mickey one

Phoenix: I have one request. After you become the new Juju Watkins, and make 1st team All-Big Ten, and lead the Hoosiers to the Final Four, do NOT transfer to Maryland. Thank you. We all love you.

You never know about highlight reels, which can make anyone look like a superstar, but she seems to have outstanding athletic ability, long-distance shooting, and great timing:

All IU fans must feel a bit bewildered that Garzon can be so clueless and/or ruthless to go to a big rival. However, the main victim would be CTM, who always wanted to elevate Garzon into the next Michael Jordan or something. Garzon was a good passer and 3-point shooter (obviously), but CTM had a vision of her posting up, and going to the hoop, etc., which frequently seemed to have little relationship with reality.

Talia Goodman says Phoenix Stotijn to IU.

UConn has amazing team esprit de corp, but Paige Bueckers supposedly has about $1.4 m. in NIL money (this year?), and some comment was made on TV at the finals, that she asked Geno for advice on how to invest her money. Do all of them at UConn get NIL money like that? Wouldn't it be destructive of team spirit to have 1 or 2 players with "big time NIL" and others get nothing or little? What if one player is driving a BMW, and the rest of the players cannot even afford cars? What happens if you get big-time NIL money and then have an off year. Shouldn't the team rightfully cut the NIL money? Last of all, is there a "contract length" (like the pro's) where the NIL goes for a set term, and then is renegotiated? If a player has a great NIL contract, would they care if they don't "produce"? Re the "student-athlete thing", if a player is getting $1.5 m. in NIL, isn't it somewhat ridiculous that this person would have to go to classes and get passing grades? At $1.5 m. NIL, some players will make more than the head coach.

Why wouldn't the coach agree to use NIL?

Depressing. Whole new round of being drubbed in the recruiting race. Whatever Maryland is doing, IU needs to do that. At press conference after crushing UCLA, Geno quoted Hank Stram: "in order to win it all, you have to have it all". Means you have to have great players, throughout the roster.

Where do marginal players land (or do they)? Will Sandvik, Bargesser, Meister, et al. get offers? From like Murray State? Would they want to play there? Ava Learn was a big success there (or Jordyn Poole to Dayton), but are most B10 players willing to move to that level?

50 schools supposedly interested, including UConn: https://www.themirror.com/sport/basketball/yuting-deng-auburn-college-basketball-1072625 UConn fans are skeptical: https://the-boneyard.com/threads/yuting-deng.206936/ Since when is Kentucky regarded as women's basketball elite? Tied for 4th in SEC last year.

Is this for real? "The Chosen One"? This will make everyone forget Garzon pretty quickly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-n0V7nf-gk

This coming year will be interesting, because it will be a completely new look. Last year was sort of "more of the same", but at a lower level than the year before. Depending on the portal, we can be "average", "good", or "really good"--but at least it will be different. And we can also see some new players develop.

per Talia Goodman, USC's Avery Howell in the portal. Wow, this is wild stuff.

Good analysis: *another factor: her sister, Lior, transferred at least twice, from Villanova to Ok. State to Colorado. Maybe more? *for all the true old fogeys here, remember '76 Hoosiers who won National Championship? Scott May, et al. were Seniors and only Kent Benson was a Junior. He came back and it was a miserable, underachieving year. He probably regretted it. *"Show me the money!" yes, why not? *contender? If she went to LSU or Texas or even Duke, it's not a sure thing she would have great PT. At IU, she was "the man"; elsewhere--I don't know.

It she's not really good enough to make an impact, CTM has to face that (which I'm sure she will). Yarden Garzon herself was a sleeper, and turned out to be a big hit. You need that "Belichick" intuition to get people no one else is paying attention to, like TOM BRADY!

If you want "can't miss" territory, then we should only be interviewing Gianna Kneepkens, Serah Williams, Cotie McMahon, et al. But, probably nobody here thinks we can get those top-flight players . . . . so, we are bumped down a rung, and have to take chances, or hope that CTM can work her magic on a squad that may not be player-for-player the equal of South Carolina or even Ohio State. The solution is that when you are at the top (which we were 2 years ago), you recruit the absolute top players, but we missed that boat. We should have had a 5-star replacement for Mackenzie Holmes, a first team All-American, . . . and that never happened.

Don't know why people are dismissing Spreen. Ali Patberg transferred from Notre Dame, where she had limited PT, and became a HUGE asset at IU. Chloe Spreen WAS Miss Indiana B-Ball. I saw her play in the Kentucky-Indiana All-Star game, and she was dynamic--taking the ball to the hoop and shooting effectively. I don't know why she disappeared on the bench at Alabama, but, again, Ali Patberg disappeared at ND and emerged big time at IU. Ditto somewhat for Sydney Parrish at Oregon. Sometimes you just need the right situation to shine.

Looks like an interesting player--she played a lot for a freshman--must have inspired confidence in coaching staff at Arkansas. I wonder what Valentyna Kadlecova could have done with the same amount of PT as a freshman. ??--did Phoenix say in her IG who else she saw at IU on this visit?

Merkle seems to be in the tradition of Audie Crooks or Janel McCarville (if you can remember her from Minnesota), i.e. a "big body" who is surprisingly mobile and effective.

I am all ears.

I think all agree that CTM is a great coach. She has revolutionized IU basketball, all for the better. The mystery is why we have not recruited better. No one seems to know for sure. With IU's stature, it seems like we should be able to recruit on a par with South Carolina and anyone else. But, we are not. One real wild card is the portal and NIL, which introduces all kinds of unknowns. Don't we need more transparency here? Like, for instance, some kind of "salary cap" like in the NFL, so all teams are operating with a common ceiling, and then public disclosure of offers and the "salaries" for all players on a team? You might say "this is a private matter", but not really--it's become a bidding war, and it is only fair to all involved, PLAYERS as well as fans, to make this known. Sad to say that college athletics has come to this. It should be either about "student-athletes" or full-blown professional sports. At present, it is some kind of weird hybrid, and we are mostly left in the dark . . . which doesn't seem fair to anyone, least of all to the fans, and not even to the players.

Glenn Box on portal madness: https://www.daytondailynews.com/sports/archdeacon-transfer-portal-turning-college-basketball-into-the-wild-west/VGKQCVSX6JFSNCADYQXYNMEJGI/ Looking through the entire portal, I don't see a lot that IU could realistically pick up to improve. In a way, I think IU would be best off if the 5 leaving players would just come back. But, these players may pick up more PT elsewhere, so I can see why they are leaving. I really think that CTM needs to be more strategic in doling out PT to give players a sense of hope and development, and perhaps she could avoid this kind of mass exodus in the future. The portal has changed the "power balance", like it or not, for better or worse (from the team perspective).

Are there any good examples of "culture" vs. "talent"? The idea seems to be that some talented players would be disruptive, or bad for the locker room, or bad teammates, but I'm not sure who that would be? Was there a concrete example of where IU could have gotten someone really talented, but passed on them due to "behavior" or "culture" issues/factors? For instance, Hannah Hidalgo, Olivia Miles, Kate Koval, Sarah Strong, Joyce Edwards, Page Bueckers, Juju Watkins, Lauren Betts, Mikayla Blakes. As far as I can tell, they are all great, and great team mates, and good for their school. Are there any examples of disruptive players that IU would want to avoid?

That's the problem. A lot of them seemed invisible.

Seems like people are "whistling past the graveyard" or rationalizing the situation. To me: 1. Moren is a great game coach. It's amazing how she can take an outmanned team and play schools like South Carolina or Ohio State even, or even beat them. That is a feat, BUT 2. Being "outmanned" to begin with is her own fault for recruiting fails--Blakes, Howell, Lauren Hurst, Zania Socka-Nguemen, et al. Can you get all of them? Of course not. Should you get more than what IU does? Look at USC or Ohio State or Maryland. Someone on this forum said earlier that CTM at Indiana State had a reputation for being hard to play for, and drove people off. Seems like there is SOMETHING at work here, to lose so many top people. Are people being scared off by something? Does she tell recruits that they are expected to be in the gym for 6+ hours a day or something? To say that you only want people who "fit your culture" seems like a dodge for outright recruiting fails. 3. CTM was like daring the subs like Lex, or Faith Wiseman, or Valentyna to transfer. In a down year, there is no opportunity for them to get minutes? Faith Wiseman is so hopeless that she does not deserve some extended playing time, just to see how she can do, and develop? I don't know why she would not transfer to some place that will give her a shot. Sad to say, in college basketball, recruiting is half of the game, and IU has come up short. I question whether it is "people not fitting our culture". The solution? Maybe face this fact (that there IS a problem), and get a crackerjack recruiting coordinator, on par with this guy CTM brought in from the Indiana Fever. Just saying . . .