JPCIVOP

Separated by literally one spot on the committee's seed line. Think we can be excited, and there are extenuating circumstances, but this is a funny point. This West Virginia team is literally the best team DeVries has ever had by the advanced stats. We'll be counting on him growing a lot from what he's done so far. Think DeVries is dedicated to growing, and so excited to see him try.

So this would be an interesting thing; I'm open to this. Think the resources would make a lot of coaches successful, and IU will give many more resources than WV. A couple questions: Is it concerning that his teams don't hit the offensive glass and don't get to the line? That's been true even at Drake. This year, it led to them not being a very efficient offense at all. Is this year a defensive outlier? He's never had a defense nearly as good as this year's. What is the offensive ceiling? It seems like teams need to be at 120 points per 100 possessions, and his best team at Drake only got to 115. His offensive efficiency numbers look a little too much like Archie's for my comfort.

If Butler hires Stevens, that might be it for me...

This is also true. This year's WVU team - according to the advanced stats - is the best one he's ever had.

This is actually close to my POV. IU's standards have fallen; my biggest hope is that DeVries seems like the kind of guy who is not willing to settle for those middling standards. He does seem like the best floor coach since Sampson. But he'll have to prove it, and we are having to talk ourselves into him.

Everyone keeps talking about Mark Pope like he didn't just tie for UK's second worst SEC record since Billy Gillespie. He did fine. But I'm rooting for this to go better than Pope's first year went.

It seems to me like when West Virginia hired Beilein years ago. Not an immediately apparent winner. But was able to turn into that. About the same age as when WVU hired Beilein; IU has top-level resources. But I think we'll have to get cooked for a bit, PR-wise...

Guesses if this is the category, and if the hire could be made known with the tourney going on: Wright Donovan

It is a little uncomfortable that Miller came to IU with a comparable resume to Devries and more tournament success...

Back to the Pack!

Y'know, if we can only put together 750 more pages, we can make this the all-time leading thread on this message board. I formally petition to make this the 'Hired Coach Thread' if and when the hire is a big fish. I think it's a fitting way to bring closure to the Brad rumors/longings one way or another.

Off topic: If IU wanted to fly to given locations, and not risk being tracked by coaching search obsessives, what would be some good airports to evade suspicion?

It is true; if the floor is Darian Devries, IU is in good shape. Looking forward to see this play out over the next 48 hours or so, hopefully.

There aren't very many agents left to agent. Is there another coaching search that has gotten so many guys extensions or raises?

FWIW, because we're talking Devries. He seems like an unknown. He's been really good with his son there, and he was good this year at WVU. I just wonder if there's a ceiling. Would be more comfortable with a guy who's shown more.

2500+ for sure! A note; also the thread has registered at 3.1 million views...

Really can't take this much longer...

Bark Turgeon

Barian Devries?

That's the unnerving thing; it seems like Chris is losing a sense of directionality. If we've come near the end of the search, it seems like people are largely in the dark.

That would be a tough break for Brad...

Wish the kid well, but to think that a bag was dropped to land Khristian Lander...

The Archie thing made me re-evaluate how I look at coaching resumes, and give more weight to comparative success. Archie was very good, but there have been a lot of good coaches at Dayton; I now think that a coach like Miller would be expected to have a team with more favorable predictive metrics than Dayton ever had during his time there. Hindsight is 20/20, but I think that's a relevant insight.

So the thing is that this sounds both completely insane... and reasonably plausible compared with some of the things that have been shared on this board.