lillurk

There’s a sort of logic to playing faster when you’ve got more budget (and thus in theory talent) versus being on par in those areas with your peers at Drake or below average for your conference at WVU. Pace or not, going all in on Randy Foye-era Nova four guard/Oats-style 3>2 is going to be a fun experiment.

As the unofficial “guy who posts lots of Torvik stuff, Fyi, there’s more in the projections than the “talent” rating; this doesn’t mean IU was ranked 3rd at any point last year. Neither the algorithm nor Bart, the person, said as much. This measure tells us what we all knew: IU paid for big time star rankings and a poorly constructed roster. I use Torvik because it shows more during the offseason and is free. As a predictive metric, like Pomeroy, it’s better than the human polls. You don’t have to like it, it won’t hurt me or anyone else, but I hope we can all use it in a way that reflects what it actually says with context.

Agree, it’s fine. Up to 31 after the adds last night.

The handwringing about a starting-caliber center right now reminds me of the period after Enright committed when some were mad because they thought he’d start. Or after Conwell picked UL and Wilkerson took other visits and they sky was falling because we had like three players. The rim running, shot blocking, screen-and-dive center we need is going to look at the roster and see a perfect fit for him. C — it could be you! Feast at the rim with our spacing and passing. PF — Bailey SF — DeVries SG — Wilkerson PG — Conerway bench: Alexis, Enright, Miles, Dorn, Drake, Sisley, (Goode?)

Old news now but I thought the Desmond Claude contact was interesting. 1. probably just due diligence 2. does indicate they probably still have quite a bit of dough to splash 3. wonder if the vision is/was a sort of Swiss Army knife 6th man. 4. more broadly, I think IU’s gonna play teams who’s best player is the best guy on the floor…but IU’s 4th or 5th best guy in most lineups doesn’t look likely to be very weak.

Like others I would be happy to see some underclassmen but I will caution everyone that I’m not sure the old way of thinking about roster building holds any more. It would be nice to see some guys develop, and I think that with regional or in-state prospects that will still make some sense. But if IU pulls a frosh from the east coast, he plays minimally, but then Maryland is convinced he’s worth a mint after his freshman year? Well, all your development and the sunk costs of his year at IU benefit Maryland, maybe even if you’re willing to match his offer.

One note on Torvik and ceiling: if he does it anything like Pomeroy, there are minor program and coach adjustments to preseason rankings. So e.g. the same roster UConn, DePaul, and Wisconsin-Whitewater might not be ranked identically. All that to say there probably is a preseason ceiling for IU if there’s an adjustment based on the recent past.

@RaceToTheTop has a good response but it’s also a choice in methodology. I don’t know if any of the services really explain how they rank, but I know that for 247 football, they’re ranking based on potential/ceiling/projection, which makes some sense here. Alexis is probably capped at “mid-major 2nd/3rd team and all-defense” or “high-major backup.” Cupps and Newton each have 3 years left and could conceivably get to, say, “plus high-major starter.”

Like everyone I'm pleased about this both conceptually and on a player skill basis. I do hope everyone realizes and accepts that this increases game-to-game variance somewhat , though you can mitigate if by ORebs, defense, still being capable of getting to the rim and the line. I can just foresee losing a close road game by 2 while shooting 10/35 from 3 and some folks being grumpy that we “took too many 3s” like a week after we beat a top ten team because we shot 18/38 from 3.

This is crazy because Bart has like 20 full D1 seasons to compare to.

Not sure if we’ll target James Scott from Louisville, but if we miss on Federiko, he might appeal. Scott’s ‘25 season’s most similar other player season is Federiko’s ‘25, per Torvik.

It’s April 24th, today’s the first full day that Bart Torvik made his homepage the ‘25-‘26 projections and not last year’s final outcomes. IU slots in projecting 34th overall, 10th in conference. 34th in offense, 37th on defense. If you fiddle with it just a little — add Goode, subtract Zrno and former walk-on Rayford — they jump to 24th (though the components get wonky, as they’d be like top 15 on both sides, which A. Would make you higher than 24th and B. Doesn’t pass the smell test on D w/o also adding a d-first C). 24th is about 6th or 7th in conf.

That’s correct

By deep I mean like especially so, almost all the scouting videos mention hitting ~8 or more from beyond 25’, even Conerway

Thanks. Couple thoughts: -Between Dorn and Drake they’ve got some guys really grinding Colonial tape. -Commonalities offensively across the perimeter players so far: high volume possession users, mostly high volume 3pt shooters with good efficiency (Conerway the exception here), ability to hit from deep, lots of efficient finishers, willing passers.