lillurk

We knew what we were in for. The goal is winning, attracting talent, and playing a pleasing style of basketball; taking a reasonable volume of 3s does all those.

Tend to agree but from the outside adidas has always seemed to have a strangely zero sum view about these things. Obviously with individual recruits it is zero sum — Thompson can’t pick KU and IU — but other than when they play each other head-to-head it isn’t really true that Kansas and Indiana can’t both succeed at a high level. Conversely, Nike seems much better at supporting UNC and Duke, UM and MSU, so on.

Appears he’s the highest rated player in the 2027 composite who’s committed anywhere. (Missouri has a guy who’s committed in the same neighborhood of the rankings, 35th composite/31 to 247, vs. 33/43 for Chase.)

https://twitter.com/tiptonedits/status/1969522545515773997?s=46

Committed!

On your description this is exactly the sort of kid that’s a bit of a stay away for me. Not a character judgment or anything, but a competitive/resource heavy recruitment with the chance to be more frustrating than helpful to winning for one year…

“First open practice since the Crean era” is so insane

Yeah I think there was an easy case that McNeeley made a decision that made sense, but it doesn’t seem to have worked out in a way that helped him. Now, injuries have something to say, and he might’ve done quite well in a jumbo JHS role at IU too, but in hindsight it didn’t work out as planned for him. Best of luck to him in the league.

DeAndre Ayton one recent example

Now the inverse of the concern is the possibility of something like Conerway, Leal, then any 3 of Dorn, Miles, Harris, and Alexis as a pretty nasty unit defensively that still has some shooting and ball movement, if — big if — one or more of the younger guys really gets after it on that end

One thing I’ll be watching: how often does IU trot out a lineup without at least one of Conerway, Alexis, or (if waiver granted) Leal? Those are the only surefire plus defenders I see at this point. Most others have experience, high bb iq, or athleticism to help on that end, and maybe it won’t be a problem…but there are some pretty likely lineup combos* that could be a serious concern on that end. *e.g. Enright, Wilkerson, DeVries, then 2 of Goode/Harris/Bailey…reasonably likely lineups based just on a back-of-the envelope depth chart.

The Harris bug on Torvik is driving me insane. I’m genuinely glad you’ve mentioned it repeatedly because I know I’m not simply losing my mind

Also has appeared to know the scheme and situation every night even from the bench. He may not want to ever coach, idk, but it wouldn’t shock me.

Same complaint was levied at Enright, who’s good for about 2/3 of 118 in three years and as a sophomore was over 70%. Not Ray Allen from the line but we can’t all be.

Since no one has laid out the math, as far as I can tell his first season is free for COVID, and his 3rd season he played only 11 games and had some injury issues, so the idea would be to get that one back.