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Thanks for posting this I was curious if we'd somehow respond... Off the field, Cig has literally not had a single misstep in Bloomington. And he has been pretty perfect on the field too. I'm just blown away how he nails every single interaction. Could listen to his press conferences and interviews all day. If we end up playing TCU in the playoffs, IU by 28 or more seems like free money. Lol

No info, just gut... I could see Luke Murray taking Jaylin Stewart and Jacob Ross with him to BC. Stewart is a 6'7 rising senior who was ranked #56 overall / #10 SF out of HS... he has shown flashes but never really put it all together at UConn and mostly out of the rotation lately. Jacob Ross is the brother of Jayden Ross. Jayden has really come into his own down the stretch this year and carved out a role for himself that Stewart couldn't. Jacob was ranked in the 200s out of HS and didn't play this year.

And what do you do when you've spent $20M on 4 players and have $0 left? Just saying, it's not really a legitimate stance to say "just spend whatever it takes to land the most talented players." Sadly we do not have an infinite money machine. 2-3M is far from mediocre. There was an article shared on this board a few weeks ago where multiple agents put the range of players potentially able to net 4M+ in NIL between 10-25. They projected All-Conference players to go for 2.5M, give or take 500k. Money obviously helps. All the final 4 teams this year are well resourced. Some more than others. The goal is not to follow the market it is to outperform the market. You can try to do that in the way BYU and Kentucky did this year. Or you can simply not spend wastefully and ask your coach to use their still ample (but not infinite) resources to build a well-balanced team capable of winning. Outperforming comes down to coaching much more than it does spending. This is well documented... see Duke. And if Haralson wants to be here for a number between 2-3M and that's what the staff offers him, then I'm all for it.

I don't agree Haralson is the kind of guy you blow out the budget for. Not to the extent of 4-5M. He is talented and young but look at his assist:TO ratio and 3FG%... optics wins don't help if they don't translate to wins on the court. And spending all your money on two good players then a bunch of scrubs seems like a great way to not get optimal results on the court. It's wonderful your sister was able and willing to go above asking for a home she fell in love with. Hope she enjoys it. That's not how prudent organizations function. Can't make emotional decisions with a finite pot of money. Can't hit the easy button and buy a solution, if the solution is 2 studs and a bunch of bench warmers. Have to do a good job on the dirty work of scouting, evaluating, prioritizing, negotiating, pitching, selling... IMO, that's the lesson of this year. Not that we need to construct a roster like BYU or Rutgers two years ago.

I will ask every commercially available LLM to map each potential transfer candidate for 2026-2027, how much NIL they project to make, and a summary of their strengths and weaknesses. Then I will bring it back to the board and ask for thoughts on our potential new starting lineup of Haralson, Romeo Langford, Trent Sisley, Yaxel Lendeborg and Willie Caulie-Stein...

This graph is based on 2023-2024 data. Willing to bet it currently looks significantly different. Can't wait to see how many of our guys get drafted

4M for Haralson seems totally insane to me...? I literally couldn't care less about the players getting paid, they deserve it, but seems like a very frothy and unsustainable market right now. How are teams supposed to build a roster when a guy who didn't even make the ACC all freshman team is going to command 3M+? With that 3 point FG% and AST:TO ratio? Makes it kind of easy for me to want to just glaze over the roster building process and see where we end up when the balls roll out on the court next year. A case study on radically free market economics indeed.

That's the face of a man who is enjoying far too much time in Brooklyn lol

Pretty amazing seeing IU as far on the right as it is

Genuinely curious, how are you projecting that?

Yep. DDV's past two seasons in P5 his winning percentage is .578. McCollum's one year of P5 is .649. We will see how it shakes out over the course of their careers

And where will Indiana be? Tough to say right now. Threads easily get derailed when people say it's "ridiculous" that people "ignore" the "coaching failures" of a team that just went to the elite 8 while we were at home and they spent half as much as us lol. Hopefully we can surpass .500 in the Big Ten next year and DDV shows he is well on his way to succeeding like Dusty. He will have to do some of what McCollum has done first. Perfectly content to leave it at that and let the thread get back to its original purpose. Looking forward to having something substantive to talk about once we start signing guys.

Who is bashing our coach? Thought message boards were intended for nuanced discussion. I want Indiana to win. Don't particularly care what it looks like. We'd be lucky if DDV succeeds like Bo Ryan, based on Indiana's history since the turn of the century. The goal is to be what Michigan is? How the mighty have fallen... Dusty May vs Ben McCollum is more of a discussion than Ben McCollum vs Darian DeVries, so I agree we should stop talking about McCollum. DeVries is running his own race. Hopefully he shows immense improvement and next year we enjoy a product that looks more similar to Michigan this year. The 3s will be glorious, I am sure.

Well, respectfully, we could debate hypotheticals all day... we won't know what DDV could have done in the tourney this year because the team didn't earn it. The direct tournament comp is 4-2 (in 2 years of D1) vs 0-3 (8 years in D1) Next season will tell us more about DDV. Iowa has more momentum than Indiana right now, we will see how that translates to the portal. Iowa returns a lot of players so they probably just need to add 1 or 2 difference makers. It's not a false regular season comparison... they finished with a better record and McCollum has a better D1 career winning percentage. These are the objective facts. Both had some bad losses and some good wins this year. We can see who has a better career. We won't know that next year either. So far, McCollum has a better D1 resume and more momentum after year 1 in the Big Ten. We will see if DDV can change that next year. Rooting for him.

For sure, he's not perfect... no coach is. And everyone will have their own opinion on things like how meaningful the tournament is to assessing a season and play style and the importance of NIL / financial resources in determining a program's ceiling. I don't think DDV is a bad coach by any means. And all coaches look better with better players. For me, it's kind of easy to be discouraged about where things stand after year 1 when you can see with your own eyes that McCollum has a pretty high "ceiling" (if you believe in such things) despite having much less competitive NIL. I can't see DDV's ceiling right now and there were not that many big moments in year 1 to make me a believer yet. JMO. That's comparing him as a conference opponent also in his first year in the B10, not a coach I'm pining for in Bloomington. I don't buy the idea that McCollum is a one trick pony with Stirtz and at 44 years old, I find it perplexing why some do. Maybe wishful thinking. He will have some momentum for the portal this year. They probably will take a step back next year, but I think it's fair to say at minimum Iowa won't be an easy W on the schedule while he is there. Could see him having a Tony Bennett like career. Luckily doesn't mean year 2 has to be the same way. We've got more of a blank slate to work with, so lot of potential to build a much improved roster and see what DDV can do with the benefit of a year under his belt and full staff. Hopefully there will be more to be optimistic about soon after the portal opens.

Hopefully! I'm not saying he's a terrible coach, just not better than McCollum IMO. They got the 9th seed in B10 tournament we got the 10th seed. They were 24-13 (10-10) we were 18-14 (9-11). One of them has a .764 D1 winning percentage one of them has a .695 D1 winning percentage (also very good!) One of them is 4-2 in March Madness, one of them is 0-3. One of them won the head to head by 17... His D1 resume is better than DeVries... that's not really debatable. Hopefully DDV shows superior coaching abilities next year. Happy to drop the comparisons since McCollum never wanted to be here anyway

Yep this is fair. The margins are thin in college basketball. There is a gap between how year 1 went. It's not very productive to compare the two since he was never coming here, but he is a conference opponent, so it's natural people will feel strongly one way or another. Hopefully we have something better in year 2 to beat him with.

Lol... nothing is wrong, it's all factual. I'm not contradicting him or using AI... Can you tell me exactly what McCollum's coaching failures were in their losses? Teams sometimes lose games they shouldn't, right? End of the day, they did what they had to do to make the tournament and we didn't. They excelled with the opportunity they had. They have a more straightforward path this offseason. Is what it is. I'm rooting for DDV to figure it out but there's no need to lie to ourselves about other first year coaches lol. He has his work cut out for him.

A 9 seed is squeezing into the tournament now? I thought that was the metric for "safely off the bubble" based on posts here. Maybe that's inaccurate. But yes, he had a better season because he made the tournament... then he made the elite 8. Just saying, tough to point to many "coaching failures" by them this year... DDV will hopefully get his 4th chance to win a March Madness game. I am rooting for him and think it's totally doable. I don't think there's much of an argument that McCollum is not head and shoulders above him as it stands today in terms of coaching ability.

I mean, we all agree teams win some they shouldn't and lose some they shouldn't, right? On paper, it's hard to argue that the Iowa's staff did not significantly outperform Indiana's staff this year. They also have only one player who was rated in the top 100 out of HS as far as I can find. The core of their elite 8 team came from D2, Wyoming, Robert Morris and some HS kids that McCollum identified and secured with far fewer resources than Indiana's. The tournament is single elimination so it's fair to not weight it super heavily when assessing a season, but that doesn't mean you can't draw meaningful insight from it. Single elimination tournament amplifies the importance of coaching (see Dan Hurley vs Duke this past weekend). McCollum is 4-2 in March Madness two years into being a D1 coach. Including knocking off #1 seed Florida, defending champions. DDV is 0-3 in 8 years as a D1 HC. Iowa also has much more straightforward roster construction than we do. Way more returners. He had a much better year 1 than we did, it's okay to admit that.

Lighting up IU is not such a high bar these days. UConn won't even sniff in Mack's direction IMO. They want the Furman kid. Georgetown went 18-16 and 16-18 with him playing 30+mpg ... this year 38% FG and 29.8% from 3... not super exciting and don't think we will be involved

And he was likely making some good coin relative to his skill set, so if he is leaving, that money can probably be put to better use. We should have a ton of NIL "cap space" to work with.

How many players have announced their intent to enter the portal already? Wonder how that number stacks up vs a week before the portal opened last year. Kinda shocked none of our guys have announced they're portaling yet.

The past is the past and can't be changed so not sure why we're relitigating the WVU transfers situation. Anyways... Last year the transfer class was rated #10 by 247. Per 247 transfer portal rankings, we signed: #18 overall, #45 overall, #63 overall, #102 overall, #105 overall, #112 overall, #160 overall, #198 overall, #412 overall, #505 overall Sam Alexis was the #412 overall ranked player, Reed Bailey was the #63 overall. Enright was #198 and Conerway was almost unplayable at the end of the year ranked #105. We obviously have the money to pay "top" players... Do we have the chops to 1) scout them accurately 2) land them when other schools have a better pitch Rankings mean bupkis in the grand scheme of things if we can't do #1 And we won't know the answer to #1 until we see the team on the court. Everyone can cope differently while we wait. At least until then, we all can enjoy football season

Hungry for some news on this front