2025-2026 IUBB Season Expectations

[Hoosierfan2017 24,880]

1 minute ago, steubenhoosier said:

One thing I will take into consideration is that IU has scheduled some high level games, but they are all against programs more established than us, and all happen relatively early in the season. Based on past results, I have confidence that CDD is going to put together a well-coached and competitive team, but it’s going to take some time for a bunch of portal guys to develop a cohesive unit. The Marquette, UL, and UK games are considered marquee contests that can significantly improve the resumes when the tournament committee picks the seeds. I hope we play competitively in these games and can win at least one of them. However I fear that the fanbase is going to melt down if we struggle.

Regardless of the money and resources we have, none of that can blend a group of individuals into a team. Only time, coaching, and the willingness to work together will do so.

Long season. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Coach Cig didn’t need time to turn the worst P5 program in the country into a playoff team. Dusty May didn’t need time at Michigan to turn a 8-24 team into a 27-10. It didn’t take Pat Kelsey time to turn a 8-24 team into a 

Pre-portal/NIL comparisons are null. It’s not 2008 anymore. A great coach can come into a situation like IU and win immediately. DD has everything he needs from a resource standpoint to make the tournament next season. If that doesn’t happen then it’s on him as the coach. 

[JaybobHoosier 13,172]

8 hours ago, rcbowla said:

Respect the hell out of ya but......couldn't disagree more. Have, and I mean HAVE, to make the tourney in year 1. Not only that but I think be comfortably in as a 9 seed or better. Can't accept less from a coach with the payroll we're working with.

All good brother, guess I won’t trade blows with ya :) lol. 
 

It’s all good to disagree with one another. I think it’s important to make the tourney, but not necessary. Give me a coach who’s busting his butt recruiting and developing, laying a great foundation setting up this program for future success. 

[AH1971 3,146]

8 minutes ago, Hoosierfan2017 said:

Coach Cig didn’t need time to turn the worst P5 program in the country into a playoff team. Dusty May didn’t need time at Michigan to turn a 8-24 team into a 27-10. It didn’t take Pat Kelsey time to turn a 8-24 team into a 

Pre-portal/NIL comparisons are null. It’s not 2008 anymore. A great coach can come into a situation like IU and win immediately. DD has everything he needs from a resource standpoint to make the tournament next season. If that doesn’t happen then it’s on him as the coach. 

Of course DD can win right away, that isn't what is being said though.

[iu eyedoc 4,448]

9 hours ago, Unexpectedflash said:

We better make the tourney. It’s a different time than when Archie was coach. Good coaches are good in year one now. Can’t be one of the teams spending 10 million on a roster and then miss the tourney. With those resources come a certain level of expectations 

Yes it's different. CDDV arrived with zero or 1 returning player. The portal giveth and the portal taketh away. This is more like Crean's first season than Archie Millier's. Of course rebuilding a roster is much easier now, but CDDV is still relying on mostly 1 yr rental players to get things rolling.

For sustainable programs the  1 yr portal players are a supplement to recruiting not the main course. UF got rolling  2 seasons ago with portal transfers but this season 60.2% of minutes played and 56.9% of scoring returned from 2023-24 roster and 5 of their top 6 scores were return players. 

So expecting a top 20 team and a top 5 to 6 NCAA bid, while it would be great, is far from the bar for a successful first season.

[Stuhoo 89,441]

7 minutes ago, JaybobHoosier said:

All good brother, guess I won’t trade blows with ya :) lol. 
 

It’s all good to disagree with one another. I think it’s important to make the tourney, but not necessary. Give me a coach who’s busting his butt recruiting and developing, laying a great foundation setting up this program for future success. 

In any other era I'd be with you on this one, Jaybob, but in an era where many top tier teams are turning over the majority of their roster each and every year? We have two key 'returnees'; both Tucker and Enright are completely immersed in Devries' system and will play key on-court roles.

So I think that, absent some really key injuries, we should be a top 45-ish team and therein make the tourney year one. Hell, Devries lost two of his top three players last year and was first team out (and arguably got really screwed in not making it anyway). So, I think that Darian Devries would also disagree with Jaybob; he'd say, "hell yes we need to make the tourney year one!"

Thankfully, I don't think it'll be an issue. We have plenty of talent and a schedule that will get us in as long as we win 19 + games.

[Hoosierfan2017 24,880]

1 minute ago, AH1971 said:

Of course DD can win right away, that isn't what is being said though.

Then why shouldn’t a tournament appearance his first season be the expectation? 68 teams make the tournament. A fraction of them have bigger budgets than IU. Unless DD isn’t a top 50-60 coach, making the tournament should be entirely doable. 

[AH1971 3,146]

15 minutes ago, Hoosierfan2017 said:

Then why shouldn’t a tournament appearance his first season be the expectation? 68 teams make the tournament. A fraction of them have bigger budgets than IU. Unless DD isn’t a top 50-60 coach, making the tournament should be entirely doable. 

I think making the tournament is more than doable, there's nothing wrong with expecting or wanting that. Firing a coach after year 1 of a 6 year contract who turned over the entire roster however is completely asinine. Who cares what IU's budget is? It doesn't mean or guarantee a damn thing. The headache of trying to get 13-15 new faces (and now millionaires) to gel in a single season is far greater than than an established coach with an established program making a 68 team tournament. For all we know, we entirely overpaid on the roster. Outside Tucker DeVries and Sisley, I hadn't heard of a single kid on the current roster until a week or two ago and they're now all making 7+ figures. 

I want to see DeVries lay some groundwork and start fostering and harboring a solid basketball culture in year 1 far more than I want him to see him be a 9 or 10 seed in the tournament. You're not going to erase 30 years of futility overnight. Once people stop looking at it that way, the faster and smoother this process goes. 

[iu eyedoc 4,448]

12 minutes ago, Hoosierfan2017 said:

Coach Cig didn’t need time to turn the worst P5 program in the country into a playoff team. Dusty May didn’t need time at Michigan to turn a 8-24 team into a 27-10. It didn’t take Pat Kelsey time to turn a 8-24 team into a 

Pre-portal/NIL comparisons are null. It’s not 2008 anymore. A great coach can come into a situation like IU and win immediately. DD has everything he needs from a resource standpoint to make the tournament next season. If that doesn’t happen then it’s on him as the coach. 

Todd Golden was 16-17 in his first season, so was Dan Hurley and he didn't win a tourney game until season 5, both of them starting their current jobs during the portal era. Jim Harbaugh was 1-6 in bowl games before his Natty.

 

Highlighting exceptions to the rule doesn't make it the norm.

[steubenhoosier 1,829]

17 minutes ago, Hoosierfan2017 said:

Coach Cig didn’t need time to turn the worst P5 program in the country into a playoff team. Dusty May didn’t need time at Michigan to turn a 8-24 team into a 27-10. It didn’t take Pat Kelsey time to turn a 8-24 team into a 

Pre-portal/NIL comparisons are null. It’s not 2008 anymore. A great coach can come into a situation like IU and win immediately. DD has everything he needs from a resource standpoint to make the tournament next season. If that doesn’t happen then it’s on him as the coach. 

None of those 3 played v 3 teams who made the playoffs the previous year in the first month of the season.

[iu eyedoc 4,448]

11 minutes ago, Hoosierfan2017 said:

Then why shouldn’t a tournament appearance his first season be the expectation? 68 teams make the tournament. A fraction of them have bigger budgets than IU. Unless DD isn’t a top 50-60 coach, making the tournament should be entirely doable. 

Dan Hurley and Todd Golden, the last 3 National champions, say hello.

[Hoosierfan2017 24,880]

4 minutes ago, iu eyedoc said:

Dan Hurley and Todd Golden, the last 3 National champions, say hello.

NIL didn’t exist when Hurley started at UConn. Did Golden have a top 10 NIL budget his first year at Florida? It’s ok to have standards as a program. When you’re spending top 10 money it’s ok to have top 50-60 expectations. 

[AH1971 3,146]

2 minutes ago, Hoosierfan2017 said:

NIL didn’t exist when Hurley started at UConn. Did Golden have a top 10 NIL budget his first year at Florida? It’s ok to have standards as a program. When you’re spending top 10 money it’s ok to have top 50-60 expectations. 

Golden didn't have a top 10 NIL budget when he started nor when he won the whole damn thing this year. What he did have however was time...time to do things his way on his timeline. 

[IUCrazy2 2,970]

26 minutes ago, iu eyedoc said:

Yes it's different. CDDV arrived with zero or 1 returning player. The portal giveth and the portal taketh away. This is more like Crean's first season than Archie Millier's. Of course rebuilding a roster is much easier now, but CDDV is still relying on mostly 1 yr rental players to get things rolling.

For sustainable programs the  1 yr portal players are a supplement to recruiting not the main course. UF got rolling  2 seasons ago with portal transfers but this season 60.2% of minutes played and 56.9% of scoring returned from 2023-24 roster and 5 of their top 6 scores were return players. 

So expecting a top 20 team and a top 5 to 6 NCAA bid, while it would be great, is far from the bar for a successful first season.

He said he wanted to make the tournament.  That is a Top 40ish type of team.  That should be doable.

[Juwan Moye 1,183]

2 hours ago, Pagoda said:

It's tough to see a scenario where we spend $11M on a roster (top-10) and we've got one of the biggest program budgets in the country for staff, etc., and we miss the tournament and that's not a pretty big red flag.  I am fine being patient and I want to be patient, but when a coach gets these sort of resources, they just have do something with it all, or why is IU giving him $11M for players?  

We really haven't been a big resource program until the NIL era, and the last two years we have really ramped up the resources.  I say this because pre-NIL we didn't do much of the under the table payments stuff to players, which made it hard to compete with KU, UK, Duke, UNC, etc. for top talent.

Two things stand out to me on why we really should make the tourney:

1) Making the tournament is not that hard, even though IUBB has made it seem hard.  With these top-10 resources, we've just got to be a top-35 or so team in the country to get in the tournament.  Mike Woodson more or less had the same resources last year (this year other teams are a little more competitive on resources), and despite him doing a terrible, terrible job, he still almost made it.  I mean it took a Mike Woodson masterclass to miss the tourney. 

Plus, we just saw UM, UL, and UK go through something similar to what we are going through and they made it.  I don't think the tourney is a high bar.

2) After this season, we're going to have a lot of key players run out of eligibility, so we're going to be pretty heavy in the portal again next year.  There is nothing wrong with this, it takes time to build in some high school recruiting, but if the portal didn't work in CDD's first year, then I'm not sure why it would be much better in the second year coming off a missed tourney.

If we miss the tourney in year one, I don't want to fire CDD, that's insane.  But I am going to be very worried because he just spent $11M picking his own team and he didn't do well.  I'll just have to hope he fixes it in year two with better portal picks and some internal development.  

And to be clear, I'm not worried right now.  While I don't have a great read on CDD yet, he's a quiet guy, his track record of program building and coaching at Drake and WVU looks good.  He is off to a good start in the portal and it's still early.  And some people I've ran into have good things to say about him, and they aren't IU fans.  For me, he's got free rein to do his thing this portal and hire his staff.  We won't know how well he did in the portal until we play games.  A top-30 player could be so-so, and a kid ranked #100+ may blow up, and the team has to fit together and be well coached.  And I think the team will be, and we go on to make the tourney and build from there.  But, I guess this rambling post is a way too long way to say I have a hard time seeing a missed tourney as anything else but a pretty serious red flag (assuming no bad injuries).

 

Outside of extenuating circumstances like a massive number of injuries, making the tournament this year should absolutely be the bare minimum expectation. Nothing is an absolute here, we could start poorly but then it starts to come together and we barely miss in which case I may be ok, but in this day and age with the resources IU has there’s no reason to not make the tourney.

Purely guessing I think we still add a couple very important pieces and are squarely projected in the tourney all year, sometimes flirting with the top-25. But as long as Devries achieves that, as well as having systems that make sense, and we see actual player development, fans should be excited.

 

[IUCrazy2 2,970]

8 minutes ago, AH1971 said:

Golden didn't have a top 10 NIL budget when he started nor when he won the whole damn thing this year. What he did have however was time...time to do things his way on his timeline. 

Did I miss something?  Did someone say fire him after one year if he doesn't make it?  I think people are saying that with Indiana's resources we SHOULD expect him to make the tournament.  Failure to do that should be viewed negatively.  That doesn't mean fire him after one year, but it is not a good start.  Not with a bunch of senior transfers which means you have to do the recruit thing again and at that point the honeymoon period for players is kind of over.

He should make the tournament (and as of right now I think he will) and we shouldn't expect anything less.  At a certain point this program needs to start living up to the expectations that the amount of money pumped into it should demand.  If it can't, then stop wasting that money and invest it elsewhere.

[JaybobHoosier 13,172]

31 minutes ago, Stuhoo said:

In any other era I'd be with you on this one, Jaybob, but in an era where many top tier teams are turning over the majority of their roster each and every year? We have two key 'returnees'; both Tucker and Enright are completely immersed in Devries' system and will play key on-court roles.

So I think that, absent some really key injuries, we should be a top 45-ish team and therein make the tourney year one. Hell, Devries lost two of his top three players last year and was first team out (and arguably got really screwed in not making it anyway). So, I think that Darian Devries would also disagree with Jaybob; he'd say, "hell yes we need to make the tourney year one!"

Thankfully, I don't think it'll be an issue. We have plenty of talent and a schedule that will get us in as long as we win 19 + games.

Now you I may trade blows with ;) 

You’re not wrong. Regardless, I agree with I don’t think it will be an issue either. I think we will safely be in the tournament, but it’s always tricky building a roster from scratch. It works with good coaching (thankfully we have that now lol), but you can’t help if it goes badly sometimes. Like with what MJ said, getting paid before playing sets a lazy work ethic. I don’t think this will be an issue, but what if some of the kids we get just grab the bag and don’t put in the effort?

I just think Coach deserves some patience and grace this year if things don’t go as planned.

[iu eyedoc 4,448]

 

5 minutes ago, Hoosierfan2017 said:

NIL didn’t exist when Hurley started at UConn. Did Golden have a top 10 NIL budget his first year at Florida? It’s ok to have standards as a program. When you’re spending top 10 money it’s ok to have top 50-60 expectations. 

Hurley started at UConn in 2018 the portal launched on October 15, 2018 so he still missed the tourney and had 3 seasons without a tourney win even with the portal. They also didn't have to replace all 15 players in their first season.

 

Oh and IU was 54 in Net. I don't imagine you won't be throwing a fit if IU is in the same boat as they were last season.

Drawing a pass fail line in the sand based on making the tournament is worthless. Everyone hopes for season 1 success, but building a culture, rebuilding in state recruiting ties, constantly trending upward is essential the first season or 2.

 

 

 

[AH1971 3,146]

5 minutes ago, IUCrazy2 said:

Did I miss something?  Did someone say fire him after one year if he doesn't make it?  I think people are saying that with Indiana's resources we SHOULD expect him to make the tournament.  Failure to do that should be viewed negatively.  That doesn't mean fire him after one year, but it is not a good start.  Not with a bunch of senior transfers which means you have to do the recruit thing again and at that point the honeymoon period for players is kind of over.

He should make the tournament (and as of right now I think he will) and we shouldn't expect anything less.  At a certain point this program needs to start living up to the expectations that the amount of money pumped into it should demand.  If it can't, then stop wasting that money and invest it elsewhere.

Unless I interpreted these wrong, these sure seem like "Make the tournament or else" posts

5 hours ago, bigrod said:

So we're looking for another coach next year if we don't make the tournament? I don't disagree that we should, but I think we should all be looking for a sound foundation building season before all else. This program is broken. Let's crawl, walk, and then run. We've had more resources than most for the past 25 years, and it's gotten us here. 

 

8 hours ago, rcbowla said:

Respect the hell out of ya but......couldn't disagree more. Have, and I mean HAVE, to make the tourney in year 1. Not only that but I think be comfortably in as a 9 seed or better. Can't accept less from a coach with the payroll we're working with.

 

[IUCrazy2 2,970]

3 minutes ago, iu eyedoc said:

 

Hurley started at UConn in 2018 the portal launched on October 15, 2018 so he still missed the tourney and had 3 seasons without a tourney win even with the portal. They also didn't have to replace all 15 players in their first season.

 

Oh and IU was 54 in Net. I don't imagine you won't be throwing a fit if IU is in the same boat as they were last season.

Drawing a pass fail line in the sand based on making the tournament is worthless. Everyone hopes for season 1 success, but building a culture, rebuilding in state recruiting ties, constantly trending upward is essential the first season or 2.

 

 

 

He won't get that long.  I know that pisses you guys off and fans need to reset expectations and blah, blah, blah....but if he misses the tournament the first two years he is toast.  

I don't think we will have to worry about that but just dealing with reality.

[Home Jersey 15,961]

5 minutes ago, IUCrazy2 said:

He won't get that long.  I know that pisses you guys off and fans need to reset expectations and blah, blah, blah....but if he misses the tournament the first two years he is toast.  

I don't think we will have to worry about that but just dealing with reality.

How on earth can you say that when Mike Woodson just got four years because Archie Miller got four years? DDV is probably getting at least four years too. Lmao. 

Gonna be a lot of handwringing today over hypothetically missing another tournament like we haven’t done that more often than not the last ten seasons.