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Rabby said Otz is out? How confidently?

Anything from Trilly himself? Otz would be such a home run. It does seem like there’s more chatter here but maybe it’s just because Goodman floated him on that podcast.

Keeping the middle school vibes: it’s like our big field trip just got cancelled because of a few bad kids, lol.

Can you share any of this context with us?

Interesting story on McCasland: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6172277/2025/03/05/texas-tech-grant-mccasland-jeff-linder/ Like Painter, he hired a coach as an offensive coordinator, which explains their scoring surge this year. This is also relevant: “Linder had been a Division I head coach for the last eight seasons — the most recent four at Wyoming, where in 2022 he took the Cowboys to just their third NCAA Tournament in the last four decades — but he wasn’t sure he had the resources to win consistently in the name, image and likeness era. So he joined a program that has become one of the Big 12’s top spenders on basketball, with the largest 2024 operating budget of any current league member, according to statistics from the Department of Education.”

Lawrence Frank? D’Antoni? I can’t think of any names I like. Tye Lue I guess. We’ve been chasing the wrong NBA wunderkind lol.

How about now? and people with stories of Woodson being a diva behind the scenes—share that too!

This interview, posted before by others, is a good place to start: https://cbn.com/news/us/joy-jesus-others-yourself-baylor-university-mens-basketball-coach-opens-about-his-faith I do think it helps to know the evangelical community to understand what he’s describing—as with any community there are phrases in the interview that mean more to insiders. Note that he talks about limits at a secular university in there. Also re: recruiting it would probably help in some cases! Athletes are much more Evangelical than most people. I just want to underline that Drew is more focused on his faith, every single day, than most mainstream Christians. More even than a Crean or Allen. Not saying it’s bad or good.

Something I’ve been wondering about the revenue sharing: if IU is committed to giving such a big slice to men’s hoops, how will this affect women’s hoops and football? IU is nationally competitive in so many sports, too. Does anyone know how Cignetti or others feel about this?

I feel like the religion thing is going to spiral since religion (and especially evangelical Christianity) is politically coded these days. That said, I haven’t seen anyone on here be anti-religious. Stevens is very outspoken about his faith; so is the coach he hired for the Celtics. No one holds this against Stevens. But Drew is a different kind of Christian—one who sees the influence of God in every single part of his life (and also tries to serve God in every single part). It’s worth being honest about the different kinds of religion and how Drew’s is much more extreme than what most Americans practice. (Signed, the son of an Evangelical preacher who hasn’t gone to church since the Crean era.)

I remain hopeful for Otz or Lloyd, but I will admit that sometimes I worry Dolson has a soft spot for older, “experienced” candidates because he tried to hire Matta and, far worse, Pat Fitzgerald. Does this concern any other fans? Like we all say “trust the guy who brought us Cig” but if he hadn’t been overruled by Whitten he would have brought us Fitzgerald, right? It’s weird that everyone just pretends that didn’t (almost) happen

I appreciate the specificity, even if I’m skeptical. Are you a Maryland fan? Have those fans had any remorse or self reflection for running Turgeon out to get worse results from Willard? I’ve always wondered that. (Not equating this to IU—Woodson has to go, though I guess you could draw a parallel to Crean.)

So how much of the chatter on Trilly’s discord comes from people other than him? Does anyone on there seem informed? I had assumed it was mostly just him posting and then people reacting—didn’t realize they had their own (inferior!) Chris007s.

Re: Archie, I think in retrospect it was always going to fail, but it’s surprising how badly it failed. I think a big issue is that Archie couldn’t find the right point guard to compensate for his bad (yet hyper controlling) offenses. At Dayton he had Schoochie Smith, and he really kept those teams afloat in March. I always loved and rooted hard for Rob Phinisee, but he was never what Archie needed him to be. I think something similar happened with Woodson and Reneau. Woodson was always going to play two bigs, and when one of them can neither shoot nor rebound nor defend the rim, he was screwed. Archie and Woodson were bad coaches. But I think things got worse, and got worse faster, because they didn’t have the right players at key positions for their team building—and of course couldn’t adapt. You get the key position wrong (PG for Archie, PF for Woodson), you never have a chance. So let’s hope for a new coach who is more flexible and better at evaluating.

Appreciated all this. I remember the personal connection but the rest of this detail is really helpful. Thanks for taking the time! If you need a reference to beat the “not Ant” allegations, I’m your guy. ;)

Why don’t you elaborate here? If you just keep being terse it feels like trolling. What have you heard? When? From who? There are ways to be vague here—other insiders do it all the time. So if you're serious about this, give us a serious perspective.

Agree. And the “Knight disciple” thing can cut both ways—Beard screwing up would cause lots of media to also bring up RMK’s past mistakes. It would just be a total nightmare.

I think people are just giving you a hard time for the Turgeon stuff, and also making a joke about Ant Wright, who is a Twitter analyst for Big Ten hoops (and has DMV ties I think?). what have you been hearing on Mark or others?

The recent Crimson Cast episode on candidates, the second one, explained this in a good way. Basically non Big Ten / SEC schools lack not just NIL but also revenue sharing, and Galen (one of the hosts) said a lot of Big 12 type coaches might want to jump. Galen also pointed out that Otz’s wife, his much mentioned tie to Iowa State since she played there, is from Australia originally. So maybe the ties aren’t that deep? Who knows, but given his youth I’d take TJ over anyone other than the Melville character.

It is possible I have just missed or misread things—the posts are flying fast. But it seems like @BehindTheBench may be combining or mixing up @Truthhurts and @MikeRoberts Not a big deal—like I said, the posts are flying fast. But I believe the “0 percent” and the aggressive tone started with @Truthhurts. Which is fine, as far as it goes, but I think if @BehindTheBench knows there are at least a couple people arguing with him (and that it’s not a one on one duel to the death) then maybe we can all take a breath. Not trying to meddle. It just seems as an outsider (heh) that some wires got crossed here and the wrong people are mad at each other.

This is not true at all. Most of the insiders here share a vague sense of their sourcing and, more importantly, have a track record, and, most important of all, aren’t cranky for no reason.

Are you saying that if you have insider info that says he’s not going to coach here? Why not share that and give us a sense of your sourcing instead of being cranky? Everyone in here is having a good time. (Just don’t ask about a couple of guys yesterday lol.)

Nice find! But I think the 37.5 percent is of the total remaining contract—so $4.5 million for the four years, which is doable, but I’d rather put that money toward Otz.

Crean mentioned this factor as well, lol. He sounded so relaxed and comfortable in the podcast and I kept thinking, man, where was this guy when he was coaching. But maybe he’s grown, and maybe that’s the pressure of the gig, too.