str8baller

I would go a step further and reduce it to 8. B1G and SEC champs get an auto and 6 at larges. 25 yrs ago IU would be going to the Rose Bowl to dominate USC/Oregon and then would be the national champs the next day. We’ve come a long way but all these 2 and 3 loss teams jockeying for a shot is ridiculous.

Agree to an extent. No doubt UK spent more money than say Arizona. But UK spent unwisely, apparently. And maybe so did we. We went the midmajor alll-star route. But unlike Cig we didn’t come up with any Sarrats or Fishers. In fact, I don’t think any of our guys are plus-athletes at the B1G level. So that means coach needs to form them into a cohesive unit and quickly. I agree with you that just because we or UK have stumbled doesn’t mean we didn’t spend in the offseason. It’s expensive to get free agents. One thing I wish we would’ve done is get a couple less seniors so we had more returning next year. Going back out into the market for 4 new starters next year is going to be rough, especially when one of them is a big.

I was bored one day and read on a Michigan blog or twitter or somewhere I forget now, a couple Michigan fans talking about how Dusty basically hit the donor circuit from day 1 and the response to him was really positive. I’m sure them just having bought a football championship helped the mood of the donors. Supposedly Cig had similar success with Cuban this off season. You can take all the above with all the credibility a random internet comment deserves, but it seems like a plausible theory given their success and his personality. A hope Devries has a little bit of that in him.

I think so. The big knock on him was defense and he competes hard on that end. And he’s made some nice alley oop passes when driving off the dribble. I actually think he needs to be allowed to dribble and penetrate a little more. I hate to say it, but if anything we rely on creation from Tucker too much. He doesn’t have the athleticism to get anything off the bounce. Yet because our PGs get nothing in that regard either so a lot falls on him. The big thing with Lamar (and all our guys) is that he/they get blocked at the rim a lot. That seems like maybe it makes them shy to cut and back cut towards the rim which then results in a lot of standing around the perimeter.

Opposite, imo. Big Ten and SEC run the show. ACC and B12 aren’t getting any favors or extra teams unless the committees hand is forced. But like this year the CFP (ie B1G and SEC) will guarantee them a single spot for legitimacy reasons plus basketball. I’m pretty sure they could bring one conf into the fold and tell the other one to go kick rocks if push really came to shove. But the playoffs aren’t going to freeze anyone out or ND ( the team that was runner up last year) for legitimacy reasons except as a last resort. Last thing they want is a competing splinter group. If that were to happen this year and TT beat ND in a B12/ACC/whatever playoff and anybody but undefeated Indiana won the B1G/SEC playoff all of a sudden you have a real issue on your hands. Good forbid a 3 loss Alabama wins and TT or ND won theirs you’d have a majority of the media claiming the other group is the “real” CFP championship. Fox/CBS/NBC would be all over that. B1G/SEC just has to keep everyone happy until they can take over the basketball side and consolidate the whole thing into the top 75 programs or whatever for all sports. The committee wanted both the ACC champ and ND in but got their bluff called when the ACC title game went sideways. That’s why the rankings were the way they were. Push comes to shove they had to take Miami for the ACC. ND can cry about it but that’s the politics of the situation. Really ND f’d over the Big Ten by beating USC. There’s zero reason a 3 loss, 5th SEC team should get in when the B1G is only getting 3 teams in. Obviously I want IU to win the title but if we don’t I hope it is Oregon. There should never be another year where the B1G gets 3 teams and the SEC gets 5. The other 4/12 spots are just place holders to keep everybody happy.

Physically he looked like he belonged. The whole bench pretty much got torched so I’m not sure how much you can take away from it other than he’s healthy.

94 in Kenpom. Marquette is 92 for reference. Of course, Minny is 112. I haven’t watched PSU this year. Those numbers suggest we should win easily but the last 7 days of IU hoops days otherwise.

NCAA has nothing to do with it. And any encroachment they make into college football will just hasten their demise. As soon as the big two confs figure out what to do about basketball and a new governing body the NCAA is dead anyways. I think the latter is something the big 2 doesn’t want to mess with right now.

Kind of depends on what you think of Ole Miss. there’s a good argument they shouldn’t be in the tourney but otoh had they might be the most talented first round team. I like our draw. If those teams weren’t named Alabama and Oklahoma people would see two flawed teams and ones that might not have made it. I might’ve preferred Miami in there but we avoided A&M which I think is a win. They have a talented roster, imo.

No point in going. Any draftees aren’t likely to play. Neither are kids who are going to portal out. All those crap bowls cost programs money to attend, and that money can be better spent elsewhere in today’s arms race. And you get a chance to start preparing your own portal moves early.

Predictable, maybe. Avoidable…nobody knows. I’m not sure what else was out there at what price on what timeline. I know both Mc Neely and Conwell were guys I liked watching last year, obvious high major talents, and in the portal. It’s frustrating to see them both go to Lville and then torch us. But I haven’t a clue if IU had a shot with either. Iirc, Woody might’ve screwed the Conwell thing up. We’ve still got a roster that can compete. Iowa at MSU the other night looked every bit the part of D2 guys playing against the big boys. Outside of MSU, UM, and Illinois nobody in the conference is going to out match us so much physically or athletically to make winning impossible.

Ultimately everything falls on the head coach. My larger point being that it can take more than 9 games to get things sorted with a brand new roster. He could be doing a good job and we might not see the payoff until January. The roster is on him. Short staffed, crunched for time and no real impact players to bring with him besides his son, so it’s hard to quantify exactly how much behind the 8 ball we were. I think the roster is tournament caliber, but next year will have to be much better.

Not with the team that took the floor at the Barn. Probably not the one that played vs Lville either. Minnesota is really bad and that loss is probably somewhere down there with some bad Woody and Archie losses. I think they’re talented enough to make it. Probably like Lville last year…9/10 seed. But something is off. Hard to blame CDD too much this early but his offense has very little answer to teams extending their pressure and daring us to beat them off the dribble.

I mean…you were worried about rim protection. As some of us pointed out there’s other ways to play defense besides to funnel everything to a shot blocking big. Devries has shown he can get an athletically limited group to play sound defense. Our problems right now are offense and nobody really imagined that would be the case. Some of it is athleticism, but currently the problem looks to run deeper than that. Devries has his work cut out for him. I’ll agree with you that whoever put the roster together needs to be reassigned to some other duty next season. You only need to look to Louisville who has two transfers and a euro big helping lead the way, but they’re more proven than ours.

IU 75 PSU 70

Let’s just delete this thread and pretend this game and Louisville never happened.

I probably would’ve stayed up way too late posting with you guys! Welcome back BTB.

One helluva season!

Makes a little bit of sense that we’d over perform the efficiency metrics because they give you credit for wins and we haven’t lost yet. Still, that’s a nice start. Where did you see these at btw? I’m just seeing the old ones on cbs and ncaa’s site.

Pretty much. Otoh, I’d argue Illinois is the only good offense they played all year.

I think it would be cool if one of them made it in over the ACC champ.

Injury or can’t crack the rotation? How did he look?

I would say Minnesota is a very soft 4-4 at that, having lost to every decent team they’ve played and needing overtime to beat Green Bay. Tough place to play, but it’d be disappointing to drop this one.

That’s all well and good. But the defense gets a say in the matter too. For example, with Edey and a set of not all that athletic guards, Painter would just abandon the mid range to keep his guards contesting the 3’s while Edey tried to stay close to the paint. That’s why even though Woodson was no strategic genius his strengths played well vs Painter and despite having inferior teams Woodys IU squads more than held their own vs Purdue. A good example is a guy like Hood-Schafino who was happy to take all the midrange shots Purdue gave him and feasted both games. If you can consistently out execute your opponents scheme matters less anyways; otherwise sometimes you have to take what the defense gives you. When our execution breaks down we seem to settle for long 3’s which are also inefficient shots because the same math that applies to long 2s apply equally to long 3s.

There’s nothing wrong with OPEN 15 footers. Best shot still remains an open shot for a good shooter. But unless a team is really good at protecting the rim and running you off the 3pt line—and KSU isn’t—you can get more optimal open shots at the rim or 3pt line with good ball movement. Stuhoo provided the math above.