str8baller

Tbf, our fanbase has spent 25 years watching Davis/Crean/Archie/Woody try to coach. That’s like going to the hibachi place and getting Michael J Fox as your chef. You can’t blame ‘em for thinking “hey, I could do better than that!”

Kind of to Five Prime’s point, none of us know anything about Ryan Carr and we’ve pretty much already turned him into a modern day Red Auerbach. I’m bullish on the hire too, don’t get me wrong. But taking people, players, and coaches that we know little about and building them up once they sign with IU is kind of what we do as fans.

No idea who those two yahoos are but that’s probably closer to the national perception than what we tell ourselves here. Whether it matters in the portal or not, I couldn’t say.

Definitely. I’m pretty sure he stole it from the guy above. :{

Yea, I’m really curious how they hold up in the NIL era. Between Dean Smith, Jordan, Nike, and their kind of “coolness” they have been THE recruiting juggernaut of my lifetime. Thus, making it possibly the top job in college hoops for decades. Now with NIL that is all potentially secondary. Nike is still there but they’re in at least as equally with Duke. I could see this going in multiple directions easily

And more importantly, “are there any transfer portal players with IU interest who can withstand the grueling grinding physicality of the Big Ten conference?”

Scott played his way in late in the season. He’s a fifth starter type with not a ton of production. Mayer is barely a rotation piece and him and Ward didn’t contribute a whole lot more statistically than Sisley did this year. You can’t rely on guys like that to fill key roles. But let’s say best case scenario and you get one of those guys to pop as a 6th/5th man type à la Jordan Scott, add that to your “two studs” and you still have to find 5-6 more “diamond in the rough” types on cheap deals to fill out your starting lineup and rotation. Unless Carr is some type of wizard who can consistently find $200k guys who play like $2mil guys that is a recipe for having a bunch of Jasai Miles and Ristic types up and down your roster. Seems risky

Kansas is on an insane coaching hire run. They’re the anti-Indiana. If they nail it again we need to send our best researchers to their athletic dept. They’re the only school I can think of who have poached a B1G coach this century. This will be the first time in 50+ years UNC has went outside the family. I don’t even know if there are any plausible UNC candidates. I’m fairly interested in their search.

Purdue or Iowa really don’t. MSU has a couple bench guys. If we spend big on just two guys we would need 3 starters to come from the freshman/Sisley group of cheap contracts. It’s one thing if you have a Boozer, Burries, or Peat coming in. Or get lucky with a Waggler. We don’t have any of the first group so we’d be relying pretty heavily on luck.

Can’t see any of them except Byington. He’s not a UNC guy but he is a South Eastern Atlantic Coast guy. Close enough

They kept their handpicked successor, the loyal son, one less season than we kept Mike Davis. Lmao…

They won the SEC by 3 games this year. Upsets happen. They had a pretty flawed backcourt this year and I thought he did a nice job getting them straightened out for the most part.

That’s what I heard an elite, proven PG was going for last year. Or at least getting offers for. Might be a touch more this year if upper teams are throwing more in the pot.

Florida isn’t necessarily outbidding us or UK or whomever. If he’s going to UF it’s because they have an opening on a ready made team with a coach whom he thinks can improve his draft stock. Yes, guys are getting paid but the better players still want to get to the league and are looking for opportunity plus fit/style. I think one of the frustrating things about last year, is nobody really knows what we have to “sell” in that regard. We just have money right now.