Juwan Moye

Given our consistent trend of underperforming preseason projections, I like that people are sleeping on this team a bit. Hopefully coach got guys with the right type of character who believe they can compete for a B1G title regardless of what the pundits think.

Given this team will likely have some growing pains, and will attempt a few threes, I’d expect a couple of really bad losses next year. Last year at WVU they had some big wins but also got blown out a couple of times. Fans are going to have to “trust the process” a bit for this first season IMO. Will be interesting to see how fans respond to that first bad loss.

Being a fringe top-25 team to possibly being a bubble team seems like the most likely range of outcomes for this team. Obviously crazy things can happen to go more positive or negative but the Torvik rankings align with my own expectations heading into the season.

We’d get a high level wing defender and, if coach actually runs some plays for him, someone who was a proven shooter prior to getting to IU and get “coached up”.

Grok providing what I think is a reasonable projection for the upcoming year. Aligns with what the predictive metrics are suggesting as well although obviously none of this is perfect.

Given the variability in the off-season it seems like the range of potential outcomes this year is pretty broad with the median outcome being somewhere around where the projections like Torvik have us.

“I know that I told you all to chill, but now that he’s finally gone I’m glad you didn’t”

You’ve never beeeeean!?

The things I REALLY liked about that, as I think this is something coach seems to have prioritized, is that he made sure guys were coming in with the right mindset. I think you made the point earlier about culture, or them playing hard, and if we actually have guys come in that have that "dog" in them, it won't matter what their previous stats say about them, they'll grow together.

Yeah, while I understand AH's point, Federiko isn't some high-caliber talent. If coach really wanted that rim-runner, rim-protector, rebounder he should've gone all-in on Bidunga. But it doesn't seem like we did that.

I had read somewhere that it was unlikely, can't recall where I read this or the source though sadly.

Yeah, I should’ve clarified: I’m not saying this is a final four caliber team, just that I’m expecting more “running and gunning”, so Iowa may be a more apt comparison. We all seem to agree that this team should be solid on the offensive end, which is already a big deal given our last 8 years, the questions are just around how coach can get the most out of these guys on the defensive end. Hopefully he’s running some Kelvin Sampson style practices.

Yep, that's been my thought as well. If some team plays some back to the basket big that's tough to stop, and he may also be a rim protector, he gets nullified by having to guard Bailey out on the perimeter. So we have Conerway able to facilitate a 5-out offense while likely having 3 elite shooters out on the wing. We may see a lot of similarities to 2023-2024 Alabama, just potentially not as fast-paced depending on if coach is actually committed to getting shots up early which he hasn't necessarily done with consistency before.

The point the Debbie downers were trying to make was basically our roster isn’t as good as it could be because we didn’t spend money. (Paraphrasing here) Regardless, this roster looks solid by all accounts, especially on the shooting front. If our main weakness is “rim protection” I can live with that in year 1 of a “tear it down to the studs” rebuild.

I tried explaining this in vain earlier in the thread. A guy like PJ Haggerty, who is really good, reportedly turned down $3m from Memphis as he was asking for $4m. Ole Miss reportedly offered him $3.5m. So the idea that all-conference mid major guys like Bailey or Conerway are making $1m+ should be pretty easy to see why this is the case. Conerway especially given he was the Sun Belt POY, really excited to have him.