lillurk

The Sorsby mystery for me is why they’d set the market with him as opposed to anyone else. Seems they’re going to pay All-American prices for a guy who may be 2nd-team all-conference or honorable mention. If the wheel spins, you’ve got the cash, and he’s the last good guy left? Yeah, pay up. But splashing out early surprises me a bit.

Last night really sold me on him as a high-level perimeter defender. Not JUST that he gave Haggerty the business but the way it happened: TOs, not getting to his spots or having space to shoot, giving up ~3 inches to a legit high-major scorer/all-american caliber player.

Mgoblog Purdue defense film scout from earlier in the year: https://mgoblog.com/content/fee-fi-foe-film-purdue-defense-2025 Offense, though at this time they still had Mockobee: https://mgoblog.com/content/fee-fi-foe-film-purdue-offense-2025

Any idea if potential bowl game tickets on the secondary market are going to be higher or lower between now and the quarterfinals?

Who’s visiting this weekend?

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.

For his career and every individual season of it he’s over 60%. Not going to say he’s a good FT shooter, but maybe he can aim for 80%.

He was one of the best defenders in the conference this year and offers a lot of lineup versatility, as he can guard all but the quickest guards of the stoutest posts credibly

I don’t necessarily think Bailey/Alexis/Harris is a bad rotation at the 5 (and of course 2 of those 3 will see time at the 4 too). But the fact they’ve sniffed around other, less offensively versatile screen/dive/block/board/dunk bigs suggests to me they can still add one, despite Tyme et al making hedged suggestions that the roster is basically finished. If you’re looking for a part-time player, 15-20 minutes or less depending on opponent, I don’t think it’s a terribly rare and thus expensive thing.

Does their CMS not hide pre-writes from search engines? That seems like a problem

They absolutely did, Eduardo Andre was 23rd in the country in block rate. He played in every game, started 9, 1.4 bpg in 17.1 minutes. 6’11,” 240. I think there’s probably a spot for a similar player, unless they think Alexis is that. You are right that ball pressure is probably more important to the overall defense here, though, if Harris and Bailey are spending most of the time at the 5.