IUCrazy2

For me, the way his recruitment went down left a bad taste in my mouth to begin with. Getting heavily recruited by Indiana, you choose to go to rival 1 or 1a depending on what part of the state you are from and then his parents bad mouthed the fanbase. And his career at UK turned out just about like everyone said it would. He was not the typical Calipari "I could be in the NBA right now if not for the rules" player and it showed. So now we are supposed to boot a kid off the team who has committed and fought through some really tough years to make room for him? I mean if he comes I will support the kid, but I don't want to boot Jerome or Rob or Galloway or Leal to make room for Brooks. He made his bed.

I am really disappointed. Seems like Woodson is already regressing after the quick start. ;) Edit: Seriously though, this has been a real good couple of weeks with good news every few days. I got spoiled. It is going to be a long 7 months waiting to see what these guys can do.

Why would he or Lander leave after recommitting? I think Woodson was probably really honest with these guys when he asked them to stay with the program. Trey and Anthony said they were Hoosiers. There are only 2 guys I can think of who are left who have not said anything one way or the other.

He will have to be on the refs constantly to make sure they are not allowing tackle hoops like they usually do.

I agree with Leal and Galloway probably needing to wait and develop, but using Fife as an example of a guy who was rated lower and needed to develop did not fit IMO. Fife was a big time recruit when he got here. Now if you wanted to compare expectations to Greshman results, Lander would be a better comparison to Fife IMO.

Fife was a McDonalds All American. He was a 5* kind of player when he was brought in. Not Top 150ish.

No where did I say he almost came to Indiana. No where. So stop trying to put words in my mouth. I said I think he probably thought about it and said no. Why do I think that? Well first, because he was being offered an insanely large amount of money. And second, from the way the rumors were floating when it started, he did not just up and say no off the bat. If he did not consider it at all, it would not have floated around for days that he was the number one target. It would have been a no in one phone call. "Hey Brad, I got $70 million sitting here for you if you are interested in Indiana." "No, thanks Scott. Happy where I am." Boom, convo over. I did not entertain the offer is "hey boss and fans, see how committed I am to you....look how much they offered me and I stayed." There is no such thing as "almost came", there is he chose to coach Indiana or he did not. He did not. I think you are nuts if you seriously believe they dropped that kind of cash on the table and he just flat out rejected it in the first call. I agree with you, he ultimately did not want to come or else he would be here for that kind of money. Funny how you appear to disappear for several weeks and then suddenly pop back up to once again be the Brad Brigade.

Yeah, it is PR. Someone drops that kind of money in front of you, you are going to think about it. I do not care how much you like your current situation. Stevens thought about it and said no. I am kind of glad he did. I think he had zero chance of meeting the expectations he would have to meet for that kind of money. He would have had to do what Calipari did his first 3 years on a regular basis and any slip of that for any extended amount of time would lead to grumbling. And to be honest, I do not think Stevens would be willing to do the stuff Calipari had to do early on for those results. So RIP idea of Brad Stevens being the coach at Indiana. If I were Indiana he would never be on my coaching list again. However, I think he did us a favor because I think overall, we potentially have just as good if not a better total staff then we probably would have had if he had accepted...and we are getting the entire staff for about half of what we offered just him.

If we go with a softer schedule, I hope it is filled with more teams in that 150 range then down in the low 200's and 300's. I think you want some competition before conference and those teams that Crean used to schedule are just too far down the list to be of much value.

https://mobile.twitter.com/IndianaMBB/status/1378154321506934790 Posting this again. It is clear to me the direction IU is going in order to get the b-ball program up to snuff again. The grey area is about to be a little less grey. So having people who were a part of that world is going to be an asset. I know that is going to drive some people nuts, but it is not 1987 anymore, the entire sport is going this way. If you want 1987 amateur athletics, you will have to look at D2 or D3, because D1 is going to be a mash-up between a semipro and an amateur league. Indiana is advertising how we will make players money when NIL hits and we have an NBA guy for head coach with all his connections and now bringing in assistants with some of the same. This is positioning to take advantage when the floodgates open.

Does he have a nephew that is about 6'5" and hits about 40% from behind the arc? Asking for a friend. (The Smith kid would be a big land but I think we may still need some shooting on next year's team.)

Think you got those in reverse order....

Why? Rob has had a bunch of pressure on him the past few years. He may see this as some nice competition and some help in the backcourt.

I just watched a national championship game where a team with 3 ball handlers (basically guards) dismantled their opponent. I think there is plenty of room for everyone.

Rough year for the Miller clan.

Yes, I am also curious to see how skills development goes over the summer. It did not sound like we were doing much of that under the Miller regime....or we at least were not doing it well.

So kind of thinking the last two guys might be out based on that. Would stink to lose some guys but on to the next if that is the case.

Right. Let's give the guy a chance. Everything will not be unicorns and rainbows, I guarantee that. But so far, so good. It is ok to relish some good news for the program for once in a long while.

I think that is spot on.

How about this, has anything transpired so far that has not fallen under the rainbows and unicorns column? In my estimation, no. Everything in the first two weeks has been fine. Stop creating failures that have not happened yet. "Receuiting these guys back to the team is easier than a 5* recruit." Possibly. In some instances it may be harder. Some of these guys were involved in some of the worst failure theater in the history of the program. They know the reality of Indiana. Getting shitty messages on Twitter from fans. Getting booed off the court in their last game. They have a view of this program from the inside that a high school kid does not. And for most of these guys, there has been quite a bit of negative here. I think what I and some are saying is that things have gone well. "Everything has been great so far but no 5* yet..." And? It has been 2 ******* weeks. He doesn't even have a full staff yet, has to recruit back half of the team, and deal with a transfer market. We are probably barely in touch with HS kids right now. Yeah, he will need to do all the things you mentioned but you are out searching for reasons to be "mad", "pessimistic", or whatever label you want to put on it in the face of nothing but good news so far. You may not be in this category, but if Franklin chooses to go elsewhere, there will be a slew of people who will use that as an indictment on Woodson when there are literally over 1,200 players in D1 looking to get out of their current situation.

The people on Facebook and Twitter need to just tone it down. "We're IU and we should get whatever coach we want, we're too good to have landed Mike Woodson." This coming from the same people who have been arguing how bad we suck for the past 20 years. North Carolina has definitively been better than us over the past 20 years. No competition really and I think, on paper, we had a better hire than them. I was perusing the Kentucky forums for Brooks news and those guys are saying some stuff that just is not reality anymore IMO. "Ha ha at Indiana and UNC, they go in the family and ignore these other options. We're UK though and can get whoever we want." Can you though? The next hire at UK and the next at Duke are going to be real interesting. You can win a title at Baylor and get paid a crap ton of money to do it. And you can do that without a psychotic fanbase who believes it is their birthright to be in the Final Four every year. The landscape is changing and I think we got the best hire we had available. A bunch of the other guys we were pining after had baggage, are currently flavors of the month, or came from the same background as Woody but just left earlier. I am happy with the direction of things for the first time in awhile. We still have to go and win games but it at least looks like we have a plan and everyone is on board so far.

And I would say people keeping moving the goal posts. After he was hired, people said his #1 job was getting players back. So far, 1 guy is officially gone and that guy was gone when Miller was here. He is currently undefeated in retaining players with a few still to be played. Jury still out on the transfer market. My initial point still stands though, the media is right about some of this fanbase. Never happy. Never content. Rarely upbeat. Mostly negative.

He absolutely needs to win games, but the OP was talking strictly about recruiting wins. Currently Woodson is undefeated in that metric with some games still to go this year. I have eventually gone negative on most of our recent hires, but it wasn't done 2 weeks after they were hired. You sometimes get the impression that the thought process for some people is: "I did not like the hire, let me seek out any and all information that I can put on the internet to show I was right. If good news is received, how do I create the small storm cloud off in the distance?" Ultimately Woodson will be judged on wins and losses but the guy has done just about everything people could have asked of him up to this point. Retain our best player? Check. Retain solid recruiter from prior staff? Check. Retain the 2 higher rated freshmen with high ceilings? Check. Pull in the transfer who is expected to help with shooting? Check. Bring in solid recruiter from in conference rival who many thought was a coaching candidate? Check. Like I understand not wanting to crown Woodson the King of IU yet, I am not ready to do that, but my Lord, it is ok to be optimistic about how things have gone. People who are a constant, negative wet blanket get old. Can something actually go bad first before we start bitching?

And Jackson-Davis was....? He already passed the biggest test for the current team.

A part of him has to be a little irritated to lose an assistant to an in conference rival.