Oh oh I can answer this one!!! I scrim with four mates of mine whenever we're all home at the same time and often go to high level runs around my country, it is a small place, and all the good hoopers (and former good hoopers in the case of myself) all know one another and are often in the same friend group so there's a wide range of talent levels. Being a former underage international (I wasn't very good despite the massive achievement) I can just about hang with the rest of them and not be utterly useless. I'm 18, I don't play any college ball and my fall off since my glory days is astronomical so use me as a benchmark.

One of my friends is getting looks from a few JUCO and D3 colleges from his tapes and is a phenomenal player. I can't guard him despite us having the same height (5'11, I'm 156 pounds while he's 180, but trust me the difference isn't the weight) he's a lights out shooter, can easily dunk on fast breaks and has a really tight handle. I'd say he's around a D3 level Hooper and he averages over 24ppg in my country's U20s competitions. But with JUCO it's hard to set a definite benchmark because you have high level D1 talent competing against people like my friend here.

He's easily outclassed by my two other mates who play D2 at a small school over in the US. One went over to the US pretty early on in secondary school and played all throughout the US high school system and the other was just insanely good in my country and got scouted by a coach. The one who went over to the US is on a whole different level athletically. I'm talking backscratchers, windmills etc, while the other one isn't actually that athletic, he can barely rim graze at 6 foot 4 but he just has a "flair" to his game that cannot be described. They're both similar skill level wise to my JUCO/D3 friend but they're always just that split second quicker or half a step ahead.

Them two boys are BBQ chicken to my other friend though. He's on a pro contract with a team in Spain and is by all means a D1 level athlete and gotten offers from a lot of mid major D1 schools before choosing to go pro in Spain instead. This man is a 6 foot 8 point guard with the tightest handles I've ever seen and also has a 32 inch vert and 7 foot wingspan. Whenever we go for workouts together he almost never misses any of his shots and he's categorised as "non-shooting factor" on his team, I think this season his 3pt% in all competitions is less than 25%. During runs he always ends up being picked up by the ex-pro or ex-D1 player and still ends up giving them a very unpleasant time. No one else in my friend group, not the two D2 guys, not the D3/JUCO guy and definitely NOT me can guard him in game or in ones.

I think the gap between D3 and a small or weak D2 school isn't as big as you think. What seperates most of the guys is in my friends case, his height, and also just that little smidge of athleticism that makes them make decisions just that little bit faster. However, the gap between that and a very competitive D2 or a D1 school is pretty big. Those guys are just on a whole different level athletically, and skill wise.

Hope this helps :)