Hoosier Roots

I don’t think the NCAA is going to be reining anything in and we shouldn’t sit around assuming that the rules are going to be brought back to our conservative comfort levels, that genie is fully out of the bottle now. We’ve spent over a decade waiting and speculating on when the NCAA will bring the hammer down on UK, KU, UL, etc. for cheating much more egregious than NIL violations. It’s not going to happen. We need to adapt and start paying players competitively to come here. It’s pretty much now or never.

Since football season is already depressing, it seems like a good time to remember basketball is right around the corner lol. Pacers rebuild seems to be picking up hype as two of their young players are picked to potentially make Ja Morant like leaps this year. https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/34697196/nba-preview-2022-23-10-breakout-candidates-including-former-no-1-pick-eurobasket-phenom

He’s popular nation wide but definitely an artist listened to by serious-ish rap fans as opposed to a more pop superstar like Drake. Our players and recruits definitely know him, plus he is releasing a new album the day of HH which should build some hype.

This sounds like the pitch my Army recruiter used to get me to enlist, except he at least included a 25k signing bonus and a salary too hahaha.

Safe to say this might not turn out well. We have fan pages arguing with Xavier's family members smh.

LETS F#*¥ING GOOOOO BABY

This place got pretty toxic towards the end of the Crean era tbh

I know one of the biggest knocks on Woodson last year was his tendency to do a whole platoon swap and bench all of our starters during the game. I doubt that disappears, however we might be heading toward the point where we have enough depth and talent on the team to actually make that work with additions like Malik.

Troy didn’t have NIL money to factor in though. The ability to earn 6 figured in college changes the draft calculus a bit.

Full 10 minute breakdown on Cupps, what he can do and needs to do from about 5 months ago. This guy also has breakdowns on Kwane Evans and the whole Monteverde team for anyone who is interested.

From the small amount of tape I’ve seen, he seems like he definitely has the ability to rebound and block shots. 8.5 rpg is more than what Trayce did his freshman year and his scoring output rose throughout the season to over 16 ppg during MAC play, pointing to a player who was improving during the season. Also he was a 70% FT shooter which would be an improvement over what Race and Trayce put up last season. I don’t think he would come in and be the star of the team as a sophomore but I think it’s worth seeing what he can do over 3 years.

I feel like people on here are getting way too caught up on this kid’s 3pt shooting. Yeah our shooting sucks as a team but it’s pretty unlikely we’re going to change that through the 5. Unfortunately KAT and Dirk aren’t coming to IU anytime soon so we might have to temper our expectations there.

After watching a highlight real of his year at BSU (not the best way to judge a player I know but still) it seems like some may be discounting what this kid can do. I saw a kid who can easily get up high for rebounds, dunk through contact, and out muscle and body his defenders. Definitely not the unathletic, below the rim post player that some here are describing as far as I can see. I’m sure he isn’t a TJD level athlete but considering it sounds like he can hit from mid range better, I don’t see why he couldn’t work as the 1 in within our offensive scheme.

Geronimo is too good to sit on the bench, you have to play him period. In addition, he is only 6’6. If he has any intention of playing in the league then it makes sense to develop the skill set of a 3 more.

I really like this kid! It seems like he is a good scorer, very athletic and has a good frame for 6’8. If his main knock is defense then I can handle that, I trust this staff to develop this kid defensively much more than I trust them to develop offense or superb athleticism. I think he could have a very good career trajectory at IU.

I just don’t understand the pearl clutching around compensating players other than some idea about the sanctity of college athletics that has never really existed in practice. As it was pointed out above, the NCAA has a 10 figure tv deal just for their basketball tourney. College athletics is probably the only industry in the world where an entity can legally make that much money and not have to pay the workers who generate the revenue anything (and until recently have done everything they can to stop them from profiting outside their direct confines). I would even argue that it is a completely unethical business model. Sure you can say the athletes don’t NEED more compensation than they receive to get by, but that’s in the same way you could say that an NBA player or a CEO of a large company don’t NEED to earn more than the average worker to get by. Any pretense of fairness falls apart when you examine the value they add to their organizations. College football and basketball players for many D1 schools are for all intents and purposes workers for their schools, and some of the most valuable and lucrative ones at that. Sure you can say that a 5 figure scholarship is enough to justify the lack of a real salary, but that’s ignoring the fact that the cost of the education is generally bloated and overpriced in the first place, and that the scholarship cost the university almost nothing per player. When compared to the revenue that a player like Cody Zeller or Yogi Ferrall brought in over their career, it’s completely inadequate. I enjoy watching Indiana play but I have no pretensions about the reality of the business behind it. In an industry that deals in such large amounts of profit, amateurism doesn’t, and shouldn't really exist. If players playing for free and the love of the game is the end all be all of basketball for you then you should just watch high school.

I for one am completely fine with giving the players (especially the stars) piles of cash to play here considering how much money is made in the business of cbb and cfb. 1. It absolutely infuriates me that IU is fine with making Millions off the program each year all while putting out a below average product, self sabotaging multiple times over the decades, and acting smug and pretentious about it on top of that. To a certain point it seems like the loyalty of the fan base is being exploited. I have no moral opposition to giving some of that money to the kids who generate it. 2. The NCAA doesn’t even enforce their own rules. I know there is a portion of our fan base that is traumatized from the Sampson era’s consequences, but it’s pretty clear in retrospect that self reporting to the NCAA was like cutting off the hand to avoid a slap on the wrist, and served us no benefit when we could have just fired him. All it takes is to look at Kansas, Duke, Kentucky, etc to see that as long as programs are profitable and popular, the NCAA has no interest in actually hindering them. The direction of college athletics is even trending to make it easier to get away with this kind of stuff with NIL. It doesn’t even have to be done with bag men anymore. I am 100% sure that with full support we can find smart and creative ways to get players compensated and actually complete to land the players we need. These issues really have nothing to do with Woody (whom I really like) or even Archie or Crean. It’s absolutely ridiculous that we have a program that is so profitable and well supported perform this badly so consistently. IMO it’s the result of the sum of multiple decisions by the administration and BOT over the decades that have had a myriad of other impacts on the school than just in athletics but are the most visible and easily quantifiable in the basketball program.

I think both haircuts are just coincidentally in style right now for 18-22 year olds

Haven’t seen anyone mention this, but when me and my friends tried to enter the student section yesterday, we were told that it was so packed that they weren’t letting anymore people in and instead we had to sit in a different section by the south endzone… which was also entirely full of students. Seems like the student body is really showing out this year.

I really don’t like the noon starts from a stadium atmosphere perspective. I get that older fans like it, but I think it will be difficult to get the student section in full force (and full intoxication) that early in the day.

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that Andy Katz has been to only 5 B1G campuses total.

To be honest I have no problem with football and basketball players being adequately compensated for their contributions to the university’s revenue. Especially when none of the powers that be seen to care and the morality of making players play for free is becoming more ambiguous every year.

The dude was an NBA coach during the 1 and done era. I feel like he would have no problem handling primadonna 18-20 year olds.

Practice squad players make like $9000 a week. If we’re being honest he would make much more playing a season on the practice squad then he would trying to land a job with a Degree during a pandemic. Cant blame him for taking that opportunity.

That was a bad L and we all look incredibly stupid for how we acted before that game now, but that’s not on the players. I know if I was on that team, after that showing the off season would start tonight and I would be hitting the hotel weight room very soon. I hope this team has a similar mentality. A loss that painful has to provide a lot of motivation for the next 6 months. This team should start the next season as a hungrier, better, and more focused group.