str8baller

But you have to pay them again each season. It isn’t a one time windfall…lol It’ll be $12.5mil (minus) what the returnees make. Not $12.5mil (plus) the returnees. The hope is you get your guys that are happy to be here at a slight bargain vs the open market.

Yea but so was Tucker and that’s on dad. Can’t miss twice like that. Im just using these names for no other reason than their familiar but for example think of if instead of Tucker our big name splash land was Lendeborg and our center was somebody serviceable like Reneau instead of Bailey. Even with Enright and Dorn starting and a weak bench we’re probably something like a 6-8 seed. Lots of pressure this year because going 1 for 3 in big name signings puts us on the brink of missing the tourney again.

You have to pay the other 8 players. Even at low to mid 6 figures for your rotation guys you’re at another couple mil and you know the frosh were promised something decent. Need to do it like the nba and splurge or 2 or 3 guys but you can’t miss. Missing on Tucker and Bailey this year put us behind the 8 ball.

I don’t follow NET enough to understand it very well, but currently Purdue is 9th and Wisconsin is 32nd. A similar gap exists on Kenpom even though my “eye test” would have them much closer together. Ideally Wisconsin would climb to 30 and give us another Q1 win and we beat OSU adding another one. We would improve from 2-11 to 4-11 in Q1 games in that scenario. Hopefully that would be enough.

19 wins and similar metrics is what we had last year and got left out, but every year is different. We have the worst Q1 record among bubble teams. OSU is second worst at 2-10 but their Q2 record is better. Win out and put an extra win in the BTT on top of it and I’d feel pretty good about sneaking in. I hate that Purdue is our only real good win. I’ll begrudgingly be rooting for them from here on out, I guess.

He’s played in 10 games last appearing in the Purdue and Illinois blowouts. Can he even redshirt?

They could be. Or they could be unplayable. At first I was in the more conservative “need 4 good starters camp.” But the more I think about our bench the more I think its by far the worst part of our current roster. I think coach would agree because he rarely uses them, instead preferring to push our starters to the brink. We played 3 bench guys 34 min Saturday compared to 57min for MSU. You have to go back to early conference play to find games where we were playing our bench as much or more than the opponent, and some of that was because Baikey went to the bench but was still playing ~20mpg. You could build a good starting five and completely kneecap them by bringing back the current bench squad if they don’t drastically improve.

Assuming we miss this year, Mike Woodsons two trips to the tourney represent our only trips to the tourney IN A DECADE! That is abysmal. Also, I was just going back and looking at some of those bad late era Knight teams. And yes Knight was in his old crotchety phase and those teams were beat down and not his best coaching. But there’s squads like the 96-97’ one that definitely didn’t have more talent than this one that still managed to make the tourney easily. IU basketball is lost in the wilderness right now.

After thinking it over, my guess is we’re closer to completely starting over next year than we are to adding just 5 players. Even if we add 4 quality starters to Dorn we still need a backup big, so that’s 5 right there. That leaves us with essentially the same bench as this year minus Bailey but plus the freshman. The truth is our starters haven’t been that bad this year. But our bench has been one of the worst in the league, maybe the worst. We got 0 points from them again yesterday and we routinely play starters 37-40 min trying to avoid our bench guys. So if we only add 5 starters next year, we’re returning one of the worst benches in the league hoping that 1) the freshman can meaningfully contribute, or 2) the guys we have can develop. Either way that’s a gamble. Adding 7-8 guys plus the 3 freshman means that we lose some out of the Sisley/Miles/Dorn group or we basically clear out all the redshirt guys who were supposedly being developed this year. And if we’re not adding that many guys we seriously risk derailing next years team with an awful bench like we did to this years team. Portal season can’t get here soon enough.

I couldn’t tell very well from the TV, but from what I read several of the bigger boos were when he went to the scorer’s table to check in. To me, that is them doing exactly what you are saying. In other words, they were booing the staff for putting him in, as much as they were booing Reed himself. Ultimately who knows? Mob action rarely makes sense. The whole Reed Bailey project has been a failure from start to finish. Hopefully Weds goes well and we don’t have to worry about it anymore as the season will likely be ending shortly thereafter.

Anybody in a public facing role gets subjected to abuse from time to time, regardless of salary. It’s a matter of personal decorum whether you do it individually, but you can’t stop other people. How is booing any different than some of the comments here calling him awful? You don’t think Reed Bailey and his family read the internet? What about bigger accounts on X? I saw Ant Wright was killing him in a couple posts yesterday. What about these podcasters and radio hosts? I’m sure recruits read and listen to most of this stuff. Those questions aren’t directly at you @spe317, but just in general. In general, I find our fanbase’s conduct pretty average (for comparison, several schools have been fined this year for their student sections conduct) all things considered, even though we have our share screwballs that go overboard occasionally.

At some point we’re just fans and logic goes by the wayside. But for my sanity I’ll be telling myself the following two things: 1. Carr will make a huge difference. Well once again have a top 10 type budget and should have a top 25 roster. 2. I didn’t think our base offense and defense were an issue Xs and Os-wise. I think the 4-out, quick trigger on 3s style should be appealing for most kids these days. Now if we want to be down because of things like other teams adjusting to what we do and having no counter, some of the rotations and in game coaching, the regression here at the end of the season, I get it. I wonder if there aren’t some personality issues. To me it’s no surprise that Conerway goes out of the starting lineup and we go on a little run. Then his first two games back for him playing big minutes are a record loss to Purdue and home loss to NW. Maybe it’s him, maybe it’s someone else, but we may have some addition by subtraction going on too. But there’s no universe in which we shouldn’t be in the tourney comfortably next year.

I remember last year when McNeely didn’t come because he heard IU fans boo. Wait…it was actually because he didn’t like what he saw on the court from the coaching staff, wasn’t it? Weird how that works. I’d be less worried about what the recruits heard in the stands today and much more about what they saw on the floor.

IU 79 Minny 71

Two starters though, which is two more than we’ll have. There’s literally nothing to build on with this roster. Unless they’re going to play Sisley Dorn and Miles 35mpg in the tourney which then I suspect would last exactly one game.

Nebraska returned a bunch of players. We will not.

We’ve completely regressed on defense to atrocious. We were at least average-ish before. Roster is bad but looks to me like the coaching has been bad too.

If you can’t crack this rotation you are really bad at basketball.

Probably have to win out and 2 in the conference tourney. I’m not convinced we can win out tho

That’s the worst insult I’ve ever heard hurled towards a basketball team…lol

On top of not being athletic we’re also not very smart. Dangerous combo!

How do you lose Koehler there?

Only down 8

“I should’ve held out for more money.”

He’s gonna be dangerous in local church league basketball.