str8baller

Wouldn’t you be recruiting over Tucker first? I get that Galloway shot it poorly last year but he was still an effective ball handler and an above average defender. Sending him to the bench probably already makes us worse defensively. Putting a freshman wing and mid major guard in his bench spot 100% hurts us defensively, and maybe offensively depending on how ball handling duties get carved up. Just seems fairly unlikely those two haven’t been given some assurances on PT. Signing Tucker and barely playing seems like it might hurt Woodys recruiting strategy of going “big game hunting.” Interesting puzzle to solve, for sure though. I just don’t see a lot left on the bench for non-bigs

That spot hasn’t getting a Hickman or Conwell because it isn’t much of a spot. It’s probably not getting a player like Essigian either. Do the math on the minutes. Most guys know Galloway is going to the bench but even projecting him at 20mpg is iffy. He’s played 28 and 33mpg the last two seasons, I’m sure he’s not expecting to go to 15 all of a sudden off the bench. Will have to be the backup 1 & 2 just to get to 20mpg off the bench, so long as we’re playing 2 bigs.

Always struck me as true! He's probably still underrated at this point, but much like Knight, he was never buddy-buddy with the media. Often times he seemed openly antagonistic, again like Knight. As such he never really seemed to get the fanfare guys like K, Williams, and even Bohiem did. It's interesting to me him and Hurley butt heads.

I might be more jealous of that than his upcoming million dollar salary. Lol

I played in both systems and was very anti-class basketball. At the time I was at a smaller school that played and beat bigger schools quite often. But at this point, the big schools have gotten so big even I have to question if a single class makes sense. Basically, the big schools keep growing and the smaller schools have stagnated, or shrunk, in size. It's sad that people won't ever get to experience that again. Indiana HS basketball is still the best in the country, imo, but the old single class system was an institution that stood alone. But nothing in life is constant but change.

For what role? Guys that want to start and play big minutes can’t get that here , assuming a Carlyle commit. I actually don’t think it’s surprising that hickman or conwell aren’t interested in possibly sub 20min off the bench.

One of Tucker Galloway and 3rd portal guard may not get minutes. Newton and Cupps may be lucky to have a spot in the layup line for warmups.

Whether we do it or not, is up to your opinion on Woody (And this isn’t the thread for that). But we’d have to play small to get another starter quality guard off the bench (ie land 2/3 of conwell, hickman, carlyle) any decent min. 40min a game x 5 starters = 200 total min. if your starters all avg 28 mpg your at 140 minutes leaving 60 for the bench. Galloway played 33mpg last year, but let’s say he’s a team player and does 20mpg off the bench this year. 40mpg left. Your 5star frosh Tucker + table scraps for Cupps/Leal/backup big is probably at least 20mpg. 20mpg left. That’s the max you can offer a 2nd portal guard and that’s if you stagger Ballo/Reneau perfectly and play 4out or mbako at the 4 half the time. There’s no way to play big all game and get 2 more guards the mins they want.

The numbers really don’t work at all unless you push Cupps all the way out of the rotation with Galloway as the backup PG and other perimeter and you commit to staggering Ballo and Reneau and going small about half the time. Then you could probably guarantee a 2nd guy 20min and a big payday. That’s really stretching it, though. It also means you have 0 min to offer to a backup big.

But it's not yet and we're still talking NIL and the next couple of years. For example, Purdue went around last year and made a huge push to get more money to keep Edey because they felt they had a real chance at a FF or title. The level they spent last year isn't necessarily being replaced as they go back to their normal level. You'll see schools do that maybe for title worthy teams or something. All we know so far (at least according to this board and other sites) is that a couple big donors were convinced to shell out a couple million more for this year. I suspect some people may not feel their "investment" is worth it if they don't get the results they are expecting. The world of NIL is so new, nothing is guaranteed in the future.

Maybe. Seems like at least the Cook portion of it is tied to Woody and Buckner. So what happens if they're gone next year? Or is it a one time thing regardless? Nobody really knows. Only that they've invested heavily in Woodson for another year. This isn't the pros where you have reoccurring revenue. It's essentially time money every year.

Diebler was robbed!

Might make sense if the '23 team didn't exist. How do you explain that? Unfortunately you can't blame Cupps for that.

Or a alternatively Few looks into his nightly scotch and says thank God I never took that massive offer from state U, I could've been Monson. I'm not even kidding, I'd like to get Few drunk and ask him what percentage of the reason you never let Gonzaga is due to Monson falling on his face.

Exactly. So address the question: why not get them more volume? Woody didn't even try. Leal attempting three 3s at 40% is likely better than him attempting 1 at 47%. So why didn't Woody get him more 3s? We were one of the best 3 point% teams in '23, but low volume. Why not get those guys more 3s? If he didn't the last 3 years why will he do for Rice and Carlyle?

Those two shot 47% and 36% from 3. Why in the world wouldn't you try and get them more 3's. (Edited out some unnecessary snark)

Good get. Dynamic pg was our biggest need. Nice to go that right away.

Very unlikely. Just statistical variance mostly. Someone pointed it out, but we played the same with XJ starting. Also, everyone saw Galloway ball out versus Kansas. He a senior guard that didn't need much, if any, time to acclimate. 1 point wins to Morehead st, a double digit loss to Nebraska, blowouts to Purdue and a home loss to by double digits all followed that. Those count just as much in our efficiency metrics. It's really the double digit losses as much as the narrow wins versus bad schools that drug our ratings down. You can jump us up 40 or 50 spots in overall efficiency (some combo of improved offense and defense) and we still suffer losses to most of the teams we lost to this year and still lose by double digits to auburn, Purdue, and uconn. In '23 we were one of the best 3pt shoo teams in the country by percentage but shot it just about the least. Does bringing in rice and Carlyle take us to this new "guard focused offense" or does bringing the top portal center again to pair with an already pretty dominant Reneau just signal more of the same (but with improved guard play)? I think if there's hope for optimism on a more perimeter oriented offense, it will be with the second unit. We played far way sparingly towards the end of the season. And if we land R-C-B plus another good guard like Hickman, then you pretty much start to run out of minutes for all these guys unless you stagger Reneau/Ballo and play small part of the time. I'm all for it, but that has made sense in the past and Woody has been reluctant to go there.

I think that's probably true, and I am all for it. With 3 of those guys seeming almost like sure things, I'm trying not to derail this thread with how the pieces fit together. It's interesting though and I would think at least 1 backup big gets added.

Sure, but the flip side of that coin--and the bad news--is that we way over performed in the W/L dept relative to our efficiency metrics. We should've probably been in the 15-16 win range per something like kenpom. So it's easy to say blow out the lesser teams on our schedule except we almost lost some of those or were in dog fights well into the second half. Saying we should have blown them out is like saying we should have just not got blown out by uconn, auburn and Purdue. It is what it is. So I think the point some are trying to get across is that you can land Rice, Ballo and Carlyle and jump into the top 50 in offense and defense but that may put you more in the realm of a bubble team like Oklahoma or Ohio state. It doesn't necessarily give you an offense like Arizona or uconn. Those two aren't even alike. How some can confuse what those teams are doing with what Woody does is beyond me... especially since we played and got our butts kicked by both in the last two years. If the point is, Rice, Carlyle and Ballo put us back into the realm of bubble team status, or maybe better, then I think most agree. A lot of unknown variables could still shift that one way or another, but until proven otherwise Woodys style of play isn't one of those unknowns for me.

1) good guard play is imperative 2) Woodson has had good guard play maybe 1 out of 3 years Best case for firing Mike Woodson in 1,000 plus pages.

You missed the point. It wasn't only quality of guards but style of play. Woody can change the former but not the latter. You tried to make it out like hiting 3s wasnt key to them having a top 5 offense saying only one guy shot over 40% from 3.

They were up tempo and shot the heck out of the ball from 3. They were 48th in 3s made and 20th in percentage. Had two guys over 40% and several more north of 35%. Not really comparable to Woodys IU teams.

I would guess very little but with the right coach possibly pretty competitive. Stanford alumni in the tech sector alone could find $6mil in their couch cushions. Not the nice living room couch either, but the crappy one relegated to the pool house. Lots of them right in the Bay area too. The thing is I doubt they care about sports. But if you had a dynamic young coach who could get them a little excited I could see one of the younger billionaires peeling off a million or something. Kind of like the SMU deal. Not much there now, but I’d rather be fishing those waters than up in Pullman or Corvallis.

I’m not criticizing anyone for not knowing this, but people that understand substance abuse know that throwing someone like that into a high pressure situation is a recipe for disaster. Send him to a place like UK or IU and he’s not going to drink less. There’s a very real chance he spirals out of control. And if you don’t care about booze and domestic abuse just know that it probably would eventually take its toll on winning too. Everything was great at Texas until it wasn’t. Not to keep on Beard, look at Sampson. Habitual line-crosser. Got caught and a second chance. But that second chance was at a high pressure job at Indiana where he immediately reverted to his old ways trying to win. What’s the old saying: adversity doesn’t build character, it reveals character. These top jobs will test your character in a million different ways. Calipari was largely very successful and even he got tired of it. As someone said above, Beard is going to have to demonstrate he can establish a pattern of not screwing up for a few years before any AD ties their future to him and gets a donor to cough up money for a big contract. For me personally, I’d actually have to see that he addressed his underlying issue in some way—not that he merely went without incident for a few years—before I would attach my name to his. Second chances are fine, but not if you’re just going to make the same mistakes again. We should know that better than anybody given the Sampson ordeal.