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What if we were mentally tough? That'd be a fantastic change.

Checking in today.

I just think it’s funny how FANS think they’re qualified to determine how IU allocated their NIL. I understand opinions but some of you swear you know the answer to a lot lol

This post reads like you’ve seen the payroll and compared it to other payrolls you’ve seen.

I am sure what is missing in most people's minds is the idea that we might have a coach that can actually coach his team up, improve the skills of his players, and make everyone better. IU hasn't had a coach who is capable of improving his team in quite some time. I am excited to see how these players come together and improve over the course of the season. It should be fun to watch.

IMO it’s pretty easy to get excited about this roster, even with valid questions about the 5 spot / defense. If Conerway and Bailey translate well the team can be very good IMO. I guess that’s a gamble in some ways and can be viewed as overpaying for “unheralded” guys (I don’t find that totally accurate). Maybe they seem like a reach if you were expecting us to sign Ian Jackson and Jayden Quaintnance (#1 ranked C on 247 is listed at 6’9 230…). I really value their mid-major productivity and think they’re a pretty good bet. TBD on some of the other guys, but I think we can be confident in a pretty competent rotation of 8 or so guys emerging as the season goes on. The years of suckage have really conditioned people to expect the worst, I think.

That’s how a market works. This is exactly how the market works in something like NFL free agency, which is basically an open bidding market with teams having variable amounts of money available. 1) You have to be the highest bidder, thus every signee is an “overpay” 2) it is always cheaper to keep your own players. Sometimes you get a hometown discount, but mostly because guys prefer not to move and you just wait to see what the market is and match it. It’s why even in the NFL you need to build through things like the draft. #2 is why guys like edey and Braden smith ultimately stay at Purdue despite fielding some huge offers. The best big time players don’t hit the market and it’s why teams go heavy after mid majors. People that were expecting a top ten NIL to translate to a top ten roster year one were simply unprepared for how the process would unfold. Teams that change coaches are at a disadvantage especially if they’re not bringing over a bunch of players from their old team. Apparently Dolson understood this and moved quickly to get CDD in early for a reason.

Every player committed had other p5 visits... either lined up or had taken them previously. Oh, well, Tucker didn't.

Not a single big on the staff. I was hoping for at least one rim protector.

Kenpom had them ranked 85th preseason on defense and they finished 15th on defense at the end. I mean he would have won 20+ games if his son didn’t get injured as they had the majority of their Q1 wins with him starting at the beginning. He increased Javon Smalls PER by 6. There are a lot of positives if you think about it.

Well said. On #1, if you're a very good coach at an amazing program you can probably get a small discount in some instances (selling development, winning, and exposure in place of money), but it won't be much. With IU and CDD starting from scratch, I think we could win some battles where the money was even, but winning as the #2 or #3 bid would be tough at this stage. Also, we really don't know who we "overpaid" or got a great deal for until these players play the friggin' games!

No offense but you have quite literally zero credentials to tell anyone how much these players cost on the open market.

Any ideas what to title his new thread to get focussed discussion of portal players with IU interest? Would something like "Overpaying mid major talent and the horrors of not being ranked in the preseason top 25," work? Or would that likely attract discussion of slow coaching staff construction and favorite Bloomington eateries?

Would Walter Clayton had been an overpay if it took $2 million to get him? Genuine question, your logic seems to be if he’s a mid major it’s an overpay and yet Clayton just led his team to a championship so I’m trying to figure out if you’re actually consistent with the logic.

Lots of offense options. Will we have assembled an Alabama-level roster, or will we have assembled an Iowa-level roster? Anyone who says they already know is guessing. Gonna be pretty fun to find out.

The point the Debbie downers were trying to make was basically our roster isn’t as good as it could be because we didn’t spend money. (Paraphrasing here) Regardless, this roster looks solid by all accounts, especially on the shooting front. If our main weakness is “rim protection” I can live with that in year 1 of a “tear it down to the studs” rebuild.

No Mike Woodson guys on the roster is enough for me to get excited about the team.

DeVries is cooking. Just stole an SEC teams top assistant. A sec team that just went to back to back elite 8s. Not even May and DeVries has 3 assistants that are known to get dudes and has a roster of 11 possibly 12. Heck of a job in my opinion. Impressed

Bailey’s defensive numbers are really really bad, and that was in a weaker conference. We was one of our earliest pickups, so it’s hindsight, but a defensive-minded center would’ve fit better with the way the rest of the roster has shaped out.

We've beaten out Kentucky, Gonzaga, Ole Miss, Auburn, and Maryland for portal transfers this year. That's just off the top of my head. All of these programs have been better than ours the past 5-10 years. Snagged a reserve player from the national champions. If Tucker Devries wasn't related to our head coach, he would have been able to pick any school in the country to go to. Yeah we've got cash, but we are not some outlier program that has gobs of money to outbid every program for any target we want especially when we have 12 spots to fill. Every school has money.

Are we still doing the roster construction/NIL melodramatic histrionics thing today? Asking for a friend

Can’t understate how much I prefer CDD’s offense to Woody’s or Bama’s. When Bama is making 3s they are tough to beat but when the shots are not falling… boy, is that some pitiful basketball. Think most everyone will enjoy the new style of play this season after our past 8 years.

Me too! But the entire point of a message board is to share opinions, so there will of course always be ones you don’t agree with. People not interested in reading food for thought from other random guys on the Internet probably should spend time elsewhere.

What roster would you have assembled if you could?

Yes back to the basket bigs is a cause for concern, but equally important, I don't think a combination of Wilkerson, Miles/Dorn, and DeVries 2-4 inspires a great deal of confidence guarding out on the perimeter either. That's why, in my opinion, the need for a true rim protector is so great. I think Conerway is a good on-ball defender who should be able to hold his own at this level and Enright will certainly scrap his way to making some stands, but overall this roster on paper seems like a rather poor defensive team as a whole. A solid rebounding rim protector alleviates some of those issues.

There is a lot of insanity happening right now. Gonzaga is not looking good. I think we got good value based on market prices and how astronomical it is. In addition, there have been kids who have signed but are still shopping themselves around. None of our kids but others.

Honestly we have a Hell of a good looking coaching staff. DeVries is killing it. So looking forward to watching a well-coached team again, that spaces the floor, gets out fast in transition, and drains 3’s.

Because multiple reputable sources have said so and every guy we’ve added we’ve been competing against power conference teems for. the evidence we didn’t pay $10M is waynefleekhoosier said so without having access to any information whatsoever.

For such a bad portal class IU is ranked 8th on 247 and 9th on ON3

Somebody sees a for sale in a gif and suddenly Leal is the talk of btb. Unreal.

He averaged 19 mpg and during the tourney he averaged 11 mpg. Again last year with a top 15 D he had a more offensive 5 and a defensive backup. He is doing that again I believe. Alexis had a higher block and rebounding percentage than Federiko. Alexis also was significantly better than Babo at the mid major level.

L’ville was an 8 seed and got beat by double digits by most good teams including getting trounced in the first round of the tourney. That’s certainly attainable with the roster we have. May and Pope did better jobs, so we’ll see how they build off of that this year. I expect that they do. But we’ll all expect CDD to do so in year 2 as well.

All I know is I am going to trust Devries who has coached for 20 years in the college game over my opinion or any other person on a message board

He's a 20-22 mpg piece that doesn't exist on the current roster. I've never made him out to be anything more than that lol. A 22/18 minute split with Federiko/Alexis at the 5 next year perfectly compliments the remaining personnel.

if you watched his interview with the goofs from field of 68, Wilkerson mentioned that he needs to really step up his defense. I really like that about him because he recognizes what his not so strong point of his game is. I find Wilkerson is going to be our biggest one we put under a micro scope.

Wrong Davis. Hubert Davis of UNC is the Davis who is talked about in the article and is being referenced in the comment you replied to.

Would you like a merit badge for your merit-based opinion?

We might not have great individual defenders but hopefully we can be a good team defense. I also heard Wilkerson's high school coach talking about Wilkerson being a very good defender and was named the states best defender. He thinks that Wilkerson will be a very good defender at IU

So we might not be a perfect "rim protecting" team or "rebounding" team.... we were absolutely pathetic rebounding this past year, so that doesn't worry me in the least bit.... Really... Trey Kaufmann is about the only individual who really worries me. And he'll have to guard TDV on the other end, and the South Dakota kid will have to guard Bailey. I like that.

Who gives a chit what these guys are getting paid? Not like we’ve spent so much we can’t fill out the roster. Money ball, overpay, market value… we’re all p!ssing into the wind over here without a clue, lmao. And we really think Trilly Donovan’s basically got the financial figures for everyone on every roster? The way he/they are perceived as a golden source of truth is pretty humorous considering they’ve admitted to not being as tapped into IU. Perhaps that’s changed with the new staff but I highly doubt they’re just sharing anything and everything with “Trilly Donovan” because he’s oh so trustworthy. And any intel from agents should be taken with a huge grain of salt. I’m an IUBB fan, couldn’t give a crap what the payroll is. Just win. I think this roster and coach can do that. Gonna have to wait to find out.

I tried explaining this in vain earlier in the thread. A guy like PJ Haggerty, who is really good, reportedly turned down $3m from Memphis as he was asking for $4m. Ole Miss reportedly offered him $3.5m. So the idea that all-conference mid major guys like Bailey or Conerway are making $1m+ should be pretty easy to see why this is the case. Conerway especially given he was the Sun Belt POY, really excited to have him.

It's part of it, but our average recruit ranking is still fairly high, it's 12th in the top 50, and that factors in several teams that only brought in 2 players. It's a very good class by recruiting rankings (not that means much, considering a guy like Carlisle was ranked 14th overall last year).

People who have access to the payroll don’t strike me as the type who would spend their time on BtownBanners lmao

Did Louisville go cheap last year? They spent and arguably a similar if not a worse on paper roster. DD spent what he had to and got (mostly) the kids he wanted.

Could be close. 2 mil each for DeVries and Wilkerson, that’s 4 mil. Than $500,000 each for 10 guys and that’s $5 mil. Add together for $9 mil. Seems to me more than likely we are at $10 mil or well over it for a 13 man roster, once its complete. I still believe you are a star gazer and want buzz. I want wins. Both would be great but that wasn’t ever going to happen unless we spent like $20 mil and just poached from every top team.

I don't Kenny Johnson is pretty big.

And not a peep from Goodman, he must only report assistants we talked to who didn't take the job.

One distinction; while CDD relies on the three ball far more than Woody, he hasn't had offenses that have been super-reliant on it. However, I would think that the days of a lot of our offense generated out of post feeds are all but over. Spread the floor with shooters and then drive or rim run, or run perimeter motion to free shooters. With Bama the percentage of three balls is extreme.

The things I REALLY liked about that, as I think this is something coach seems to have prioritized, is that he made sure guys were coming in with the right mindset. I think you made the point earlier about culture, or them playing hard, and if we actually have guys come in that have that "dog" in them, it won't matter what their previous stats say about them, they'll grow together.

I just want to see Indiana play team basketball again