str8baller

There’s 22 starters in football and 5 in basketball. Devries brought 20% of his starters over, a number probably close to Cig. Where Cig has made his bones is identifying talent in the portal especially at the one position that really matters. He can coach ‘em up and so can his assistants. It’s probably just better not to compare them for a variety of reasons, not the least of which a whole bunch of college football coaches across the country are getting axed via that comparison. He’s in a league of his own right now.

NET isn’t a predictor model, although since the selection committee uses it is nice to be high there. And we’re there mostly on the strength of our efficiency metrics. I.e. we’re beating the snot out of lesser teams. It’s not nothing; we complained, rightly so, that Woodys teams couldn’t do that. But as I mentioned way back, something is wrong in that it isn’t translating over against better opponents and almost in exactly the same way each time. And if you look at a predictor/efficiency model like Kenpoms you can see that in his “luck” rating where we are 302. Essentially what that says is “this system really likes IU statistically but this system isn’t very good at predicting wins for them.” As for UM and Lville if you look at their schedules you’ll understand those records. Anyways it’s academic because we know how they finished. Lville wasn’t great but they were squarely off the bubble and in the tournament. You won’t see too many complaints here if that’s where we end up.

Outliers are what you want. All championship coaches are outliers to some extent. If winning were easy, everybody would do it :) Maybe Golden is the best example of someone who fell flat his first year and rebounded in the portal era. But even he had some key freshman on that first team. Maybe that’ll be Ristic and Sisley.

FWIW, Knight and Yeagly were hired by Ryan I think, who is/was? considered a good president. Pretty sure Doc Councilman was here when they got here. But at one point IU was something of an example of good leadership. Even Mallory was pretty good, all things considered. People used to point Brand as the turning point. I don’t know if that’s just because he fired Knight or if he really sucked. But it wasn’t always this way.

And Cig got the lowly Hoosier football team to the playoffs in year 1 and a regular season #1 ranking and Heisman winner in year 2. Cig is not only bad for other college football coaches’ health but maybe some of his colleagues too. Between Cig and Dusty May, it’s going to be hard to convince this fan base it takes 4 years to build a winner.

I’m going to talk myself into the following rationale—true or not—for my own sanity: it was a quick transition, he didn’t have much time or a full staff and Devries was operating with one hand tied behind his back. His son and Enright are obvious gets at the right price. Alexis is fine. Wilkerson was a good land even though he can’t get his own offense. But I don’t know how you could scout Bailey and Conorway has B1G caliber athletes. I can see how Conorway was a good midmajor player against lesser athletes because he just likes to beat guys off the dribble and create. Can’t do that here. I can’t for the life of me see how Bailey made an all-conf team in the A-10 of all places. Unless Sisley blossoms into an All-Conf type player in the offseason, Devries has to bring 4-5 new starters next year. He can’t whiff on them like this year. And if he brings in all seniors again because the heat is on from a bad first season, he gets to start year 3 much the same. You can see how things can snowball in an unfavorable direction. So yea, I’m guessing you’re right on the money with the fact nobody is going to be rushing to shove NIL cash at the program so long as Cig exists and we’re a perpetual also ran in basketball.

That’s awesome. It’s what still separates college sports and makes them fun.

That’ll still be a decent season. If we make it. The problem I have is the issues are structural. It isn’t a case of cold shooting for a star player, injuries or poor officiating. We see the same things exposed time and again. It doesn’t mean they can’t be fixed* but they’re not. Some things take time to sort out as a coach. Other things like the horrible early 28 foot 3’s should take one conversation or a benching. We’re not really seeing much progress on any of it. I can’t say we weren’t competitive in our losses, but in all 3 games once the opposing team figured out we can’t handle extended defensive pressure we were pretty much dead in the water. The problem with guys like Archie/Woody wasn’t that they had flaws, but instead that they were unable to address or fix them in any meaningful way. So watching this team get exposed in the exact same way game to game has some déjà vu vibes to it. I’m hopeful Devries can figure it out. They have 3 weeks to come up with something besides “hope the other team can’t defend the 3pt line and we go nuclear from 3 at home.” *roster construction is obviously set for the season and we can’t do anything

I’m no Wade fan but Seton Hall is currently 50th on Kenpom. We lost to Minnesota.

A 25 year tradition at this point.

I turned it off. 12 point loss…. Guess that’s about right for these guys

I don't understand why that is ok. You’ll know even you ever need to know about Devries when you find out what his son is making this year. Under market price? He wants to win. Crazy inflated price…they see IU as just another paycheck.

Debatable. Every time they get punched in the mouth on offense they have no answer.

Loser program. Easiest decision in the world for any competent program

Nothing really changed. Other teams adjusted and we didn’t

This board will be dead until then .

Can’t get benched when your dad is the coach

Didn’t want to mention it before be we should wonder how much Tucker is being paid

Same. I give every coach 2 years. But this ain’t looking good.

Awful roster and awful coaching.

This offense is so soft

Not this year…lol. in general. In any given year there’s 5-10 coaches capable of winning a title. If you don’t have one you move on.

I’ll wait until he has some more top line athletes before I make a final judgement but he has to be better than this here if we’re going to win a title.

Even Charles says that’s a flop

I’ll have to think about that. We were pretty mediocre in pace to start with but have increased it. Ultimately we need to be able to score in the half court and these crazy long shots give me Crean flashbacks. with that said, I love what we’re doing on defense. If you’re sound enough you don’t need a rim protector to be effective there.