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The fantastic son I am, I took my mom to Mother Bears on the west side for her 76th birthday last night. Around 7:30 in the evening, I looked up and Coach DDV, Rod Clark, and DDV daughter all walked in. After our dinner, we walked over to say welcome to Bloomington and told coach it was my mom's birthday and that she had spent 42 years working at the University. Super nice people, were so gracious, felt like we could have talked for an hour. My brother, who wasn't sold on the hire, has now met him, plus heard a couple of other stories has changed his tune.

Did they order the Dante's Inferno pizza? If not, I am not sold that this has been a good hire.

That is crazy. No offense to Leal but you really have to question a ranking that shows IU jumping 10 spots nationally by adding a bench guy. Makes zero sense.

Doubt it. We're experts here.

Happy Birthday. I will be celebrating my 49th in two weeks. I recommend taking any old person to Mother Bears for their birthday and treating them. 76% off for my mom last night was fantastic.

Happy birthday to your moms! My 45th is today!

With the roster just about finished, we can talk a bit more substantively about next year’s team. My level of pessimism / optimism oscillates quite a bit. I think you can objectively rate the roster anywhere from C+ to B/B+ as it stands today. But of course it could prove better or worse as the season plays out. Think we can have pretty strong confidence in TDV and Wilkerson being “guys” for us. Also think a lot depends on how Conerway and Bailey translate to their roles in the B10. TBD who the fifth starter will be but we need our starting PG and 5 to be real players at this level. Would think Dorn and Miles will compete to start at the 3, and Goode may too. Think we’ll need defense and rebounding in this unit so I tend toward Miles but maybe practice paints a different picture. Dorn could be an X factor / dark horse that elevates the team. Great catch and shooter, smart with the ball… can he pull his own weight on the boards and be a positive on D? Probably will depend on match ups / shake out as the season goes, but right now I’d see the starting lineup being: Conerway/Wilkerson/Miles/TDV/Bailey Very curious how much Alexis and Harris play and are used. Lots of interesting lineup combinations. Not sure how much we’re going to be able to run and score in 12 seconds or less since it seems like we’re going to do a lot of gang rebounding. Plenty of shooting, which makes me hopeful.

Being a fringe top-25 team to possibly being a bubble team seems like the most likely range of outcomes for this team. Obviously crazy things can happen to go more positive or negative but the Torvik rankings align with my own expectations heading into the season.

Kenny Johnson has entered the chat.

Why? Because we don't have a "fatal flaw." Some are judging the roster as if there needs to be certain pieces of certain sizes and profiles that fill certain criteria for the roster to be effective. If we have a dominant defensive post? That's just another tool in the kit, but every time we insert one type of player we remove the skill set of a guy like Bailey from the lineup. Winning happens when a staff instills: a culture, work ethic, a coherent scheme, and then recruits effectively to that culture, work ethic, and scheme. Will Darian Devries do the actual things that affect winning? Hell if I know - but he did so in a major way at Drake and to a solid extent in his year at WVU. If we instill a culture, work ethic, and effective scheme, opposing coaches will most certainly not be salivating at the thought of playing against our posts. In Edey's second year, St. Peters ended Purdump's season with a couple of 6'8" guys guarding Edey. In his junior (national player of the year) year, Farleigh Dickinson had a 6'7" post guarding him. Both of those teams adjusted on the defensive end and Edey couldn't effectively guard their posts on the spread out offensive end. Toughness, proper defensive principles, defensive scheme, making us hard to guard. That's what will win if we don't have a dominant defensive post.

A couple things likely drive that without knowing much about Torvik s exact formula. 1) Leal started about half the games last year, played 20mpg and has really good advanced metrics on defense and for things like WS. 2) The teams ranked 20-40 are probably all grouped really close together. In other words, you might jump ten spots but statistically you still all group together as teams that will all finish at about the same place

I'm the same as you, with one wrinkle -- I think this year will be a uniquely excellent test of DeVries as a coach because what this team needs to succeed is toughness, culture, and effort. They have the shooting, passing, etc., but a good coach could theoretically get them to rebound and defend as more than the sum of their parts. We haven't had a coach who can do that in a long time. So if this team is good, it won't just mean it's a fun season -- it will mean DeVries is the coach we want him to be. (I think DeVries understands all this better than us -- in fact, him getting guys like Bailey over traditional defenders is him betting on himself and his culture.)

Harris will also bump IU up. For some reason he isn’t listed on the roster or in the available transfer pool. FWIW, if you add Goode and Leal it moves IU into the 20s and that’s without adding Harris. EDIT: adding only Goode moves IU to 28. Adding Goode and Leal moves IU to 24. I would guess adding those two plus Harris puts IU around 20

It’s very likely because Devries knows a whole bunch-o-stuff that we do not know.

Just a FWIW, since I can't add Josh Harris to the roster on Torvik I added the most similarly rated power forward portal player on 247 that is currently unsigned (Doctor Bradley from Arkanas Pine-Bluff) and IU's ranking went from 38 to 31. If you then add Goode but not Leal (I am still very doubtful that Leal wins his appeal), IU moves to 24.

Preseason top 25 you say?... nevermind.

“Who’s the greatest modern American singer” sounds like a subjective question, except it’s not. The answer’s Aretha Franklin. What a freaking Titan. I’d never seen this before. Aretha doing “Natural Woman” as a tribute to the great Carole King, who co-wrote this with her and is losing her mind throughout. She was 73 here. Staggering. And if you’re not familiar with the symbolism of it, the dropping of the coat at the end is an old time gospel symbol of someone retiring. So unbelievably cool.

He posts under the name RoadToZion

IU has offered 6'8' Caleb Gaskins from Miami, FL. 5*, 247 composite #12. I've seen him listed as a SF and a PF but his twitter account says G. 247 I don't know if this is behind a paywall or not: https://247sports.com/college/indiana/article/indiana-basketball-recruiting-5-star-class-of-2026-forward-caleb-gaskins-lands-indiana-scholarship-offer-christopher-columbus-nightrydas-249661794/

Beagles are great dogs, except they like to bark a lot. Sorry, my mind was running. And I couldn't catch it.

Make the tournament, don’t make my eyes bleed when I watch, effort

I would prefer a player defending a bad coach to the press than one calling them out. Issues should be handled behind closed doors.

Eh not really. You could survive off the current roster alone if you had too. With keeping these two, you're essentially bringing back two B10 players with a wealth of experience. Goode is a very good volume shooter and Leal is a much better defender than people want to give credit for. Both are fairly low ceiling players but each have a pretty established floor, can't say the same for the majority of the roster which is pretty devoid of P5 experience. If Goode and Leal are your 8th and 9th guys, you're probably alright.

Now the inverse of the concern is the possibility of something like Conerway, Leal, then any 3 of Dorn, Miles, Harris, and Alexis as a pretty nasty unit defensively that still has some shooting and ball movement, if — big if — one or more of the younger guys really gets after it on that end

Our pitching staff is 13th in the conference in ERA. Our lineup is second in home runs, batting average, walks, on-base percentage and slugging percentage and #1 in RBI's and OPS.

This is oddly one thing that IUFB was ponying up for even before the Cig hire. They paid Ballou and Rhea handsomely and when they took off for Bama, went out and grabbed Wellman who was far from cheap. Hopefully we don't have to replace Owings for a long time.

Two competing concepts: Top 75 recruits, which Trent Sisley is, rarely if ever redshirt. Pretty much every player that is not going to the NBA wants to extend college NIL years as long as possible; that's where the money currently is above and beyond a proven star in Europe.

https://www.on3.com/teams/indiana-hoosiers/news/yogi-ferrell-james-blackmon-jr-join-assembly-ball-for-tbt-2025/ https://www.thedailyhoosier.com/assembly-ball-returning-to-tbt-this-summer-first-two-players-confirmed/

A good post. I just think considering the context of Indiana not finishing in the top 25 of Kenpom since 2016 that finishing 25th or better would be great. Michigan finished 21st as an example from last year. It was a great season for them after a rough patch. 2023-30th (with TJD!) and 2020-34th are the best Indiana efforts in a decade.

If you add just Leal they go from 38 to 28. Kinda shows the uselessness of such rankings.Though if Leal gets his extra, extra year he should definitely take a copy of the before and after Torvik ranking into his NIL discussions.

I'm going to preface what I'm going to say with this. Leal(or anyone else) should get a sixth year unless they were injured unless they played 10 or less games. I watched almost every game this past season. IMO, regardless what Leal and Goode said on Social Media or Senior Night speeches, they were the only ones who tried and played hard almost every game. At the very least a lot more than the rest of the team. Sent from my SM-S908U using Tapatalk

Does anyone wonder if Sisley is going to/willing to redshirt? I feel with the roster IU has he could absolutely redshirt.

Torvik which isn’t fully updated has us #38. Feels about right to me. Goode will bump us a bit. Tons of question marks heading into next season with a tough schedule to boot. Will be incredibly low on fanfare during the off-season. However, like Cig, if DeVries can win excitement will follow. Sent from my iPad using BtownBanners

Clearly you don’t do sarcasm …

Bring some of those gals to IU

Gonna get a visit. Huge step for our new staff with the '26 class. https://247sports.com/college/indiana/article/indiana-basketball-recruiting-davion-adkins-the-no-1-ranked-center-in-the-2026-class-is-planing-to-visit-indiana-249656353/?fbclid=IwY2xjawKGIzRleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETFnMm5YclNWMUE0cjREUXRaAR4_6GffDnbppNlYfR58OA23QuVHrQ7dHIYAyuzNC2yPkWsyHkIpBZL5hUI3Ww_aem_JcPk7YZHcNQI0c1f-yE6nQ

No worries... he's someone else's problem now. Thank God and Greyhound, he's gone!

Jesus.. just watch... Woodson will try to market himself as the "California King" and sell mattresses...

I did not have a Luke Brown mention on my bingo card today...LOL

Pope gets a Langdon Hatton to call his very own.

Move Goode down, move Harris up.

I would’ve lost a lot of money on a “Will Mike Woodson ever work again” bet. I guess he feels well rested after his part-time job the past four years.

Davion Adkins attends Faith Family Academy of Oak Cliff in Dallas, TX. I believe he plays AAU on the 3SSB circuit for Southern Assault. @_showtimedee 247 Rivals ESPN On3 https://www.zagsblog.com/2025/01/12/four-star-big-man-davion-adkins-shows-out-at-iverson-classic-updates-recruitment/

You can tell he is truly proud to have been the HC of IUBB. Definitely was time to move on, but he had some success here too that he can hang his hat on. Nearly a decade since, hard not to appreciate the guy.

I will say, I was most definitely ready to move on from Crean by the end of his tenure, but the way he has handled his post Indiana days has made me very fond of the guy. Just a truly caring guy that shows his guys the ultimate respect and handles Indiana with a bit of admiration and fondness. Pretty awesome stuff.

SIAP, just a random meet up https://x.com/TomCrean/status/1915461842182480214

TBT is returning to Hinkle Fieldhouse for an INDIANAPOLIS REGIONAL, hosted by All Good Dawgs (Butler Alumni) and Assembly Ball (Indiana Alumni), July 18-23!

Then I just started blasting

It’s spots 12 & 13. Not a huge deal to me