HoosierDevils

Exactly. Makes me think maybe some people on here are really pining for Brad Brownell? Cause that's literally who's on line 1

100% - can't keep doing the same thing, nor can you do the same thing as your competitors and expect to catch up to them. Hopefully there is a paradigm shift for IUBB. It'll be interesting next year where we actually will see, I think for the first time, a solid mix of new P2/P4 head coaches from either lower ranks or the usual hires in football at least. UCLA, Florida, Auburn all went the G5 route hiring coaches of JMU, Tulane, South Florida, respectively. Michigan, Penn State, LSU went the route of hiring form the P4 candidates.

A bit of luck, but also the structure of coaching searches at the P4 level make it really hard for truly great programs to hire a guy like Cig at the point we did. For example, if Alabama after Saban had said they were hiring a guy at Elon or JMU, the AD would be fired immediately. At the very least, the AD would know that the 1st year better lead to a finish in the top 2-3 in the SEC, else he'd be laughed out and fired along with new coach. At IU, remember our expectation was that maybe we can consistently have 5-7 wins a season and maybe an 8 or 9 win season if all goes right. But the expectation was not winning a flippin Natty in year 2. That gave the AD flexibility to hire someone w/o P4 (or in football, maybe P2) HC experience or any major NFL experience (e.g., coordinator level). It also gave Cig the flexibility to do whatever he wants -- OSU, Michigan, Georgia, Bama, etc. all have crazy external pressure (kinda like IUBB) where there's a ton of cooks in the kitchen each with their own interests (we want the most 5 stars, the most NFL guys, the most guys from this prestigious in state football high school, etc.)...none of that at IU. So, yes, dumb luck, but a lot of institutional and structural reasons too. Cig is catching lightening in a bottle a coach who comes around once in a generation if that, but I think the general process of finding a hidden gem is really constrained by the way coach searches are done. I mean just look at all the coaches you see at any level (NFL, NBA, CBB, CFB) where we don't really know if the HC is really the best mind, game manager, recruiter, etc. from an objective perspective or they just have an inside track and it's kind of an old boys network (we have some experience with that at IU!). Obviously, there are many great HCs out there who operate at the top schools or teams but also a ton that seem to always have a job just through networks and a you scratch my back I scratch yours.

We're not the only school, though, which is my point. Fine, we can offer someone like Schertz a deal like that, but then couldn't another P4 school offer the same + a buyout? It's a two sided market meaning he (and all coaches) negotiate and program compete against each other in the labor market for talent and bid up what's in the contract until you get to essentially the prevailing structure we have now. Don't get me wrong -- I find it frustrating too! We spend SO much buying out all these contracts for the person we're firing and the person we're hiring that it feels like we must be spending more than any other school the past 10-12 years without the results to show for it. Really annoying, but also want to put into context what the market for stars is like

Because it’s a two sided market and no coach/agent would sign a contract without one?

Good catch - I had definitely forgotten some of those though I don’t think the ones I missed negate what I said: I already discussed May and Kelsey. Jury is out on Pope in year 2 and Cal needed until late Jan/Feb to become a tournament team. At this stage Arkansas were not very good.

I feel like Dusty May is the only coach making the leap that truly had success from the get go. People forget that one of Kelsey’s big wins last season was the one against IU in the Bahamas, otherwise as people have pointed out they won games against KenPom sub 250 schools and in the ACC. This year Will Wade has no big noncon wins and was considered the best hire and new rosters, Ben McCollum got blasted by 30 to MSU and has no noncon wins to speak of (one of the easiest schedules of high major schools), Odom at UVa seems good but again no great wins, Sean Miller at Texas isn’t doing too great in year one, baby Pitino’s Xavier looks awful…I really think May’s success at Michigan has thrown people off—kinda like Cignetti in CFB. But major difference is May’s NIL budget is massive. Heck wouldn’t be surprised if he has more money to play with on a much smaller roster than Cig did his first year.

I appreciate the comments from more optimistic and reasoned posters, despite that I recognize internally I feel super negative and down on IUBB even in this new coaching era. I’ll try to be as unemotional about this: I’m not surprised that we have games where we struggle when the 3 ball isn’t working and knew coming in that we’d have some bad losses and some good wins where we got hot from deep. My dismay is realizing that half that statement is true - we will have bad losses like Minnesota but it doesn’t look like we will get good shots against athletic teams with top level talent even if the team isn’t very good. The way Louisville who is very good and Kentucky who are not great shutdown this offense just with raw athleticism advantage at every position without a way to scheme out is really disappointing. It looks like DDV didn’t feel it necessary to drop the bag for top athletes in the HS class but I’m hoping this experience will tell them they need to find one or two transfers who are high major athletes and drop the bag. Just can’t do it with small unathletic mid major players on the entire roster. It’s not like they didn’t spend cash on this roster, they did and this is what they put together.

Definitely. I feel like the excuse last year was that he just is not used to coaching top tier NBA talent and it threw off "his system" playing Bailey and Harper. That was always a ridiculous narrative, so it's validating to see Rutger struggle even with the guys Pikiell usually recruits.

Kansas State looks great against Chris Jans’ Miss St team that’s #45 on KenPom. Up 20 and PJ Haggerty with 37. Based on what we saw this week, am a bit nervous for this one.

It does feel like the days of getting blown out are not behind us. There likely will be a game or two this season when shots are not falling and we just can’t really compete athletically. Wish it was in the past, but don’t think it is. We will definitely have some incredibly exciting moments but also some really deflating ones.

This week was really deflating. Two cupcakes and didn’t look great. Given what we’ve seen before this week I’m hopeful that it’s been a bad case of playing down to competition and perhaps practices being more intense than they would ahead of K State, L’ville, KY, and the conference schedule.

Really hope IU has a better November home slate next year. Really excited for this team, but this schedule is hard to get too excited about and can’t blame fans for the poor attendance at SSAH when the schedule is what it is.

Looks like Dorn and Ristic are out again. Not suiting up to warmup with the team, though Dorn was listed as Questionable and there was some optimism he would get some playing time earlier in the week. Really going to be lacking depth again. Jasai Miles should play but his shooting hand is wrapped up.

That is definitely true for schools like UConn versus basically anybody, and perhaps for comparing Villanova to Northwestern but not true for a comparison of Xavier to IU. There's a massive within conference variation as well. Don't get me wrong, I agree that a middle of the pack Big East school (or bball first and no football) is in better position than a middle of the pack power conference (esp. ACC) school but don't think that's the case for mid-tier Big East to top-tier Big 10. Certainly the difference there is small enough that is easily offset by difference in NIL resources...even if the Big 10 school's NIL isn't earth shattering.

But they also have much less revenue to spare on athletes. IU's athletics revenue is around $105 million and Xavier's is around $30 million. Even though disbursements to athletes is capped at 20.5 million, to meet other expenses Xavier likely can't afford to allocate the full cap amount to paying athletes. They probably have 10ish million to do that and fine they may allocate 70% to men's bball instead of the 70% to football, but that's still just 7 million which is not far off from what major basketball programs in the B1G & SEC will be able to allocate to men's basketball, not to mention these schools have much better NIL than Xavier/Big East sans St. John's. Edit: Clarifying, the $105million for IU excludes student fees, indirect & direct university support through transfers, or donors. it's just the organic revenue generated annually. @Pagoda is correct that when you include all these IU is in the 150-180 range. Source: https://nil-ncaa.com/

Trilly Donovan on the discord logged a prediction for IU!

Yeah, and I think it's possible IU was too far behind to make up. I think the previous staff didn't really pay attention to him and Purdue has been in on him for quite some time.

Doesn't seem like Hill felt there was much direct contact: https://x.com/JamieShaw5/status/1981094572886560962 "I haven't been on a visit yet, so I ain't really get to talk with their staff a lot. My communication with them is a little iffy. I don't really talk with them that much." Really wonder what happened - is this a misstep by the staff on a top local recruit or they saw something they really did not like and backed off completely.

Anybody know if Karvala is on his OV? He was posting videos of Alabama basketball during the exhibition matchup. Diané was definitely at the game though.

Diebler also seems to be thinking that locking down a national top 10 player from Ohio will help him avoid the hot seat. He’s willing to burn through funds for that. imo landing AT and having an impact on another B1G 10 coach’s job security would be the cherry on top. It really seems like AT and whoever he talks to about his bball decisions know IU is the better situation, but it’s unknown how much that’s worth (is the delta between IU’s offer and OSU offset by the difference between playing for DDV and Diebler)

It's unclear whether Allmond did go after the biggest bag. OK St's offer was probably good enough to compete with Maryland, though not greater. Relationships with Ok St staff won out over Maryland, not money. But even if it did, I'm surprised that so many on here think people don't usually go to the place offering them the most money.

Kudos to the new staff for not getting into a bidding war over a top 30 kid that wants top 10 money. It makes sense for Steve Lutz to want to make a big splash for next year at any price. Hope we are able to push hard for AT and VK. AT, VK, and PAM would be a fantastic first HS class.

It’s for Manny Green. Allmond seems to be between Ok St and Maryland. Edit: The Allmond being between Ok St and Md is according to Trilly.

I did not even realize there was no offer! I just assumed because of the OV and the post about it being between Xavier, Cal, and IU. Never mind!