Pagoda

Yea I’m fine…

Not great. But it’s so easy to drive three hours and spend a day at UK… even if he is an IU lean he doesn’t have anything to lose taking the visit.

A lot of Tom Crean connections! ;-)

Yea. I've heard IU (Dolson) doesn't give him hardly any info, and in general when any school doesn't give Goodman much info he gets petty towards them. We've seen that even with his daughter going to IU.

Recruiting has always been the wild west and a messy business. What Kenny did doesn't seem out of line for what was actually pretty darn common. So, personally I don't care that much about his NCAA penalties. Hopefully he knocks it out of the park for us.

Good. This is fundamentally why we have a basketball team — to play meaningful games and get meaningful wins. Nice to see CDD confident enough to schedule these games. Makes for a much more fun season vs trying to stack easy wins and juice the NET with blowouts. And yea of course we have to actually win some of these and be competitive.

Good news -- IU is playing Louisville at Gainbridge on Dec 6th. Quality game! https://x.com/GoodmanHoops/status/1910438946888176106

Dan will say things he knows are wrong or are rumors -- just low character, bad faith nonsense. It's too bad, he actually does know basketball and could be very insightful. But he gets caught up in trying to be some sort of bball oracle that gets listeners with his "shock" takes... just a trashy approach and he is often pretty incoherent when he tries to make points. No surprise he is on the AM dial and his podcast doesn't have many listeners.

This is how I feel. As an fan with limited info, I feel confident judging wins/losses (vs. program resources) and catching major red flags (e.g., losing at home to Indiana State by 21, an obviously not very talented roster, hiring Mike Woodson). When it comes to the sausage making process of hiring staff and recruiting... I just don't know much, nor do I exactly know what's good or bad. I've never met these assistants or recruits nor do I know all the dynamics and back and forth at play with landing them. So at this stage, I personally give the coach a lot of leeway before declaring something is a red flag worth being concerned about. Now, I admit I do get nervous and my IUBB PTSD kicks in all the time. But if I remind myself it's very early, not much is known, nothing is seriously wrong right now, and CDD isn't dumb/incompetent.

Not sure if it's biased, but valuation methods are certainty debatable and there can be errors and/or numbers used that aren't apples to apples. Just looking at this for 30 seconds, OSU's (ranked #4) numbers look off vs. the latest OSU AD financials. And Duke's revenue is oddly high despite playing in little Cameron Indoor, meaning Duke's numbers may be calculated differently (just guessing -- more media rights allocated or something like that). Who knows. It's hard to know which program is the most valuable... do you include mega donors, owning an arena, "brand" value, etc.? Bottom line is IU is somehow up there in the top few bball programs despite the last 25 years. Obviously this doesn't guarantee us a darn thing, but if we ever get it going we've got a high ceiling...

True. I guess it’s human nature to (i) get anchored to the idea, and (ii) then want what we cannot have. I don’t really care as long as it’s not impacting recruiting. I was hoping we might get some assistants on board who bring a player or two. Still could happen just hasn’t yet and it may not matter I don’t know.

We do have big money, but we need people who know how to use it. - Top-10 or so player payroll. Though of course other schools have enough payroll available they can get aggressive for players they like, so we can’t just dominate other schools in recruitments with huge offers. What we can do is get involved with most players and we can afford a few more good players than most schools. This is a big advantage, but we still have to win close recruitments and get the right guys. - We have the largest staff budget in the B1G and a top-5 or 7 athletic dept budget (this excluded player payroll) for basketball in the country. No expense spared for bball — recruiting trips etc. are basically unlimited: Hopefully CDD can use all these resources effectively, as we saw this can be wasted. If CDD can do it our ceiling is high.

Yea, IU is really pushing. This last fiscal year the athletic dept got a $25M loan from the university to help fund some of what you outlined in the short term. Unprecedented from IU. And all of this is happening as the $22M rev share expense is about to kick in. Some media rights increases will help, but IU is spending like we never have before in a not exactly easy environment to spend. If we can keep building our football program that is going to help our AD finances so much. Overall, IU’s overall commitment to athletics is pretty impressive under Scott/Pam.

I don't hate Kelvin (Kevin), and I don't think much about '06-'08 anymore, but I am glad he lost last night. The situation with him here was complicated. Maybe IU could have worked through it with him (as in make the call/tests issue go away), but Kelvin put IU in a tough spot for no good reason. And his team had poor character -- I get they were upset their coach on probation broke the rules again and got fired, but that's not an excuse to react how they did. In the end, Kelvin and who he brought here hurt IU. He's a great coach and he's had a nice comeback, but I'm still not a fan and I am glad he didn't get the championship.

Ooof. Got any more good news? Also, waiting for Wilkerson is brutal.

Yea. Heck I remember it was pretty widely reported that Anthony Davis got $200-300K to go to UK. What a great deal for UK back then. AD would be $4M+ today...

2025 portal.

My perspective fwiw after following this closely: While Scott was AD, Quinn/Ferguson/other donors very heavily influenced the Woody hire and keeping him on for a 4th year. Tough for a new AD to go against the Chairman of the BoT and large donors, they have to approve the coach hire. Last year when Woody failed and football did very well, Scott gained a lot of credibility and influence. This search was basically all Scott with Pam in support (like the Cig hire). This has been confirmed by folks who cover IU and it also proved out by the lack of leaks (only Scott and 2-3 other people knew). So good or bad, in my view CDD is basically all on Scott. As an aside, I think it's good our AD is running our athetlic dept again. If the results are poor, fine, change the AD, but we can't have the BoT/donors/Presidents doing the AD's job, because that group of people is terrible at running an athletic dept.

Agree and it seems that way, but would need to quantify it to know if it’s a material difference vs last year. Unfortunately I can’t find any articles or analysis on this. But, in the end CDD is gonna do whatever he is gonna do, so while I am curious it is what it is.

One thing I cannot tell is if more players are signing sooner this year (to get ahead of the April 7th House Settlement) vs last year. If players are signing sooner this year, the pacing comparisons to last year may not be relevant. But again, I’m not sure if this year is materially different or not.

So… does anyone know who we are interested in right now? We have PT available.

Yes. Dusty at UM continues to be very (maybe extremely) annoying.

Yea. Going into Year 3 Woody got a raise a few batted an eye at that. Everyone was excited for the season and thought we had a great shot at McNeely, Boogie, and Queen. The Fire Mike Woodson thread didn't appear here until February 2024.