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First glance gut reaction 4-3 in home only 4-3 in away only 4-2 in home & away Would be a 12-8 conference record. Could see anywhere from 10-10 to 14-6. Looking forward to seeing them in Peru. Bummer Yig won't play though

Looks very favorable, nice

7'2 Dorin Buca to Rutgers from Kansas State / Italy

Interesting info. We'll see how things translate. For as much as people knock Dorn's shooting outside of his hot streak, he was 38% from 3 on the year, good for 2 makes a game out there on 5.3 attempts. I think we need Harris to be at least as good of a shooter as Dorn was. Harris really didn't play enough at Duke to read much into his stats. I'm not feeling super great about that but I applaud the staff's conviction in locking up a guy they clearly wanted. Suppose they see something that makes them confident they can get production from him. I feel better about Mustaf's role than Harris. IMO Sisley will be a pretty low volume 3 point shooter regardless of how efficient he is. And I don't think he's going to be much better than 35% or so from out there but would love to be surprised. Sisley and Sherrell may shoot a couple 3s a game trailing in transition or taking advantage of the defense getting lost. I like a lot of the sets we ran this year on offense... but outside of Lindsay, right now we don't have a ton of options to knock them down consistently IMO. We will create open looks, which will help. But if we take ~28 3s per game like we did this year we won't really be playing to our strengths IMO with Burton and Mustaf on the court as often as they will be

With the stipulation that we still need to be able to hit 3s and there's not much proven volume shooting on this roster

Yeah definitely seems like a lateral move from Andrej for this coming year. Granted, I've only seen a short highlight reel on IG but it looks like he moves a good bit better and in one clip he hits a 3. Skinny and just 18... maybe we can develop him for down the road. Maybe not. Minimally at least he is a 7' practice body.

We largely agree on everything here... especially no more mulligans. I'm just saying, until they produce results on the court, it's hard for me to say with any real conviction that the program is objectively moving in the right direction. The portal approach was much better this time around but I don't think that necessarily means the program itself is trending up. We should have a pretty good to very good starting 5. Beyond that, a ton of questions and need to see how the puzzle pieces fit together. We could finish a fringe T25 team. Or we could get nothing out of our bench again, lose Sherrell to the NBA, have a few guys transfer out (Harris, Sisley, Manhertz, the last 3 guys we get this year) and wind up needing to fill a lot of gaps again for next year. That's a worst case type of scenario, but it's just as much a possibility as the best case IMO. The reality will probably end up somewhere in between IMO

Looking forward to hearing about our non conference schedule at some point. UConn has games vs Kansas, vs Ohio State, @ Arizona, vs Illinois (in Chicago), vs Duke (Vegas), and vs Michigan (Boston). Also finalizing a game vs UVA at MSG and rumors they're trying to add Arkansas to the schedule.

@Pagoda and @str8baller have made some really good posts explaining it more eloquently than I could.

I think that's presumptuous. We improved the talent level, which we had to. This is not some obvious T25 team at the end of the year to me. We very well could achieve that, but it's not a given.

Meh. I don't think he was downplaying Carr's contribution as much as reframing the question to share the credit with the entire staff

In fairness, last year's team was also fringe top 25 at the start of the year. Peaked at #22 in week 5. "Clearly moving in the right direction" is an optimistic take that I can appreciate, but don't find objectively true yet. We missed the tournament again and the staff decided they had to completely rebuild the roster for a second straight year. How many times has IUBB won the offseason with no results to show for it? IMO a lot of positive assumptions (which could prove to be totally valid) are needed to say the foundation is being built "the right way." Don't know that we can say that until after the season when we see how the pieces fit together and how many holes we need to fill in the portal. At least the money should go further if you're only filling 4 or 5 spots instead of 12-13. The talent is undeniably better than last year, and it had to be. It's not unquestionably a tournament team as things stand today, though IMO

Maybe 1.5 ... projects as the 6th or 7th man on this team. The only player retained. IU fan growing up. The rumor Michigan was after him. Optics of him leaving would have been terrible. I'm sure his camp knew that and was able to get a very healthy bump. Just guessing of course. Either way I think the budget is close to tapped at this point

Year 2 is a complete rebuild. The DDV era is going to be like year 1 B.C. (before Ryan Carr) and year 1 A.D. (after Ryan Carr) lol. Hiring Ryan Carr is definitely a big move to turnaround IUBB after decades of mismanagement. ~$20M is an extremely competitive budget, so the resources are there. Unfortunately, it's a complete rebuild. Hoosier fans love their basketball so much. Us hardcore fans on the message boards are basically masochists for being this invested in a program that's been as bad as IU over the last quarter century. Whether we are top 10-15 or top 20 spenders on the roster it's impressive given the awful results on the court. We're spreading that budget over 12 new players and probably paid up to retain Sisley. Hopefully year 1 A.R.C. provides a solid foundation for next year so we can be more efficient with our player payroll and use the portal to really elevate the program's ceiling. Year 2 A.R.C hopefully we are on a clear trajectory to compete for a B10 title and make a run in March. With the portal and the budget I think that's not too much to ask.

I'm with you here for the most part. I do think we probably are very close to 20M though Sherrell 4.5 Burton 3.5 Yig 3-3.5 Mustaf 1.5 Lindsay 2.5 Sisley 2 (I'm thinking he got a nice retention bump) Harris 1.5 Freshmen 1 That's 19.5-20M... I think Yig and Lindsay got sweet deals committing without a visit. Just speculation from me. We should definitely look to improve the team with the remaining 3 spots. I say remaining because they're not the "last" roster spots. Minimally need one capable of playing 8/9th man minutes. Hoping for some Euro lotto tickets to hit.

I think my brain has been protecting me from remembering the Woody era because despite knowing that Rice played a big role for us, I can barely recall anything about his time here specifically. Wish him well at Washington State in all likelihood.

We were 32nd in the country in 3FGA last year and 147th in 3FG%. Tucker and Wilkerson were more proven shooters coming in last year than anyone we have on next year's team except for Lindsay. College players are not elite enough shotmakers to copy the NBA's 3 or dunk philosophy. If you're going to shoot that many 3s you need to have some ability to get offensive rebounds and we didn't last year. This year we will. There are multiple ways of winning. The shot chart from Michigan UConn is interesting. Michigan: 21-55 (38% FG), 2-15 (13% 3FG%), 25-28 FT (89%) UConn: 21-68 (31% FG), 9-33 (27% 3FG), 12-16 FT (75%) IMO we shot too many 3s last year and will probably still shoot a ton next year. We were tied for 215th in the country in FTA per game. This year's team should be able to get to the line more thanks to Burton and Mustaf penetrating and get more 2nd chance opportunities with Sherrell and Yig. I'd like to see us live and die by the 3 less and think we will.

No doubt the team has been seriously improved and the staff deserves a lot of credit for that. We do have a lot of big questions, though, aside from how we fill out the rest of the roster spots. Harris has never played more than 10mpg. He was Duke's 9th man most of the year, down the stretch when they had a couple injuries they only went 7 deep and he still didn't get many minutes. He only eclipsed 15 minutes played 7 times this past year - 2 of them against P5 opponents (their loss to TTU and a blow out win over ND). Duke fans have said he is a good kid but likely didn't play more because he is a bit laterally challenged. He will have a bigger role here and we're going to need him to hit shots. We are really banking on Sisley taking a considerable sophomore leap IMO. We will surely add some big man depth but at this point looks like the plan is that he will get minimum 20mpg and likely a bit more? Right now, looking at the roster, we should probably expect a fairly different play style next year. Lindsay is basically the only proven volume shooter on the team right now. Maybe Harris can be one too, maybe not. Not really Burton or Mustaf's game to knock down a bunch of 3s. Replacing Wilkerson's production will need to be a committee assignment IMO. We are going to have to see how all the pieces fit together. A lot to like too, with Sherrell and Yig especially. Certainly capable of being a tournament team. Though I don't think it's a slam dunk at this point. For me it's just as easy to see us getting a 5 / 6 / 7 seed and going to the R32 as it is to envision them missing entirely if we find out Harris isn't up to the task and Sisley didn't improve a ton over the offseason. The bench could be a serious impediment to success again next year. And if Burton, Sherrell or Yig get injured, things could really fly off the rails IMO. We will just have to see how it all comes together.

Nah. I very much believe we will field a full 13 man roster and don't see much reason to think otherwise yet. Not a ton of portal activity in general right now. Schools are either saving for NBA draft drop outs or evaluating slim pickings in the portal or going to Europe because they're generally more affordable and polished. Those Euro guys won't be available until midway through the summer or so for the most part. It doesn't seem like any news is on the horizon but given timelines I think that's fine for now. I'll be concerned a bit if we aren't hearing anything come mid June.

I'm sure UMass has a lucrative rev share contract to offer him... haha

Supposedly, LSU fans think they've got 7 or 8 Euros "silently committed" which... seems insane to me. Wade has publicly said he will lean into International players more though. They also held open try outs with the student body (reportedly for the practice team)... I'm sure they will field a team, they will probably just suck out loud IMO

The clock is really ticking for Will Wade and his roster of one (1).

Karaban was in much better shape than Tucker and hustled much harder. Measurements are pretty similar. Karaban is 6'8 220 with a 6'11 wingspan. Tucker is 6'7 220ish and can't find his wingspan. Karaban is more efficient and a smarter player IMO... much more capable defender. They averaged about the same volume of shots. If you put Tucker on UConn instead of Karaban it would be a significant downgrade IMO.

... and one big guy on the floor at any given time. They had Sanogo / Clingan, Clingan / Johnson, Johnson / Reed, Reed / Reibe. Pretty sure each pair literally never shared the court with each other. We are going to start two 7 footers this year. We just need some more depth. Size and length are much improved

I agree that'd be a nice way to round out the roster. Probably splitting hairs a bit but I don't really view the portal haul as a scouting win per se. Talent acquisition win, definitely. But each of the 6 portal guys so far come from P5 schools and we paid good money to land them, so to me, doesn't necessarily show scouting chops. IF they can find a diamond in the rough or help a couple decent players become solid players, that would show real scouting and development chops and drastically improve the outlook for next year / building on next year's team without as much roster turnover. The ratings are nice but their keep will be earned or not on the floor. Looking forward to year 1 part 2 lol