IU Basketball News and Notes

[Alford Bailey]

On 3/17/2026 at 12:54 PM, Golfman25 said:

If that is the case, then it was shear stupidity and they should take his AD award away.  If that was the plan, they should have gone young to develop and build some continuity.  I.e.; Sisley sitting on the bench did nobody and good.   

Too late to get HS players at that point. We were lucky to keep Sisley and even that appears to be a waste of time.

[Crazy about IU]

I was wondering what everyone thinks about the impact winning the national championship in football has on the basketball program. 
It has to help doesn’t it.

[TheWatShot]

5 minutes ago, Crazy about IU said:

I was wondering what everyone thinks about the impact winning the national championship in football has on the basketball program. 
It has to help doesn’t it.

A rising tide is supposed to lift all boats. 

 

Unfortunately our basketball program is an anchor. 

[IUHoosier5]

51 minutes ago, TheWatShot said:

A rising tide is supposed to lift all boats. 

 

Unfortunately our basketball program is an anchor. 

I laughed out loud. Damn you! 

[yogisballin]

On 3/17/2026 at 1:21 PM, str8baller said:

Almost all of our high dollar guys were.
 

We got some filler on the back end, but it’s kind of up in the air if those guys can even meaningfully contribute. Maybe we’ll get one starter out of it. We have so much filler nobody even really knows who might or should come back. If we go into next year with 2 of Sisley/Dorn/Miles/Harris starting, I’d bet we’ll be in trouble.  
 

Maybe Dolson meant something else but that’s how interpreted it. 

Yeah, that’d be a safe bet

[Pagoda]

9 hours ago, Crazy about IU said:

I was wondering what everyone thinks about the impact winning the national championship in football has on the basketball program. 
It has to help doesn’t it.

I think it's a net benefit.  But a small one.

+ The athletic dept has leveled up financially.  Football is the only sport that can turn a serious profit, and some of that can be used for IUBB.  Also, NIL donations have exploded, and while most are for football, some are general donations where some small amount can be chipped off for IUBB.

+ Indiana's exposure is WAY WAY up.  We're actually one of the biggest topics in college sports.  While it's not for bball, it helps players hear about Indiana a lot.  There is more awareness about IU, which can't hurt.  Marketing 101.

+ Hard to quantify this one, but IUFB has set a standard.  It's hard to make excuses.  The model of how to do things is across the parking lot.  But, since IUFB has got good, IUBB has not gotten any better.  So this might be nothing in reality.

- The negative for IUBB would be attention.  IUBB butt in seat attendance has been declining for a while due to program performance, but IUFB has probably satisfied some fans demand for IU athletics.  On average we've got something like another 10-12K fans going to home football games now, and for some that's a replacement of going to IUBB.  Eyeballing it, it seems this season AH attendance was down about ~2K people on average (butt in seats, not tickets sold, ticket sold probably only down slightly).

At the end of the day, healthy football means more financial resources and exposure that can only help IUBB.  But I think it only helps a little bit.  At any school, FB and MBB are pretty separate operations with little correlation in terms of results.

[str8baller]

6 hours ago, Pagoda said:

I think it's a net benefit.  But a small one.

+ The athletic dept has leveled up financially.  Football is the only sport that can turn a serious profit, and some of that can be used for IUBB.  Also, NIL donations have exploded, and while most are for football, some are general donations where some small amount can be chipped off for IUBB.

+ Indiana's exposure is WAY WAY up.  We're actually one of the biggest topics in college sports.  While it's not for bball, it helps players hear about Indiana a lot.  There is more awareness about IU, which can't hurt.  Marketing 101.

+ Hard to quantify this one, but IUFB has set a standard.  It's hard to make excuses.  The model of how to do things is across the parking lot.  But, since IUFB has got good, IUBB has not gotten any better.  So this might be nothing in reality.

- The negative for IUBB would be attention.  IUBB butt in seat attendance has been declining for a while due to program performance, but IUFB has probably satisfied some fans demand for IU athletics.  On average we've got something like another 10-12K fans going to home football games now, and for some that's a replacement of going to IUBB.  Eyeballing it, it seems this season AH attendance was down about ~2K people on average (butt in seats, not tickets sold, ticket sold probably only down slightly).

At the end of the day, healthy football means more financial resources and exposure that can only help IUBB.  But I think it only helps a little bit.  At any school, FB and MBB are pretty separate operations with little correlation in terms of results.

Great post. 
 

From an outside perspective, I kind of look at it like this: You see a few football schools get really good at basketball; you rarely see a basketball school win big at football. Football controls.