Hoosierfan2017

Joel Embiid on James Harden: “Obviously, I’m sure since we got him, everybody expected the Houston James Harden, but that’s not who he is anymore. He’s more of a playmaker. I thought, at times, as with all of us, could’ve been more aggressive.” Joel Embiid throws his teammates under the bus every year after he gets eliminated in the playoffs. In no world is PJ Tucker a better basketball player than James Harden.

Because it’s quickly went from players being paid for their NIL to players signing with the highest bidding school. Teams are basically buying players now through donor intermediaries. So you have a system that’s even more wide open than the NBA or the NFL. No salary cap, no max contract, and every player is on a one year deal. Massive discrepancies in the amounts each team can pay that you don’t see in the NFL or NBA. When you have a billionaire donor announce an $800k + new car deal with a transfer recruit minutes after he signs, any illusion of this being anything other than pay for play is shattered. Then you have reports of Lincoln Riley and USC tampering to get a kid from Pitt by offering more in NIL. Whenever an IUFB player has a breakout year are we going to lose him right after because one of the blue bloods will offer a stack of cash? I’m starting to not like it in its present form.

For now, but we’ve seen the NCAA grant immediate eligibility for guys who have played at/transferred from multiple schools. For example, James Akinjo has played for three schools in three years.

I liked NIL and still do but this is… not great. With it + automatic transfers, every player in college basketball is on a 1 year contract every year and can just go to the highest bidder in the offseason. A player like Pack getting $800k is crazy to me. Zion got $400k under the table, and that was for a generational player. Pack’s not worth that much in NIL, but it’s a drop in the bucket for a rich booster so might as well pay it to marginally improve your team.

I genuinely just don’t know what the job entails, honestly.

How important is this role?

I’ll be bummed if we miss out on a contributor because we didn’t want to rock the boat and Crean the 12th or 13th man.

We’ve sucked over the past decade but still have the same number of conference titles during that period as them and only one less sweet 16 trip.

Lol Fife got into a shouting match with a recruit about NIL? What a tool. So glad he got canned.

The “college sports you love” have had bag men and under the table deals for decades. Why would you stop loving it just because it’s finally out in the open?

It’s not my money. I’m in favor of whatever we can do to bring in the best players we can. If NIL helps do that., great.

The way it should be, imho. If Woody fails, the fact that he was nice and kept good ole Indiana boys like Leal (or whoever would be replaced) around won’t save him. Archie seemed to almost exclusively recruit Indiana kids and he got fired because he sucked. Build the best team you can so you can win as many games as you can. If you piss some people off in the process, oh well.

From his Instagram it looked like he was on a visit to Iona over the weekend.

That’s why I’m 100% in favor of it. We’re not talking about swapping Leal for a different 13th guy. We’d be replacing the 13th guy with a rotation player, which in turn would push someone else to the end of the line. It’d make us a better team. I think McNeil makes us better next year than Leal does, so it’s a no brainer to me. Talent wins in basketball. Acquire as much of it as you can. That leads to winning, which leads to momentum, which leads to top recruits. We got some momentum last year when we made it to the semifinals of the conference tournament and then made the NCAA tournament. If we lose to Michigan and miss the tournament do we still get Malik? Maybe, but the staff wouldn’t have as much to sell, and some of our guys like Race and Xavier may have left. Elite programs push out and recruit over guys all the time. They still land top talent. If IU becomes an elite team again we wont have to worry about it either.

Hopefully not. Emoni Bates sucks and has a huge ego.

The “burning bridges with Indiana high school coaches” stuff is overblown. Woody didn’t recruit Leal. Through two years at IU he hasn’t shown an ability to contribute at this level. If you have the chance to substitute someone like Sean McNeil for an end of the bench guy like Leal, you take it. If it makes Leal’s high school coach mad, who cares? How many times do we recruit players from his high school? Woody has a top 5 recruiting class, only 1 of the players is from Indiana, and he’s by far the lowest ranking player in the class. There’s nothing special in the water at Indiana high schools. Indiana players are far less important when you can recruit nationally and land 5 star recruits from prep schools across the country. That’s the route Woody’s trying to take.

I’m not big on Dennis but I’m intrigued by McNeil. A bunch of solid schools want him. 37% from 3 last year and 39% from 3 the year before on good volume. Outstanding free throw shooter. He did it in the Big 12. He was a starter on a tournament team in 2021. I think he fills a hole we had last season.

I doubt that they have any interest at all in moving, but if we have a chance to upgrade the roster we should take it. I don’t like Galloway but he’s at least shown he can be in the rotation. Leal really hasn’t shown anything to make me think he’s anything more than a last player on the bench type of guy. He’s billed as a shooter but he’s shot 30.8% from 3 in college.

Leal’s really no better of a shooter than Dennis, and he doesn’t play defense. It’s great that Leal loves IU but that can’t be the reason you keep a guy. We already have a cheerleading squad.

I’d be fine losing Duncomb and Leal. Galloway too honestly if an upgrade is there. Never really wanted Gunn but he’ll be here for next year at the minimum, though I wouldn’t mind if we landed someone in his place either.

Great news! Exactly the level of recruit I want us going after and landing.

Kopp shot 36% from 3 and 85% from the line over three years at Northwestern. Last year with us he shot 36.1% from 3 and 86.5% from the line. We got basically exactly what we should’ve expected from him.

But we’re only going back and forth on the issue of their shooting. The poster said he didn’t know why one guy is considered a shooter but the other one isn’t. I didn’t opine that Davis is the better player or that he would be better here. Just that he’s clearly the better shooter. Who knows what his percentages would be at a P5 school. It’s a step up in competition, but he’d also be playing with better teammates and wouldn’t get as much defensive focus. Zeisloft shot 6% better from three at IU than he did at Illinois State.

He’s clinging to the 34% vs. 36% because it makes his argument sound a lot better than it really is. It lets him say “oh that’s only a two percent difference! They're not that different as shooters!" The reality is one guy is a career 34% from 3 but has shot under 34% in three of his four college seasons. The other guy is a career 36% from 3 but has shot above 36% in three of his four career seasons. Davis had one down year where he shot 32%. He's been above 37% the other three years on 10+ shots per season. Dennis had one good year, his freshman year, where he shot 40%. It looks like an outlier that he hasn’t been able to replicate since. The past two seasons, Davis has shot 521 3s at a 37.6% clip. That’s an outstanding percentage for that volume. Damian Lillard is a career 37% 3 point shooter. Using his logic, Dame isn’t a “shooter” and is barely better than Dexter Dennis from 3.

Armaan was never a flamethrower. He’s just the only player we’ve had since firing Crean who has shot better from 3 individually than the 2016 did as a team. Crean’s teams were never great defensively, but the 2016 team only gave up 0.7 ppg more than last years team during conference play while scoring 11 more ppg. Doubling down on the defensive focus isn’t going to take us to the next level. You need to be great on both ends.