Also not a big expert but here goes (from my experience)
Almost always use scouting combine (can't think of when not to use it). This gives you ages and height of players. Then look at the 18 year olds as they are best to train. If you wanna train big guys, look for 18 year old tall guys, and vice versa for guards.
I don't know how efficient this is, but I've been told you can use group demonstration in conjunction with scouting combine. However the condition is that there has to be at least 10 draftees who are 18 years old within the 1-2 ball prospects, this makes it essentially scouting 10 or more 18 year olds for the price of 10. Then do your interviews. This is where hit and miss kinda comes in. Star rating can go from 5 to 2 and 2 to 5 after the interview.
All in all, generally you go
Age -> height (if you want a specific position trainee) -> potential -> star rating -> grade rating
I've always wondered whats the difference between star rating and grade rating. I don't have 100% answer, but from what I've read in forum posts, star rating are the starting skill levels while grade rating are the sub-levels of the skills.
E.g. star rating indicates the skill is 'Respectable' which is 7 but the grade rating A+ indicates it's has a value of 7.8 rather than 7.2
Last edited by jeffjeff at 2/13/2013 8:53:31 PM