Pagoda

On the other hand he is currently in the desert 1,500 miles from rainy Washington state. There ain’t a great bball job in the PNW and he seems willing to move around. All I can find on his new buyout is it is “seven figures,” so at least it went down to some extent. Agree he won’t be cheap.

Their athletic dept has financial issues (including NIL) and word is Tommy may not get along great with their AD. That’s why I mention him as a possibility, though how much of a possibility I don’t know. I would be excited if we got him. Good metrics and he can handle this job.

I think that's fair, though personally I'm fine with down years being worse than that as long as there is a reason (injuries, bad luck, etc.) and there is a clear plan for improvement with incoming recruits, new assistants, and/or a strategy change. I think it's a good sign IU and Scott made it clear limping into the tourney this year after imploding last year isn't good enough given the significant resources provided to the program. I also think the poor effort and incompetence behind the scenes factored into Woody getting fired, which is good too.

RIP Centel :-(

I'd guess a 20% chance we have a coach search in 3-4 years. 1) Most of the factors that caused us to make bad hires over the last 25 years are not present this time around. It's been pretty well sourced this is Scott's show and Trustees/Donors/Presidents that don't know what they are doing are not meddling this time around. 2) Scott proved he can make a good hire 15 months ago. I'm not sure what else can be more reassuring right now, he literally just successfully did what we need him to do right now. 3) We have never held a coach search when IUBB can offer top-5 player payroll resources. Also, many athletic depts outside the B1G and SEC are struggling as the revenue share cost hits this year. The IU job is more appealing than it has been historically. Coaches can afford a materially better roster at IU than they can at many other schools. This should help.

Thanks. I don't expect you to comment, but I suspect Otz and Lloyd are actionable and could be interested in the resources upgrade at IU. The ISU situation has been covered here pretty comprehensively already. Arizona has financial issues and Tommy may not be too happy there...

Or get on the Road to Zion(sville). Cmon Scott find a way to get it done!

I’d guess he feels his path to the NBA got seriously derailed this year and he and his family are worried. He’s so gone. It’s too bad. He seemed like a nice kid and I liked his academic strengths. He appears to have been chewed up by Woody’s bad program from what I can tell.

Interesting. Kentucky tried with Drew and Hurley, but they said no. I suspect paying larger buyouts is just naturally rare because only 10 to 20 schools would pay a big buyout, and those schools usually aren’t hiring coaches, and when they are hiring they may be internal hires (Duke) or just get No’s (UK). Personally I don’t worry that we will go cheap. I worry more about getting a “Yes.” Just my $0.02.

Uh oh. This news is going to need to be factored in. (jk… mostly)

If they ever took some of the money they spend on facilities and put that towards NIL I would think they could do much better. I’ve always found this sort of confusing. $110M on the Welsh-Ryan renovation, $100M+ on the FB portion of the indoor athletics facility, and $850M on the new football stadium… yet FB NIL is bottom of the conference and bball NIL isn’t great either. It seems like they could put a little more towards NIL? I don’t know, it’s just interesting.

The grind point is spot on. You know CBB better than I do, a few thoughts on my mind after reading your post: I would guess it’s so much different working with less skilled and less experienced players. College players are in an earlier development phase, and figuring out how to help guys improve is vital and not the same vs working with polished and high skill NBA guys. Also understanding what various players are capable of and what you can get them to do is so different. Carmelo vs Mgbako, Ray Felton vs Rice, Amare vs Malik… this is another world in college. Woody had never really worked with college kids. I think that’s why we see so many of our players stagnate outside of some bigs that had NBA level skills. I also don’t think our offense or defense works well with college level players (or any level players eeeek). And lastly, college coaches have to play a sort of father/role model/ mentor/disciplinarian role with 18-21 year olds that coaches either have or they don’t. Woody has some of this, but he doesn’t have the disciplinarian part, or the role model part, which is another issue. Broadly speaking, the best NBA coaches seem to be tacticians and ego managers. Phil, Spo, etc. By the way I’m not dogging CBB, I vastly prefer college to the pros — more passion with the fans, more interesting variability with younger players, and programs have more unique identities. Overall, Woody was just a nightmare fit for CBB in so many ways. I can’t wait to have a real CBB coach again.

Third year in a row he signed an extension. Sheesh.

She seemed to primarily be a Woody and Quinn defender. Now that those two are on their way out she has no narrative to push on this board, therefore we don’t see her anymore.

Not the easiest place to recruit to either. It’s a pretty area, but it’s also remote. Come on Mark, put on your big boy pants, get out of your Spokane comfort zone, and win a title at IU.

He is interesting, so is Lloyd who I guess doesn't love his AD. Otz has the low buyout. Few could be low on NIL. Do any of these guys want to bite at top-5 or 10 NIL plus rev share at 2x the B1G conference average? I bet our player payroll is $2-2.5M more than what they have now. That's a pretty powerful pitch, but I don't know if it's enough...

Agree to disagree on a Beard DUI -- our most visible coach continuing bad behavior and providing another mugshot for the internet/media is worse to IU than losing games. We would look so bad and the DV stuff would get brought up again. A DUI and I'd guess Scott gets fired and Pam gets the riot act.

Correct. It's actually March 2nd 3PM on Foxsports when we find out. /s

Imo, you're a good example of a different viewpoint presented in a reasonable way that we can all factor in. Thanks.

It is the job of the President and BoT to protect the image, brand, and reputation of Indiana University, a huge multi-billion $ institution. Fair or unfair, the public perception alone (details in a police report or investigation don't matter) of some candidates could damage IU's image/brand/rep and it's within Pam and the Board's purview to get involved in such situations. I don't consider this materially meddling in the process.

I've been on Rivals a while and that guy is an iffy source at best and I don't really buy the timeline of his story. Just my $0.02.

It's pretty interesting how there are varying levels of $ (both for coach/staff and NIL) depending on the coach. With donors, their $ is always a voice in the process to some extent. It may make Scott's job a little trickier if we have to go down the list from Brad.

Old Friend said it. I can't entirely shake the last 25 years either. Aside from the Trustee/President/Donor meddling, am I missing something that has held IUBB back? I don't think so, but I can't be sure, it's hard to be this bad for 25 years. This is by far the best shape we've been in for a hire. 2001 we had the search committee that didn't interview anyone (lmao). 2006 Herbert meddled. 2008 our program had exploded. 2017 we had an inexperienced AD (I think this hire was pretty unobstructed). 2021 we all know. Now 2025 we had a seemingly good AD and for the first time we are selling top-5 player payroll to prospective coaches, which is very powerful. Who wants an extra $2-3M per year to afford 2-3 more elite players? A lot of coaches. The IU job is awesome, we've just hired bad coaches. I've said this before, aside from Boy Wonder I don't know who we should hire. I've never met these coaches and heard them talk about (i) why they are successful, (ii) how they would translate to IU, (iii) their vision for IUBB and what they need from the AD, and (iv) how they would handle a big job like IU. It is Otz, Lloyd, Dusty, Ben? I don't know. Scott has to figure that out and then get them here.

Thanks RTZ. I don't know who we get, but I continue to feel good that Scott will get this right.

I'm a Scott supporter and if that happened, yes he should. But it won't happen.