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We have top-5 NIL resources. So there are probably 10 teams in our ballpark in terms of team payroll. You can’t dismiss that. An extra $1-1.5M of payroll is one or two very good to great players, which makes a massive difference. $2M extra payroll is 2-3 very good players. MD, Tom, and Archie’s under the table “payroll” was tiny and nowhere near top-10. We just didn’t do much of that, especially after probation. They couldn’t just throw huge cash offers at players and become a finalist their recruitments. Yea they still got some five stars, Indiana has some appeal, but it was much harder for them. Agree MD and Archie were bad.

People don’t appreciate the advantage of NIL for Woody. Pre-NIL we didn’t pay players under the table much and we really did not compete with UK, Duke, KU, UNC, etc for recruits because they were getting more money to those players. Now our money can get us involved with almost anyone, which is a huge change. Woody still flubs the long-term recruitments because he sucks, but Mike, Tom, and Archie would never even have a shot at most of these guys because they couldn’t pay them. It is hard to fathom how bad Woody is. Could be among the 5-10 worst coaches in D1.

3-4x raise vs his NBA assistant gig.

The Party did its job.

Yea, he really highlighted Woody’s deficiencies and gave the fans an alternative to Woody’s garbage. Attendance has been poor, the number of true fans is dwindling.

IIRC he just works for the Pacers and was a guest of Woody’s for the game, and he posted a picture he should not have (from Woody’s perspective). He’s not a big money booster.

Sorry, not sure, just referencing other posts on this thread that said Trilly started talking about the IU coaching job.

Trilly season came a lot earlier than I expected...

I like Ant, but he’s been smuggly pro-Woody. I wonder when he will give up on that.

His 2023 buyout was $17.5M. Probably still in that range. Doesn’t get much higher than that in CBB. Not too realistic for us.

Yea. He limped in through a BTT run and the play-in and we got wrecked by St. Mary’s. Then we had a decent season with a veteran TJD and great freshman JHS… and we won one tourney game and got blown out by Miami. Our tourney appearances have not been exciting.

Yes, they have limits. They're dumb, but not infinitely dumb.

Even they have limits and the crappiness of his coaching has exceeded those limits.

Yea. If so I’m surprised news isn’t out yet. I’m leaning injury. Whatever it is, I don’t want it to be a possible excuse for the season being bad.

Cook and Simon are our two billionaire mega donors. We can’t afford to lose either of them, especially Cook. I don’t see anyone who could step in, Cuban has never showed interest in being a big donor. I don’t think they will stop donating fwiw, especially Cook, they run the Hoosiers Connect collective.

Hire a new coach that's good and NIL makes sense again.

Anyone who gives to bball NIL must be clinically insane.

Terrible excuse. He's been making this excuse forever, and in reality it's just the nature of college basketball. Thankfully Louisville made him look dumb.

Yea. With the portal we need someone in place asap so they have a shot to save who they want on the current roster and get some xfers in.

I don't know how it will go. If he actually misses the tourney with a $6M team he won't have any sort of case. And good luck going against Scott, his fanbase approval is very high. IMO, as long as Woody gets his money and some sort of made up resignation story to make it sound like not a firing, he'll stay fairly quiet, this whole thing has mostly been about status and money for Woody. But, maybe I am wrong and he goes out ugly. We'll see. Enjoy firing him Scott! Payback.

I think she inherited this mess. It’s tricky with the Board being her boss and she has been under pressure a bit the past few years. Hopefully when Quinn is gone she plays her part in making sure the chain of command is reestablished and people aren’t meddling with Scott’s job.

Agree, that’s the way to do it. Personally, I want the AD left alone and responsible to pick the bball coach. The bball coach also needs to be left alone to pick his staff. This creates clear accountability in the organization, which is important.

When Mike was hired: "I’ve been chosen to be the coach here and I’m going to try to tie it all together to make it all work, and we all will be one big family and win basketball games." That sure didn't happen.

It’s nice to see them quickly fall out of being elite with Lurch gone. With their poor recruiting, they should keep getting worse. Next few years probably a borderline top-20/25 team, which is great given Painter is a very good coach. He just hates NIL and the portal, which isn’t a good approach.

8-3, but $6M roster and #48 on KenPom and #63 in the NET. It's hard to start much worse than this.