Demo

Wow. I was never a Richardson fan at all. Almost choked when Holder reported that the Colts had him #1 overall on their board and would have taken him 1-1 over Stroud. But how underwhelming must he be up close in the building for them to quit on that toolkit in 2 years at 23? Never thought for a second he wouldn’t be the week 1 starter.

Last year top 10 in scoring was right at 20. So maybe.

100%. A kid like this is a perfect 13th scholly. Would love to see one like him every year. If they hit you stole a kid and if they don’t you move on to the next one and the kid moves on to find his level. Love it.

Finally got around to watching a couple of games of Acimovic tonight. NFL exhibition games were tough to get away from(snark), but priorities are priorities. Couple of thoughts: Yeah, he has no chance to meaningfully help this year, his body’s just not ready, but his skill level and his mental processing were better than I expected from just clips. He’s got soft hands. He can make catches in traffic. His feet are ok. His problem is that he doesn’t sink his weight naturally and right now he really, really lacks lower body strength, so when he gets banged around he has trouble maintaining balance. But that’s not bad feet. When he has some space he moves them ok. He has a drop step/counter that he executes and in 1 game he caught the ball mid-post and inside pivoted, Jack Sikma-style, and made a 12 footer. That was cute. He also faced a kid up, jab stepped, put down 1 dribble right and put up a sort of jump hook that he missed, but it was a nice efficient move. So he’s got some stuff in the post. Also made 1 read in each game where he found cutters, 1 from the weak corner and 1 down the lane, that he timed and hit perfectly for layups. Very good reads. 1 thing for sure, he is not gonna be a rim runner. Just doesn’t run great. But he’s got a pretty stroke and he’ll be able to help in a full court game as a trail shooter. Fully expect him to be a really good shooter down the road. As he gets stronger and fitter I’ll be interested to see how his defense develops. Right now he’d be pretty much unplayable. He would just get out-leveraged in the post by any decent big, badly. He’s not switchable at this point, not because of his shear movement so much as he just doesn’t bend his knees so he struggles to change direction. But he can contest some at the rim and he has good timing. So if the athleticism comes the defense will probably hold up eventually. Last thing, he he got busted dead in the mouth by an elbow and he got straight in the kid’s face and didn’t back down an inch. That was nice to see because he doesn’t carry himself that way. He really is a textbook redshirt candidate. Like that plan a lot. He’s got a chance to be a pretty interesting piece by maybe year 2.

https://x.com/SeanBormanNFL/status/1956805967171010933 Price taking a punt 80 for a td.

Pretty good shortish pod with Jamie Shaw. Some analysis on several IU offers including Diane, Muurinen, Mingo, Thompson, Kinney and Rippey and mentions of multiple others, including Taylor. Nothing super insightful, this isn’t about their recruitments, but some nice analysis on their development. Interesting to hear his thoughts on Thompson’s progress because, and I imagine I’m alone on this island. I think that kid will be a better 25yo NBA player than Tyran Stokes.

True. Honest to God, I can count on 1 hand, the waves at Nazare, Chilean Patagonia, the South Island of New Zealand, that I want to see as much as I do a 100% candid discussion by those involved of the Woodson hiring “process”. Desperately want to hear successful, serious people reflect on how they hired a guy that at that point no one above HS would have hired as a HC for the freaking Indiana job.

https://x.com/AriWasserman/status/1956014414311965123 Lamenting the Adidas/Tennessee deal. Sound like any fanbase we know?

I’ve heard Crean say the “it was worse than I thought” stuff more than once and if you remember back there were times in real time both on and off court when he had this “what the hell am I doing” look, so I’m sure he genuinely believes it. But I doubt that’s really true. I just think if you were one of those guys with the ego and ambition to really want one of the heritage jobs, and Crean was definitely that guy, IU was probably the only 1 of those gigs that looked like it was gonna come open any time soon. So I imagine he let the opportunity cloud the situation in a way he probably wouldn’t have if it was, ya know, say, the Wisconsin job.

https://www.si.com/college/indiana/basketball/took-that-personally-darian-devries-lamar-wilkerson-indiana-basketball-exhibition-puerto-rico-mega-superbet Nice little read. My assumption all along has been that as the guy with the ball this would probably evolve into Conerway’s team but at least early on it pretty clearly appears to be Wilkerson’s.

Kirk Hammett owns that guitar now and no disrespect intended, but he needs to never play it. It just needs to be staged somewhere with a freaking spotlight shining on it.

Weight down. Textbook slide. Playing with his chest. Maintains hand discipline. Somebody’s gettin’ coached.

Would be interested to know how those stats compare to pre-Covid year/portal explosion.

https://www.zagsblog.com/2025/08/10/27-pg-lyons-hearing-from-high-majors/ Nice article. Visiting Bloomington next month.

The infectious energy is fantastic. Genuinely not busting last year’s kids, but the connectivity there just never took hold and this already feels miles better after a couple of months. Side note: the announcer’s accent when pronouncing names is awesome. Sahm Alexees. Titan Con-Airway. Love it.

Even a couple of years ago feel pretty confident this would have been KU against the field but the KU dynamics are definitely changing. Weird as this probably sounds given how relentlessly he played through the post, but I don’t think Woody would have had any shot with a kid like Taylor. Despite being just huge, everything about the way he plays screams rim runner/PnR finisher/high post secondary facilitator. What DDV appears to be doing with Bailey is probably way more appealing to him than what Woody did with Ballo. Really want him because purely from a developmental perspective he may be the most interesting kid in the class.

Goodman’s an idiot. By “down class” he’s saying, “Hey, since I don’t watch these kids at all except for a couple of days at Peach Jam I need to have a few at the top that any any moron can see and require no projection at all.” Sorry Jeff, since there’s no Flagg or Peterson in ‘26 you’ll just need to put in a little more work. There are gonna be a bunch of kids in this class who will be big pieces on NC contenders and play a long time in the League. Gotta up your game a little, Jeff.

Kid is relentless. Saw this and thought that’s it 9 on a Saturday night he should be out having fun. But then thought, yeah friends invited him out but he declined to follow an August exhibition game on Twitter. That might be the coolest thing I’ve ever heard. That right there is my boy.

Yeah, it is. He’s gonna have a Chaz Lanier-type year.

So, was Ristic translating smack talk back and forth?

https://lastwordonsports.com/basketball/2025/08/09/top-ranked-center-arafan-diane-leader-in-recruitment/

Well, as it so often does, filthy lucre seems to have trumped God. Would imagine even the Lord will be advocating for NIL guardrails at this point.

Have been completely obsessed with this from the great Gary Moore for the last couple of weeks. Was originally done by Roy Buchanan in the late 60’s, who played it with something of a jazz feel. Moore punted the vocals, turned it into this bada$$ instrumental and recorded it for 1 of his late 80’s albums. That’s how I knew it. Then I saw this. This thing. Live performance at Montreux in 1990. Jesus. From the cool as hell intro motif to the last note, the most incendiary yet melodic electric guitar playing I’ve ever heard. Maybe no one else does, but Gary Moore is on my Rushmore of rock guitarists. Guitar God gets thrown around pretty loosely. That dude was the genuine article and needs to never be forgotten.

I just think the kid needs to be in the right situation with appropriate expectations. Flagg, Dybantsa, those kids classed up because they were just ready to be top 2 options on really good teams. I imagine on a good 26-27 college team he’s probably a 3rd option. More like Nate Ament’s gonna be this year rather than Cam Boozer. But I’d buy futures in that kid all day.

This is a great freaking listen. Highly, highly recommend.