str8baller

I’m too old to really care about that. Reflexively I agree with you. Then I ask myself, “what the hell do I know about social media?” I would be fine if Indiana just embargoed everything and anything involving Dakich.

I disagree it was poorly constructed. He got a top center, a top pg, a well ranked off guard, and a good shooter off the bench. All things we needed. It was, however, poorly coached. As many of us expected. If CDD can’t coach them up with the best of them he’ll eventually be sent packing too.

I disagree with this. Setting his IU connections aside Goode would represent one of the very few players on the roster that have played and won at the high major level in a role requiring significant minutes. Add in his appreciation for IU and a year here under his belt and I think he’d be a value-add as a 5th year senior.

I’m intrigued by what’s going on. Honest to God, I don’t know what I would do with myself if we had a coach that could coach multiple styles and switched up depending on his personnel. Its been so long since we’ve had anything like that in the sidelines, I would probably just sit back in amazement the first full year or two. (ok, that’s as much as I can let myself dream…back to reality)

I agree with that. But that’s kind of why I pushed back on that comparison. Iowas issues were Fran moreso than personnel. If I squint real hard I can talk myself into this roster being something like Gards put on the floor at Wisconsin. Not athletic enough to be really good defensively but sound. Somebody compared Bailey to Wahl and that’d be a solid outcome for us.

They had pros all over that roster and their top 3 perimeters aren’t just pros, but very good pros. We can play small, but that’s not a comparison I’d want IU fans to be thinking about.

They also didn’t play Tucker at the 4 because he was injured. So I’m not sure we’ll look like them. Or maybe we don’t play Tucker at the 4? Who knows…

Jeez…I hope not. They’ve been putrid on D the last few years. Worse than Tom Crean and Woody defenses. We’ll have little shot at the tourney if we’re that bad on D. Ideally, we’d look more like Wisconsin/BYU/Kentucky this past year. A top offense…. Don’t need to play a blistering pace to get it…and inside the top 50/60 on def efficiency. Purdue , Uconn, and Illinois were similar but played slower. I get the personnel issues and comp to Iowa, but they're so dang bad on D I hate to even see that comparison.

That’s fair and ultimately on CDD. But the people who didn’t believe IU was shelling out cash (strangely after we literally proved it last year with Woody) were simply being myopic to a fault. Will these guys work out? Who knows…but at this point it seems coach has the resources he needs to go out and get the guys he wants. We’re approaching 8 or 9 guys who were sought after with a big and maybe Goode to be added yet, at a minimum. IU is apparently stacking cash for these guys. Hopefully CDD can coach them up.

Remember when people were worried IU didn’t have any money? Dude visited a couple big dogs then signed with IU and told Gonzaga “stay poor.” lol…

Good list. I’d probably bounce OG and put in a true big. One of Zeller/TJD/Henderson.

I’d be surprised if a lot of these media reports aren’t agent driven. Always looks good to have a high dollar school or two on the list even if the interest isn’t exactly high.

It shouldn’t increase your variance much if you can do all the other things you mentioned and win multiple ways. Otherwise it’s a sub-optimal strategy in a sport that comes down to one single elimination tournament. (I’m ultimately fine with whatever CDD does next year, in that regard, because nobody is or should be expecting him to be making a deep tourney run in year 1).

The Bailey pickup was early and now seems to be the one piece that may not fit, defensively at least. But he’s talented enough and we didn’t have any commits yet, so you had to take him at the time. With that said…it’s not necessary to have a rim protector to play good defense. Play like Bo Ryan or Tony Bennett teams and stay in front of your man, keep them out of the lane, deny the post and rotate like hell out of it, and you can still have a good defense. I don’t know if that is CDD’s style or not. But right now after you slot in Tucker defensively at the 4 and two mid major guys not known for their defense at the other wing spots, having a guy who isn’t a plus-defender at center seems to be a big gamble going into the season. I’m really curious as to 1) how they round out the roster, and then 2) juggle those mins next season.

We might be trying the Alabama approach this year. Score 100 and hope the other team doesn’t score 101. Would be a pretty fun year 1, at least.

Probably depends on other circumstances at that point. I honestly think if Crean never missed the tourney in his off years he wouldn’t have been fired. But eventually your standards get readjusted kind of like how IUs have been adjusted downward. Knight hadn’t made the S16 in his last five years and a not insignificant part of the fanbase was ready for him to move on claiming the game has passed him by. And at that point he was a stone cold legend of the game probably no worse than 3rd on anybody’s list of greatest coaches of all time. But the “losing” had grown tiresome. In some ways it’s easier to do what IU’s done the last 25 years which is just lose and make excuses like typical losers do. That way the fanbase never has to grapple with actual expectations, having great teams but coming up short anyways because your best player has an off game or a bad whistle or something. We’ve never had a Keady/Painter/Pearl/Barnes type coach who is good enough to put out consistent winners but seemingly not good enough to win a title. We’ve had Knight (for the older fans) or sucktitude with the irrationally firm belief the 6th banner is just around the corner. If faced with such a situation we might lose our collective minds in an existential crisis of trying to manage real top 10ish expectations.

Yea, I think talking about “the portal” now means the last couple years of mass portal entrants combined with huge NIL deals that are actually just a salary. Bringing up someone like Hurley in that context is largely meaningless, to me. With that said, we have very few data points because it’s all so new. Otoh, we have some good direct comparisons last year like Kelsey, May and Pope. All similar programs with similar resources who hired coaches with similar resumes to CDD. 3 data points isn’t enough for me to call it a baseline, but it’s as good as we have this early into this new world. If you want to point to Pitino or Golden to try and excuse away a bad first season, I can live with that. The problem there is Pitino won the Big East in year 2 and Golden was good in year 2 and won the title in year 3. So either way, expectations come fast and get big quick.

I don’t think s rim runner is as important as some defense. Unless Miles or Wilkerson surprise by being really good defenders, we’re really thin defensively outside of the pg spot.

Most of the guys brought in have 1 year of eligibility left. They won’t be a part of any future foundation. Can we at least expect them to produce like guys being paid top dollar? Or is the new coach smell supposed to be so intoxicating that we just clap like trained seals for a couple years no matter what happens?

How well have computers been predicting the jumbled mess that has been offseason NIL transfers the last couple years?

Might be a better question after the season and we see how much coaching was involved with those misses. In any event, you’ll probably have some misses every so often anyways. We’ll get to see a good dose of Rice this year with a good coach. If he looks more like the guy from the Tenn scrimmage than he did at the end of the year it will make Woodys haul last year a lot better (but make his coaching look even worse). I’d say from last year Ballo was pretty much as advertised, I think Rice was mostly a coaching issue, Carlyle was a miss, Goode was as advertised, and Hatton was as advertised. Tucker was a frosh but late add so if we throw him in I think he was a miss too. I think whatever mins we get at C likely won’t be as good as Ballo. And our haul so far is light on defense, so that’s not a small thing. But if the perimeters brought in by CDD aren’t markedly better—and clearly coached up better—than last years group we’re in big trouble. Right now I feel pretty confident they will be.

I’d say that after last week we’re definitely in good shape and ahead of schedule. We’ve landed two quality PGs (both good defenders and passers), a highly sought after SG, an athletic wing who can rebound, his son at the stretch 4, and a skilled big where there’s some debate if he can reliably guard B1G level bigs. Needs: depth in the post, and depth off the bench particularly scoring depth if Goode isn’t eligible. I’d say being unbiased as possible he’s safely in A-/B+ territory overall and maybe graded out higher if you 1) either love a couple of the players, or 2) want to grade on a curve given the circumstances of starting from scratch. There seems to be a narrative that there’s still plenty of money to fill out the roster the rest of the way. tl;dr - doing good

Yea, I have to say I’m surprised by TT. I bet they have a singular west Texas oilman booster who loves basketball or something. Either way, McCasland with a top budget could be dangerous.

Maybe Bailey gives you 20-25min at C and another 5 at the 4 when Tucker is out. You’re then hoping some combination of Curtis and Sisley can soak up 15-20min. Either way, the perimeters are gonna have to defend. You don’t need elite shot blocking if you can play like Ryans Wisconsin or Bennetts Virginia teams and keep guys in front of you and out of the lane. Either way we’d be pretty thin up front but hopefully can score with the best of them.

Those are two data points I don’t put a lot of stock in. First, his son is completely unique in that it’s his child. He’d be coming from wherever he was. Also both were injured last year, giving us a less than perfect look at their high major production. Also having coached Enright before, it’s hard to say if CDD is bringing him in because of his production at Depaul or because of what he knows of him at Drake. I wouldn’t expect CDD to reach for two high major transfers every portal season based on those two data points. But that’s purely a guess, based on everyone else he’s brought in. (With that said, he did make an attempt at Dix and Conwell so maybe he will fish those waters pretty consistently???)