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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

Duke's 3 losses were by a combined 5 points with the final leads being taken with 3 seconds, .4 seconds, and .4 seconds left. Unbelievable season.

Just playing of course. Clearly I am just more salty / butthurt than most people about Dusty lol

Can't imagine how much of a heathen or masochist an IU fan would have to be to not mind seeing Dusty win one at Michigan haha. All due respect.

Yep. We will see. Nothing guaranteed

UConn beat Illinois by 13 points when they played earlier this year. We will see. Nothing guaranteed

They have 6 titles and all have come since '99. Just insane for a program across multiple coaches. Some people filled out their brackets with the "OSOC" model that has accurately predicted the last 17 champions. It's a very simple model. One seed or Connecticut. I still favor the winner of Arizona-Michigan, but that finish against Duke feels like the type of thing that could spark UConn playing their best ball of the season with just two games left.

That's some pretty poor commentating considering Smith was on the floor and did not, in fact, come off the bench to celebrate with Mullins lol

UConn beat Illinois by 13 when they played earlier in the year but that doesn't matter so much in March. I could definitely see Illinois winning but can't bet against UConn in that one. They lost a close game to Arizona earlier in the year without Reed or Mullins. Just a crazy run they've had the past 4 years.