IUBB vs #10/11 Nebraska - Saturday, 01.10.26 @ Noon on BTN

[AZ Hoosier]

9 minutes ago, Josh said:

Correct.  If somebody above me makes the decision I must comply.  I can influence, but the decision is not mine.

However, Quinn Buckner is not ranked above Scott Dolson.  So how does he get the decision making power and credit/blame?

Buckner absolutely IS ranked above Scott Dolson in the management structure.

[Josh]

2 minutes ago, Pagoda said:

Quinn as Chairman of the BoT was above Scott.  Scott doesn't have the sole power to hire.  The hire and contract has to be approved by the BoT.  Quinn as Chairman absolutely controlled the BoT on this matter, as the trustees all looked to him with respect to basketball.

Furthermore, our most influential basketball donor wanted Woody.  So material athletic dept revenue was at risk.

I'm not saying Scott was perfect in the 2021 search, but when the unqualified best friend of the Chairman of the BoT and most influential bball donor gets hired, it's pretty clear who made it happen.

Interesting, thank you for this perspective.  I didn't realize the BoT was listed above Dolson on the Org Chart.  Is that common?  

I'm not worried about the donor, funding can be found by a good leader.

If Dolson truly does have less power than a Trustee then I'm baffled at what his powers are

[Golfman25]

5 minutes ago, Josh said:

Correct.  If somebody above me makes the decision I must comply.  I can influence, but the decision is not mine.

However, Quinn Buckner is not ranked above Scott Dolson.  So how does he get the decision making power and credit/blame?

Yes he is. He is/was Chairman of the Board of Trustees.  They sign off on everything.  He can easily say we won’t sign off on firing Mike Woodson.   Just like he could say we won’t be hiring coach X.   
 

Again if the Chairman of your BOD walked into your department and said “I think you should do . . . .   You guys would be doing it, and hoping it would work out.  Now most Chairman don’t work that way because they understand delegation of authority to people who are subject matter experts.  But Quinn thinks he’s a basketball expert.  

[Golfman25]

4 minutes ago, Josh said:

Interesting, thank you for this perspective.  I didn't realize the BoT was listed above Dolson on the Org Chart.  Is that common?  

I'm not worried about the donor, funding can be found by a good leader.

If Dolson truly does have less power than a Trustee then I'm baffled at what his powers are

Not just a trustee.  The Chairman of The Board who in many cases can get consensus of the other trustees.  

[Josh]

There are some really good responses here, thank you.  Sorry, I'm not good with "It just is, trust me bro", I need to see analytics and facts.

I still have issue with Dolson getting all the praise for success in football without the blame of failures in basketball, so I'm sure I'll still bust his chops.  His PR firm is phenomenal lol.  

[Hovadipo]

34 minutes ago, Josh said:

But I think it does.  Even a shift manager at Burger King has some decision making power.  If somebody outside that power makes the decision that the shift manager allows to happen then the responsibility falls on the shift manager.

If Scott Dolson has the power to hire and fire coaches and he allowed somebody else to have that power then he is fully complicit.  This isn't that hard.  What am I missing here?

You’re missing that it isn’t as black and white as your world. You have Fortune 500 experience, I have college athletic department experience. It’s way more complicated than you’re making it out to be. 

It’s a frustrating, political, inefficient system that leads to things like the last 20+ years of Indiana Basketball. 

[Josh]

9 minutes ago, Hovadipo said:

You’re missing that it isn’t as black and white as your world. You have Fortune 500 experience, I have college athletic department experience. It’s way more complicated than you’re making it out to be. 

It’s a frustrating, political, inefficient system that leads to things like the last 20+ years of Indiana Basketball. 

It's all Org Charts though, right?  I guess I was under the impression that Dolson got to make decisions on hiring and firing.  He has said so himself before the Devries hire and he gets glazed for the Cignetti hire.  It's wild to me that somebody can get so much praise for successes but no blame for any failures.  

And make no mistake, IU basketball management is a complete failure.  If Dolson isn't to blame and Quinn isn't anymore either, who can I spew my angst toward?

[Pagoda]

I mean, IUFB is the biggest athletics success in 40+ years at IU.  Scott hired Cig, and even if someone wants to call that luck, he still mobilized unprecedented resources for football here.  And when many big CFB programs tried to get Cig, he kept him.  At IU of all places. 

And CFB is really the only sports that matters in college athletics.  It's 80% of the revenue and all of the influence.  We somehow went from one of the worst to one of the best.

From what I can tell, Scott sure seemed to get control of the bball program in 2025 when he fired Woody midseason and seemingly was left alone to make the last hire (CDD).  To me, IUBB is all on him right now.  I don't think this looks like a very good start, but I just have to hope they figure it out.

[Hovadipo]

3 minutes ago, Josh said:

It's all Org Charts though, right?  I guess I was under the impression that Dolson got to make decisions on hiring and firing.  He has said so himself before the Devries hire and he gets glazed for the Cignetti hire.  It's wild to me that somebody can get so much praise for successes but no blame for any failures.  

And make no mistake, IU basketball management is a complete failure.  If Dolson isn't to blame and Quinn isn't anymore either, who can I spew my angst toward?

The org charts are so jacked up it’s not even funny when it comes to basketball. It’s just a mish mash of money people, AD people, people that think they matter and don’t, The Hysterics™️, etc. It’s the entire reason the program sucks and credit to a lot of people here and other places for saying so for years. Maybe it sounds convenient but after seeing the dept operate up close for a few years I have zero doubt that Dolson was largely kept from owning basketball in the immediate post-Glass years. I do think he owns the DeVries hire and however it plays out, but since I don’t think he has to own the Woody years I suppose the leash is longer in my eyes. 

And yeah, he gets to claim one of the best hires in the history of college football lol. I don’t think that’s too crazy of an ask. It has completely re-shaped the future of IU Athletics. 

[12345Brad]

59 minutes ago, Josh said:

Interesting, thank you for this perspective.  I didn't realize the BoT was listed above Dolson on the Org Chart.  Is that common?  

I'm not worried about the donor, funding can be found by a good leader.

If Dolson truly does have less power than a Trustee then I'm baffled at what his powers are

My understanding … Dolson decided to fire Woodson.  He had May and one other coach essentially verbally agreed as plan B.  He went to the BoT and Buckner said “if Archie got 4 years, my guy gets 4 years.”  
 

Buckner gave Woodson all the NIL $$ he needed for last season.   And they obviously didn’t meet expectations.   

IU missed May by a year due to QB.  Not Dolsons fault at all.  

 

[str8baller]

1 hour ago, Uspshoosier said:

Living in an upside down world.   IU lost a home game to Nebraska and moved up 1 spot in Torvik from 19 to 18.   

Torvik’s system has been high on IU for some reason. It hasn’t reflected the results we see on the floor. 

[8bucks]

43 minutes ago, Hovadipo said:

You’re missing that it isn’t as black and white as your world. You have Fortune 500 experience, I have college athletic department experience. It’s way more complicated than you’re making it out to be. 

It’s a frustrating, political, inefficient system that leads to things like the last 20+ years of Indiana Basketball. 

So Kcathy was right sort of

[Uspshoosier]

1 minute ago, str8baller said:

Torvik’s system has been high on IU for some reason. It hasn’t reflected the results we see on the floor. 

Yeah 18 is too high.  Ken Pom still has them at 25 after the loss.   For me so far this year they are a flawed lower seeded tourney team in the 7-12 seed range.  Big missed opportunity for them to improve the resume 

[Uspshoosier]

Nebraska’s wins in the B1G so far are crazy 

Wisky at home 

Sparty at home 

IU on the road 

Ohio st on the road 

Illinois on the road 

all tourney quality teams 

heck of a year for Nebraska so far 

[Golfman25]

32 minutes ago, Josh said:

It's all Org Charts though, right?  I guess I was under the impression that Dolson got to make decisions on hiring and firing.  He has said so himself before the Devries hire and he gets glazed for the Cignetti hire.  It's wild to me that somebody can get so much praise for successes but no blame for any failures.  

And make no mistake, IU basketball management is a complete failure.  If Dolson isn't to blame and Quinn isn't anymore either, who can I spew my angst toward?

But every org chart has the guy at the Top.   Buckner was that guy as Chairman.  As AD Dolson gets the hire/fire responsibilities subject to approval to everyone higher up on the chart.  Most of the approval will be implicit for low visibility hires — say boys badminton.  Those hires with high visibility will likely need to be more explicit.  Unlike football, basketball was farqued up because the chairman was a former player — heck if he wasn’t he wouldn’t have even been a trustee, let alone chairman.   

[spe317]

17 minutes ago, 8bucks said:

So Kcathy was right sort of

You wash your mouth out with soap. 

[Josh]

32 minutes ago, Hovadipo said:

The org charts are so jacked up it’s not even funny when it comes to basketball. It’s just a mish mash of money people, AD people, people that think they matter and don’t, The Hysterics™️, etc. It’s the entire reason the program sucks and credit to a lot of people here and other places for saying so for years. Maybe it sounds convenient but after seeing the dept operate up close for a few years I have zero doubt that Dolson was largely kept from owning basketball in the immediate post-Glass years. I do think he owns the DeVries hire and however it plays out, but since I don’t think he has to own the Woody years I suppose the leash is longer in my eyes. 

And yeah, he gets to claim one of the best hires in the history of college football lol. I don’t think that’s too crazy of an ask. It has completely re-shaped the future of IU Athletics. 

But does Harry Gonso get any credit for shaping IU football as the football guy on the board?  Kidding -- mostly.

So maybe I'll stop saying the past 5 years are Dolson ball although I do believe he was complicit in it.  Devries was a bad hire though and I'll put it all on him

[Scotty R]

16 minutes ago, Josh said:

But does Harry Gonso get any credit for shaping IU football as the football guy on the board?  Kidding -- mostly.

So maybe I'll stop saying the past 5 years are Dolson ball although I do believe he was complicit in it.  Devries was a bad hire though and I'll put it all on him

I would say it is way to early to say it is a bad hire. He is winning 75% of his games here. Probably will go down in the next few weeks but right now I don't think it was a bad hire.

[Scotty R]

In our 4 losses we have lead at halftime in 3 of them so it shows we have been playing well in those games. We just have to learn to go ish games and handle adversity better.

[cbp4iu]

2 hours ago, WayneFleekHoosier said:

Coaching and Money combined is the common sense formula. It’s a A x B= wins formula.  The better the coach and scout the less the money might be needed. The worse the coach the more money needed.  Plus roster building is key!  Our currently team isn’t too far off.  Switch out 2 guys for 2 better guys would be enough, I think.  Money solves that.  Staff didn’t spend well and didn’t have enough to get the pieces needed. really unfortunate. 

Like thinking about next year… Outside of Dorn and Sisley…. We return nothing  in the experience and minutes department. Honestly outside of those 2 guys and Ristic/Achimovic…. We probably should move on from everyone else. If you can find minutes on this team…. So if we have to fill another 7 scholarships like you said scouting has to be nailed. We can’t just spend to spend. Yet we can’t get cheap. We can have another Reed Bailey situation. I rebuilding team who spends a good sum of their funding on miss is doomed.