BGleas

It's only a video, and the angles may have distorted things, so who knows, but I didn't think Davis looked two inches taller in that workout video going around. Could totally be wrong, just didn't think he looked it.   

My bad! Thanks for the heads up. Deleted my post.

Absolutely glad to hear that Hanner has been awesome. I kind of remain cautious on it though. It's one thing to be awesome against April/Priller/Davis in practice, it's an entirely different thing to be good against Anthony Lee, Hammons, and the rest of the Big Ten.    Not worried about JBJ's start to these practices, your first few college practice can be an absolute shock, in terms of what's expected and how hard you have to work. He'll adjust and get comfortable. 

I'm not a student, my eligibility is up, and I threw out my back playing 1 on 1 with my 14 year old neighbor this evening...but this seems like fun! Might look into it :)

Here's where I disagree. If one of our unranked bigs exceeds expectations, that still probably means they average 4 pts and 3 rpg. While exceeding expectations, still not a huge impact.    If Blackmon exceeds, not meets, but exceeds expectations, then we have one of the best guards in the country. We have arguably the best back-court in the country. That's huge. We need Blackmon to be a stud next year, and there's a big difference between "stud" and "impact freshmen". A guy like Stan, while him exceeding expectations would be great, the ceiling of what that means is lower. But, I did have Stan on my list.    I have Hanner #2 on my list, so not sure why you're mentioning him.   

I just always think on a list like this, you always want your best players to exceed expectations. Their ceilings are higher. The only reason I didn't include Yogi is because we kind of already know what he's capable of.    We need Blackmon to be instant impact and more.   

1) Blackmon 2) Hanner 3) Davis 4) Troy 5) Stan

Sounds good! Best of luck with the move!

If you were getting as far south as Baltimore I'd be happy to help you out, NaturalHoosier.

I think it's kind of smart, if that's what is really happening, except we seem to stink at this. You have recruits saying Martin is recruiting them for Indiana, I think Martin even made a reference to the job or to Bloomington on Twitter, then you have him appearing as a coach on the team website. If we're playing this game, we're not very good at it.

I had the same thoughts, but I'm guessing he realized it's very difficult to essentially sit out 3 years and then get a ton of minutes at a Big Ten school. Probably figures he transfers now and next year is his red shirt year while he rehabs. Wouldn't be surprised to see him at an NAIA school or D2.

It's fine to add this kid at this point, as long as it's a 1-year scholly. But, it shines a glaring light on our inability to actually add contributors in the spring.

I don't think the 4-year scholly thing is that big of a deal. I think it was Goodman that said it's basically a change that makes people feel better on the outside, but doesn't really change anything. If a coach wants a player to transfer, he's going to still transfer, etc.   

Interesting points, mdn82. IMO, one of Crean's biggest problems will be not bringing in better talent around Zeller in the 2011 class and outside of Yogi, the 2012 class being a bust. Even with Zeller leaving, if the other two players in 2011 had been more productive and we got what was anticipated out of Perea and Hollowell, things would have been perfectly fine last season.    We'd be coming off the back-to-back Sweet 16's (though the second one being a bit disappointing) and a conference title, and probably would have gone down a bit last year, but not nearly as dramatically. We still would have been a tournament team and competitive in the conference.    But, getting zero from Remy Abel and virtually zero from Ethrington, Hollowell, Perea and Jurkin is what has killed Tom Crean's program right now.   

Can he? Yes. Am I optimistic he'll get it done at this point? No.

Feel bad for Embiid of course. As a Celtics fan, I'd love for him drop to us at #6. For the top 2-3 picks you can't gamble on his health, but at #6 it's worth the gamble. Hope he's still there.

By the way, Bronk, not that it's probably even on the table. But, I reserve the right to completely jump ship and reverse my stance on this issue should the Celtics somehow be able to land Kevin Love, dump enough salary, and convince LeBron James to come to Boston to join Rondo and Love.  :biggrin:  

Agree with your premise. But, the bottom line is, for this team to overachieve we're going to need Hanner and Davis to surprise/step-up.    We need Davis to be the next Oladipo. Not to that level necessarily, but you get what I mean. In terms of guys with more his style/position, we need him to be the next Draymond Green or Kenneth Faried, etc.    There are a lot of guys out there that were somewhat underanked or under-recruited because they were PF's in a SF's body, or tweeners so to speak, but became great college players because size/length isn't as important as it is in the NBA. We NEED Davis to be one of those guys.    It's almost crucial to IU being a team that overachieves and really surprises people, or the other way to IU being an 18-19 win team on the bubble or in the NIT.   

I don't know that the balance of power is much of an issue though, because if you've noticed I haven't discussed the 80's Lakers too much, part of that is I followed the Eastern Conference more as a kid, but the other reason is the West wasn't nearly as deep as the East in the 80's. Those things are just cyclical. Agree, regardless of the era and how they're constructed, there will always be "super" teams. Luckily there's options for everybody. In the 80's you could pick between the Showtime Lakers and the more Blue Collar Celtics. Now you can pick between the "built from scratch" Spurs and the Heat. I could talk the history of basketball all day, definitely enjoy this topic and discussion as well!

Love the thread topic, just not sure how to respond, since I think how you play defense can/should really vary somewhat based on the opponent.    In general, given our speed, quickness and athleticism, I think we should be trying to pressure and force as many turnovers as possible. Also, being a perimeter oriented team and with some really good free throw shooters, we should be trying to force as many turnovers as possible, in order to get in transition, get easy buckets and really put pressure on the opponents defense.    The only issue with really forcing the tempo with our defense and playing a real pressure defense, is that you need a rim protector because you'll give up drives doing that, and we don't know if Perea can do that consistently yet. 

You don't see a difference between Jerry Krause scouting a little known forward out of Central Arkansas (Pippen) and engineering a draft trade for him and then the organization developing him alongside Jordan, as opposed to LeBron, Wade and Bosh spending an entire season figuring out how they can all end up in Miami together? Pat Riley figured out how to make the numbers work, but those guys ending up together was all them.    You don't see a difference between Red Auerbach surrounding Larry Bird with Kevin McHale, Robert Parish and Danny Ainge through trades and smart drafting, and LeBron, Bosh and Wade spending the Olympics the year before figuring out how they can all end up on the same team?   You can dismiss what Jordan actually said and what actually transpired in real life for what you think he might have been thinking, but Jordan didn't spend the 86 offseason trying to get Isiah, him and Barkley together because they couldn't beat the Celtics by themselves, he spent the offseason figuring out how to beat them.   It's not like when Pippen and Grant were drafted everyone said "Now the Bulls are legit, they got a future HOF'er in Scottie Pippen". The Bulls targeted Pippen in the draft and worked a trade for him and then developed him. If we're going to be accurate with history, Jordan was very frustrated with Pippen during their losses to the Pistons in the playoffs, but Jordan didn't bail and go join Ewing in NYC and orchestrate getting Barkley there too, he got in the gym and worked his butt off to beat the Pistons.    There's just a different mentality in basketball these days. Part of it is the AAU scene, these guys grow up buddies instead of competitors, part off it is the media scrutiny when losing and part of it is instant gratification instead of working to defeat your competitors.   I prefer the older days instead of all these players figuring out how to get together because building and developing their own teams is too hard.    

A couple things, in the 80's there were only 24 teams so you had to have 2-3 HOF'ers just to compete to get to the Finals. The Celtics had to contend with the Erving/Malone/Cheeks/Toney Sixers, who went to the Finals in 80, 82 and 83, an up and coming Detroit team, Jordan's Bulls and even Dominique and the Hawks. I didn't even mention Milwaukee, who was pretty good back then too. Also, the Celtics and Lakers were built through smart drafting and smart trades. Red Auerbach drafted Larry Bird a year before he actually came out,in order to secure his rights. He traded for Kevin McHale and Robert Parish, etc. he drafted Danny Ainge and convinced him to quit basketball. The list goes on. I don't know as much about the Lakers, but know they were built pretty similarly. Like Jordan said when LeBron went to Miami (paraphrasing) "I didn't want to play with Barkley, Magic and Larry, I wanted to kick their butts".

You missed an absolute masterpiece by the Spurs. I grew up on 80's basketball, with the Celtics, Lakers, Sixers, etc., those were great years in the NBA, but if someone asked me how to play basketball and I could show them one team, this Spurs team might be the video I show them.    They were so much fun to watch, I'm almost sorry the series is over just because I don't get to watch them anymore.   

Players care about both. The reality is, most coaches default to just throwing their starters in at the end of the game and players know that. Most players spend the offseason talking about how they want to crack the starting lineup, from my days playing it's actually talked about more than discussing the end of the game, because you know if you're a starter then you'll probably be in at the end. I didn't say anything about Troy.

Players absolutely care about starting.