lillurk

Yeah I find it hard to believe adidas can’t make a profit selling IU stuff if they tried. I would’ve dropped a pretty penny on the Hysteria shorts from this year, for example

Gotta be Race, right? Stewart has had tough perimeter scorers from tip, so maybe some of him if they want to hide Race on one of the shorter guys

Think you can make a case that IU might “surprise” a bit this year just based on a soft non-conference schedule, and a B1G that’s spotty beyond its top two teams. I think IU’s alright, but if Illinois, OSU, Maryland, and MSU aren’t as good as we thought, and Nebraska hasn’t taken a leap, and UMass thumped PSU, and Wisconsin…anyway, some of these results are just bad games. But in other cases…

Agreed, my case for modest Illinois skepticism this year is they’re too dependent on Curbelo, who can’t shoot even when the other stuff is working. And Kofi, for all his positive contributions, is also not a shooter outside six feet. As we know from watching Archie teams, it’s hard to win when your best players can’t shoot. Still think UI is a top 20 team, just probably not top 10.

Godspeed

Should be a good atmosphere vs. St. John’s Wednesday, and if the team plays hard and well over the next two months you’d think spring term home games will have serious electricity

Yeah this is a super valuable sort of player if they’re in the right role. Archie didn’t know that.

This is a good problem to have!

https://hoopvision.substack.com/p/what-can-we-learn-from-opening-night

Look, I guess my prior point is it’s pretty rare to shoot 17% on 3s as a team even if you’re a bad shooting team! At least this happened on a night IU could fade it https://twitter.com/AssemblyCall/status/1458459021447421955?s=20 https://twitter.com/ZachOsterman/status/1458451151116984324?s=20

In the entire, poor-shooting Miller era, 125 games, IU shot as bad or worse than last night from three eleven times. They went 3-8 in those games. So under a coach who seemingly could not figure out how to develop or recruit shooting, a performance last night happened about 9% of the time. I think IU will shoot better under Woody and this staff. Having an off night yesterday from 3 wasn’t the only concern but it was the biggest one, by far, and they still one. A night that bad happens probably two or three times a year…you just hope it hits when you’re healthy, against a weaker opponent, and when nothing else goes sideways. Don’t sweat it.

Almost word-for-word what he said in today’s press availability too

Osterman mentioned near the start of today’s Mind Your Banners podcast that IU led the scrimmage wire-to-wire.

One of the reasons I’m bullish on this team is I’m bullish on Geronimo

Lol yes, you can imagine the game easily, 77-63, it’s a miracle IU scores 63, Archie puts his hands on his head, leans on the scorers table, tries to get them to hurry up, Belmont hits 14/31 threes and all eight free throws when IU fouls down the stretch, three consecutive chances to tie the game at the seven minute mark are squandered in embarrassing fashion…

for what it’s worth Belmont is one spot above Nebraska in Bart Torvik’s preseason rankings and the implied spread of a neutral site IU/Neb game is ~4 points. So an 11 point win is a slight over-performance, within the realm of reasonable outcomes for sure but encouraging.

The best shooter who’s ever lived has shot 35% or below in three of five games to start the year, please don’t be bothered that IU shot it in one scrimmage

Well it appears IU has a promising true FR QB, which is good since it needs one. But this thread has increased in relevance to me in light of recent (unsurprising) events in football.

I imagine anyone there has to “launder” what they see through intermediaries, and we have Some likely intermediaries here, whether or not they will actually be there ;)

Don’t think this has been mentioned but Brendan Quinn of The Athletic said on the 10/18 edition of The Moving Screen podcast that Fife had coached the MSU offense in recent years. He indicated — as will surprise no one — that it’s really Izzo’s offense, and Fife was charged with implementing it. (This was in the context of a discussion of how much that would impact MSU this year.) Izzo’s offense, yes, but I’d have to think Fife learned quite a bit in his time with that responsibility. MSU’s offense has been typically excellent during the time Fife was there, and taken many forms: post-heavy, egalitarian, star-centric, ballscreen/PG-dominant, etc.

I think there’s some potential to compare JHS and MCW defensively. They get it done differently; MCW has always been remarkably skinny and his arms appear insanely long. Those don’t seem to be the same strengths for JHS even if he’s already gifted on d.

Oh yeah Milton’s another example of a line cooling

I’m here. Any time things get quiet after they were loudly optimistic I’m a little worried — I’m probably misremembering but if I recall the Malachi Richardson, Theo Pinson, Darius Garland, and Goodluck Okonoboh sagas all went that way and the player ended up elsewhere. Now the folks in the know seem to think things are promising here, and I would take it as a positive indicator that we haven’t moved on to a similar 2022. But who knows.

How do we feel here?

1. Get the impression that neither is really a player dev guy. 2. Arizona has a lot going for it: weather, somewhat a “basketball school” by the standards of its relative popularity vis a vis football. 3. Seems like Nike knew how to get its dudes there. 4. I think Nike — via access to sponsored recruiting events, USA bball youth team events, etc. — and Millers have good relationships w/national bball media. So some of the UA recruits may have been scouted with sympathetic eyes. 5. And these are five star players I’m taking about, so they’re no slouches, they have physical tools and so on. But that brings us back to #1 above.