Demo

Gotta be somebody around here clued in on Evansville basketball. Does he have a chance to rebound and defend at the HM level?

Shots til his heart’s content.

If I remember his deal correctly, part of Thiero's original appeal was that his Dad is 6'10" and he still had open growth plates so might well get significantly taller. So UK listing him at 6'8" might be correct. Either way, I don't really see the fit with this roster. But a lot of UK fans REALLY like that kid and are mad at Cal for not being able to retain him, which is not the usual mindset with that crowd. That says something for him. Will be an interesting follow.

Couple of things with this: 1) I assume the bold print is an MSU Insider or some such and their implication is that IU outbid them for Tucker. IU probably outbid someone, but it wasn't MSU, which is currently oversigned by 1, or KU, which if Furphy goes and McNeeley commits is on the number. They didn't have roster room. Funny, I would expect an insider to know that. 2) If you would, either link to the source for the NIL packages that Tucker, Galloway and Leal received or just summarize them because I've never seen those and I'd love to. 3) Ware has been nothing but highly complimentary, probably as gushy as a taciturn kid can get, about his IU experience. He was far less mercenary than I expected.

Scratch this one off. A shame.

Imagine he’ll end up back in Philly. Maybe Nova.

They’re on their own level. The only thing that’s saving the field is that it’s not an NBA format because nobody’s beating those guys 4 of 7,

I’ll always remember the guy for the way he shamelessly campaigned for the IU job in ‘09 when he was at Wright St and it looked like nobody wanted it, like he had any shot. Impressive chutzpah.

Gotta assume he’s probably following Smith to Stanford. This was his 3rd yr out of HS because he had an injury redshirt as a true frosh and missed his 2nd year while being treated for lymphoma. Comes back and is very good. Easy kid to root for.

Given where that program is the 1st 4 bonuses ought be 10 times those amounts.

I agree, with the caveat that the dumbest creature God ever put on this earth is the 17-20 yo boy.

Thought the same thing.

Hiring Howard is 1 of those "any dumba$$ does it" moves. That kid is gonna have a long successful career

I remember reading somewhere Tucker being dragged that he was only taking a single class each semester at Bishop O’Connell when in reality he didn’t have to take any and he was only doing it to be eligible to play as a senior.

I’m pretty amazed that the staff appears to be coming back intact. I was absolutely sure that Kenya was gonna get the Ned Stark treatment.

1 thing I just realized we’ve never talked about around here: You won’t see videos of Tucker playing travel ball because he never played travel ball. He did a couple of top 100-type camps and played some international team ball, but otherwise his summers were all skill development work and school. He was so far ahead academically that last spring he was considered an almost certain reclass. At 1 point he was pretty much universally penciled into Mich St’s ‘23 class. Make no mistake, he’s kind of a different kid.

Yup, and people tend to lose sight of the fact that labels are meaningless. 1-5 was literally created to simplify diagraming and teaching sets. It’s not about labels, it’s about scheme. Anybody think Reneau would have a problem playing the role labeled as a 5 in Oats’ or Moser’s systems? Of course not. If the staff has shown these guys schematic changes that opens the floor and creates operating space, call them whatever you want and they’ll be fine. Hell, call Reneau a PG if he wants. Introduce your entire lineup as PG’s if they want. It doesn’t matter.

Everything they're doing right now also signals that the goal is, if not to play small, to certainly play smaller.

Will be pretty surprised if he doesn’t stay in the draft. Imagine he’ll work out well enough to get a promise late in the 1st rd.

Who would have thought that a MCDAA wing scorer’s “play style”consists of force feeding the post, cutting to the weak corner and just kind of hanging out? Snark aside, I would think no other visits is probably promising.

Well, that’s a pretty underwhelming bunch. Oweh has a lot of Justin Smith about him in that he’s a spectacular athlete who mitigates it by being a slow mental processor. I’m sure he’ll have a great list because coaches always think they can scheme over that and they’re almost always wrong. Blackmon and Essegian couldn’t defend 1 decent scorer if they were allowed to double team the kid.

That is a good, good hire. Thought he could be 1 of those guys who might be able to go straight to a power conference job. I’m not as big a fan of Drew as some, but he undeniably has an eye for coaching talent.

Hey, look, what Perea was supposed to be able to do but actually couldn’t.

3, excluding Gillespie since he’s committed, with confirmed IU interest. For me, Shaw is light on Sears and heavy on Pegues.

Agree. As long as you have a vision for how you want to play, you’ve identified the traits you’re looking for and the kids you’re reaching out to embody those I don’t care how many kids you contact.