str8baller

But they will know him. It’s speculative. No different than you having money in the stock market.

I’m not sure I understand then. What is it that they are making the money on? I guess in my mind, getting paid for who you are is the definition of getting paid “on your name.” That’s how it works in my industry. To the second part, college sports has always had players getting paid under the table and in the last two decades coaches have made $5-10 million per year. Putting it above board doesn’t seem that disruptive to me. Again…quite possibly reasonable minds can differ here.

Matter of perspective, I suppose. Schools making millions and coaches earning millions while actively preventing players from earning money off their own name always struck me as odiously greedy. Had the NCAA and member schools worked to find a middle ground (eg. allowing players to earn a cut of basketball camp appearances or jersey sales) when huge tv money started to infiltrate the game, then maybe we wouldn’t have gotten to this point. But the schools/NCAA’s greed knows no bounds and the courts stepped in. So here we are. (Fwiw, I say this as someone who is generally a bit of a traditionalist).

This was always my take. NIL money would favor IU more than most provided they leaned into it and did it smartly. Another thing IU has going for it is it should really help reestablish traditional basketball schools like IU. The newcomers like Florida, Baylor, Oregon, Etc… will feel a strong pull to divert as much money as possible to football. Basketball should be pretty wide open for traditional basketball schools.

Woody grew up and played in the state in the 70s and 80s. Went to IU. And spent years managing egos in the pros. When he was coming up not only was the head basketball coach the most popular govt employee in town, he was usually the most powerful (if he won). I get the apprehension given the miscues in this regard of our last few coaches. But out of all the things I could forgive a coach with Woodys resume for not knowing about the college game, I would actually be disappointed in him if he didn’t understand this. Of course, even Knight screwed up the Montross ordeal, so who knows…

I can never remember that!

I wouldn’t even know what to do with myself if we entered an era of IU basketball where the staff or administration had ambitious plans and actually executed them without creating a giant embarrassing spectacle. Pinch myself, I guess? If Woody accomplishes that he gets an A for the off-season. We’d be entering the summer with as much optimism as any year since the summer of ‘12. Any more excitement and you’d have to go back to Knight’s heyday and the early 90’s.

To be clear, I was saying I think JG is not a bad perimeter defender. I think he gets lost a little off the ball and that’s why Woody didn’t play him as much as many would like. Without knowing the gameplan and what coach expects that really is just speculation on my part. He obviously got better and played more towards the end of the season. I would think with his increased offensive output and continual improvement on the other end, he’ll be awful hard to keep off the floor next year. Stewart and Kopp simply have trouble with athleticism at the B1G level. They both compete, tho. We were starved for offense last year so they had to be on the floor a bunch for at least the threat of hitting outside shots and spacing. If guys like Race and JG can maintain their improvement with their outside shot, they will make it much harder for Kopp to see the floor as much as he did last year.

It really depends on what you’re looking at. To me he’s perfectly serviceable as a perimeter defender on the ball, with the potential to be really good. He gets lost off the ball more than any player on the team, and is the main reason he didn’t play more.

Galloway and Geronimo are good players. They’ll be in their second year of the system and do a lot of things besides score. Trying to replace guys like that with shiny new thing is a fools errand in more ways than one.

Race isn’t coming back to be a bench player. If anything they sold him on being TJD’s replacement. If they both come back Geronimo is in all likelihood competing for a starting spot at the 3

Race was a good stretch-4 the last third of the season. He shot ~40+% from 3. His improvement there and XJ’s increased 3pt percentage really picked up the slack from Stewart and Kopps (to a lesser extent) drop off. If he can keep that up—and maybe it was an anomaly, but seemed promising—he’s not only an ideal stretch-4 but much more. He still rebounds and defends his position well and can play small spurts at the 5 in small ball units to give TJD a breather. Honestly, if XJ and Race both return and shoot like they did at the end of the season—two big if’s—we already start out so much better than last season. We don’t need to be as desperate to force shooters onto the floor at the other 2 perimeter spots. A second “if”…is that if guys like this freshman or JG and Bates can hit about 35% from 3, we all of a sudden have a squad that looks drastically different from last year and very frisky on offense. I don’t expect all of those things to happen. But we have enough “outs” that there’s a decent chance we can pair an (at least) average offense with our very good defense.

This x1000. There’s a difference between running a clean program and being so puritanical that you shoot yourselves in the foot never having a chance of winning. I don’t know what the exact line is, but each program needs to find what they think represents their values. As personally flawed as Knight was, he ran a program that was exemplary in being respectable on and off the court, even though we can nitpick individual decisions. Whether we’re talking the NW incident or this XJ thing I want Woody to run a successful program that holds people accountable. He need not adhere to some rigid code of honor that kicks guys out for a certain set list of transgressions. Someone mentioned it earlier in the thread, but I suspect XJ’s treatment will depend a lot on the conditions Woody set out after the NW incident. As an isolated incident, I don’t think this warrants much more than a 1 game suspension. I’m curious to see how Woody handles it.

It makes all the sense in the world and aligns with a few small things I had heard (all 2nd and 3rd hand info). Think big picture: they have had the “Butler Way” there for 20-ish years. That’s included hiring from within and almost always having a strong pipeline of future coaches as assistants. It’s been incredibly consistent and had not failed them yet. I had heard that they were slightly pushed into the Jordan hire. It did not work out and they lost their continuity of coaching succession. Bringing Matta back for a few years allows them to restabilize the program. That includes not only winning but getting the right up and coming coach on the staff and ready to take over. This is where Matta will excel. I doubt he’ll be doing the heavy recruiting (or maybe even alumni events) like he would have been expected to at a place like IU. I have no knowledge of whether this is the plan or not, but it makes a lot of sense from the outside looking in. Matta gets one last shot at coaching in a lower stress environment than a place like IU, gets to help his alma mater, and the inside track to an AD spot. Butler gets a proven former coach who can help them get back on track on the court and replenish their stable of promising assistants.

I heard it was Thad Matta. Then today Matta leaves. Coincidence? I think not…

That’s the worst part, I think. If he plays another year of HS ball I think it is possible some of his flaws become more apparent and he drops to a mid 4* guy and there’s less expectation on him. Nobody expects him to contribute a ton his freshman year (this year). Having him graduate early just accelerated all the problems and hype.

Absolutely. At 34 you’re hungry, full of vigor and primed for success. At 54 having been out of the game for 5 years you’re looking for a transition into retirement. Let’s not act like the guy wasn’t gently showed the door at O$U. I like Butler and Matta. But this is Butler teaching after having failed; it’s not an IU issue. there’s a lot of nervous people on here I wouldn’t let carry the eggs home from the grocery. To wit…. lmao…who cares? All kinds of nonsense gets spread on the recruiting trail. IU’s not losing recruits because Phinisee goes to play pg at a .500 BE program.

That makes a ton of sense…except for the part where he left them for Xavier, who he then left for OSU. This is more like Butler finally made a misstep in their hiring lineage and played upon his loyalty to come home.

That should put everyone’s mind at ease if he’s fishing for IU discards.

This would be my best guess. IU recruits nationally, in part. Butler recruits regionally. Also, Butler got pushed into the Jordan hire and it set their program back. They’re used to going from one successful Butler guy to the next. Rebuilding a program is harder and they haven’t done it in a while. Thad will provide some short term stability. They’ll surround him with a lot of energetic assistants and he won’t leave the Indy area nearly as much as someone in his position normally would. It can both be true that he wasn’t physically up to the IU job and he is capable of performing the role Butler wants him to fill.

As I said in another thread. He’s about league average for the role of backup PG. He doesn’t hurt us wherever he goes and there’s no reason to have ill will towards the guy. Coaches will be interested in his upside. He was basically a frosh last year and he obviously didn’t fit into what Woody wanted. But he has a lot of room to improve and the tools to do so. Some coach will be excited with him as a project.

Same. I don’t get the urge to boo him. He gave his all for 4 yrs; things just never materialized for him. On top of that, he’s a probably a league avg backup PG, at best. He won’t appreciably help any of the teams we’re trying to pass in the standings. I think Purdue would be a dumb option, but if that’s where he thinks he fits in best then more power to him.

Mom and Dad, no? Or maybe I’m misremembering.

I think both of these are right. Our offense looks way more competent if guys knock down open shots. But having an excellent guard to pair with Trayce would be a game changer. At his best XJ looked like it breaking defenses down with the drive and dish. He only played that way about 20% of the time. It sort of shows you how far we have to go, roster-wise. We need a trayce type guy plus another all conf guard plus guys who can defend and shoot to compete nationally.

How does that work? Especially on the next six years part? Is it less money or less time if they get beat earlier?