HoosierX

Don't forget Tucker.

Just curious why you think Newton needs to play? If Carlyle comes, I think the top 7 would be Oumar, Malik, MM, Bryson Tucker, TG, Rice, and Carlyle. I also think Cupps would generally get some minutes as a backup PG and Leal as well will see some time because he brings shooting to the table. Obviously, Newton is a major unknown, and I could be totally wrong, but not sure I see him getting much run.

I don't disagree with that, there are likely some that may come in large part due to Woodson. I just think it will be hard to say Woodson is "landing guys" when we are the highest bidder.

It was a little over top that people felt we weren't going to get any portal players. The simple reality is that we're going to be the best offer for a lot of these kids. So I'm not sure how much credit Woodson should get when we land them. I'm not saying no credit, but I also doubt many of these kids will be coming because he is the coach.

Eat crow about his ability to get portal players or eat crow about his ability to be successful here?

Ummm no, it showed the gap between Purdue and one of the most dominant teams in NCAA tournament history.

I don't think it's particularly close. ESPN is projecting them as #4 next season without projecting them to have a single returning starter.

Ok, I'm not sure how that relates to my ultimate point though. How does someone prove they want to play at IU vs. getting paid? If they want to play at IU but insist on getting paid fair value, what difference is there really? If that person wouldn't take 5% less to play at IU, does that mean they only care about money?

OK, fair, can't judge the ROI of Ware and Mgbako in a vacuum. However, what I was trying to refer to was the overall ROI of our team. I'm willing to bet we were top 10 in NIL and our team was...not that. I couldn't care less that we're paying Bryson Tucker, and happy we landed him. But I'm understanding of people who don't think it necessarily means anything. If your only point is that people shouldn't complain about us paying players, then yeah I agree with you.

Probably because it's a nuance that's ultimately meaningless in the modern age of college basketball. The only way you could objectively qualify as the former is by taking less to play at IU than you could make somewhere else.

I'm with you, we should absolutely be using the advantages we have. I have no problem with these players getting paid. I think part of the frustration is that Woody had this same advantage last year, and he did very little with it. A lot of people, me included, gave Woody a ton of credit for landing Mgbako and Ware last year. In reality, we probably paid them more than they would have made anywhere else. Again, I have no problem with it, but where is the ROI? I'm glad we're landing some players, but I'm not sure Woody should get all the credit for it. In reality, the credit probably belongs just as much to the fans he has maligned.

What do any of our assistants give us? If Kenya had any actual coaching chops, he would have gotten a shot to be a HC by now. And he’s not exactly pulling in the recruits either.

I honestly don’t think that’s true. He’s already lost the fanbase, and it’s going to get really ugly next year if he doesn’t right the ship, which everyone knows he won’t.

Pretty sure we would get one. It’s in the tournament’s best interest for IU to play.

Speaking of that, what a riveting interview by Katz. How you feeling? I’m fine. End of interview.

It’s just so deflating that everyone, including the people making the decisions, know he is going to fail again next year and yet we’re bringing him back anyway.

That and if the hockey substitutions would have been done away with sooner. The metrics probably wouldn’t hate us so much.

Gotta admit, you post things that sound plausible, but I'm guessing it's pure conjecture. Even if agents are rampant for tranfer portal players (I have no idea if that's true), I would be willing to bet that's not how things would play out. An agent is almost certainly not going to stop sending players to a university/coach, even if the agent gets upset about something. If the university/coach is willing to pay his client the most amount of money, an agent is not going to cut off his nose to spite his face.

It’s almost as if you’ve never been to rupp rafters. The concept that fan negativity scares away recruits has no basis in any sort of reality. Occam’s Razor would say Liam McNeely and his family watched this trash post-centric offense and our results all year and weren’t impressed by it.

He is much better defensively than Cupps for one.

Made the comment early on that we were locked in defensively, we really were. But minny’s complete inability to shoot helped. Either way hell of a game.

To be fair, at some point someone listed all the coaches that took a mid-major to a final 4 and the list was pretty impressive. There weren't a whole lot of busts on the list.

Except most of them are just laying out facts, which don't really have an agenda. And you're making blanket observations that you almost certainly can't back up. Which one of these guys is spouting things that aren't based on legitimate analysis? Which ones are less intelligent than an average fan? If people want to consume their content then who are you to tell them they shouldn't? If it's a side hustle, even better, they're doing it because they love it. Get a f'ing life dude.

Agreed, that is such an overplayed narrative. It's something that sounds reasonable when people say it but ultimately makes very little sense. 1) For the reason you mentioned, money talks 2) No one who is worth hiring expects to fail

Or maybe these people can discern that Woodson is a bad coach using objective measures and subjective observations? And why do you get to decide we have way too many of these folks? Clearly the market supports it, so you are literally wrong about there being too many.