BGleas

Zeller was in the middle. He just refused to take the 10ft jumper and kept driving right into the teeth of the zone getting shot blocked.

Pure guess, but with his birthday today I'm going to guess it has something to do with Bob Knight. Maybe naming something after him, or some honorary title so he can "retire" a member of the program, sort when a player signs a 1-day deal before retiring. Doesn't sound like Knight's style, but just throwing a guess out there.

Clearly Mark Cuban, the players, the coaching staff and the athletic program do not feel these guys reflect poorly. A boatload of former players who have been guests on their podcast seem to not feel that way. I'm not saying I love everything the HH guys do, but clearly most people that are highly involved with the program value what they're doing.

True, I missed that one. Though he's not a guard either, so the larger point still stands.

Odd in this day and age to have the top 5 players in the conference all be bigs.

While certainly not as long as Woodson (partly because he's over 10-15 years younger), Howard spent 6 years as an assistant with the Miami Heat (one of the best run organizations top to bottom and for grooming coaches) and was considered a guy that was soon "up next" for a head coaching job.

Agree on the larger point. While I certainly want these guys in college and Hood-Shifino at IU, these guys make money with OE/GLeague just by showing up. In college they have to do even more work (social media content and additional appearances, etx) on top of basketball and school to get paid.

Yeah, we're mostly agreeing, and I may have misread part of your post so thank you for clearing it up. I'm in the marketing space as well and have done influencer deals as well as deals with Power 5 athletic programs as well. My experience is that schools want every dollar they can get. They have budgets and revenue they need to generate, etc. The money the top schools have been helping funnel to players illegally, now legally, is incremental dollars not splitting dollars they're generating from advertisers and/or donors. Most of the big schools actually farm out their marketing/sponsorship wings to outside entities. Agree on the actual marketing value of the players. I think where most kids will ultimately be able to generate dollars is on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, etc. There was a D1 football player a few years ago that had to shutdown his YouTube channel because he was generating revenue from the ad platform.

Schools aren't going to be moving money away from coming to them to instead be funneled to the kids. The schools still have budgets they need to meet and revenue they need to generate and make. The money the players make has to be incremental. IU, or any school, isn't going to move incoming ad dollars or donor dollars away from them and too players.

No, Maryland is up there with the best. Their student section is great.

Not saying it's better than Assembly Hall, but Maryland is legit as far as the atmosphere. It is one of the best in the country. I've been to a few games there, including a game where they upset #1 Duke, and that place is nuts. The student section is big, organized and insane. Again, not saying it's the best, and their building doesn't have the history of an Assembly Hall, Phog Allen, or Cameron Indoor, but Maryland's atmosphere is right up there.

Can you imagine being a 5*, out of state recruit on a visit to Indiana and you and your parents are sitting in an office reviewing film and talking about your future with Mike Woodson, Thad Matta and Armond Hill? I don't mean to not include in-state players, but those guys already have a tie to IU and being interested, this is the first time since probably Bob Knight that IU will have a draw to out of state high-level talent beyond just tradition, fanbase or some direct link an assistant had to the player. That doesn't mean we out-recruit UK or something, but I think IU finally has a staff that not only stacks up to anyone, but is also blazing a unique new strategy that others will be trying to mimic.

Armond was an assistant with the Celtics when I worked there, so I got to know him a bit. This is huge. He is as legit as it gets in terms of his knowledge as well as the way he interacts with players. He will be phenomenal working with players on and off the court (assuming he is used with one of those new non-staff slots that can be on the court). I couldn't endorse this hire more!

I don’t think it contributed at all. The only reason Fife left was because it was Indiana. The sexual assault issues were several years ago at this point and Fife hadn't gone anywhere.

Yup, and it's not like Doyel is the one doing that, it's the people that run the website.

Agree. And there is no NBA organization that would create blocks because they're trying to secretly steer their current head coach to one of the co-owners favorite colleges in the future. Stevens wanted to stay in Boston and he wants to be in the NBA.

There is no way that happened.

The thing with Franklin would be that every other in-state kid has not only come back but emphatically announced they want to be part of bringing IU back to where it belongs. Franklin leaving to go to a rival on the backdrop of TJD's passionate announcement, Lander specifically saying he wants to help bring IU back, and Leal and Galloway both saying they love IU and never thought of leaving, would not be a good look for Franklin. It would be one thing if several guys were leaving, but to be one of the the only guys and the only in-state guy, and to go to a rival, would be really awkward.

Yeah, im not advocating for a slow pace by any means. I hated our pace. I spent many a game screaming at the TV for Phinisee to pick it up. It was maddening how he'd walk the ball up the court and then stop over half court and just stand there for 5-8 seconds before starting anything. It will be interesting to see how that plays out under Woodson.

Could be. Maybe they discussed controlling pace in practice and then all of the sudden during the game Archie is screaming to run so it was confusing.

This is the puzzling part to me too. I'm not defending Archie's offense or pace, but with that said there were numerous times the last few seasons where Phinisee would walk the ball up as slow as possible while Archie screamed and waved his arms frantically to get him to push the pace.

Maybe that's not whats really happening.

That's just squarely perception of opposing fans on Danny Ainge, not the reality. He wouldn't have lasted this long as a GM with one team if that was accurate. Hes widely respected in the NBA among players, coaches, and other GM's. I find it funny when fans present this image of Ainge. On one hand opposing fans call him a snake who other teams don't trust, then on the other hand they call him "Trader Danny" because he trades so much. It can't be both. Read this article from just a couple months ago that are anonymous quotes from other GM's on what it's really like to deal with Danny. This is the reality. Most GM's like dealing with the Celtics. https://www.celticsblog.com/platform/amp/2021/1/19/22237956/what-is-it-really-like-to-talk-trades-with-danny-ainge-boston-celtics

We're all oversimplying things. There's nobody on this message board that was in the room with Stevens, Ainge, Wyc, or Dolson on IU's side. None of us know exactly what happened. With that said, knowing a bit about how the Celtics operate, and how these things work, I'm absolutely confident that if Brad Stevens wanted to be IU's coach, he would be IU's coach. The Celtics aren't going to play some game where they ruin his career or threaten his future NBA prospects, beyond owning his rights and getting compensation if he returned to the NBA. IMO, the most plausible scenario is that he really just wanted to stay in Boston and stay in the NBA. The next most plausible scenario is he had interest but he and the Celtics wanted him to finish this season in the NBA and IU didn't want to wait. I'm as confident as I can be that there wasn't a scenario where Stevens wanted the IU job and the Celtics somehow forced him to stay against his wishes.