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Making the field of 68 is not a very lofty expectation and that's really all the fans have asked for over the past decade with just two postseason trips to show for it. The expectations are very fair for a program that spends like we do. We give all our coaches 4 year minimums. It's hardly a career defining risk. It's a great pay day and the last guy spent more time golfing than doing his job lol.

Put some respect on Curt Cignetti's name. There's no copying him or replicating that hire. The suggestion cannot seriously be "just copy the greatest hire in the history of college sports"

You can't become a revolving door with the 3-4 year cycle because of the buyout money. The takeaway isn't to give mediocre or bad coaches a longer leash, it's to hire a good or great coach. 3 years is enough time to prove you're the man for the job. If you don't have momentum after 3 years at a place like IU you probably never will. Eventually you have to pick a guy you will ride through the ups and downs with, including a rare bad year here and there. But you gotta ride with the right guy otherwise you're stuck going in the wrong direction.

No thanks! Haha. Huge 3 heading into halftime. Let's go Bisons

For your sake, I hope BYU goes on a deep run. Watching him take over a game is a total treat. Uber talented kid

And the fans readily accepted that it would be a total rebuild, endured the 3 worst years in program history. They were willing to wait while he instilled his culture. Then Crean imploded. Then we wasted a lot of time between doofus #1 and doofus #2. The program was plenty stable under them. It just sucked and never got better. And fans still showed up. Being "hands off" won't help the program. The program is about the coach. No it isn't. Indiana's problem is hiring bad basketball coaches. Wanna know how I know? Kelvin Sampson. We were on a great basketball trajectory with him because he can coach (he had to go for other reasons). People really try to force a square peg in a round hole with the lessons they derive from Cig and IUFB IMO. Fans have no real influence on the culture coaches build inside the locker room. That's why Cig succeeded... not because he was allowed space to breathe, which the basketball coach in Bloomington is not afforded. Whether DDV succeeds or fails here, the fans will have nothing to do with it.

Even so, how is the answer to let a guy who isn't cutting it get 6 years? Didn't we basically just do what you're suggesting with Crean, then proceed to waste 4 years on Archie and 4 on Woody? For what reason? To diminish fan interest entirely? The answer is for the fans to shut up and go away and come back if / when they start winning again? They're no longer "building" anything from "scratch" at that point. If it's clear a guy can't win, there's little point in keeping them around once that's clear. I don't think you can fairly say that before 3 seasons, maybe 2 with the portal. But because of buyouts, 2 will never be a realistic minimum of years unless things are exceptionally bad. So I guess put me in camp #1. Go to the coaching carousel until we hit. But most importantly, stop missing. Just make a good hire. The fanbase is currently the program's greatest asset by a country mile.

Syracuse should hire Gerry McNamara. He's not as accomplished as Dusty was, but it's a similar situation in that he's an alum and probably as good of a coach as they're likely to get.

Yeah. I am not a lawyer or banker by any stretch, just a guy who likes to riff on the Internet a little too much (lol)... if I were to spitball a bit, specifically about basketball in a vacuum (football is top dog and probably make things too complicated, but for the sake of discussion) Everybody tends to agree a change is needed to the landscape but I'm not sure there's any catalyst forcing that on the horizon (again I could be totally ignorant to something already in the courts) I don't think any sort of Congressional action is politically viable. My guess shooting from the hip? Some group of investors with NBA connections get together with the idea of creating a G-league that people actually care about. The how would obviously need workshopping but a 50,000 foot view specific to basketball might involve something like a new league entity being formed, the schools license their branding to the teams in that league and lease out their facilities. Maybe the endowment fund gets a small equity stake in the new league entity or something. If the jerseys and courts/stadiums are the same, I'd wager most fans would still watch even though they aren't students. Then maybe the NBA acquires that entity and treats it like an MLB farm system. In that scenario, I think the new "amateur college athletics" would probably be more similar to a club sports with regional conferences. Seems like anything could happen. I'm sure a lot of what I just ranted about is not viable for a bunch of reasons, not least of which is that only like 20-25 schools have profitable athletic departments and the obvious being, football is gonna drive the school's decision making before basketball. Whatever happens it would be nice to see Indiana basketball winning again.

Oooof. Another reason I'm glad I deleted Twitter lol. What a goofy goober.

Just heard Chase Johnston from HPU made his first two point shot of the entire year to take the lead with 11 seconds left. Nothing beats March Madness

I missed a chapter lol... what's this spicy mystery business?

And that's the crux of it really... the sole purpose of NCAA and "amateur student-athlete" branding is basically to fight tooth and nail against the idea they should be classified as employees. It's probably not financially feasible for a majority of schools? IMO if that's the route things go it's surely because the big money schools are breaking off and doing their own league. Who knows what that looks like. Probably very lucrative for some people. Maybe that would also set the stage for a more true form of amateur college sports to exist. Maybe...

Since he spent most of his career as an assistant, he better appreciate the importance of good assistants. I think the portal will go better this time around, but the lack of urgency in filling the staff feels like a very amateur-ish move from a P5 coach IMO. Even if their interest was real, he could've been lining up back up options. Drew Adams and Kenny after the portal started (?) just didn't inspire much confidence and the results were similarly lackluster. Hopefully the continuity helps + Clark now on staff for the portal, which he wasn't last year. I think he can show a lot of growth in Y2.

The coach doesn't need to placate the segment of the fan base that was convinced Stevens was coming lol. Who cares what they think? He didn't have to bring his WVU staff. Just come fully staffed with guys in his network. Maybe he thought his first two choices were definitely on board to join him and was caught off guard when they weren't? Either way, took too long to staff up when he wasn't in March Madness, we should've been in position for the portal and we weren't. Is what it is. Onward and upward.

I don't think there would've been any outrage at all for him not pursuing those guys actually. I think there was way more outrage over the season we just had (which was in part because he swung and missed on his top assistant choices). The best ability is availability. I'd have thought the expectation between Dolson and DDV would be that he comes with his staff and hits the ground running. But things didn't work out that way. All we can do is move forward. Hopefully year 2 is much better in many different ways.

5 years to play 5 Industry standard becomes 2 year contracts with a transfer fee clause... de facto way of limiting transfers but still allowing for quicker rebuilds in the portal. And make it more feasible for kids to actually get a degree from somewhere.

To your point, with as bad as we've been for so long, the amount of social media engagement and TV viewership is definitely way lower than its potential ceiling. The amount of online engagement about a good IUBB team would crash this site and easily move us into the top 4 or 5 on this list lol

Should schools have to pay a transfer fee to the player's previous school like in soccer?

Yeah totally agree. Your post gets at the crux of why this is a bigger issue than just making roster management / continuity impossible for schools (which is a big issue itself) Euros have a different development system than we do in the US. They go pro when they are teenagers. Our players are supposed to go to high school then college to develop. Letting Euros in at the expense of American high school kids in the long term is damaging to the USA basketball product and the same way Luka, Giannis, Jokic took over the NBA, CBB will end up just another stage for their players while ours get passed over for opportunities.

Wasn't Golden's title team mostly lower major transfers? I could be mistaken. In any case... Aidan Mahaney was a scouting miss by Hurley that ruined their backcourt and limited the team's ceiling. Xaivian Lee from Princeton has turned around a rough start and is now playing pretty well for a championship contender. His former Princeton teammate Pierce is headed to Purdue next year. So Painter thinks that kid is a high major player. Your mileage may vary. You need a certain amount of athleticism and skill, but it's a lot more about a good scout, role, fit, buy-in than whether the player comes from the MAC or Horizon League or was riding the bench for a Big 12 or ACC team. IMO

Just updated my bracket. March Madness is the best

It feels like Conerway and Alexis could've been utilized more effectively this year and the staff just never got things figured out. That's more concerning to me than the roster construction itself. The path to MM was begging for this team to take it, and we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory down the stretch. Brutal. But it happens. Weird year for sure. Here's to hoping next year is less weird.

Not nearly as high on Sisley as the rest of the board but it would sure suck to have a freshmen from Indiana who grew up a fan of IU get poached by Dusty. Not doing everything we could to sign May will probably end up on the Mount Rushmore of IU athletics failures.