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I am not going to lie until the one dunk I was thinking can this dude even dunk? lol

Doubt this will have any effect on her decision, but the longtime coach at Ojo's high school (about 10 minutes from where I live) has retired. Won over 700 game and 16 -- yes 16 -- state titles. Think the chances of her wearing cream & crimson are extremely slim anyway. https://www.pilotonline.com/2026/05/04/darnell-dozier-retires-after-guiding-princess-anne-to-record-16-girls-basketball-state-championships/

This is pretty funny.

Yes for sure. That's kind of what i meant when I initially posted. Iowa puts lineman in the league and has a great developmental program for them. There would be no dropoff in going there vs IU if that's where they want to go. I think the only difference at this point would be IUs CURRENT success going to CFP and winning the natty.

Iowa is a top 25 team and has fantastic offensive line development. Programs of that caliber (just like IU) are going to sell development and results, not guarantees of anything. Highly ranked, confident recruits largely want that; not any promises, because they think that they will rise to the top if allowed to compete for a role. So if this kid loves the vibe at Iowa and commits there? I get it. If he loves IU even more and commits to us? I get that too and think it would be the best decision he'll ever make.

Nowadays it might be able to make that promise and mean it to a 5 star. Because if you are paying them it will be hard to afford enough guys to knock them down the depth chart. I think you just frame it as “Currently we project you as a starter, if you come in and do the things we ask we fully expect you to start”. Anybody scared off by that I wouldn’t want anyway. But if Iowa projects this guy as a starter and we don’t their pitch could be more appealing. We can make that pitch to Brewster and Sales I think safely because it just one less stud we go get from the portal

So we've already got these roles covered: Yigi = Mara Sherrell = Morez Johnson Sisley = Tschetter Ben Winker = Yaxel Landenborg Winner.

For sure. Kids that want guaranteed playing time can go elsewhere. That's likely why we are having issues closing on more of these top recruits (5 star/high 4 star). They want more than we are willing to give. I would think most programs would have a hard time guaranteeing anything to freshman but I guess some will say/do anything to get the players they want.

He’s probably a top priority for Iowa. He might be a priority for us but we might not be willing to stroke his ego. Cig doesn’t promise playing time either. We are going to lose kids who aren’t a culture fit. That’s a good thing.

If it's IU and Iowa...Iowa just put a bunch of lineman in the NFL as well. If that's the ultimate goal vs winning or playing in CFP, then I guess no difference. Sucks we are still having issues closing with in state kids, but we seem to be in on many lineman so hopefully losing out on this one won't be as big of a loss.

UConn has been in 3 of the last 4 title games and won two of them playing exclusively with one big on the court. More than one way to win

Lendeborg was a highly skilled wing who happened to be huge. Obviously a game changer, but there aren't many of those guys around in college ball. Johnson played about half of his minutes alongside Mara, the other half Johnson was the 5. I expect we will deploy Sherrell in a similar fashion. The backup "big" for Michigan was Will Tschetter - Sisley will fill that role for us.

14th out of 18th or 17th or whatever in the B1G. I think we were projected in the top 5. Been a bad season for sure. Always curious what a rebuild looks like or if guys would stay. We seem to have some talent that would be nice to retain. I guess either way, probably time for a new direction, sadly, because I wanted him to succeed.

Agree. Yig, Sherrell, and Sisley are likely to eat up nearly all of the 4/5 minutes in an 8-man rotation. We absolutely need another big for depth, but it's only a 0-10 mpg slot we are offering unless someone gets hurt. Best case scenario is to strike gold on someone like Alexis again. But a Sparks type is probably more likely.

True, but Dusty seems to know how to get those players like Wolfe that have Big10 size/high IQ type players and have enough depth to keep them fresh enough throughout the season and it looks like he will continue that model going forward. I think it is short sighted to play one Big in this era of college basketball, especially in the B10. It's all about identifying the right players that can work for this system and be competitive in the upper tier of the league. I really do hope that all those years of experience we now have on staff will be able to navigate this and lock down a roster that we can be confident in. It's not over yet so maybe we have some hot irons in the fire for quality depth, but that comment Wayne was talking about that Rabby said we were only looking for practice players to round out the roster doesn't inspire confidence.

An impressive lack of dunks for a 6'11 guy in his highlight reel lol

In town to sign on the dotted line, meanwhile, he is checking everything out before make it official.

Since it's a highlight reel for a young, untested player I was looking for signs of athleticism. Nope - didn't see any!

That's because Landenborg was able to guard 1-5 and played some point guard on offense. When you get a very rare 6'10 player like that it opens lots of possibilities. Again; that is a very, very rare player.

And kept them fresh. Mara and Johnson each played less than 25 mpg. Running Samet and Sherrell out there for 30+ mpg a night is going to be a disaster. You almost have to do it because the drop off is going to be significant.

Michigan dominated last year because they figured out how to use Lenderborg, Mara and Johnson. Thats a better plan than using one Big in todays game as we just experienced IMO.

Agree. It’s in a coach’s best interests downplay how much they have to spend and overestimate how much his competitors have.

You need a big in case of fouls or injury but I really doubt anyone that comes in makes the actual rotation. Devries has never played with two bigs before. Splitting Yigi and Sherrel would mean about 20mpg of two bigs together and 20mpg where one of them is the singular big. You can’t get a quality backup big that doesn’t fit in the rotation and just force them on the floor if there’s an injury. Most coaches will just go small at that point. Even 7’ center addict Matt Painter went small when faced with an injury 2 years ago. It would be really weird for a “small ball/4-out” coach like Devries to not do the same if faced with an injury. Woody was committed to 80 mins per game of post play and we still ended up with backups like Hatton, Sparks, and Duncomb. I’d expect something like that at best for our last big spot.

That's an excellent long form piece. I didn’t know the longer background with Cig. I wasn't around for '75-'76. I always wondered what that was like, especially since that sort of athletics success at IU seemed very unlikely to occur again. I can't believe I got to experience something even more amazing. And IUFB likely isn't done being very good. Thanks Curt!

Mercer was able to hold it together the last few years but its been a slow descent, with the wheels finally coming off this year. Hoping for a few miracles this weekend but not holding my breath.