Silat Player

What's sad is that MM is the perfect modern day college 4. Does Woody not see that?

Yeah, I think that's the inherent danger here. Nearly ANY guards are going to look good here. I mean, IU had basically the worst backcourt of any major P5 team last year. Are we talking about comparative advantage here or are we talking about getting players who will actually compete for a minimum of a Sweet 16 or Elite 8? Two completely different conversations...

Yep. He's from my neck of the woods. Never offered by either.

Good call. And I accused him of being Steuben's Burner. Sorry Steuben...LOL

The irony is that we have become what IU fans have always claimed to detest. We have become that program who simply tries to buys the most expensive players. Although, We're the less successful version, obviously...

Oh my goodness. That article reads like it was written by a member of IU's Sports Information Department. LOL They should at least TRY to make it sound like a REAL article...

Yep. That's why Purdue gets away with playing 2 bigs part of the game. They have 3 other players who can hit 3s on a regular basis. The fact that Woodson didn't change last year after Race and TJD graduated was a travesty. It will be telling how many bigs Woodson recruits. It was...uh...interesting that he recruited both Walker and Sparks - two bigs who couldn't shoot outside of 5 feet.

I'm personally sceptical of Bank's future. I see a bit of JG in Bank's game and wonder if he will ever be anything close to an intuitive basketball player. I'm not sold on him at all and think he'll follow the career trajectory of JG. I do, however, think there is still a chance that Gunn could become a pretty good player. I don't know why it hasn't happened yet, but if he gets in the right situation, he may thrive. A lot.

Come on. This is the program and AD who hired Woodson in the first place. A 60-something coach with ZERO college basketball coaching experience who hadn't even been an NBA head coach for years. There was no part of this that was logical. There's no part of keeping Woodson and throwing a bunch of money at the portal that's logical either. You're going to get a bunch of pieces that aren't going to fit together. It's going to be a season of Misfit Toys.

Are you new here? None of that is true...

Is this Woodson's equivalent of Davis allegedly not coming out of his basement? LOL

Yeah, I've never understood the whole "tanking" argument. But this doesn't mean that a bunch of players are necessarily coming back. Ware has a lot to play for. He's trying to assure himself a spot in the NBA lottery. MM and Reneau have a lot to play for. I'm sure that MM would love to go pro after this year and MR had a great first half of the season. He probably also wants to see whether their would be any NBA takers. Also, either or both of the players might be playing hard to get a shot in the transfer portal with a top team next year. Cupps should play hard because he's trying to prove himself in his freshman year. Heck, I think often he's just trying to survive out there. I could go on and on. Most all of the players have a reason to keep playing hard, and it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with their coach...

Maybe true. I think it's deeper than a meaningless win on Senior Day. I mean, IU got hot after the season was already lost and they're losing their best player, by far. I'm not sure that anyone is really placated by wins after the season was already lost. And Woody's recent comments are just fanning the flames. It's like he's TRYING to be as unlikeable as possible...

Yikes! Are you serious? Despite your constant defense of Woodson, IU's program is a dysfunctional mess and they aren't sniffing the NCAA tournament this year. Purdue waxed IU twice this year and are going to win the B1G for the second straight year and be a number 1 seed in the same NCAA tournament that IU is missing. Your arrogance is astounding. Yes, I would like IU to be on Purdue's level right now. They have a bad NCAA history, especially recently, but being a number 1 seed would be beyond the wildest dreams of any IU fans right now.

Purdue says, "Hi." They used the portal to fill in a position of need on a very good team full of players who fit their system and that Painter has developed. I don't think their consecutive B1G championships and top five ranking indicates that their system is a "thing of the past."

And remember, Smith played with a fellow Freshman in the backcourt. The emphasis on Purdue's "talent" is overrated. He ran point on a B1G champion in an all-Frosh backcourt. Smith was good last year, and it wasn't just based on Purdue's talent. And Cupps is running a team with 3 Five-Star players. I think IU has plenty of talent. Now coaching? That's another story.

There is no plan B. Woodson have very much shown that to be true. Consider the portal last year and all the guards we got. And the 2024 HS recruiting class...

Of course, I mean history is no indicator of future success, right? LOL

This is what has hurt teams who rely on top-ranked one and done players. Kentucky hasn't won a title since 2012 (I think). Duke won their last title in what...2015 maybe. They started getting unbelievable recruiting classes after that title and coach K never won another one. Trying to reload every year, instead of developing players, has not proven to be successful in the long run.

So basically, what you're saying is that Woody doesn't want to have to develop young players and already wants finished products who were developed by other, better coaches. Got it. Well, I guess that's one way for an ex-NBA coach to do it...

I think Woodson still doesn't know that he's not coaching in the NBA anymore. He thinks that some GM is going to do all of his player acquisition work. Has anyone told Woody that he's coaching in college now? LOL

Yeah, this is the part that I think is hilarious from the Woody apologists. He literally couldn't get ONE guard out of the portal last year. And yes, I know...I know...it was because X and Trey were so good that no good guards wanted to come. LOL So now these Woody accolytes think that he's going to grab a bunch of really good guards out of the portal this year and completely remake the roster. There's absolutely nothing that Woody has done in the past 3 years to indicate that this will be possible. He has shown a propensity to just recruit the top prospects that everyone else is going after, and not having a great deal of success recently. And the super secret plan to get slightly lower-ranked players for 2025? What? He has absolutely not shown the ability to successfully recruit players in that range. And what about the 2024 class? Were there no players in that class that he could successfully recruit. Anyone who thinks Woodson is going to get some kind of monster haul this Spring is absolutely delusional. And he's going to have to prove that all these different parts that he does find can be molded into a functional team. Good luck with that. This year proved that he's not very good at that either. LOL

It's become more obvious by the year that IU's inept administration just had extremely good luck when they hired Bob Knight in 1971. Given the fact that they've messed up the basketball program so completely since they fired him, apparently RMK's surly and controlling personality is the only thing that kept the basketball program at an elite level for all of those years. Now that the administration has taken back control of the program, they've been entirely inept. The sh*tshow of this season is just further proof of that. I never thought that I'd long for the "bad" Knight years of the late 1990s, but here we are...

Was absolutely an entertaining treat. I mean, not for Chuck. But for the fans, it was high entertainment. LOL

And then Woodson's excuse will be that "the guys are young" or "they need more time to learn how to play together." Losing McN and then having a bunch of guys depart will create the perfect storm for Woodson to get another year. I can hear QB say, "It wasn't a fair year to evaluate him on. It was a new team..."