Silat Player

If this is an example of his system, he's going to have to recruit like a mother, though. You're not going to be able to "out athletic" the likes of Duke or UNC on the regular.

They certainly are doing that today. I have to admit that I've never really paid attention to his teams, but yikes. McNeese is playing so hard, but so wild. They do make Clemson look really slow, though, so there's that.

Exactly. Expectations should be for a good, solid season. And, more importantly, an improved culture. The players play hard. Recruiting starts to look better. Team plays smarter. The fans will know if progress is being made. A certain number of wins doesn't need to be attained. We just need to see a solid program getting stabilized.

This is EXACTLY who came to mind for me, of course. LOL

No, the only thing good about the Archie time period was his smokeshow wife. Archie was an absolute disaster, and I can't believe that he got past the interview. Archie must have brought his better half and Fred was ... uh ... distracted.

Never too early to get a jump on next year's voting...

You have to follow the process. That's why it's s-l-o-w.

I'll never understand the Ballo shooting his freethrows with his opposite hand thing. I love Calbert, and will never know anything about basketball compared to him, but having him shoot free throws with his weaker hand? That just seems so counter-intertuitive. It obviously didn't work. Why not just work on improving his form with his natural shooting hand and work on any mental issues he has with shooting free throws? A fitting metaphor for the last 4 years. Everything IU did under Woody just seemed harder than it needed to be..

This. I feel like Woody had the attitude that we were all lucky to have him. WTF did he do before he came to IU to have that attitude? I feel like with both Woody and Miller, there were red flags all over that were missed prior to hiring that should've been caught in the interview, but I digress. With DD, it feels like a very good match. He's grateful to be at IU, and IU is grateful to have a coach of his caliber.

That will ALWAYS be funny.

This is maybe the most painful part of the last 8 years of IU basketball (well, that and the losing). How is it possible that IU has had so many bad shooters? It seems impossible.

Yep. That's why I wasn't that unhappy about Reneau putting his name in the portal. Not the ideal big for a 4 out 1 in system. At all.

You've just got to change your name, man. LOL

Agree here. I saw a YouTube video of him being interviewed yesterday on an Engineering Culture channel. He spoke of the importance of choosing players who fit the culture of the program first and foremost. I think we can all agree that Woody seemed really scattershot in this regard and just seemed to get whoever was highly ranked and didn't seem to cultivate relationships long enough to ascertain whether they would be a good fit or not.

If our search firm was the same one that WVU used year, that might help explain why the name was kept under wraps so easily too. They had already done their due diligence on Devries and had a file on him, so to speak. I mean, if he had already been vetted, then there was just the matter of IU interviewing and negotiating with him, which requires very few people. Easy to keep that quiet.

Neither of the stuff about Stevens is good. Either he: 1.) Didn't have any interest from the start and turned IU down right away. Or 2.) Strung IU along and reneged on a verbal agreement at the last minute, thus kind of screwing IU over. Either way, can we please forget about this guy? He hasn't coached college basketball in forever. He had a great deal of college success with exactly one group of guys, and at a time when IU wasn't exactly recruiting the state very hard, so a couple of guys kind of fell into his lap. Who knows if he would/could ever replicate that? We need to let the guy go for good. On to the Devries era...

Maybe a little longer than that. We have to see how he will recruit, not only from the portal but also HS players. He had a pretty good class at WVU, so one would assume that he'll be able to recruit HS guys at IU.

I'm certain that Duke fans were thrilled with this win. Anything to further secure Hubert Davis as UNC coach. They LOVE this guy...LOL You know it's a bad sign when your rival loves your coach.

I, for the life of me, can't figure out why Devries would be considered a worse hire than, say, someone like Otz. Why does Otz get so much more love? What DD did at Drake was nothing short of amazing.

I don't begrudge anyone on the WVU for being upset that Devries is leaving. It's a natural reaction, even for someone from Indiana like Small. We'd be upset on our side if IU lost a really good coach. In fact, it's just further verification that Dolson made a good selection.

The question is, "Does Devries want him?"

If they get McGollum, their fans will be fine. Now if they don't get him after Drake loses in the tourney, I think the meltdown will be bad.

De-Vreeze Rhymes with Mr. Freeze

I'm gonna miss the smoking whale...