str8baller

If there’s a good roster and one spot left I wouldn’t be upset if they kept it open to hunt for a high quality euro looking to make the leap over here late spring or summer. I don’t remember if it was Fru or the UVA kid but one of them didn’t sign until like July last year.

I would worry more about Hall’s athleticism if he were in Wilkerson-like role from last year. But with a strong post game and Burton getting in the lane, he should get a ton of nearly uncontested 3’s on this team.

Josh Smith for us old(er) timers

Don’t forget Tschetter or however you spell his name. But yea…we’re probably a year away from anything great due to roster continuity which I pointed out yesterday. In any event, if we spend top 5 money a top 25 roster should be a bare minimum expectation. Whether the AP voters see it initially is kinda irrelevant.

I think the someone said if he gets in shape and loses a little weight it shouldn’t be a problem.

Have to think it happens today or things get interesting with the Colorado kid coming in tomorrow.

I’m sure we all know IU’s never reported a half truth in the media to save face.

Agree that it is the future. Disagree about those guys though. They have GMs but overt authority. In other words the GM is just a guy who works for May. I’m not sure that’s the case here with Carr and probably why someone like Carr would come. For fans of pro sports this has been like a 25 yr year saga of coaches wanting to do both roles, great coaches having the juice to become their own GMs, and then mostly failing. It’s why Jerry West left the Lakers. But by now almost everyone concedes it’s two distinct full time jobs at the pro level and even great coaches have little chance of exerting authority over the GM in matters of personnel. It was the future of the pros. It will likely be the same in college. I think IU is possibly ahead—way ahead—of the curve on this one.

An equally plausible explanation is that Devries was the one who assembled it. And he’s not this time. Which is fine, because he can focus on coaching and doesn’t need to be coach and GM. Outside of a few guys like May, Scheyer and Pitino it is probably better off for most schools that way.

Kind of a funny coincidence. And Burton is definitely better than Miles Rice.

Honestly, the only thing that gives me trepidation is that IU basketball is the king of over reacting 100 miles in the opposite direction of what just failed. This portal season is kind of going that way…lol. But I mostly like the quality of guys we’re pulling so I wasn’t going to mention it until I read your comment.

Adams might have been on the recruit. But this is such a Pacers-y move I have to think Carr was integral.

You certainly could understand the Simon family having a certain amount of trust in Carr.

He’d better. I wouldn’t say Pope is on a hot seat, but it is getting warmer. And he made the S16 his first year.

That kind of turnover happened before NIL and the portal. Teams always lose a guy here and there for whatever reason. It doesn’t affect roster stability like having 7 seniors leave at once and then a bunch of disgruntled bench guys bail too.

So if we spend top 5 money this year, you will expect a top 5 team? Nobody will because we started from scratch again and had nothing to build on. You can’t build on anything if you’re just taking one year rentals. Kids in good situations won’t do that because there’s downside risk to them, mainly worsening draft prospects through new uncertain and circumstances. Cadeau, Mara, Mullins, etc… could all portal and get another $500k or so but they’re not going to.

They will be less likely to leave when they’re all being paid well and you’re winning. I think our perception is a little skewed because of how much of a mess we’ve been. Most top teams with sufficient funds aren’t losing key players to the portal. This is pretty much what Carr laid out. Otherwise it would be pointless to build through recruiting like they want to do. Once there’s a stable roster you can go throw some big money at that one main portal piece or a 5 star freshman.

If you’re scoring at home: Grandma Duncomb - 1 Woody - 0

Nice thing about Jake Hall is he would be a soph with Sisley and help balance the classes out a little

Same. He took like 60-80 per year before he got to IU. For us he took a whopping 4. Made no sense.

We’ll know soon. He probably leaves late morning/early afternoon.

Solid breakdown, from what I watched, if you haven’t seen much of Burton. It’s interesting they used Yogi as a comp because it’s the only IU player I could think of close to Burton in terms of size and burst. I will say I don’t totally love the Yogi comparison though. I can recall very few people who just glide across the court, especially laterally, like Yogi. They probably share similar downhill hill burst. Also, Burton being a touch bigger might be a better finisher in traffic. Also, the thing that made Yogi so dang good his senior year was that despite being a great shooter who could get his own shot almost anywhere on the floor, he was tough to even have defenders hedge towards because he was happy to let a pass fly the moment he sensed one of his shooters was open. Burton, to this point in his career, has been more likely to take on that extra defender and try and score. And I’ll admit I haven’t watched as much Notre Dame as in the past because they’ve been so bad, but they might have oversold his defense a touch based on those one on one matchups. ND has been so bad on D it’s tough for me to really say. Either way, I think Burton can be a really good defender for us.

I suspect we spent more last year than most here think. When it turned out we were bad people got demoralized and rationalized that we didn’t spend any money instead of the what likely happened—we spent it unwisely. Maybe we got caught a little flat footed by the increases of everyone else and “only” ended up at say 15th in spend instead of 5th. But that’s not nothing. It’s nice to see them double down and recommit to building this roster the right way. Next year’s portal should see us being way more selective.

It is but almost every school is meeting their ~$20 mil school portion of player payments. Additional money here is coming from NIL. I guess you could argue football winning the title has energized the donor class. Thanks (again) Cig!

I don’t think anyone is going to replace Wilkerson in that sense because the team is almost assuredly going to be Burtons to run. It’s really impossible to judge these things without knowing how much they’re getting paid. I would guess with Harris’s pedigree and rumored list of suitors he was looking for starters mins and maj conf starters pay. Or maybe a 6th man, major mins off the bench type of role. But who really know?