str8baller

If Michigan can get a couple early runouts and knock down a shot they might run away with it. UConn played pretty well to their strengths and are still down.

The Dusty magic wears off a little if you can stop their pace. UConn looking pretty good so far. Helping them that they’ve gotten several offensive rebs

UConn getting the pace they want early

NCAA are morons. Sooner they go away the better

And apparently his daughter is a volleyball player there? Absolutely reeks of an easy late career paycheck a la Woody if so. He’s a better coach but there’s so much to the NIL era that is beyond day to day coaching.

I’m curious what it pays to rehab an injury and enjoy the Bloomington night life for a year?

That’s weird because the situation he inherited at Michigan was similar. If he worried about going into an easy situation he would’ve taken the Louisville job. I get the distinct feeling Dusty May doesn’t care too much about what his peers think about him. The IU administration screwed it up royally. It is what it is.

The scout is more important than the profile. We would all take another Wilkerson. But Conerway, Bailey, and to a slightly lesser extent Devries were all misses. Can’t miss on 3 projected starters no matter where they come from. But yea…loading up on guys from midmajors again would be funny just from the fans reactions. But one thing this staff can’t do is take that reaction into account. They’d be fools to shy away from a Mid major sleeper they like just because the fans would react poorly.

The fact that we get to watch Cig should bar us from any complaining. But dang IU basketball is so bad …lol

Hurley might be the best coach since Knight.

Sickening seeing these guys tearing it up for other programs on the big stage. Sean May, Kyle Guy, Big White not for UNC in the 90s, Duany Duany, and probably a few more.

Hurley with a TO up six at 6min mark. Interesting call.

Masterclass by Hurley in slowing down possibly the best offense in the country.

I’m not convinced of that. They keep losing to individual players for a variety of reasons that might not exist if the major conferences banded together for litigation aimed at going up the appellate chain. You’re seeing public sentiment change a little with legislation introduced and now the executive branch trying to step in

I’d actually prefer that. Get rid of stupid conf tournaments. Let the big conferences go to a true round robin schedule eliminating most non-cons.

My biggest fear. Another decade of Crean like results might beat my fandom to a bloody pulp. At least Woody and Archie has the dignity to suck hard enough that there was no doubt they needed to go. CDD has said he wants to get bigger and more physical this year. That’s the one thing I’ll be looking for in the portal. Woody claiming he wanted to shoot more 3’s and then signing Ballo to go with Reneau along with two guards who were mediocre 3 point shooters made him a dead man walking before May golf season started.

He never got a good handle on this squad. So I’d start with team management: i.e. what you do with the roster after you’ve selected the players. I’ve said it before, but we’re not privy to practices where the real work is done, so I like to give a lot of latitude to coaching decisions based on practice. But I have no idea how you could practice all summer and fall and come out with a lineup that has Reed Bailey starting over Sam Alexis. To CDD’s credit he fixed it. Something similar happened at the PG spot. Conerway was having trouble integrating into the team offense and it wasn’t until he went out with injury that the team started to gel. That one would’ve been less obvious from practice and again to CDD’s once he saw it he tried to fix it by more or less just banishing Conerway to the end of the bench when he came back. Obviously dropping the ball on those two spots from a roster construction standpoint cost us a lot. But not figuring them out earlier from a team management perspective likely cost us just enough to miss the tourney. I agree that at times we got glimpses of a what the offense could look like at its best and it was exciting. But too often it didn’t hold through first contact with opposing coaches defensive schemes. Some people on here got mad at me when I criticized the early in the shot clock, long distance 3s. I said the players didn’t trust the offense and were panicking. A few games later in a post game press conference, Devries admitted he needed to clean that up and referred to it as “nervous” shot making, or something. Our metrics kinda pointed to that too as they just sank on both sides of the ball as the season wore on. I don’t know what happened to the team down the stretch but there were some embarrassing performances. You can say that you shouldn’t have to coach efforts at this level, but it’s still in the job description. What separates Devries last game of the season from Woodys the year before? Bubble team. Chance to earn your way with a win or two against mediocre opponents in the BTT. Come out and get your butts kicked looking like you’d rather be anywhere else than playing basketball in an IU jersey. I could go on… but I’m on my phone. The biggest takeaway should be that all the stuff is normal fixable basketball stuff. It’s not Woody-like structural stuff (eg deploying a defense that doesn’t guard the 3) that’s just never going to work at the B1G level.

Fwiw, I deleted some unnecessarily combative posts. Yes, I’m familiar with Tony from social media and knew what you were referring to as I listened to that podcast too. None of these podcasters that want to maintain good relationships are going to publicly criticize a coach in his first year. And I've seen some of Tony’s breakdowns and think he does a nice job. He goes out of his way here to lay blame entirely on roster construction here as a way of purposely not publicly criticizing another working coach, and in this case one who is at the flagship university of the state he coaches in. I can go back and find his tweets saying nice things about Woodson early on too, but what would that prove? If you think Devries did a good job coaching last year, fine by me. You’ve stated it several times. I don’t think any team that lays down and dies down the stretch with a tourney berth on the line, like IU did, received consistently good coaching. I’m hopeful for Carr and the new roster. I’m also hopeful for a Devries learning curve because I don’t think even with an improved roster he’s going to see a second contract if he doesn’t address some things besides roster construction.

When Devries craps out what are your coaches going to say? Are you going to tell them they don’t know what they’re talking about?

Puke

I’d hope so since there’s no such thing as tampering…lol

You’re encouraged byv that? Oh boy….

Not ideal for Indiana

Not reporting to your boss is a baller move. I endorse.

I’d offer up an Isiah Thomas phone call but he’d probably screw it up so bad we’d end up with Mark Turgeon