str8baller

Recruiting has always been a bit of a crap shoot. I’m not absolving the staff of anything in that scenario but it could certainly be a case of bad luck too. Great HoF coaches often have as many recruiting misses as they do successes.

I disagree that our bench wasn’t the issue last year. They were awful and we got nothing from them. That’s often when teams were able to press their advantage. Our starters more or less held their own outside of Michigan and Illinois—two FF teams. The difference this year should be that the talent on our starting 5 allows us to build up leads and give the bench a cushion. Bench and depth are an issue but that’s largely a factor of starting over from zero again. In his first interview Carr talked about building depth through recruiting. Our 3 guys this year plus Sisley should contribute to that and we’ll start to see real depth next year.

Do you think Harris starts over Lindsey or Mustaf?

I’m not picking on you because I’ve literally seen about everyone mention this. But, a couple of counterpoints for the board: 1) That’s true of every team. You can’t have a suitable near all-conference pg just sitting on the bench in case of injury. Any backup we bring in will be a huge drop off from Burton. At any point last year if Stirtz, Smith, Thornton, Fears, etc.. went out those teams were in a no-win situation. 2) Lindsey. I will say I didn’t watch much Villanova last year and don’t have a good read on him. But he was second on the team in assists and 2nd in USG rate. You have to think the staff has him pegged as our emergency PG if Burton goes down. 3) Sherrell. What are we paying this guy 4-5 million dollars for if he can’t be the focal point of the offense for a few game stretch if Burton would have to miss a couple games with an injury?

Looking at those comps, I think we’d have to be pretty unlucky to not have at least one decent rotation piece. There are also a couple of nice starters on that list. If we get that our whole minutes conversation takes on a different context.

Louisville would be an interesting comp. They’re coming off a slightly disappointing season, are starting from scratch again, and have a similar budget.

Who is going to come here to play 8mpg at backup PG who would magically save us if Burton goes down? These guys can read a depth chart. Quality players want to play. And any quality PG or center isn’t coming for 5-8mpg and the part that comes with that. You have to fill those slots with developmental guys (we don’t have), frosh, or guys who can play more than one spot.

I don’t think they could be any more obvious about it short of a flickering “No Vacancy” neon sign hung outside of Cook Hall.

Can we break our losing streak in Madison? Pls

Maybe I’ll have to relisten but I thought he specifically said his move is to get into the midrange, look for a shot and if it isn’t there look to pass. And that’s a pretty good self assessment! Lol.. Don’t get me wrong, I like Burton. He sounded like a solid kid in the interview too. I think he’ll do a ton a great things for us. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him put career assist numbers with Sherrell and Yigi rim-running. Not sure if he’ll ever look like FVV tho…

I can’t really see that comp. Two different style players. VanVleet was/is a strong often physical defender who was a pass-1st floor general type. I think Burton is a smaller, quicker scoring type PG who is also a solid passer and defender. If he’s trying to be more like FVV then that’s great but I can’t personally say I’d expect to get a FVV type player with Burton.

The Spurs have picked first for Wemby, Duncan, and David Robinson. At least 2/3 were egregious tank jobs. Yet the league punished the Pacers for not even fully tanking this year, in reality what was just accepting being bad in an obvious down year. NBA is a shitshow run by r*****s.

He’s got a Star Wars tattoo. Maybe he covered it up with that?! Complete dork

Todd’s a smart guy. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was reading this board as I made that point about a dozen times during the Woodson-era as everyone pined for a small ball, 3pt launching, uptempo squad. :{ The pros have an 82 game season and 7 game playoff series to smooth out the variance in a way college teams cannot. With that said there’s a lot of real estate between what we did last year and the Mike Woodson/Matt Painter “play two bigs and play everything through the paint” style. One of the more popular and successful styles has been essentially one athletic big with some athletic wings and guards who can shoot. But Villanova definitely rode some stone-cold small ball lineups to tons of success. Devries has to do what he thinks is prudent even if that’s loading up on beef in the paint at the expense of 3’s. Michigan is the undisputed top dog on the block and they definitely play big, so it’s not a surprise to see teams adjust to them.

I agree with all the question marks. But it’s the whole staff’s scout this time and you have to trust that they see something with the Lindsey/Mustaf/Harris combo the way they went after them. Jersey posted about it recently but others have too. It’s pretty wild we are poised to go from basically a team that shot some of the most 3’s and hardly any 2’s to a team with questionable 3 point shooting (even on low volume) that will probably live at the rim. If I’m being completely honest and it were any other team besides IU I’d probably say it reeks of an over-correction. But I’m perfectly happy to trust these guys one more year going into Y2. I’ll say that my optimistic disposition here is really helped along by Cig coming in and wining a National freaking Title in football. lol…

Mins 1 - 33 Burton/7 Lindsey 2 - Lindsey 22 / 10 Harris / 8 Frosh tbd 3 - Mustaf 24 / Harris 12 / 4 Frosh tbd 4 - Sherrel 19 / Mustaf 4 / Sisley 17 5 - Yigi 29 / Sherrel 11 That’s a pretty typical 8 man rotation. If you can get a decent rugged bigger guy (big wing or stretch 4 type) who can rebound a guard 3/4’s you could easily go 9 man rotation and drive the Sisley and frosh numbers down a bit. The flip side is if one of the frosh or a soph Sisley is really good and needs to be on the floor 20mpg, you have to find more mins. You’re just simply not going to get a good backup PG AND backup big both projected at getting 10mpg. Their agents/advisors can look at the roster and do the same math I just did and see there won’t be room.

If we’re playing a backup big we get this late in the portal 20mpg, I’d say it’s highly likely we’re missing the tournament.

This is the key. It’s not happening at IU because there’s no team or culture to retain them to. Yet anyways.

Nobody really knows the market but I’d hope like heck we’re not paying Sisley $2M. He was an end of the rotation guy who surely couldn’t have gotten a million anywhere else.

I envy you. I still occasionally wake up in a cold sweat from a nightmare where IU is down 1 with 15 sec to go and Woodson is on the sidelines telling everyone to clear out for Rice.

That would be a near perfect fit. The possibility is seemingly so remote, I’m not sure it’s worth really discussing, though. I don’t remember what the scenario was with UM and Landenborg last year but I guess I got the sense Dusty had both a soft commitment from him should he come back and some reason to believe it was a real possibility he could drop from the draft.

I hope Memphis doesn’t test for grip strength.

You and shooter are correct. Landenborg was a wing—their starting “3”—who could slide down to a 4 when they went small. They also got lucky when he dropped out of the draft. Had he signed with UM first they would’ve had a lot harder time signing someone like Johnson as his agent would’ve looked at the roster and saw a similar but better player who would take any minutes from Johnson if they were forced to play small. As it is Johnson only played 25mpg but Dusty made it all work and I’m sure Johnson was happy to trade a slightly smaller role for a title.

Agree. It’s in a coach’s best interests downplay how much they have to spend and overestimate how much his competitors have.

You need a big in case of fouls or injury but I really doubt anyone that comes in makes the actual rotation. Devries has never played with two bigs before. Splitting Yigi and Sherrel would mean about 20mpg of two bigs together and 20mpg where one of them is the singular big. You can’t get a quality backup big that doesn’t fit in the rotation and just force them on the floor if there’s an injury. Most coaches will just go small at that point. Even 7’ center addict Matt Painter went small when faced with an injury 2 years ago. It would be really weird for a “small ball/4-out” coach like Devries to not do the same if faced with an injury. Woody was committed to 80 mins per game of post play and we still ended up with backups like Hatton, Sparks, and Duncomb. I’d expect something like that at best for our last big spot.