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Doubter Pate has now found himself traveling up to IU to interview Cig.

Assuming no injuries, with the huge money spent the roster and also the staff, I'm in the 12+ wins camp. I wouldn't really call that an expectation, but anything less and what hope I have left for CDD will mostly be gone. All the roster concerns people have I agree with, but at some point the staff just has to perform with sharp scouting and player dev and find ways to overcome the weaknesses people see. I'm really just looking for a six seed and one tourney win at a minimum. That's not crazy for the money put into IUBB. Then retain the roster, add a few key guys, and think big in season three.

I like what I heard. He's got a pretty clear case on why IU and what he wants to do. Hopefully IU can upgrade the career of another ND transfer. ;-)

Yea the alleged chilled envelope was the first draft conspiracy theory I can think of. There is a chance it was true…

They don’t show the ping pong balls live for a reason. Fixed!

The Hoosier Huddle guys keep saying (as they have for months) they expect most commits to start happening in June and July. So, while it looks like we're behind for 2027 high school recruiting, this is the plan. We'll probably get some color on why once the class signs.

He’s pure Purdue dork I gotta say. In Gen Z terms, he’s Purdue-maxxing.

Not IU. Not sure on the reason. Update: sounds like we backed off. Not a big deal to see him go elsewhere.

Tropical leaves tattoo? He walked into a tattoo parlor and said hey I’m looking to get a fern on my arm. Lol.

FWIW, and it's just my useless opinion, I think Duke is on another level. They're the highest funding in CBB, with deep recruiting ties including with Nike, a sterling brand with big exposure, and a track record of being really good every year. UM we're closer to, but they outspent us pretty good last year and this year we're closer, but still short. After a natty they'll get whatever they ask for. I think CDD made a huge mistake with the lack of multi-year guys in season one. We had all these one year dudes and the multi-year guys were not developed/retained (Trent a little). So we had another total rebuild, which personally I found very disappointing. Okay, our W/L in season one was not great, but at least develop some pieces for season two! C'mon, think long term here. I don't think it's possible to build a conf title winner/F4 team entirely scratch in one portal. Even if we had $25M. With no roster continuity, it's so hard to get 10 new guys to gel such that they can win really big. Just my opinion. I agree with pretty much all the concerns people voice on this board. We need more front court depth. We have question mark players CDD/Carr/staff better be right on... though this pretty normal every year. Best case I can see is we hit on almost all the new guys, they improve as the year goes on, and we get like a 5 seed or better and make the S16. Then return most of the roster, which is possible with all our multi-year guys (nice work!), and go into a portal needing only a few players. We'd be selling an attractive situation -- a S16 team on the rise. IUBB is back baby! Bring in a few high end portal players and then season three of CDD we're thinking conference title and F4. Is this likely? It's IUBB. Be optimistic at your own peril. I could type out a downside scenario, but we all know what that would look like... I've got to say I'm surprised we spent so much money. The thinking was $13-14M, now it's closer to $20M. This rachets up the expectations this season... which is good. Big pressure on CDD this year. This season is now much more interesting than I thought it was going to be. I'm looking forward to games in Peru now.

Agree. Close to $20M spend when it's all done, plus this huge expensive staff, you've just got to deliver a six seed or better. Or else why are we spending all this money? If they can't do this and there were no serious injuries, I just cannot see a case for this staff being the right one that's ever going to do anything here. Hopefully this staff hits their stride this year...

Agree the roster continuity/advanced scout is the most important benefit with retention. But I wouldn't downplay the savings. If the player is happy -- the program is winning, they're developing, and they're comfortable with staff/program and their life/future, it's going to take some pretty lucrative tampering to shake them loose such that they give all that up and hit the unknown in the portal. $100K or even $250K may not do it. So there is that angle to the savings. The other thing is replacing a lost player is so damn expensive in the hyper competitive portal. I think good retention saves 15-20% across the whole roster, which lets a team afford another impact player. Also, the other way to save on the roster is to develop guys. If they get better they're still on the same money, at least for one year. It's all a flywheel. (1) Recruit bad, mediocre development, lose too much, roster turnover up, players cost more. (2) Or recruit well, develop well, win more, roster turnover low, players cost less (relative to their skill). IUBB needs to get on the positive flywheel ASAP.

I'd hope Sisley is closer to $1M. I can barely remember, but I thought Woody threw a nonchalant $500-750K offer at him back during his recruitment and Painter was mad about it. So if he was ~$500-750K last year he get's a bump to ~$1M or something. I dunno, just a guess.

"I'm closer to LeBron than you are to me." -Scalabrine

That's an excellent long form piece. I didn’t know the longer background with Cig. I wasn't around for '75-'76. I always wondered what that was like, especially since that sort of athletics success at IU seemed very unlikely to occur again. I can't believe I got to experience something even more amazing. And IUFB likely isn't done being very good. Thanks Curt!

Chatter was he got $15M for his roster. I almost don’t believe the number given how few players he has. Insane!

20-25 schools over $20M? I’m not buying that Sean. Bit of exaggeration there imo. Maybe 10 are $20M+. That said, #10-20 still have a lot of money. IU needs to start developing and retaining players to help offset the increase in player costs.

If Bama (his childhood team) is out of the picture… that’s good news.

If we can watch preseason games on TV that would be excellent.

Here we go...

A long time ago students used to be in the north bleachers -- I think back in the mid-2000's they moved them out. Now they're back in the north bleachers. Should help the atmosphere a bit. Nice move. Update: I heard a donation helped make this possible. Kinda crazy.

Agree. That feels like the best case scenario. It's kinda easy to picture how this happened. To close on the big time signings like Sherrell, we probably went a little higher than we wanted, which kept eating away at the budget for the last few spots. But it was a better move to close on those guys than be sitting here without them and using their budget to sign a bunch of mid players. We'll see. Regardless, it's been a pretty exciting and solid portal. Still #1 on On3 and #3 on 24/7. Offseason champs!

I don't think IU is lowering standards or giving up on the last three spots. If we had done that, we would have already signed some players to round out the roster so the staff could take a vacation. I'm pretty sure we're low on money. We've spent a fortune and there is a limit to what we can spend -- I don't think we can just allocate another $3M to IUBB for another obvious impact player. I get why our fans would like IU to do that. I suspect the staff is scouting for the best we can get for our remaining budget. It's not ideal and not easy, but that's where we seem to be. There will likely be uncertainty with part of the rotation. The staff is going to have to get some upside surprise from some players on the roster for us to have a really exciting year. That's pretty normal, a staff either scouts well and develops or they don't. And if they don't, nothing very good is going to happen.