lillurk

It’s possible there are other reasons the staff backed off but size/length are a clear emphasis. Clearly this is a talented player but it wouldn’t surprise me if Woody’s staffs mostly avoid smaller guards based on everything we’ve seen

24-20 good guys win, and we are loving each other

Turnout looked awesome, well done. I can’t make it to Btown for games much but love to see it.

Good idea for a thread, Stuhoo. From the outside the vigor and success that we’ve seen from Walsh since the regime change signals good things for the program: not to impugn the prior staff or Walsh’s prior work, but it tells me Woody etc. will empower staffers (and by extension players) to expand their abilities, contribute, and receive credit for their efforts. That’s good leadership.

Per the 247 story, I presume his parents are American, so they may be able to contextualize Indiana for him somewhat. That could help, or at least help lead to a visit. And yeah — this is a guy you really want on an OV for a 9 pm Saturday game with some stakes.

Impressed they found this guy

Closing my eyes, imagining the stunned silence at Kinnick when Stephen Carr runs 25 yards to put the Hoosiers up 20-6 in the middle of the third quarter

I would love to see some hard data, but anecdotally I think they work pretty well with one notable exception. Average-sized or smaller PGs don’t have a good track record when reclassifying to get to college sooner. Derryck Thornton is probably the poster boy here, Ashton Hagans a guy who eventually panned out. But players at other positions seem to pan out more often than not. (For what it’s worth a decent number of reclass guys are moving from a class where they’d be old to one where they’re more normally aged compared to peers.)

This reminds me that Ken Pomeroy had an intern who did, like, a college senior stats thesis building a college basketball recruiting projection system. Pretty sure geography was the strongest factor, then program prestige, winning, and probably beneath all that, positional need. I think it used to be linked from Ken’s site but I don’t think it is any longer.

There are more early entries than draft spots, guys play overseas or get contracts as undrafted rookies, and given they have to take summer classes to participate in summer workouts, most guys can finish undergrad in 3 years if they try…I wouldn’t bet on a fourth year, think @Chris007 said earlier this week it’s a non-starter

Also in re: how he does or doesn’t replace TJD, right now it looks like next year’s team will depend less on inside players as primary scorers. So if, as Demo says, he can man the dunker spot, screen and react, and defend? Then he’s doing enough.

Wow, yeah, ESPN was much higher than the other services, all of which had him in the 40s-70s

Yes, that’s a close pair, and certainly up there for same-class backcourts. Strickland was RSCI t-62, as high as 43 by Scout, I think — comfortably four-star territory: https://www.basketball-reference.com/awards/recruit_rankings_2002.html For what it’s worth I think the only other year I can find with two or more four-star and above guards at IU in the same class in my database is JBJ and Rob Johnson. (Of course you can go farther back, as mentioned previously, to ‘89, ‘87, or other pre-rankings years.)

As far as I can tell, IU has only had one pair of rankings-era (~2003-present) five-star guards share a backcourt: Yogi and JBJ. If you go a little farther back, Recker and Fife overlapped for a year…that’s pre-rankings most places, but Fife was RSCI 12th and they were both McD AAs. 12 is five-star territory by any system, and McD AAs are a good pre-rankings proxy. Not sure you’d call Recker a guard. Before that there’s Pat and Greg Graham in ‘89 and Damon Bailey in ‘90, again all McD AAs, with two IN Mr. Basketballs.

Agreed and I need someone in the know to tell me it’s going to be IU even though a random video editor on Rivals picked UT