str8baller

No idea who those two yahoos are but that’s probably closer to the national perception than what we tell ourselves here. Whether it matters in the portal or not, I couldn’t say.

Definitely. I’m pretty sure he stole it from the guy above. :{

Yea, I’m really curious how they hold up in the NIL era. Between Dean Smith, Jordan, Nike, and their kind of “coolness” they have been THE recruiting juggernaut of my lifetime. Thus, making it possibly the top job in college hoops for decades. Now with NIL that is all potentially secondary. Nike is still there but they’re in at least as equally with Duke. I could see this going in multiple directions easily

And more importantly, “are there any transfer portal players with IU interest who can withstand the grueling grinding physicality of the Big Ten conference?”

Scott played his way in late in the season. He’s a fifth starter type with not a ton of production. Mayer is barely a rotation piece and him and Ward didn’t contribute a whole lot more statistically than Sisley did this year. You can’t rely on guys like that to fill key roles. But let’s say best case scenario and you get one of those guys to pop as a 6th/5th man type à la Jordan Scott, add that to your “two studs” and you still have to find 5-6 more “diamond in the rough” types on cheap deals to fill out your starting lineup and rotation. Unless Carr is some type of wizard who can consistently find $200k guys who play like $2mil guys that is a recipe for having a bunch of Jasai Miles and Ristic types up and down your roster. Seems risky

Kansas is on an insane coaching hire run. They’re the anti-Indiana. If they nail it again we need to send our best researchers to their athletic dept. They’re the only school I can think of who have poached a B1G coach this century. This will be the first time in 50+ years UNC has went outside the family. I don’t even know if there are any plausible UNC candidates. I’m fairly interested in their search.

Purdue or Iowa really don’t. MSU has a couple bench guys. If we spend big on just two guys we would need 3 starters to come from the freshman/Sisley group of cheap contracts. It’s one thing if you have a Boozer, Burries, or Peat coming in. Or get lucky with a Waggler. We don’t have any of the first group so we’d be relying pretty heavily on luck.

Can’t see any of them except Byington. He’s not a UNC guy but he is a South Eastern Atlantic Coast guy. Close enough

They kept their handpicked successor, the loyal son, one less season than we kept Mike Davis. Lmao…

They won the SEC by 3 games this year. Upsets happen. They had a pretty flawed backcourt this year and I thought he did a nice job getting them straightened out for the most part.

That’s what I heard an elite, proven PG was going for last year. Or at least getting offers for. Might be a touch more this year if upper teams are throwing more in the pot.

Florida isn’t necessarily outbidding us or UK or whomever. If he’s going to UF it’s because they have an opening on a ready made team with a coach whom he thinks can improve his draft stock. Yes, guys are getting paid but the better players still want to get to the league and are looking for opportunity plus fit/style. I think one of the frustrating things about last year, is nobody really knows what we have to “sell” in that regard. We just have money right now.

He’s just practicing up so he can argue with Haliburtons and Morants dad in real life.

Kansas has been stale. We just won the football national championship with the Heisman winner and presumptive #1 draft pick. If there’s ever a time Adidas could get off their lazy butts and send us some high profile recruits, it would be now. I’m not sure whose job that is but somebody needs to pick up the phone.

Alexis led the conference in 2pt FG%. But he was only getting 5 attempts per game. In fact, our entire team was top 10 nationally in 2pt FG% and bottom 10 in attempts. There was a serious imbalance in our offense. It was actually almost the bizzaro Woody offense from ‘23 where we were one of the best 3pt shooting teams better never shot them. I get that the staff is looking to recruit better to what they want to do and that should help. But they have to be better at adjusting to what’s happening. Teams were sitting on our 3pt shooters and giving us high percentage shots inside the arc and we weren’t taking nearly enough advantage of that.

No worries. I actually found this last night. This guy claims to have coached against McCollum. (It’s Twitter, so take it fwiw). He claims McC is the best PG developer in the country and Stirtz will be his 2nd D2 PG to go pro. Thought it was interesting anyways, given our convo.

We haven’t locked down the border since Clyde Lovellette bolted for Kansas and won a title. Lol But Indiana is a talent rich state which we get too few players from these days.

You’re talking about something entirely different. Any level below the top of P5 has the dynamic you are describing which is essentially: convince kids that belong up a level to come play for you and then overwhelm your competition on talent. It is, imo, the #1 reason guys look good at the lower level and then fail at the elite jobs. You can no longer routinely outrecruit your competitors when you take the IU/Michigan/Duke/etc… job. You have to be able to coach too. Maybe it wasn’t clear because I was responding to a quote, but my comment was addressing his recruiting prowess, or how he got kids like Stirtz—an all-B1G player—to sign on with him at the D2 level. If he can replicate that, probably by scouring his region and finding guys to develop, he might have sustained success. Bo Ryan made a career out of doing that with big men. Weirdly enough Gard is kind of doing that with guards out of the portal. I have no idea if McCollumn can do it at this level.

They said the same about Ware. Somebody dust off the golf cart and wine glasses. The king may be coming back!

Seems unlikely. Everyone at that level dreams of playing Div 1. Good recruiters can get guys to come down a level but it’s hardly an easy sell. Now, the caveat to that is he’s no longer recruiting against other D2 and lower level D1 coaches. He’s recruiting against the best guys out there and if there’s local 5 star talent guys like Self and Scheyer will be in the mix too. But a no talent recruiter like Woody made some hay by trading off what he did with TJD. McCollum can sell he took a D2 nobody in Stirtz and turned him into a first round draft pick. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if a couple of the top PGs or combo-guards in the portal give him strong consideration the same way Ware and Ballo did Woody.

He’s like Reed Bailey with normal grip strength

National championship = program + coach. There are few select coaches who can rise above a crappy job, but the reason most coaches “climb the ladder” is they want to be at a place that can also credibly compete for championships. Lute Olsen left Iowa and won a title at Arizona. Much easier to recruit at AZ. I’m not in the pro-McCollum to IU club but he could very well not win a title at Iowa but have been capable of winning one at Indiana. He might also fail. I’m agnostic. But he’s given Iowa their most tourney success since ‘99. Even with our crappy 25 year run—like historically bad for us—I’m pretty sure we’ve won way more tourney games than they have in that stretch.

They didn’t really play all that slow last night. And while they were slow this year they weren’t much different than a team like Houston. A far cry from his season at Drake. Also, I don’t think national champion threat is the standard at Iowa. This is the first time they’ve seen the second weekend since the 90’s. They have like 2 Final Fours ever and haven’t won Conference since Carter was in office. They are a very mediocre to below average program historically.

Why?