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I think we are all basically saying the same thing ;) Maybe..just maybe the silence on the last player is going to be a good surprise!

1. Not doubting what you heard. 2. He wanted to be part of this! Strrrrong pickup.

I mean.. Dukes 9th man vs whatever Dorn was for us The gawking of Dorn is wild.

Good point…that may have cost us the first year more than we know.

Jai Lucas must have seen something about Dorn that he thought he could work with. He saw Duke plenty too. Dorn and Harris are pretty much both athletically limited with one primary skillset of shooting. Dorn is more proven than Harris at that skill. Maybe he can show more with more PT though

I thought we hired a GM for scouting services? Hopefully they noticed something about his game they think will surpass Dorn, maybe defense, IQ, higher ceiling in the long run? We’ll see I guess.

Are they better than Cam Boozer and Patrick Ngongba? Because that's who Harris played with when he shot 33% from 3 in 9.7mpg last year.

I have not seen anybody not acknowledge that this team is significantly better than last year, which is good, and we had to have it. Do some guys just want to nitpick and criticize? Maybe. Are some reflexively defensive? Maybe. Most likely we all are just posting opinions in good faith and differ on how we view some things. As you acknowledge, it's not like the roster is ironclad perfect, so of course there will be offseason message board fodder about personnel, budget, etc.

Our photoshoots are insane.

Wait till the Raiders win a couple games and Mark Davis has Fernando pulling all nighters at the casino PF Chang's. A different kind of the freshman 15.

If we ran out of money after 6 players, we paid Harris a lot. There’s no other explanation for such a poorly constructed roster.

Out of the 9 rotation guys (it was really 8 but let's count both Sisley and Miles) Dorn was 6th in offensive rating and 9th in defensive rating. He was bad last season and is not a Big Ten level starter on a good team, let alone a bad one. I'm not saying I know what Harris will be, but Dorn was the last returner I wanted us to bring back.

Elsa is monitoring

I agree this is the test year!

She just doesn’t get sports. Her nephew is the Brownsburg QB. But she doesn’t get it. My uncle remembers the brand of chip he spilled when Smarts shot went in. I don’t think she can fathom that kind of impactful memory from a sporting event

Ha. People can be crazy wrong. He wasn’t here long, but he’s on the Mount Rushmore of IU athletes. Never lost, Heisman, Natty, great person, and has the greatest play in IU history (tied with Keith perhaps). The general world of college football will be talking about him for years to come, let alone IU.

She may have kind of a point. Sure, they’ll revere his name, but after 5 years with the Raiders and he’s gone the full Ken Stabler with the the shoulder length hair, the beard, the Marlboro filterless hanging perpetually from his lip, the beer can surgically attached to his hand and barely able to function after the previous night’s debauchery will they actually recognize him?

I do think it’s relevant, whether HS or portal transfers good players want to go to winning programs. Teams like Duke et al sell themselves. Teams like UM have the last 2 decades of high level success. A blip of 2 years doesn’t change that. IU has been bad for a decade, there is no luster to the program, and when you’re rebuilding the entire roster and players have no idea who they’d be playing with if the join, then looking at a school that hasn’t won jack in a decade vs a winning program absolutely makes a difference. For me this is the test year for DeVries and his staff. They’re still somewhat in the same boat because they’re rebuilding again based on the way DeVries built from portal last year and we missed the tourney, but there were a number of good W’s and now he has size and better athleticism needed to win more consistently in the B1G. I just have a longer outlook than you guys, doesn’t mean I’m patient or happy with where we are, couldn’t be more impatient at this point. But if DeVries does better in conf and gets us into the tournament, then with multiple talented returning players with eligibility I think we’ll see us take off the following season — that’s what I’m banking on anyway

You don’t know what we actually had to spend on the portal, and from what what we do know multiple teams spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $10M plus. You say it would be impossible not to be in the top 5 but that’s just opinion without actual evidence. That we landed a better roster than last season minimally is obvious but you guys just keep nitpicking because you want to criticize. That’s all good have at it, but the only real problem I see is the inability to bring in a good backup big and another on ball guard.

Dorn is god a** awful We have zero clue what we're paying Harris.

He was 8 ppg 38% shooter on volume last year. It all counts. That’s more than practical for a 5th starter that plays a little over 20 mpg. Harris is going to need to far exceed that as a 6th man to justify paying 7+ figures. Dorn and someone like Del Jones probably cost similar to what IU paid Harris. Thats a ton more bang for your buck.

I tend to agree with this. Before the Penn State kick-off last year, a sideline reporter said to Cig, "Indiana has never won here at Beaver Stadium, how does that change today?" Cig: "This team has never played here." G-damn it he's the best. I think should fundamentally apply to IUBB. We've stunk for a long time, but all the people that stunk are pretty much entirely gone. Everyone that had to do with Mike Davis, Sampson's problems, Crean's down years, Archie, and Woody... are gone. I get it's technically not everyone, Scott & Pam were around for Woody (though as we know he was mostly pushed on them) and there are probably some meddling donors in the background that have been around for decades. But in general, all the people who struggled here are gone. And whatever the IU admin is now, it is natty capable. Now, our image isn't great after 30 years of struggles. Fair, that's a headwind, though not an insurmountable one. But another thing that's gone is the era we struggled in, the pre-NIL era. Now we've got ~#15 roster spend last year and ~#7-10 roster spend this year. We've never had this before. This is quite the advantage as we know. So, yes, we've not been good for a long time. And maybe there is something weird in the water in Bloomington that makes us mediocre at MBB. Not sure what that is but it's possible. But overall, this current IUBB program has almost nothing in common with the iterations of our program that struggled. Frankly, while I don't expect CDD to be Cig, I wouldn't mind CDD laying down a marker that the past is the past, this team has nothing to do with it, and things change now. I can kinda buy the excuses for season one... some of them. But this season he's been given everything needed to improve significantly. There is no reason IU can't be a six seed or better and think S16 this year, then build on that for season three and really start thinking big.

It seems that Alabama’s Preston Murphy and Texas Tech’s Achoki Moikobu, both of whom had previously worked with DeVries, may have taken a long time to decide they weren’t interested in joining his staff. That hesitation hurt us last year. However, pivoting to Kenny Johnson may ultimately prove to be a blessing in disguise.