Hoosierinbham

Good catch! Need more coffee apparently.

McCollum is a solid coach. He recruits and develops to his specific style. I’ll be interested to see if he can recruit the level of talent he needs in the B1G to be successful annually. Even Gard at Wisconsin has adapted his offense to play a more modern offense that attracts portal guards. Not sure McCollum can do that with the 365th pace of play and a small NIL. Guess we’ll see.

Florida’s bigs were used to bullying people in the SEC. That wasn’t gonna happen to a B1G team. I was also very skeptical of Boogie Fland at the point. Very talented, but emotional roller coaster. Figured he would get frustrated with the style of play. He was no Walter Clayton, jr.

I recall McCollum’s style of play being a concern. Quite a few of us didn’t want a Wisconsin style offense. Many Iowa fans wanted DeVries for that exact reason. It seems like we stole Iowa’s first choice as opposed to settling on DeVries. Their fans did a 180 on that once DeVries chose us and McCollum was hired. Let’s see if Stirtz is easily replaced, or did McCollum catch lightning in a bottle with him. Only time will tell. It’s also easier to slow a team down than speed them up. The muddy slugfest definitely frustrated Florida and Boogie Fland.

It will help if DeVries gets the money to buy a Lendeborg.

It definitely looked that way

He definitely was a run-buster. We’d have a nice lead and momentum, then he’d come in, make a few silly turnovers, and the lead would get cut in half. We had to give Enright a break, but Conerway really hurt us with poor decision making.

Alexis played the majority of minutes at the 5 due to Bailey’s ineffectiveness, and Enright did the same at the point due to injury and poor play/attitude with Conerway. Tucker played a ton once Sisley’s minutes went down. No way it didn’t have an effect on them down the stretch. Effective depth would’ve been huge. Same reason thin football teams can hang for 3 quarters, then get worn down in the 4th.

Gotcha. Thanks. Appreciate the discussion of the assistants. I wondered who was functioning in those roles. Hard to tell how good those guys are based on the personnel this season. I still say the short bench caused our guys to wear down late in the season and lose some leads in the second half. Not what people want to hear, but it’s a strong possibility. Same with Sisley. Think the kid just hit the freshman wall physically and possibly mentally.

DeVries has mentioned he had to scramble to fill the roster. I’ll be interested to see if he makes staff changes because of a similar situation with his staff. Devries went hard after Murphy and Moikobu. I wonder if he was trying to create almost offensive and defensive coordinator positions within his staff? To me he had a vision for program building by leading with staff first. Unfortunately it didn’t work out, and DeVries may have spent too much valuable portal time waiting on answers/negotiations. Who knows just how close we were to landing either, and if we were capped by buyout money. Clark seems solid, but we’ll see how he feels about the others going forward.

That’s an interesting point about failing to outbid schools for their top assistants. I wonder if any buyouts made it cost prohibitive for us to match? I love that he tried to grab the Bama and Tex Tech assistants. They almost certainly would’ve improved our roster and game prep this season. He swung for the fences and missed. At least we know he values coaches as much, if not more, than individual recruits. Very Cig-like philosophy.

Agree with focusing a big chunk of NIL on 2-3 elite players. One has to be a post and the other needs to be a scoring point and/or and elite wing that can shoot and create their own shot. It was no coincidence we went on a little run when Wilkerson became a driving threat.

That’s a great observation on Drake in the huddles. I hadn’t noticed or even been looking for that, but what a terrific sign of an engaged competitor.

Hopefully we can add Drake to that list as well. If he doesn’t play this year I would assume he’s still eligible next season. Not sure what he would’ve brought this year, but depth at guard has been an issue, especially when Conerway has been out.

Your post from Sept 2 was prophetic. None of us has to imagine anymore. Great call!

His dad was a fraternity brother of mine at IU. Great guy and great family. Congrats!!

Sam Alexis is a strong rebounder and has some solid shot blocking numbers, albeit in brief action at Florida, and against lesser competition at Chattanooga. It will be interesting to see how much CDD uses him.

Bucky will know how to use MM. He’ll force him to learn to drive, and also create open looks for him from 3. He doesn’t have the post game of Trendon Watford, but plays very similarly on the wing.

Could Adams have any pull with his international connections?

I’m guessing Bucky sees some Trendon Watford in MM and plans to use him similarly.

I’m from Fort Wayne, went to IU, and have lived in Birmingham for almost 25 years now. Even with recent basketball success, basketball is still a distant second to football down here. Auburn has a better basketball following than Alabama. (Alabama won’t even sell out a home game during the week when they’re ranked #1!) I think part of that is Auburn has been struggling in football, and that gives them something to talk smack to Bama fans about. Basketball is very popular in our area because our former coach is Bucky McMillan. (Congrats on the A&M job) Most fans here still equate Indiana with basketball. The notion that the national perception of Indiana basketball doesn’t exist is false. Maybe it’s because dads have taught their sons based on the Knight years. If either Auburn or Alabama struggle for a couple years, their gyms would be empty. That being said, both schools have terrific coaches, and their fans own bragging rights for now. Just my thoughts as a long tormented Hoosier fan in SEC country.

Interesting. That could bring someone like Pearl into the discussion.

I gotta say, his honesty is very refreshing. That interview definitely shifts how I would think about him as an option. Love his view on the 1 day turnaround games being prep for the NCAA tournament. It’s also great that he views the season as prep for the NCAA tournament. The B1G needs more coaches that think and recruit that way, rather than building rugby teams and counting on terrible home court refereeing advantages.

I gotta say, his honesty is very refreshing. That interview definitely shifts how I would think about him as an option. Love his view on the 1 day turnaround games being prep for the NCAA tournament. It’s also great that he views the season as prep for the NCAA tournament. The B1G needs more coaches that think and recruit that way, rather than building rugby teams and counting on terrible home court refereeing advantages.

I would hope so. If we had to put out that ego-saving statement for him, Woodson better have a zero tolerance policy on running his mouth. He’s harmed this program enough!