8bucks

Curious. I flew down to a FF once with one of his former professors at Depauw who still kept in contact with BS. This was many years ago and she said some things that always made me doubt if he would ever come back to coach. But the stories from 4 years ago also seem to make some sense so I am curious if you think things got far enough last time that we discussed money and term? Did we extend an offer? Did they take the family vote?

This is a good point that I am not sure has been mentioned yet. I remember there were pretty strong rumors he was a strong TX lean and the "we were not interested anyway" comments could be from vetting, partial vetting or just what you say when you come in 2nd.

Still convinced they are the burners. So funny to see some expert with a handful of posts come on here and immediately start lecturing us as if we have been bff's for years. Then burner 2, 3, etc chime in supporting. They remind me of those ufo's that fly together during Close Encounters of the Third Kind - Burners traveling in packs. Odd fellas. If they came in with some humility and wanted to talk about stuff like a few of the other new posters all would be great but these burners are...unique

Can you expand that to sweet 16's, FF's, Rankings, that would help differentiate from being a mid-major to being more of a P5 school now

I think his coaching acumen is strong enough but does anyone know how he has done upgrading talent in the portal and developing talent via HS kids? Here, I presume, he will have access to a lot of $ to recruit but the portal recruiting seems to be a different strategy and I wonder how he has done evaluating and then getting results that route. I liked Cigs approach to recruit production over potential and wonder how a guy at a "smaller" school will do with those resources here

We have too many guys that cannot play 1v1 defense. MM, MR, Goode and tbh even Ballo seems to have guys score over him a lot. That really limits who you can put out there We also get blocked from behind so often. Can MM and MR not jump?

Is there something handy that ranks CBB conferences by year? I don't doubt that the Big East may have had some teams at the top better than the BT but I would be curious how all the teams compare by conference.

Amen to the saint!

Well that is obvious. McDermott is 6'8", clearly a big and we know Woody favors the big man whereas both Stevens and Drew are wings/guards. So I think Woody is putting his own scouting report together on this search.

I could see where Drew may have thought he could keep getting players in the new realm but things are changing quickly. In just one year IU increased their NIL in huge ways and announced they would invest more revenue sharing in BBall than contemporaries. Remember how frustrated many were that Woody only stayed because he got $6million to spend on players. That was a huge jump from prior years and that will continue it seems. The arms race used to be facilities but it is now cash and IU has moved to the front pack here. Secondly, at UK he may have had higher expectations than at IU. For all those who wanted Cal out he had strong results during his time there. Sure he had the best players but the results were pretty good and comparable to what Drew had done at Baylor. So if Drew replicated his Baylor results he would probably be on the hotseat at UK whereas if he replicated those at IU, who had not had consistent success, he would not necessarily get a stature but should be much further from the hotseat.

Except Ferguson, right?

Seeing as Chris liked your post suggests your #1B may be correct. I thought he was #3 and 1B was the Wolverine. Perhaps he is staying put.

1B still in play. Interesting

Ooh, are you agreeing with the Big 12 part as well?

Depends what you mean by insider. If you mean someone who knows definitely what will happen I agree. But I see insiders as people close to someone who sees or hears something. That something could be wrong, it could end up being right or it could have been 100% right at that moment then changed later. For example, my new VP is Marty Simmons SIL. If Marty were a candidate, a strong candidate or had no interest I would have strong inside info. Side note, no, Marty is not a candidate.

Wait a second, you trying to pull a Goodman on us here and say he is already hired?

No just seeing Alford, during this cycle, just does not make sense. In other coach search discussions, he was coming off pretty good runs but he has been pretty quiet and does not seem a reasonable fit at all.

I thought there was some discussion with Pearl last summer? What were the Woodson rumors?

Some other chatter that he wanted to get assurances little Pearl would get to be coach when he retired. So I wonder if it was "I am willing to leave unless..." and if he got the assurance he needed he may not be willing now. Who knows if true

I would love Stevens if only to shut up all those who laughed at the idea he even entertained the idea. IF he is really interested in the job, really interested, then I think he can be great here and be a grinder. I trust Dolson to vet that part out but it is a good point you bring up.

I would hope if he is on staff he is in a Hulls type role where he isn’t a primary assistant but can learn. If Stevens were to return to college it would be partially due to him enjoying the interaction with young people. He got to know the Zeller family and Cody very well when recruiting him and his brothers

And we just recently started getting posts from BehindTheBench. Hmm

Where was Zeller sitting for the game? hmm

I have never heard of him being toxic. He got blackballed because he was recruiting a kid (Deon Thomas?) as was Illinois. He recorded a conversation with the recruit where the gifting of money and a car from Illinois were “verified” and then he turned that into the NCAA. Some suspected he baited the kid, others felt Illinois got caught but Pearl paid the price. As for championships, didn’t he win one or more at USI?

Which one is you?