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The league doesn’t want teams giving up if their best player goes down? That tracks. Am I now hearing that the league “rigged the draft” to place the Pacers at fifth? When the odds of them getting the fifth pick were quite literally higher than for any other slot? (The next highest chance was that they’d be sixth) Tin foil hats are mighty flexible but that’s a lot to process.

Not seeing many options left on the domestic front. Really wondering how they are going to finish out this roster. I would be satisfied with another rotational big to play the 4/5 with Aiden and Samet and then another practice player. Spend the money on someone who is going to contribute. Several Euro big men options out there but the problem is North Carolina, Kentucky, BYU, and LSU and others are chasing them too. Sorry Mr. Sokolov but would not be happy going into the season with just 3 playable bigs.

Its time for a change if IU cares about this program. Mercer took 2010's first world problems of tough draws and bad rules after yearly postseason appearances, and lowered it to third world legit problems of being amongst the worst in the league the last few years. Fred Glass did some stuff well, but had absolutely no idea how to hire a baseball coach or what qualities to look for. When I heard Lemonis and Rich Maloney were the finalists after Tracy Smith was poached, I was very worried as Lemonis had no head coaching experience and Maloney failed at Michigan as soon as league got tougher. While Lemonis did OK and was clearly the better choice of those two and did a decent job, fans now seem to have a sanitized view of his tenure where player development was a real struggle. The man could recruit better than anyone but had no idea how to make the players better once they got here. Glass learned nothing when he hired Mercer who was from area, but babysat a Wright State program playing at a Bart Kaufman Field type facility while rest of league played at Sembower Field type places in a very easy conference. Furthermore, every Wright State coach who has gone on to higher jobs has failed given the built in advantages there. As I said on a previous page of this thread, Brian Smiley is also from the area, but actually has built the same school Smith did back into a mid-major power after years of struggle since Smith came here. When identifying a coach, whether its Smiley or someone else (and there are a few in that same boat who would work at IU but Smiley is the local one with this trait), it is imperative to make sure you hire someone with head coaching experience who actually built the lower level program they were at and Glass seemed to have zero concept of this when hiring coaches across the board. Given NIL and where college sports are at, I kind of understand letting baseball limp along to keep money funneling towards other more important sports. However, keeping Mercer beyond this season would be an admission by athletic department that the results are no longer important and they are OK going back to Sembower days as much as I would disagree with it.

Not really when IU's resume as a whole. I had them sixth or seventh from bottom, but safely in, and if committee had them fourth from bottom, they are looking at same objective data and have them in same stratosphere. Best win was Washington in Big Ten Tournament and other than that a series win at Michigan, who was the very last team in and is in an identity crisis with their current coach not living up to her legendary predecessor. Also got dominated by UCLA, Oregon, and Nebraska who were the cream of the league. 42-14 record looks great, but you beat up on bad teams and had a few bumps on the resume. None of this is fatal to not making it, but definitely puts you firmly at the back of the field with a mid 30's RPI. It was slightly closer than I thought, but only barely, and the fact we are debating if the team was a few spots to close to the bubble and a brutal draw, is the ultimate compliment to the program Shonda Stanton has built. These are first world problems for the culture Stanton has built as a yearly postseason squad based on offense with elite power and base stealing and a fun dugout atmosphere. No one has been close to this for IU since the 1980's, and what baseball was in 2010's and needs to get back to. As long as you are in the field in softball or baseball, getting in is all that matters. Getting upset over being a couple spots closer to bubble than thought is not worth it. Instead, lets celebrate the culture and identity that the program has built now which is actually what is important.

It's not about benefitting those teams. It's about punishing a team perceived to be cheating its way into a top 4 pick. In a given year, the bottom 4 NBA teams are epically bad. It takes years of bad drafting, misevaluations, unfortunate breaks and a ton of losing for any team to find itself there. In other words, not teams that are one year removed from a runner-up finish. The Pacers were a pretty extreme case. If the rest of their roster stayed healthy, they're probably just outside the playoffs. The league was so convinced they were tanking, they actually told them to medicate Aaron Nesmith and encourage him to play. To outsiders, I'm sure it looked suspect. The NBA doesn't want teams giving up if their best player goes down. NBA games are already a tough watch during the regular season.

This year they “rigged the draft” to benefit the Wizards, Utah, and Memphis? Gonna be hard to fit a tin foil hat on that.

David Stern was the worst before him as well. It’s been decades of crap leadership

They said on the selection show we were one of the last 4 in, which is an absolute crock of s**t.

Assuming good roster health 10 a game from Harris would absolutely work.

To Seton Hall. So with a good year will probably be back in the portal next spring.

Full tournament bracket at: https://www.ncaa.com/brackets/print/softball/d1/2026

It cannot be overstated that Adam Silver is the worst commissioner in sports. I used to love the NBA, but he is driving thia product so far into the ground. Tanking is not the issue he thinks it is, and its my speculation that he uses tanking as a guise to hide the real problems of gambling, egregious officiating, and the Aspiration scandal (which he has yet to address, as his buddy Ballmer can't be touched). I'm not even a Pacers fan and know you guys got robbed.

Women will open NCAA tournament play in Knoxville next weekend. Waiting for the NCAA to post the full brackets and schedules.

He's hottttt

NO getting Zion after trading AD, and then Dallas getting Flagg after trading Luka. And countless other examples. The rigging is beyond obvious. And Adam Silver is just a terrible commissioner. Teams “tank” because the draft is the only way small market teams can really build a contender. Order the draft based on record like the NFL and be done with it. No one whines about tanking in the NFL. But Adam Silver treats it like a plague that must be completely eradicated.

It’s stupid that one of the worst teams has a coin flip on having a top 4 pick in the first place. Odds designed to help them rig the draft

Of note: this tool predicts Harris will average 9.9 pts at IU and that Dorn will average 8.5 pts at Miami.

The Spurs have picked first for Wemby, Duncan, and David Robinson. At least 2/3 were egregious tank jobs. Yet the league punished the Pacers for not even fully tanking this year, in reality what was just accepting being bad in an obvious down year. NBA is a shitshow run by r*****s.

I'm not well-versed in how odds are calculated, but when I saw the Pacers' chances of keeping the pick were only 52%, I knew it was gone. That's basically a coin flip.

This, and minor league baseball.

Roger Clemens Sokolov, he can bring the heat

Somebody I think ran the math and basically the results of the draft being not rigged are incredibly unlikely. I haven’t seen the data but it was something mind blowingly impossible

Yea the alleged chilled envelope was the first draft conspiracy theory I can think of. There is a chance it was true…

It was 6-2 PU after 5 innings. We scored 5 in our 6th but the PUkesters scored 2 of their own and added 3 in their 7th. We picked up 1 run in the 8th but return to Bloomington winless in West Laffy. Final score 11-8. For the weekend, PUke scored 27 runs against us. Today, PUke had 16 hits off 5 Hoosier pitchers - 9 of them were for extra bases. One more weekend to suffer through.

The NBA lottery is the 1 thing in sports I’m completely confident is rigged. Not every year, but whenever the League office sees value in a specific outcome. I’m been telling people for months that since the Zubac trade made it top 4 protected the Pacers’ pick would land 5th, if it was top 3 they would have landed 4th, because Silver wanted to make it as publicly clear as he could while maintaining deniability that if he considered what you were doing tanking you weren’t gonna get paid off. Whenever he’s asked about it, and he’s too smart to do it though I’d give anything if he did, I’d love to hear Pritchard reply, “Yeah, 5th. That’s as subtle as a kick in the teeth, huh.”