str8baller

Got it. Bottom line is we need someone to elevate this program badly. If that is a couple years or twenty I think this fanbase will go crazy either way.

As long as he’s successful when here and trying to win championships I don’t think it would make him a bridge hire in my eyes. Larry Brown was at Kansas 5 years before going to the pros. Ranked every year, good seed every year, and a national title. Is that a bridge hire or just a really good hire?

That would imply that he turned IU around. I could live with that.

Hate it. CBB is fun now because most games matter and guys go hard every night. Trying to turn it into the nba, which struggles mightily with the exact opposite problem, is a bad idea. Plus the season now already stretches well into April. You might be able to squeeze a couple more games out of eliminating some of the dead weeks but those games would probably just be filled with buy-games anyhow.

We actually kind of need Purdue to pull out of this nosedive and make our second best win stay good looking for the committee.

I’d say a majority of the board doesn’t believe Stevens is coming to IU. A bigger majority doesn’t believe you have any particular insight either, into what is a very predictable and obvious conclusion.

It does seem odd his buyout came down, if previous reports are true.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement of Cronin. Harrick and Howland had little trouble building contenders there. Cronin is close to Lavin and Alford than those two. I don’t hate Cronin but he really hasn’t built the rosters that Drew has.

Couldn’t tell ya…I’m very pro Tony Bennett. I’d put money on him winning a National Title and 3+ B1G titles before he retired if hired at IU.

Woodson/Archie hires are weird in that on day 1 we would all assume Woodson was a worse hire. But in results I don’t think it could get much worse than Archie.

I hate it when those pesky National Championships inflate your record.

Iu 71 uw 68

True. He became a victim of his own success so when he really started slipping (and he did) they got restless and booted him. Barnes resurgence at UT is actually kind of crazy to me because he looked washed at the end of his Texas run. But those are still 3 straight big time hires, with a slight ding for the Shaka hire for going the mid major route. For a football school. People love Austin, though.

The Terry hire is rather understandable. Texas should actually be given a lot of credit. In 3 successive hires they hired Barnes away from Clemson, Shaka (hottest young coach at the time) from VCU, and pre-incident Beard from conf and instate rival TT. That’s a pretty strong run for a football school. I bet they get another good candidate when Terry gets the boot.

Agreed. We should do this more often.

I actually have a little second hand knowledge on this, and I would estimate NW is the tightest admission standard for athletes in the P5 . Second would be Stanford but they seem to be willing to make exceptions for athletes at times in a way NW doesn’t. In the 00s there used to be a story about a duke assistant (before Colins and I forget who) that interviewed for the nw job. They gave NW admissions the blind resumes of several players to see if they would accept them. NW admissions said no. Those players turned out to be former Dukies like Laettner, Grant Hill and Bobby Hurley. Obviously guys that got into Duke. Said coaching candidate turned down the NW job. Collins can coach his butt off. Not sure if he’d be successful at IU, but there’s no doubt that guy is a good coach. Just looking at his record in a vacuum is a mistake, imo.

Those are fair criticisms of his style. I’d only push back on the following: Drew has proven he can build championship D’s, moreso than Otz has proven he can build championship Os. And that’s also where the Crean comparison breaks down too. Also, Baylor is so much worse of a job than Houston (or Iowa St or Marquette) it isn’t even a 1:1 comparison with those guys’ resumes, which Drew wins anyways. I don’t “love” the Drew hire but his resume would have to be about the best of any coach hired to IU. Honestly, if Dolson gets a Drew/Otz/Few choice, he’s paid handsomely to make the right choice. I disagree that they’d all work out here though, but then again my salary doesn’t hinge on that assumption.

Could be “slippage.” Could just be variance. Not enough data points to know. He’s an offensive minded coach and when they have down years it’s often the defense that goes down. And if we’re being honest, we should also point out all those teams were top 3 seeds in the tourney. So even is it is “slippage” they only slid from 1 seeds to 3 seeds.

The guy recruits nationally—actually internationally—and has had some great rosters. But something about the fit at IU makes it seem like slightly less than a slam dunk to me. And I like Few and the teams he builds a lot.

Recent slippage is one way to put it. OTOH, this is his first down year in a while and Baylor is still sitting at 30th in Kenpom. He’s a couple years out from a title, which almost nobody working today can say.

Probably Drew.

Pretty impressive that the small lineup with him and Rice sees Galloway often as the primary ballhandler. I wouldn’t have expected much of that at the start of conference play. I don’t know if Woody sometimes just stumbles into these “adjustments” but I want to give him credit for this one anyways.

Would you want to commit a million dollars a year for 10 years so IU could hire Archie Miller or Mike Woodson?

He’s had a weird career in terms of three point shooting. I’d be shocked if he made 3 a game the rest of the way out but maybe there’s a scenario where he shoots ~40% from 3 the rest of the way out. That would really pump up the effectiveness of a handful of lineups.

What is this starting line up? Interesting