Hoosierfan2017

You obviously don’t remember the title we won for being at the forefront of NIL during its first 24 hours.

Both our backcourt and our frontcourt are worse right now than they were last season. I doubt we are after anymore frontcourt players, so we will really need better perimeter players to make up for it..

Both have a long ways to go before I’d want them in the rotation.

He’s not their coach yet. There’s plenty of time for that later on. You’re trying to wine and dine recruits. The blunt ‘here’s what you stink at’ approach isn’t the best recruiting strategy.

You make excuse after excuse for the staff while simultaneously blaming the fans of all people for the staff’s shortcomings. It’s ridiculous. IU was a good but not great team last year. We had a nonexistent bench, and 4 of the 5 starters are gone, including our all-American 20/10 guy. Our incoming freshman class is mediocre. Woody needs a big portal haul and he’s not getting it. We’re watching target after target commit elsewhere, two of them to the same school. Ware is nice, but he does nothing to fill our gaping hole on the perimeter.

Yeah, we can downplay guys after they commit to other schools, but a whole lot of guys we’ve pursued have gone elsewhere. Saying we’re being “selective” sounds like the guy at the bar making excuses for not getting any attention.

I mean, the SEC is a better basketball conference than the Big 10. IU was a 4 seed in the tournament this year. Arkansas was a 3 seed in Musselman’s second season when they made the elite eight. IU easily would’ve been a 3 seed if we won a few of the east games we blew. But, I recognize that blaming the prior coach for the current coach’s shortcomings is a popular thing to do for IU fans. The same thing happened with Archie. It was all Crean’s fault for leaving him such a bad roster. At what point will IU’s current coach’s shortcomings become his own fault and not his predecessor’s?

Musselman went 25-7 and made the elite eight during his second season at Arkansas. He followed that up with another elite eight the next season. Woodson is going into his third season now, and we certainly don’t project to be an elite eight team next year. I don’t think the blame can be laid on Archie at this point. Yeah, he sucked. But the transfer portal gives you the opportunity to completely revamp your roster, and Woodson had TJD because of Archie. The past two seasons look a lot different without him. Woodson didn’t inherit a 2008, no scholarship players, IU team.

To add to this, Kansas State only had two players last July and they made it all the way to the elite eight.

We’re not a desirable landing spot for top-tier talent. We can all sit around and argue about why, and it’s probably a multitude of factors, but the proof is in the pudding. Every few years we get guys like TJD and JHS, but we can’t consistently reload. Next year will be a struggle to make the tournament, which certainly doesn’t help our recruiting woes.

So what kind of offense are we going to run next season? A lot of talks about how Woodson didn’t want to run the kind of offense he did but had to because of TJD/Race. But the only portal players we’ve landed are bigs. We have a big weakness on the perimeter. Shooting is a big concern. Things aren’t looking great.

Dear diary…

One of the Bama guys involved is sitting in jail while the other is headed off to the NBA, so that won’t be a story for Alabama moving forward. And honestly, if he’s such an introvert, going to a school where the student body cares 100x more about football than they do basketball would be a better atmosphere than a school like IU. The Hoosier Hysterics would be a nightmare for a significant introvert.

Nah. Traveling kind of sucks. Going on a visit to a school if he has already decided is a waste of everyone’s time, including his own.

We don’t need a big to replicate TJD, but if we’re not getting scoring from a big we’ll need TJD’s efficient 21 ppg replaced elsewhere.

I see quite literally zero people “panicking” and about a hundred posts from you talking about people panicking. If we don’t land good portal pieces then we’ll probably stink, but the past two decades of IU basketball has prepared us for that.

Ok then just let us know when we’re allowed to start talking about our roster and we’ll all come back then. Thanks!

There are legitimate reasons to be concerned about next season. We are losing a ton. Talking about needing big pieces to replace those guys isn’t an “eeyore routine.” If you’re upset about someone not pumping incessant sunshine, you’re looking for an echo chamber, not a message board.

Because I don’t want us to suck next year? We went 23-12, made it to the round of 32, and then lost 4 starters. 1 of those starters was a top 3 player in college basketball, another starter is a projected first round pick, and a third starter was our best shooter. Our bench was very weak last season and we lost 2 of our 3 main bench rotational players. Neither were good, but we still need to replace those minutes. We only have two freshmen coming in and neither projects to be instant impact. Getting Xavier back will help, but we still have a ton of holes to fill. That’s why he needs to hit it out of the park. Otherwise you’re looking at a missed tournament which will kill the momentum we have going. Our coach is 65 years old. He doesn’t have ‘rebuilding’ time. I think a lot of people are underestimating how big of a loss TJD will be.

Like I said, Woody needs to knock the off-season out of the park and so far he hasn’t at all. We will find players to fill the last 3-4 spots (depending on if Woody want a full roster). But we can’t just fill the spots with warm bodies if we want to avoid a big step backwards. Our prospects next year are extremely reliant on who we get in the portal and I’m not feeling great about that.

This is our current roster. It’s a bottom of the conference kind of roster. Woody needs to knock the off-season out of the park and so far he hasn’t at all. Currently: Guards (pending Xavier's likely waiver) X Johnson A Leal T Galloway G Cupps Wings K Banks CJ Gunn J Newton  Posts/Bigs M Reneau P Sparks

Hang on, gotta call up my former high school coach to get his thoughts first.

Same people who say they don’t play any defense in the NBA. Hating on the NBA is just popular for whatever reason.

Thank god for the portal because that’s a rough looking roster.

Tim Priller was a fan favorite too but that didn’t mean he should’ve been playing. Leal isn’t on Priller’s level of bad, but in no world do we want Anthony Leal playing the 3 if we want to be a good team. That’s not a knock on Leal. He just isn’t on that level. And that’s fine. As others have said, he’s a great person to have as your 13th man.