8bucks

49ers would be nice

Do other schools know the portal is open?

Was just an attempt at humor

I heard it was Kenny who is out of town. The staff is full on secrecy mode and Kenny was down in Louisville walking around telling people he was a recruit from Alabama.

Would be nice to see Sherrell commit too. I know some, many, think this helps but just hoping that is the case. They seem to be different players so he does not on the surface look like a replacement. I guess if Sherrell isn’t sold on us he will schedule a visit somewhere

Did Carr get a staff to help research all the potential players out there? Recently He seemed to lead the evaluators vs doing the evaluations and I wonder if has a crew helping.

Well doggonit now we don’t have class balance anymore. Too many kids with 2 years left lol.

Sherrel seems like the guy that makes the class really good. Without him, Burton is a big need but a lot of holes otherwise. Landing Sherrell and Burton takes this class way up a few notches. Seems like we have been to the 11th hour a few times in the past and ended up short. Hopefully Sherrell commits and we keep adding first choice (from the staff) guys

Is this center supposed to play right away. Does Sherrell want to be a 4 vs a 5? Both would have an impact here

Hoosier Dentists for Good need to step up is what I have heard.

It was an estimate.

I think the difference is that if a school that has had success recently (with that coach) offers $2 million and we offer $2 million we lose out to their reputation. We have to offer more. Playing time can help but several schools can offer that. Until we can catch up to other schools by winning our NIL bucket say of $14 million may only land us players valued at $10 million.

I think that when hired DD felt he was going to land 2 of the better assistants (Alabama and TT?). That was likely conveyed to Dolson too which is reasonable. We locked in DD early and before a lot of other coaches who were hired and had his staffing plan worked out we would likely have had a much better season. It did not though and led to the difficulty i putting his staff together. Can we blame DD for swinging for the fences on those 2 assistants even though when he missed it hurt us? Probably but it will be forgotten if we have a very good season next year. I tend to think like @WayneFleekHoosier and unfortunately fall on the pessimistic side too often. I hope though to be wrong and come to these threads often looking for some evidence that I was wrong. It just feels like we get an audience and may even be able to land people (whether top assistants or players) but we are not willing or able to meet their price.

Del was from Plainfield, my old town, unless he started in Smithville. He went to HS though as a fighting Quaker lol

This was me last year. And he was right then and I started to see it once you think through it and take off the IU bias. This year could be different, we hope, but it is a wait and see. I think even if we spend $14 million we are having to pay more for some kids than a competitor school who has had more success. So while we may spend top 15-20 overall, because we have to overpay we are probably getting $10 million level roster Even with a $10 million roster we apparently have enough money for coaches/staff/facilities that they should be able to grind it out and produce results above than $10 million level. Last year I don’t think we did

Heard Rabby explain this pretty well. When you have to go deep into the portal for a lot of players you will have to over pay vs if you were just increasing a current kids pay. He shared an example from a coach who said they estimated that a couple of current kids could command a 50% increase if they hit the portal. The coach offered them 15% (willing to go to 20%) and both accepted the 15%. Secondly, Woody turned off a lot of agents who would not send kids to IU. This is turning around now so that is good but combine this with having a less successful program than most top 25-30 schools we have to pay more than schools we want to compete with to land a player. Lastly, he was asked what he thought IU needed to spend based on where IU is now in order to field a team that could make a run and he said $18 million. He was then asked what he thought they would spend and that was around $14 million. The $14 million, combined with how much we spend on coaches and the overall program, should be enough to build a team that makes it into the tournament safely but probably is not enough to make any noise. His point, which I share, is that in order to make up lost ground we have to spend more than other programs for a year or 2. It seems that IU may not have the $18 million but hopefully they do or get kids to outperform their ranking.

I don’t disagree that year 1 portal recruiting was a challenge due to some things not in play now. Missing on initial assistants who may have brought a player or two only to hire who we got late. That makes some sense as to why we had a somewhat meh result. There was another recruiting window however that we also seem to forget. For the summer HS recruiting period we had all our coaches and there were reports (from Rabby and Snow I believe) who commented on how IU was much more active than other schools during this recruiting period. For the effort we put in here, targeting many 5 start kids, we basically missed on all. You could argue that we hit on Branham but he wasn’t a 5* when he committed. I don’t mind the kids we have but they were not the high end targets we spent a lot of time on. They appear to be good support players for whenever we land high end starters. Not a bad group but to me it shows that for a second recruiting window we failed to attract the top targets. This next recruiting window seems critical. Staff is full. Have additional help from an NBA GM. I can’t tell you who the staff should target by name but the result needs to be to 1) build a team for the tournament and 2) get some momentum for 2027

Visits at other schools are starting to happen right?

Good point to add to our list of how we are better. We lose with virtue. I like you BGleas, but I can cheer for this team of non athletic players who know their role. They remind me of Indiana teams of old.

It goes against so much but I am having a hard time not cheering for Purdue. They are such a well built team. Well coached. Maybe being a football school and national champion helps me become less worried if Purdue has a good Bball team. IU has seemingly gotten worse results despite a ton of money and 6 chances to hire the right guy after RMK. Criticism of Purdue, I understand it, but compared to our pathetic attempts to field a competitive team seems silly.

But it was a more enjoyable offense to watch than the other team right.

I thought they were only good because of Stirtz.

One of the girls from my daughter's HS team was a freshman this year on the CoC soccer team.

I admit that I have only watched Iowa play twice. Have heard a lot of criticism about their style of play. I enjoyed how they played today. They moved the ball, had more than one guy as a threat and built the team around a point guard that could create. Was the game today different or was this a bad style of play?

Is there any evidence that DD can develop talent at an above average level?