SamIam

Takeaways: Man I wanted Rice so bad and I'm feeling vindicated. So fast, great on D, and smooth from the midrange. He's an older, more measured, better on D version of JHS. And he's almost 22 with 3 years left. Unreal get. I think KC had an off night, but looked pesky on D and I think the shot will fall. He's a little more of a streaky scorer but there will be nights when he can't miss. In the HH scrimmage and now I noticed Reneau looking more fluid and athletic. Mgbako looked comfortable and got in passing lanes a ton, really using his length more. I think this is what Ballo will look like pretty much all season and I think that's a good thing. He's not a great scorer, he's a crushing screen setter and one of the best rebounders in CBB. Doing what he did tonight, even while not filling it up scoring does so much for the team. Cupps looks way more comfortable and we didn't even have Gallo or Tucker. To me, thats huge. We need to play 10 deep in the non-con, preserve our top guys and trust the second unit to help run up the score. If we learned anything from last year it's that we need to dump on inferior teams to help our metrics early in the season, and the depth I saw tonight gives me hope. Cupps Leal Tucker Goode and one of the bigs is should be good enough to run it up on a weak team.

Funny to see people mention guys like Sissoko. No one who has started so many B1G games is coming to fill this spot. My wishlist for the spot are twofold:1) Is he over 6'10, 2) does he have 5 fouls to give. There are plenty of these guys in the portal, but it's probably gonna be a guy that most of the ppl on this board have never heard of.

It looks like the staff expects a lot of the "backup" 5 minutes to be taken by Reneau. Ballo played about 26 mpg on Arizona, a team with top 15 tempo, I would expect at least that many minutes on a middle of the pack tempo team like IU. I think whoever they bring in won't be playing much come B1G season, we just need another body as injury/foul insurance. There are plenty in the portal I'm confident they can find one.

I know he's pre-med so that brings up an interesting point: does the med school even admit athletics transfers? I can't imagine trying to do both.

Expectations in the B1G are hard to set with how unbalanced schedules are, the top couple of teams could just luck out with an easy schedule, plus there is added variance with the cross country travel they will be doing. I also think we should temper expectations for the Bahamas, we have a lot of newcomers and it may take some time to come together. Remember we did not play well in Maui in 2016 but pulled it together after and won the Big Ten. That being said, I think the minimal expectation should be a 6 seed in the NCAAT with all the talent we have.

Yeah in that case give me Goode. IU legacy/Indiana kid, played in the B1G, made more 3's than Anderson playing on a top ten Kenpom team, and is the same height but heavier than Anderson, in case we need him to play some 4.

Let's try not to comment about players' bar habits. I know they have heightened responsibilities over regular students but still if someone examined my habits junior and senior year they would have shipped my @$$ to rehab with how much time i was spending at Roy's lol Re: Conwell, Tyme seems to think its Xavier

It's gonna be interesting to see how much Ballo changes the defense. With Ware and TJD we had pretty mobile bigs, Arizona played almost exclusively drop coverage. I'm not sure if we have seen Woody embrace that, or if he will this year. Playing drop definitely works if you have a huge enough guy in the middle, Purdue, Creighton and Arizona all play it nearly 100% of the time, but it would be sort of ironic to play a defense designed to give up only long twos because of how inefficient they are and still shoot them at such a high rate on offense.

The way I see it, the fact that the staff is going after Essegian is a great sign because they expect to have increased guard minutes due to usage of 3 guard lineups. If they sign Humrichous, it would appear they are planning to always play two bigs.

Maybe they end up actually offering that Blazi kid as a redshirt candidate

I didn't mean to say he would play ten, Woody definitely starts the year playing damn near everyone but he tends to heavily shorten the rotations once we get into Big Ten play. That being said, I think (assuming we get KC) the top 7 that will play big minutes every game is set, and Woodson will dip into that next group of Cupps, Leal, and the 3rd string C depending on game script, matchup, fouls, injuries etc etc. So probably playing only 1 or 2 of those guys a game, and a total rotation of 8 ish players

Rice, KC*, Gallo, MM, Tucker, MR, Ballo is the core rotation. Depending on the game you give minutes to Cupps, Leal or Malone* (or other backup C) That's 10 guys with Newton available for mop up duty. Two scholarships open.

Hoping we get to see Ballo, MM, Gallo, KC and Rice on the floor together at times this year, that lineup could be really fun.

I get it, but we wouldn't take him off the bench? He made the all-freshman team a year ago, he got injured and Storr and Blackwell held his minutes. I'm fine with Leal playing minutes again if we don't get anyone, but Essegian feels like a good risk to take to play a Zeisloft role

Conwell was my favorite player in the portal but it unfortunately seems like the writing is on the wall. Still, I don't get why we wouldn't be happy with Essegian, he still averaged 11 Pts/game as a freshman at the power five level, we could do a lot worse with a bench shooter.