str8baller

He might be the first “normal” coach hire we’ve had since Knight was fired.

Yea, but last years SEC was ridiculous. There’s almost no way the B1G is close to that. So if you want a gauge of where those efficiency numbers might net out, I would look at last years B12 or B1G teams for a better comparison. Again, all this assumes a top 20 OffE, which is not a given but doable. Just a thought exercise to rebut some of the doom and gloom about our defensive personnel

If we’re a top 20 offense, it’ll be hard for us to miss the tourney. I’m pretty sure I posted a while back that a top 20 O and top 50 D would be a very good first season. Iowa was the only top 20 offense to miss the tourney last year and they were 168th in D (all #’s Kenpom). Other top 20ish Os with weaker D’s 3 seed TT at 5th/38th O snd D, respectively 8 seed Gonzaga 6/29 4 seed PU 7/53 6 seed Mizzou 6/68 3 seed UK 10/51 4 seed AZ 11/38 6 seed Illini 14/40 8 seed Uconn 15/75 9 seed Baylor 16/62 11 seed UNC 21/47 we’re not going to get the SoS benefits of last years SEC teams but we won’t be as bad off as the midmajors either. Obviously, wins matter too. To me that Baylor to Arizona range looks doable.

Slipping from the end of the lottery to the end of the first isn’t nothing though. We’re pretty much on the same page with Hurley and McNeely, but there were times watching them where there definitely weren’t enough shots for all 3 of those guys. Pulling up a couple articles some guys dinged him for inconsistent shooting. Is that because he’s inconsistent or because he was getting an inconsistent amount of shots? I certainly can’t fault a kid for going to play for Hurley, but you can at least imagine a personnel situation that would’ve let him produce a little more, handle the ball a little more (something I think he was a little underrated at) and upped his production enough a team would take him at his projected spot. I agree on the last part. There are going to be some salty fans this year when guys like Rice or Mbako have a big game. But I don’t blame CDD for wanting a clean slate, especially with what some of those guys were paid.

Didn’t realize he slipped all the way to 29. I think UConn was a strange choice just based on the perimeter talent they had. But he still performed well. He needed to go to a team that had everything but a wing scorer kind of like Knecht did the year before. I can’t say that coming to last years IU team would have helped him in any way. For several reasons he couldn’t have had the role JHS did not the least of which is he would be running PnR’s with Ballo instead of TJD.

That will make your anti-virus go haywire and may or may not have several pop-ups you’d be embarrassed for your wife to see. Can’t wait!

I think those three are hard to deny in terms of woody helping them. TJD got more Pat touches than most. Ware was an obvious improvement from Altmans staff. And oddly enough putting JHS in a million p’n’rs with TJD is about the perfect scenario for a guy with limited 3pt range, limited athleticism but a great midrange game. Everyone else…not so much. McNeely was likely smart for staying away

I personally think there’s pretty effective ways to scheme around not having shot blocking. I worry more about depth there vis a vis injuries. A team like Purdue can sustain an injury at center largely because they play a more traditional 4 and TKR was able to slide over and soak up a bunch of minutes as their sole post player at times. We have a Tucker/Luke Goode (well not anymore) situation at “4” in a 4-out system. There’s just zero chance those types can slide over and play the 5 in a pinch. So I do share Wayne’s concern about depth at the 5. But once Bailey was signed—and he signed early—I’m not sure what you do about. You’re not getting anyone of any quality to come be a 3rd string post player. It seems the backup we got is pretty dang solid. We’re also not going to get a traditional PF as a backup since we would never use one absent an injury, effectively just making them a 3rd string post player. In an ideal world, I think you have a freshman recruit in that spot that could slide into the backup post role in the event of an injury. But as a first year coach succeeding a guy who didn’t recruit, you’re just kind of stuck.

Basically this. Of all fans you would think IU fans would get the examples right in front of their face. If you think Purdue paid what Braden Smith or Edey would’ve commanded on the open market I don’t know what to tell you. Nobody can point to hard facts either way be a the dollars aren’t public. But I’m pretty sure Edey and Smith, both PoY candidates, took sizable discounts to stay home. Similarly, TJD never even tested the waters. He could’ve extracted huge money from places like Duke or UK but it didn’t even get to that point. Our roster is set and it is surely impacted by having to build it from scratch and do it in about 30 days. If CDD can’t build off this in the future we’ll be looking for a new coach again. Same as the last 25 yrs.

Pretty sure everyone sees the same flaws in the roster. It’s just that looking around the college landscape nobody else expects a first year coach with a total overhaul to have a top 10 team no matter what they spend. If you do…? Fine. But nobody can point to any previous example of why that should be, while other people can point to examples of lower expectations for teams in the same circumstances.

It doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense. If one doesn’t understand by now that it is cheaper to keep your own talent than buy on the open market, you can’t be helped. UK and Arkansas spent a ton last year. And they had coaches bringing over some previous talent. In Arkansas’s case quite a few. UK also loaded up on mid major guys. UK had great metrics but was obviously capped out at a S16 team. Arkansas was a 10 seed. Add in UM and Lville and adjust your expectations accordingly. People or podcasts telling you to expect top 10 based on our spend aren’t cogent enough analysts to waste your time listening to, imo.

He did. But his two most successful seasons were rehabilitating the Archie crew. Archie is a bum.

Two more things since I posted the last comment before I finished the last twenty mins or so: 1) He does the hilarious coach thing where he pretends not to know what something is. In this case, it is “a coaches ceiling“. I don’t even know what that is, he says. Then five minutes later, he perfectly describes what he considers a coach’s ceiling when talking about a couple big 10 coaches. In this case, it was Buzz Williams and McCollum. Wtf dude???? 2) I argued with a couple posters this spring about how money will be allocated more like the pros where two or three players get the majority of your salary. Snow pretty much says that’s how it will be going forward. No more giving 8 players $1mil each. Top 2 or 3 guys will be getting 50% (or more, imo) of your salary pool.

Perimeter forward or post? Somebody get CDD a checkbook if the latter

That was a pretty good listen. I don’t disagree with much of anything he said. I would quibble with him saying Lville brought in all winners and we’re not. Devries is a winner. So is Connerroy. Enright was under CDD. One of our two centers played real mins for the national champs. I assume it was a shot at Wilkerson or Bailey but I dunno.

Some people internalized the Woody era more than they realized. Woodys main thing was blocking shots at the rim at all costs. For as bad as people wanted him gone, it’s funny to hear people fret about the same things he would have. Of course your analysis is correct. We can find tons of examples (our rivals to the north last year being a prime one). But it’ll take time for people to finally free themselves of the old ways.

It would be pretty easy for them to get a prelim injunction, I’d bet. But it would likely tie up the scholly until the season starts. This way CDD can try and take a flier on someone. I feel bad for Goode though.

This is hard for me to fathom. If nothing else my friends seem to be excited to start anew (again). At least in various text threads I have going I’d put the excitement level above: -The last two Woody seasons -nearly every Archie season -at least the first 3 and last 3 Crean seasons -the last few Davis seasons. Those were all “dead” seasons where IU was running out a coach who clearly wasn’t good enough to be here (or the roster wasn’t in the case of Creans first 3 seasons). Sadly the above represents over half the seasons of the last couple decades. So next years unknown gets the excitement level in the upper half just by default. I’d bet IU fans pack Assembly Hall and cheer like crazy nearly the whole season like they have for every coach before. The fans rarely turn on a regime before they’ve clearly proven that they’re not the answer. That usually takes a couple years at least.

I think starting him alongside Tucker and Bailey only increases your degree of difficulty keeping guys out of the paint on defense. He’s probably good enough to start on this team but I bet he comes off the bench. He’s been great in that role his whole career.

We definitely had that with Woody but the attempts were atrocious. I don’t think we’ll have to worry about guys like Tucker being shy from 3pt range. Hopefully we can defend the 3 too.

I wouldn’t necessarily be opposed. I think there’s a universe in which that works, but it would definitely change the “first weekend “with all the upsets and things that we are accustomed to.

Twitter says Moody committed

Iowa under Fran on the low side. Fran was not a good defensive coach. Hopefully CDD is. But if Tony Bennett or Bo Ryan ran out that lineup nobody would be fretting over defense. In other words, there’s more than one way to play defense and an athletic shot blocker is nice but not a must. Hoping for a Ryan/Bennett defense is crazy with a first year team so I’m not suggesting we see that. But I think (hope) we fall some between that and Fran’s turnstile defense.

This has pretty much been my mindset. I think he will be a valuable piece if for nothing else practice and culture. I hope he gets his waiver.

Probably. But NIL bleed off to other sports shouldn’t be a problem for IU basketball. My guess is that we’re pretty easily top 10. I think buying new players is more expensive than retaining your own, which tracks with about every professional league in existence. It also tracks with what we have seen in cbb. Guys like Edey and Smith definitely have taken at least small discounts to stay home. So basically, we’ll never get less bang for our buck than this year when buying an entirely new roster. Teams that did that last year like Michigan and Lville definitely seemed to have a ceiling despite how good they were. On the flip side, teams like UF and Auburn were able to retain a ton of talent without outrageous NILs. It’s smart that CDD got multi-year players because they’ll be cheaper to retain next year, most likely. I think a lot of pieces look like they don’t exactly fit this year but hopefully we definitely have an eye on the future. All in my pretty uninformed opinion, anyways.