RaceToTheTop

Speaking of filling the 13th scholarship....I know Diamant Blazi seemed to have come from out of nowhere and then got an IU visit the same day Bryson Tucker visited. IU basically told him no thanks. Rumor was they thought his game wasn't worth the scholarship compared to him being a potential distraction, whatever that means. To my knowledge, no one else has signed him either. He was from France so it wouldn't be a surprise to see him go back overseas. I did find out that he has a big instagram (2.2 million) and tik tok (2.7 million) following.

APR, seven foot practice body, designator big to absorb fouls in a case where our bigs are in foul trouble. While he's not good, I have yet to see seven foot players who are walk ons. Someone is always going to take them in as a body. Six three walk ons are a dime a dozen, seven footers aren't.

Tatum and Halliburton DNP against Serbia.

Yeah, **** the Pacers for making the ECF because other teams had boo-boos.

I like Shrewsberry, but the amount of love he gets as a 50-51 coach is absurd.

Yeah, it sucked making the Eastern conference finals with a young team last year.

Question: Would you rather be medium efficiency, low volume threes, or low efficiency, medium volume?

Sikoa can't carry the bloodline storyline.

I understand — BUT how many players have been found guilty of breaking NIL laws? As long as the laws aren’t being broken, best get on board and use them to your advantage.

The courts have decided that players can profit from their NIL. In my opinion, they should be able to. While there might be NCAA legislation to try and control it, there is no way of guaranteeing that it would hold up in court.

Ain't digging past the surface cause I's really don't care.

Can't wait. Updated to a PS5 in anticipation last month.. Can't force myself to get it on July 15th, though. 3 days early for $30 seems pretty steep.

Oregon winning a title in his lifetime.....I think I have bread with greater expiration dates. They going to move the BCS title game up to the end this month to try to accomadate him?

Gotcha. Personally, I am not a fan of Northwestern's resume at all and think at best they should have been just on the right side of the bubble.

I was told there would be no Q&A.

The first was IU's in the hypothetical situation that they had beaten one of the U Conn, Kansas, Auburn trio -- the question I had asked is would IU have been in if they hadn't beaten one of those three and blown out the non-con they should have. U Conn and Auburn were Q1a games, Kansas was Q1b (just below 1a), so for the sake of argument let's just say that team A had one 1a win. The second team was Northwestern. They had two 1a wins but I do need to amend the 5-8 quad 1 record -- it was actually 4-7. The tournament games were put on Warren Nolan's sheet but shouldn't have been there. Northwestern put a non-conference schedule were they played SEVEN teams with a NET of 274 or worse (IU had one) and the Wildcats actually lost to one of those teams. Strength of victory for IU: 133. Strength of loss: 35. Northwestern strength of victory: 135. Strength of loss: 58. My contention is simply that Northwestern wasn't even really on the bubble -- they were a 9 seed. But in the scenario I provided -- IU getting one more win and beating bad teams by a decent margin -- I don't see much difference between IU and Northwestern in that scenario. IMO, Northwestern should have been a bubble team just making it instead of a 9 seed.

Which team would you pick? Team A: 20-13, Q1 4-8, Q2 6-4, Q3 4-1, Q4 6-0. Non-con NET SOS 122, Overall NET SOS 23 Team B: 21-11, Q1 5-8, Q2 5-3, Q3 5-0, Q4 7-1. Non-con NET SOS 330, Overall NET SOS 47

You are the tournament expert -- if IU had won one of the three games against U Conn, Kansas, and Auburn and blew out teams that they should have in the non conference, would the non-conference schedule been good enough?

They had four quad 1 and 2 games in non-conference, so it wasn't 'almost all cupcakes'. And they were rewarded a high seed because they went 13-5 in the Big 12 and played 16 quad 1 games, winning 10 of them -- only two teams played more quad 1 games and only three won more than 10 quad one games.

The results sucked. That's different than saying the schedule sucked. The net non-conference SOS last year was 110 I believe.

You are definitely harsher on him as a coach than I am, but I would never say I love Mike Woodson the person. I think the refusal to take responsibility for certain things is a reflection of him as a person and not a coach.

To be fair, they did. The Battle for Atlantis. One other clarification -- you did forget to put the fact that Tennessee is on Illinois' schedule this year (although I would have removed Missouri from your list if you want to talk about how tough their schedule is). That said: Last year IU's non-conference SOS was 223 accoring to Pom. This ranked as the 6th toughest out of the 14 Big Ten teams and was ahead of Illinois's schedule last year which was at 260. Outside of Indiana, my prediction would be that 4 of the other teams in the Battle for Atlantis would be in the top 50 NET and three would be outside the top 50. Top 50 NET on the road equates to a Q1 game. Most likely IU will face either 1 Q1 and 2 Q2 or 2Q1 and 1 Q2. The other opponents by last year NET: SIU Edwardsville: 280 Q4 Eastern Illinois 311 Q4 South Carolina 51 Q2 UNC Greensboro 132 Q3 Sam Houston 152 Q3 Miami (O) 238 Q4 Chattanooga 140 Q3 Wintrop 181 Q4 Totals: Either 1 or 2 Q1, 2 or 3 Q2, 3 Q3, 4 Q4. Last year the non-con NET sheet was: 3 Q1, 0 Q2, 2 Q3, 6 Q4. While the marquee matchups at the top aren't there (although they could be depending on how the Battle of Atlantis plays out), it is a more balanced schedule.

I googled 'schreckbagger' and it turned up.....nothing. So can we assume it means 'person who has a vague screen name that takes offense to it being spelled wrong'?