Hoosierfan2017

Why? He’s only 50 and 2 of his 3 tournament appearances have come since then.

Can Scott just throw a bag at Cronin already and get this over with? I don’t care that he’s 5’3 with an attitude. He’ll get us to the tournament every year and get to the sweet 16 fairly often based on his ucla tenure.

Well because obviously the only reason Brad would go watch his son’s team play is if he has decided to be the next IU basketball coach.

While true that there’s more parity in college basketball with NIL, NIL was supposed to make IU a more attractive job. Previously, a coach was expected to be a Boy Scout and cross every T and dot every I while competing at the same level of traditional bluebloods that we’re paying players under the table. They were expected to fight with both hands tied behind their back. Now, the IU coach will have as much money to recruit as any other coach in the country. Dolson said that himself. There’s also the fact that IU is in one of the two “premier” conferences. If we still can’t lure a name with those things in our favor then we’re in trouble.

Iowa’s the place you go if you just want to coach basketball while having middling expectations without everything else that comes with being a coach at a major program. Fran has survived 15 years despite making the tournament only 7 times, winning 50.4% of is conference games, and never making it to the sweet 16. Sounds like McCollum just wants a job he can hide out and coach without being the center of attention. Nothing wrong with that, but this isn’t the job for him if that’s the case.

Frankly I don’t really believe that his hand was forced last time, but if the best Dolson can muster this time is McCollum or Brownell, it shows it wouldn’t have mattered last time either.

McCollum isn’t even Iowa’s first choice, apparently. Hiring Iowa’s backup plan would be a total IU move, though.

Sounds like a repeat of 2021 where Dolson puts all his eggs in the pie in the sky Hail Mary basket and then we’re left with an underwhelming hire when that doesn’t work out. At least McCollum has coached college basketball.

It hasn’t been Stevens for at least a month now.

Need insiders to start coming with carfax, lol. So many people sprouting up. It’s just hard to view talks of Brad being a “done deal” as anything other than trolling, imo.

Barnes was only there for four years and made the made the tournament three times. Brownell is at four times in fourteen years. He made it his first year and then didn’t make it again until his 8th year. He’s been somewhat better the past few years, but how much of that is due to the ACC being a shell of itself? He went 23-11 and 14-6 in the conference in 2023 and missed the NCAA tournament.

Kansas has missed the NCAA tournament once since 1984 and recently won the Big 12 fourteen years in a row, and like a week ago a player posted nasty messages he got after a loss. The “it’s the fanbase’s fault” has also been complete and utter nonsense. The IU fanbase is frankly incredibly restrained given the lack of success we’ve had this century.

IU has had the worst 15 year stretch in its history. There’s absolutely no way Dolson can sell a hire who has made fewer tournaments than IU during that same stretch. Good coaches elevate their programs. Brownell hasn’t.

I don’t think the fanbase can withstand more than a year maximum of it. There are too many examples of coaches coming in and winning right away in the portal/NIL era for people to be ok with a rebuild. That combined with IU’s last 9 years (which aren’t the new coach’s fault but will affect the fanbase’s patience) will lead to the new coach feeling some heat from the fanbase if he doesn’t make the tournament his first year. Even Woodson did that and he’s probably the laziest P5 coach in the country. Now I don’t think the administration gives two craps about what the fanbase thinks, but Dolson is deluding himself if he thinks he’s going to get patience from it.

Dolson has had a year to work on this search and the two leading candidates are a guy with one year of D1 experience and a guy with 15 years of mediocre ACC experience. He learned his cooking skills at the Woodson Culinary Institute.

Dolson is gonna Brad Brownell me into being excited about a McCollum hire.

Oh there are many hires that would shock the college bball world… Just not in a good way.

This coaching search and the past eight years generally have beaten me so far into submission that I hear Chris Collins may be on the move and I immediately hope that it’s to IU.

Why is McCollum’s ceiling higher, though? Cronin is in his sixth season at UCLA. It’s a comparable job to IU in some ways. The tournament got canceled his first season. He went to the sweet 16 each of the next three seasons, including a trip to the final 4. Last year was a bad year in large part to UCLA’s NIL issues. This year he finished 13-7 in the same conference we’re in. If we put Cronin’s ceiling at sweet 16s and competing for conference championships, what evidence at this point to say that McCollum has a higher ceiling than that other than his “ceiling” being a total unknown?

Cronin has missed the tournament one time over the past 15 seasons and has zero seasons in which he finished under .500 in his conference. You know exactly what you’re getting with him. Maybe someone argues that his ceiling isn’t high enough (I’d disagree), but his floor is far better than anything we’ve had recently. McCollum is completely unproven on a P5 level. He didn’t play at that level, he didn’t serve as an assistant at that level, and he hasn’t coached at that level. Hell, he only has a few games coaching against P5. I simply have zero interest in rolling the dice with someone like that. Maybe I’m wrong, but I really don’t think IU can take that gamble at this stage.

I would take Cronin over McCollum 100 out of 100 times. The odds are against McCollum reaching even Cronin’s level of success.

How many turn into Bill Self or Jay Wright compared to how many who don’t?

How are you going to group McDermott and McCollum in the same category here? Their similarities end after the first two letters of their last name. McDermott has been a D1 coach for nearly 25 years and the last four years has gone sweet 16, round of 32, elite 8, sweet 16. I’d be very happy if IU landed him.

Oh no… not you joining Scotty R with the Bob Knight comparisons, lol. We should be “too good” for a coach from Drake. Chris Beard is begging for the job, Will Wade would probably take it too. I’d definitely rather go with Chris Collins. If McCollum is the best we can do then I guess that says it all. The thing that got me through the Mike Woodson hire was his age meaning he wouldn’t be here long term. I don’t have the energy for another tank train, so I guess I’d just accept IU’s mediocre standing as a program, try to adjust my expectations accordingly, and hope that I’m wrong.

If the best that IU basketball can do is Ben McCollum, it’s a depressing as hell signal that IU basketball is a middle of the road basketball program so far removed from “blueblood” status. Maybe McCollum is the boy wonder that many on here have convinced themselves of, but IU basketball shouldn’t have to take that chance. How does the program go from allegedly offering Brad Stevens $10+ million a year to McCollum being the next option?