from a lower prestige school (as is most common), you may see a decrease in the school's prestige.

This change accounts for the impact a new coach will have on the national perception of a school, especially in recruiting.

Each school requires a minimum level of recent success from a potential coach, which differs depending on the level of the school. The better the school, the more success required.

A coach's success is measured by looking at his team's results over the past 10 seasons. If a coach hasn't coached a full 10 seasons, then it looks at all seasons coached. The more recent the season, the more weight it's given - so the most recent season carries the most weight in the overall success of a coach.

The success of a individual season is based on the following items:

• RPI rank
• Top 25 rank
• Whether you won the conference title
• Whether you won conference coach of the year
• Whether you made the National Tournament
• How far you advanced in the National Tournament
• Whether you made the Postseason Invitational Tournament
• How far you advanced in the Postseason Invitational Tournament

When you browse the list of job openings, each one will have a brief bit of advice from your agent, which will give you an indication of whether you're qualified.

There are multiple factors that a school uses to decide whether to accept your application, including but not limited to (and not necessarily in this order):

• Overall Experience
• Recent Success (going back at most 10 seasons)
• Reputation
• Loyalty

Your loyalty grade represents how loyal you've been during your coaching career at the various schools you've coached. Coaches are graded from A+ (best) to F (worst). For each season you remain at the same school, your loyalty will improve.

Every time you make a career change, your loyalty takes a hit. The hit is based on the prestige of the school you are moving to relative to the prestige of your current school, as well as your prior length of stay at that school.

While your loyalty won't hurt your recruiting efforts, it may certainly keep you from making another job change as Athletic Directors are going to want a coach who will stay and build their program instead of using it as a stepping-stone. Please note that applying for other jobs does not impact your loyalty rating.

NOTE: All new coaches begin with a loyalty rating of B-.

Also, each player has a Free Throw Grade, which indicates free throw shooting ability, and ranges from A+ (great) to F (very poor).

Yes, based on the stamina of the player, how many minutes he's playing, the style of defense, offensive tempo, and stoppages in the game, players can get tired which can impact performance. There is no game to game fatigue – meaning everyone starts every game at 100%. The stamina ratings refer to their in-game conditioning. For example, playing a player with a 20 stamina rating for 35 minutes is not a good idea – he’ll stay in the game, but he’ll be tired and play worse.

Durability refers to their likelihood of injury - and if they do get injured, how quickly they can recover.

Player roles are basically a way to assign a custom overall rating to players. When you create a player role formula, you apply a weighting to each rating. The overall rating for a player using that role is then calculated by applying those percentage weights to the player's ratings and then adding them all up.

These custom formulas can be used in a number of ways to make evaluating players easier:

• On the recruiting search page, the "Overall Rating" option lets you choose whether to use the default overall rating, or one of the player roles you've defined.
• On the recruiting compare list popup page, you can select from your role formulas to compare the selected players.
• On the User Settings page, you can designate whether to use the default overall rating or you can designate a different player role for each position. If you use player roles, any time you see a player's overall rating, it will be calculated based on the role you've designated for his position.

• the team is in your conference
• the team has already filled that spot
• you have already scheduled a game against that team
• you have already requested a game with that team for that spot
• the coach of that team does not have a season available, and therefore can not be challenged for non-conference games

Go to your schedule, click on 'Schedule Exhibition'. Choose a team to challenge from the list. If it is an AI team, the game will automatically be added to your schedule. If the team is coached by another user, then they'll see a 'pending challenge' - which they can either accept or reject.

You may schedule up to 2 exhibition games per season. Games must be scheduled prior to 1 PM EST to be played that day. Once a game is scheduled, it can not be cancelled.

Every game played helps your players improve by giving them more game experience - exhibition games are no exception. In addition, it's also a great opportunity for coaches to experiment with different lineups, depths, tempos, etc. Those are the logical reasons to play exhibition games. Other possible reasons could include the desire to take on a buddy in another conference, or perhaps you want to see how your team stacks up with the elite programs in DI.

The downside to playing an exhibition game is that you always risk having a player go down with an injury.

Overall Conference record, at the conclusion of the regular season, is used to seed teams 1 through 12. There are also several tie-breakers that may be necessary.

The following procedures are set up to establish seeding for the championship and to break ties. Follow the appropriate steps in order.

Two-way Tie (2 teams in the same division conclude the regular season with the same conference record)

1. Regular season head-to-head results (one game or two). If the tied teams split their two games, then proceed to Step #2 below.
2. Overall record. If the tied teams had identical overall winning percentages, then proceed to Step #3 below.
3. RPI ranking

Multiple-Team Tie (3 or more teams in the same division conclude the regular season with the same conference record)

1. Teams are viewed as a “mini-conference” when comparing head-to-head results. The team with the best record (as determined by winning percentage, even if unequal games) vs. the other teams in the mini-conference gains the advantage. If two or more teams, but not all, have the same best winning percentage in the mini-conference (likely implies same number of games played in mini-conference), only those specific teams advance to the next tie-breaker Step 2 below. After the top team in a mini-conference is determined, the next team is ranked by its record in the original mini-conference. If there are any remaining teams tied by their record in the mini-conference, then they will proceed to Step #2 below to determine the higher seed.
2. Overall record. If the tied teams had identical overall winning percentages, then proceed to Step #3 below.
3. RPI ranking

National Tournament selection and seeding both rely on the same logic.

The logic for ranking teams for the postseason essentially calculates a score for each game on the team's schedule. This game score is determined by the following components:

• Result (win or loss)
• RPI rank of the opponent
• Top 25 rank of the opponent (this rank is actually calculated and used for all teams, even beyond the top 25)
• Score margin of the game
• Location (home, away, or neutral court)

Once the tournament field has been determined, then the seeding process will begin, using the same evaluation logic. Some teams may be moved slightly in order to avoid same-conference match-ups early in the tournament.

Once the National Tournament bids have been handed out, the PostSeason Invitational teams are selected using the same process.

Note: teams must have a minimum of .500 win% to qualify for National Tournament at-large bids and a minimum .425 win% to qualify for the Postseason Invitational.

Tournament seeding is not directly based on RPI or SOS. Often a team can have a high RPI without actually having many impressive wins.

For full details on what goes into selection and seeding, reference article #352.

Work ethic does not change based on practice minutes. It will change based on playing time and starts.

With regards to the offenses and defenses, the more practice and playing time a player receives under each set, the better the offense will function with regards to efficiency, and the same holds true on defense. If you have 5 Seniors who have been practicing your offense and defense for 4 years, you'll have a very "smart" team on the floor. Whereas if you try to switch your offense and/or defense in mid-season, many players will have to spend time learning the new system which can lead to poor shot selection, unforced turnovers, and missed assignments on defense.

Each player is different, but the general rule of thumb is that the closer a players GPA is to 2.0, the more study hall time he'll need to stay eligible. Also, the more important role he plays on your team, the more you'll want to try to ensure he makes the 2.0 GPA cutoff. Heavy study hall minutes do NOT guarantee a player will be eligible. It just improves the odds of eligibility.

You'll receive mid-term academic progress reports on each player, so it may be necessary to adjust study hall minutes at that time.

The RPI (Rating Percentage Index) is a measure of strength of schedule, and how a team does against that schedule. It does not consider margin of victory. It is used by the WCAA as one of the factors in deciding which teams to invite to the National Tournament and where to seed them.

The basic formula is 25% team winning percentage (WP), 50% opponents' average winning percentage (OWP), and 25% opponents' opponents' average winning percentage (OOWP). When calculating winning percentage (WP), the RPI weights a road win as 1.4 x a normal win, a home loss as 1.4 x a normal loss, a road loss as 0.6 x a normal loss and a home win as 0.6 x a normal win - neutral site games are not adjusted (weighted at 1.0).

Top 25 rankings are based on a combination of talent and game results. The "talent" portion is calculated by looking at the skill ratings of players (excluding Work Ethic, Stamina, and Durability), with more weight given to a team's top 5 players. The "game results" portion is based on opponent rank, score margin, and result (win or loss) for each completed game.

Before the season starts, all weight is placed on talent - and then as the season progresses, more and more weight is placed on game results. By the end of the season, almost all of the weight is on game results.

There may be significant movement of teams early in the season because there are so few games, but as the season moves along, the best teams will rise to the top.

Conference awards are based on stats accumulated during conference games. Each award has its own factors for determination as indicated below.

Player of the Year: Scoring, Scoring Efficiency, Steals, Assists, Blocks, Rebounds, Turnovers, Fouls, Team Success

Defensive Player of the Year: Steals, Blocks, Fouls, Defense Rating

All-Conference: Same as Player of the Year

Freshman of the Year: Same as Player of the Year, but only including freshmen

National awards are based on stats accumulated during the entire season. Each award has its own factors for determination as indicated below.

Player of the Year: Scoring, Scoring Efficiency, Steals, Assists, Blocks, Rebounds, Turnovers, Fouls, Team Success

Defensive Player of the Year: Steals, Blocks, Defense Rating

Freshman of the Year: Same as Player of the Year, but only including freshmen

All-American: Same as Player of the Year