HoosierAloha

This. You don’t go from good to elite with a team or two just the same as you don’t go from elite to good with a team or two. Hubert Davis didn’t recruit those all those players as a head coach but he was the coach that took them to a title game. We’ve seen it before with Mike Davis and Kevin (?) Ollie making it winning a title with the previous coach’s players. UNC could fall off a cliff (a stretch so far this season) but they’re still an elite program. I’d suspect if Davis strings together a few bad years they’ll can him and get a winner. Why? Because they’re elite and they demand winning basketball. Sent from my iPhone using BtownBanners mobile app

50% of the first four posts cautioning of mighty Kennesaw State.. weird. Maybe we could impose our will on them, force the ball inside and get them in foul trouble while playing solid team defense and keeping them off the glass. We’re close to elite status.. Sent from my iPhone using BtownBanners

It’s okay guys, don’t fret, we’re further behind being elite because we knew this team wouldn’t be competing with the top of college basketball. Interesting take Sent from my iPhone using BtownBanners

We definitely could use some of that in the program and make it infectious. Hopefully, he’s joining a program at that point where his voice will be heard and others jump on board. Sent from my iPhone using BtownBanners mobile app

Ehhh? Interesting comment

Like how Rutger had injuries early in the season and one of their better players came back after not practicing for a week or so?

Don't give the administration any ideas.. This would be so much easier to accomplish than actually competing with the big time programs.

I'm thinking the team will show a bit more e and e in this one.

**** before we talk about improvements we should talk about roles. What are the defined roles of our players? We should then compare that to what average, good, and great players in like or similar roles are doing. Once we have that we can look back to where they were when they entered and where they are currently. I'm guessing here but I wouldn't be shocked if we saw little to average improvement from most of our players. Among several other things, notably leadership, e, and e, basketball intelligence and discipline, our development is lacking. I'm not suggesting everyone should have an Oladipo like jump in skills. I am suggesting constant and consistent improvement would do wonders for this program.

Yes, a decent 14 year old getting a scholarship offer is exactly the talent level we need in this program. Hope he doesn't turn it down! When all other areas are equal or close to equal the swag or whatever it's called now of a program can be the difference. Not for a 14 year old decent at basketball but for the elite players, the ones we need because we can't do the other things to create an elite program.

But some players have a better percentage against some noncon cupcakes! It would be interesting to see a year over year breakdown NBA 2K style increase (or decrease in some instances) of player development. It probably wouldn't be great for the home team the last handful of years.

Is Gabe Cupps walking into a situation where he's going to have a defined role and plays to that defined role? Will he have a legit big to toss it to on the low block to get buckets at an efficient clip? Will he get the open looks or will he be marked because he is 1 of 1 that can hit open shots? Braden Smith isn't delivering because he's some tremendous basketball player. He fits a role and is in a system that is setting him up for success. Braden Smith this season at IU would most likely look like a disaster if he saw the floor as many on here thought he would at purdoodoo.

Point being he's comfortable, the NIL money is icing. He's good with being the big fish in the small pond because it's what he knows. If he was at an elite program that forced development I could see him getting some run in the NBA. He would absolutely be a pro at some level.

I guess extrapolating this from a football-centric school leads me to believe IU should be further ahead than we currently are in our trajectory. Although, I guess if the administration wouldn't have made bad decision after bad decision for decades we'd be an above average Big 1.o program at the very least.

There's no need for apologies. I'm trying to figure out how old fans are responsible for the program because they were fans when we won championships and went to FFs but aren't responsible for the mess of the last couple decades and the program will be gone when they're gone but younger fans should make the program better.

Auburn might be a good example of skipping steps. I don't know their trajectory but it seems like since Pearl has been there they've had good to great teams and are consistently competing. I'm not sure they're an elite program but they have been in the upper tier of college basketball for several years.

I'm sure Woody has still been focusing on defense like he did all of last season. It's still too early to install his offense, right?

Are we in fantasy land here or are we talking reality? We seemed to triple jump that line somewhere in the last couple of pages. W.T.F.

It feels unimaginable that some are talking about TJD as an all-timer but he's never been on a team with a winning conference record heading into his senior season. Wow, reading that is baffling. He's top 10 or close in how many categories and he's never had a winning conference record and I'd imagine will leave IU with a losing conference record overall.

Not to mention Wooden and Smith had a little assistance to get the best players. We can't do that here at IU because we value the amateurism of student-athletes or something like that but give him four years to figure it out because that's the only way it works.

Didn't someone earlier mention about getting into the 2020s instead of living in the 1970s? This is a solid representation of that statement. Goodness.

If we're "following the steps" we need to compete in the big games before we can hope to win them and we need to consistently be in the tourney before we can hope to have deep tourney runs. You setup the culture and system to take those steps. When your best and most experienced players are still going through the motions it shows that it's acceptable. When your system is still lacking production you might want to make some changes to get it going. I guess we could wait until season 4 to determine if we can make some progress in these areas.

We won a few games at the end of last season (ignore the games we were embarrassed in) and brought a few high ranked recruits in = elite status. We did some typical off-season talking about hanging banners and whatnot too. Why can't we be elite this season when we did the things we needed to do to be elite! Other programs added lower ranked recruits to proven systems and cultures. They're winning at a high level while we're trying to figure out why Rutger punked us again and why we forgot that we had to compete against actual elite teams.

I would agree to an extent. I believe fire is similar to leadership in many ways. There are some natural born leaders who just lead. They might not be able to explain why or how but they know what it takes to make others better and a group of individuals a team. Similarly, there are players who only know how to play hard. They don't understand taking a play off or not giving maximum effort in everything they do. However, there are people who can develop into leaders in the right environment with the right people guiding them. Playing with fire can be taught to an extent in the right environment where you're surrounded by players who won't accept okay effort and force you to raise your level. We don't have the environment or culture for either at this time. We have a team who accepts 3 or 4 senior+ who are cool with giving some effort or giving some leadership but when things start to go sideways quickly rollover. Has the next batch who will take over the team next year and beyond seen this and get pissed about it enough to change or have they learned it's acceptable and will continue with business as usual?

You have a point with how programs (companies, organizations, etc.) are run. Everyone should be held to the highest standards regardless if it's the head coach, best player, walk-on, GA, or the person running the varsity shop. (guy that used to run it was top notch) We don't have that standard at IU and it shows. I'm not big on how the unis look but if we need a change let's get it done. This program needs standards and to be held to them. It went out the window many decades ago and we'll defend our mediocre teams against "haters" to protect those who have turned it into a middling program. Speaking of standards, good luck with the goon or toon squad with your comments. I can see they provided the example already.