str8baller

At least Davis finished the year out and rallied to make the tournament.

Mike Davis it is.

His agent will just tell IU he’s not stepping down today, forcing IU to fire him, and triggering the whole buyout. His agent won’t let him actually “quit.” I’m guessing you didn’t have a multi-year guaranteed contract.

McCasland is an interesting dark horse. Hard to pull a fellow P5 coach out of a job but sometimes if you get them early before they put down roots it happens. Bill Self, Brad Underwood, etc…

He’s been there 11 years. Nobody would hire him at a big job during that time. And he’s went to one FF, so I don’t know about all the title talk.

I would have about as much interest as I do now with Woody or Archie or the end of Davis. Just be watching a walking disaster from afar waiting for the inevitable.

Knight was ultimately fired for that. Just like Beard. And after all of that nobody would hire Knight…except for programs like Texas Tech. You make the perfect argument against Beard, quite frankly. If Knight couldn’t get rehired at a major program why should the much less successful Beard?

Knight had anger issues. He wasn’t an alcoholic women beater. In my experience, yes the stress of the job probably exacerbated Knights issues, but he had enough runway to make it 25yrs before he did something leading up to his dismissal. Not only is alcoholic woman beater a bigger issue it is probably more likely to be triggered by elevated stressors…which again we have proof of with Beard. He last 1.5 yrs at his dream job before he flipped out. He’s a backwoods small timer coach. He can coach his balls off, but not in prime time. Even Kentucky knew better than to put him back in that position.

Criticism of whether Stevens can handle the big time is valid although it is considerably muted by the fact he’s coached and now led the front office of the Celtics. Beards already proven he can’t handle the pressure of a bigger job. Just like Gillespie and Sampson. Small time.

Woody thinks they’re winning Saturday and then winning out to get in the tournament. Buckner probably feeds into that delusion.

He was put on zero tolerance as soon as video emerged with his hand around a players neck. Is Beard gonna start off on zero tolerance? Sounds like a recipe for success…

Beard will fail here just like Sampson did. Just like Beard did at Texas. There’s a reason no legit programs looked to hire either last year. Small-time miscreants that don’t have what it takes to win at a major program.

UM 79 IU 72

Who was going to coach for the 5 year show cause he got that sidelined him?

Is that…uh…orange?

Might be an unpopular opinion, but I kind of like the Tuesday night basketball set-up on Peacock. Their presentation is pretty good too. Not sure why they had to bring Hummel and bardo from Fox, though.

Yep. He’s a small-timey backwoods yokel just like Sampson. Put them both at Bobo’s clown college in the middle of nowhere and they’ll have those boys playing ball as well as anyone. And given the lack of media, expectations, and basketball alumni functions at places like Lubbock nobody really will bat an eye at your overtly abrasive personality or if you get fall down drunk and miss a practice on a Tuesday. Put them at IU—or Texas, apparently—and the pressures of the job increase exponentially. Beard would probably crack as fast as Sampson. But even if he did manage to scratch out a conf title or FF before it went down in flames, it’s all gonna end the same way. IU would have to put so many safeguards on the hire, it might even affect his coaching ability meaning the whole thing fails to launch from the start.

Don’t you worry…when BS turns us down I am going to be driving that Bennett train full steam ahead! A couple guys are going to fire up the Billy Donovan thread. We’ll even dust off the Pitino—Rick, not “squirt”—guys and get them rolling. We’re getting the band back together!!

I had forgotten about this anecdote. Was that in Season on the Brink?

Why not be good at both? There’s no rule against it.

Looks like roughly $10mil per year for both, but since neither of us are math guys maybe we can get someone to run the numbers on that. Steven’s doesn’t have the obstacle of having to come up with $20-25mil in year one. We’ll ignore the whole time value of money thing too. Somehow you picked one of the few guys more unrealistic than Stevens.

Isn’t his buyout like $15-20mil? If so, he’s one of the few who are less likely than Stevens. How’s that for irony?

You could easily argue that without IU, RMK ends up one of those mercurial genius coaches that eventually overcomes his flaws to scratch out a singular title. But at IU with its crazed love of basketball and fertile recruiting grounds his flaws weren’t only looked past but often celebrated. He became larger than life and a legend of the sport. At one point he wielded enough populari-type power the Gov refused to extradite him after he “allegedly” punched a cop. We’re a long way from then, but that’s the type of upside the job possesses.

Duke, Kansas, Kentucky and probably UNC are demonstrably better, imo. Infrastructure, admin, fan support, funds, etc.. are all better or at worst even with IU. From there you’d have to think IU is hands down better than the next group that starts with UCLA and probably includes Uconn, MSU, Lville and non basketball, but basketball friendly, schools like Tenn, Texas, Florida, etc… to say IU is a for sure a top 5 job. I’d say we’re one of the top 10 jobs that matter still. But that doesn’t mean people are beating down the door to get here.

Yep. I kinda poke at the younger fans for their more favorable opinion on Crean. But I can’t really blame them. I don’t know what any fans under 40 would even expect out of this program. Fans under 30 haven’t seen us do a thing unless they remember Davis’s one run when they were a little kid. Even a B+ coach that put together something like a S16 and E8 in his first four years would have the fans riled up.