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Yea. I actually think WVU and the state have some endearing qualities and people rag on them too much. But, Bloomington has a lot more going for it. Especially if you're a basketball player.

Just to lighten the mood, re: Woody, this hit my Youtube recommendations. Teague: "My Worst Coach was Woody..."

Maybe he is just finishing his job out strong like a professional. Just a guess. But, and I get everyone thinks he is coming, watching this process it doesn’t really feel like he is coming to IU.

Yea. Though I can rationalize he was a one year guy and I get why he went to Creighton. I would like to sign some players soon (whoever coach likes). We've got a lot of roster openings, more than most teams, Coach you gotta spend that $11M WAR CHEST. Also, I am getting a little annoyed more of our staff is not announced yet. For eff's sake IU get moving, tell the lawyers to get whatever needs done, done asap.

Nbd if IU lets him keep his access, I bet the "King of Indiana" will rarely be back in town. He's only interested in IU/Bloomington if he's getting $3-4M/yr as the head coach or making real estate investments with his pals.

These would be some great recruiting wins on the staff side. Fingers crossed they get announced this week.

It’s tough with the guys like Dix who have one year to get paid big before what are likely less lucrative pro careers. Get the big payday while you can makes sense. I could see Illinois meeting his ask, they like to spend big in the portal.

With Tucker becoming official, we are now #7 in the 24/7 transfer rankings!

With Enright as our first official portal commit, we are now #24 in the 24/7 transfer rankings. :-)

Stuhoo quoted $3.5M for bball in a post a few days ago. Not sure of his source but he seems to know his stuff. I’d guess maybe $1.5-2M for the non-rev sports and the rest to football?

Pretty reasonable. I always go back to we have top-10 payroll and athletic dept expense budget for basketball... you've got to be making the tourney with that. This is a big reason I got so frustrated with Woody's results. Cig does seem pretty happy with his NIL/rev share and we landed some good players. I know last season's NIL, but for this season I don't know the NIL/rev share to football -- if anyone knows please post it or DM me. That said, giving football even more makes sense given how well Cig uses it and the ROI to the athletic dept. I am anxious and nervous with bball, I can't help it given our history, and any bad news triggers my PTSD. BUT, it's early. Of course I wanted Conwell, but the hopes and dreams of IUBB do not lie on Ryan Conwell. We have to see the roster take form over the next three weeks. Hopefully it's reasonably good and not a red flag out of the gate.

Fwiw Rabby on the Hysterics pod thought they would decide this week.

I wasn't talking about politics, that's the last thing I want to discuss on a message board.

Hmm... I'm not sure I'd call them "good savers" when they ran up the national debt by $30T+. Just my opinion. Agree to disagree though, IUBB should be uniting all the different generations on this board! Let's get this Murphy guy and make some waves in the CBB world.

Key recruit visits going on + April Fools... it's going to be a deluge of chatter, rumors, and joke rumors/claims today...

This moment has to be so tricky. We are explaining to targets what their roles and fit within the team would be, but right now we only have two players (Tucker D. and Sisley). CDD has convince targets what our likely roster will look like and work from that -- not easy. I suspect CDD knows several very likely commits and who our top 5-6 guys will probably be. But still... not an easy spot to be in. Hopefully we can get some commits here, establish the core of the team, and then get some more dominoes to fall. Nerve-racking.

IU still has not removed the old coaching staff from the website. Maybe it’s a summer project for IU’s athletic dept website folks to get our coaching staff up to date.

Yea. For almost all of these guys, this is the last chance they will get to play a serious team sport, and now they can do it for a living with NIL and rev share. Even if they don't play much, it can be an amazing experience. They should go for it. They have the rest of their lives to be in the normal workforce.

You're right. The visit news gets me excited, but I've got to calm down and remember we still have to close.

Yea. They get a break with the Final Four in San Antonio.

Over (knock on wood). Getting NIL deals done before the House Settlement potentially being finalized April 7th probably accelerates commits.

Cignetti looking at that unused NIL. Jk, I don’t know what happens with unused NIL, probably carries over to next year?

It seems like CDD has a reasonable amount of leeway with this portal/initial roster build. In the end, next season is what matters and how many wins he can stack up. It is true though, he can't miss on every or close to every "big time" recruit. A big part of this job is recruiting (duh), and he's got to show some recruiting chops this month, or else I would have to say it's a concern. What I don't want is a roster where it's hard to see how they can be any good and no one is excited. CDD would have a chance to prove everyone wrong, but I'd rather not go into a season where the coach has to prove his roster is actually good. Now, I don't think this will happen. And I'm ready to give CDD the benefit of the doubt as much as possible. But... and I'm stating the obvious... these next few weeks are really important. Hopefully we can land a few guys this week and get some momentum going.

I think it's pretty fair with +/- $11M player payroll we should make the tournament. I mean it's hard to miss the field of 68 with top-5 or 10 payroll, Woody had to do so many things wrong this past season for us to actually not make it. There will be lumps and bumps, but it's important we see a team identity developing, the team shows overall improvement throughout the year, we get in the tourney, and we are competitive. I don't expect to win the conference or go deep in the tourney, but we all know what competitive, well run program looks like. To keep this on topic, we may have some misses like Conwell, but we should have a tourney squad.

Once the season ended I calmed myself down with respect to Woodson and forget about him. After seeing our entire $6M roster gone (mostly via portal) and the new coach likely not seeing anyone on staff worth retaining... it reminded how awful he was and how much damage he did. Once we get a new roster in place, assuming it is decent to good on paper, then I can probably forget about Woody again. So frustrating...