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We should have had a separate thread, in the recruiting page for incoming transfers... but this is a big one...

Planning a visit to IU. 6’9 top 20 player in 2025 with wing potential. https://247sports.com/college/indiana/article/indiana-basketball-recruiting-nate-ament-team-loaded-highland-high-school-231401296/

Nobody here wants to keep talking about Purdue, with all due respect.

Asking for a friend...is there an option to hide a topic?

I've seen Hatton play a lot and I know his dad. I think he has a better game than Peyton Sparks does. He's skilled. He can shoot. He can shoot hook shots. He's pretty intelligent. Not bad for a 12th man.

I haven’t been around as much the last week or so but Hatton will be a Hoosier

Didn't see camping listed, so since it is an outdoor activity, I thought I would post it here. The wife and I just got back from a 3 night camping trip from Lincoln State Park in southwest Indiana. We were there from Tuesday and came home o Friday. When we got there, we were 1 of only 7 campers! Talk about peace and quiet! No barking dogs or screaming kids, lol! Weather was nice with a late Thursday night rain to lull me to sleep. Took day trips around the campground, went to French Lick one day and ate at Larry Bird's Restaurant, 33 Brick Street. Lots of sports memorabilia and the food was good. Ordered their mushroom chips with horse radish and cream cheese dipping sauce, yummy!! Then I had a fried bologna and cheese sandwich. couldn't tell you when the last time that I had a fried bologna sandwich, but it was very good.

Jeezus, how bad of a human are you to finish 2nd to Brad?

We have our 13th player his name is Anthony Leal, we have our 12th his name is Newton. 11th his name is Cupps. We have no back up center. We have a 4 who has proven he cant stop making stupid fouls. you fill with the best you can get.

I clicked the link and the first thing I saw was about IU.

Nice IDS article on Bryson...sounds like just the kind of kid we want in our program... I know Ant Wright said he doesn't think Tucker will get enough minutes to make an impression...but I wouldn't mind having a 3rd straight Big 10 Freshman of the Year 🙂

I think the problem was his mechanics First Pitch Miss Texas GIF C

Is Woodson a great recruiter or not? It has been thrown around that he has proven his critics wrong by his recruiting prowess yet now the new supporting stance is lack of talent and options? It cant be both. Not that I completely disagree with the options narrative. Not long ago, I said specifically that freshman Jalen was easily leaps and bounds ahead of any IU guard on the roster and the X defenders wasn't having it. At the same time, I don't buy the narrative of lack of talent or options as an excuse from a fella that is making 4.2 million dollars and is supposed to be some kind of basketball wizard yet he cant assemble and/or develop a competitive team with all of the available IU resources until mega donors who wont admit their beloved Mr Nice Guy of their glory days is not the coaching expert they had put their mouth and money on step up and increase the ante to purchase the talent needed that he couldn't on his own create or provide through traditional means.

I am pleasantly surprised that in early May we are looking for final, supporting pieces, and not scrambling to put some semblance of a roster together. This has been an enjoyable offseason thus far.

And just a look back at one of the highlights of Cliff's Rutgers career... 😁

Isnt this true of 99% of the teams in this era? More this off season than ever. As much as we have frustrations, we have yet to have a high impact guy transfer out. And players outwardly have voiced they love playing for him. X, Leal, Trayce, Ware....the list goes in. Players very clearly want to, and enjoy playing for him. Players repeatedly say he deliver what he promises etc. He has to win, 100%. But all these other "things" come off as message board assumptions not based on fact. Money is part of the equation for players decision.....part. NIL is here. We are elite there. But star players still have plenty of options to make big dollars elsewhere if they don't wanna play for Woodson.

Two months ago we were hearing about a mass exodus. Not only did none of that happen but several players players expressed public support of Woodson, on social media and even in senior speeches. Reneau and Mgbako didn't even test the NBA waters. Lots of schools have money. A paycheck alone isn't reason to stay at Indiana. So let's move past this silly notion that playing for Woodson has no appeal beyond a paycheck. Of course, players loved Crean, and still do, so you might be right about that much.

If you can't see the connection, you shouldn't be an administrator!

I never thought someone would use Kyle Hornsby to make me feel old but here I am.

There was a ball??😂

Yes, it's Mac's little bro...A little early, but his parents like us

Yeah this kid can make 3s and pass the ball. Doesn't seem to be as athletic as his brother but reasonably mobile. Probably throws a baseball like a Purdue big, though... 🤣

http://hoosierhuddle.com/hoosier-blog/veteran-linebacker-nahji-logan-commits-to-iu-after-solid-career-at-umass/2024/5/5 Nahji Logan, LB from UMass commits

I’m fine with him being out of the conference.

He covered IUPUI while Braylon's dad played there so they've known each other for a long time.

Not sure I've seen Rabjohns be so personable? (Not sure of the term to use here).. with an uncommitted recruit. 🤷‍♂️

Take a look at those 3 rosters and let me know what you would have done differently. you have to play the cards in your hand. Although, he does deserves some criticism of how the hand was built.

Disagree. Fundamentals are an integral part of a well coached team. Few players arrive in college from the aau circuit with solid fundamentals. You see it all the time watching CBB. The coaching staff gives direction on proper technique and the players should work on it on their own time. There should be accountability if they don’t improve

Agreed. I’m not sold on Woodson either but at the end of the day I just want to win. If we have a good season then I’m all for it. I’d rather be wrong about Woodson and the team has a great season than have the team do poorly just so I can tell everyone how right I was about the coach. But that’s just me.

To be fair, I am thinking some feel we would not have recruited well this off season if there was no NIL. Whereas KU, UNC, Kansas etc would. Our strong NIL helped us. Which I agree with. My point is "so what". I am glad for it. It doesn't reflect on Woodson either way. What will matter is what we do on the court next season. I am not sold on Woodson. I do, however, think some people's frustrations with him lead to a jaded view of everything. Even the positive. Let's just all.hope we have a huge bounce back season. If we do, we are all happy and it's all moot. If we struggle, I don't think there will be a divided fan base on what we feel should happen. I personally hope he flat out crushes next season. We shall see.

It’s going to be awfully boring all summer if we go back to debating Woody. It’s well trodden at this point. We all are counting on success this year. My view is that the success in the portal is a huge feather in our cap and will be a huge boon to us with regard to attracting the next coach. It’s all a win-win.

NIL budget might be necessary in this day and age. It's not sufficient. That is to say, any charges that Woodson only found success because he bought a team won't resonate with me at all. If there's one complaint that brings all sides together, it would be that last year's roster was flawed. There's lot of disagreement within that space, sure. For example, I think buddy ball actually worked well with Ware and Reneau, and the lineup efficiency numbers back that up. Our struggles came when we weren't getting anything from our backcourt, and especially when we had to dip into the bench. This year we're playing Reneau with another big again. But we've added serious talent in the backcourt, and depth on the wing. This portal season has been exciting not because we added talented pieces, but because of where we added them. Woodson may have been given a budget few programs could match, but how that budget got spent was on him. I think he picked some great targets, and now has a team positioned - on paper - to be much more competitive. If you're going to criticize Woodson for last year's roster - and I do - then any success he finds with this year's roster needs credited to him as well. Not passed off to the boosters or wherever else.

Not bad.

I will say that we bought our team and there's nothing wrong with it. I will also say that Woody deserved much of the the criticism for the play on the court and bad roster construction last season. I will also say that the false rumors flying around and leaks were straight up trash and an unnecessary low blow. So, it's time to put up or shut up for the coaching staff. Somebody put up a graph in another thread that said: as our roster stands right now, we have more returning power 6 production than ANY other team in the country. If Hurley had this roster I think many would be projecting us to be National Championship contenders. But here we are. Many are debating whether we have enough to make the 2nd weekend. I think that says a lot about how much faith fans and CBB analyst's have in Woody's ability to coach at a high level. I will be rooting for Woody to prove all the naysayers wrong, but he's going to need to accomplish a lot next year to silence all the noise. I don't want to hear any excuses about talent, depth, experience, lack of fundamentals, etc if we underperform, because at that point, the answer should be pretty clear. We have the pieces. Now we need results.

The program is a little bigger than all those people you mentioned. Anytime someone rolls out a "true fan" argument I just believe that they've run out of support for their position and have instead brought out a sledgehammer to silence critics. Woodson deserved most of the criticism he got last year. He has gone out and built a team that he was supposedly not able to build for the past 3 years because of reasons. There are indicators there that we are currently sitting on a Top 10 to 15 team on paper right now. So Woodson has a grand opportunity to shut people up with his coaching prowess next year. Anything less than 23 win is an abject failure with this roster and even 23 should be a "meh" enough result to really question if you want to extend a 67 year old coach (which you almost have to do after this year if you plan to keep him around). Put up or shut up time for these guys. They've been running their mouths since the end of the year either in public or behind burner accounts on social media. After all that talk they better have results.

Woody is lucky that he is coaching in the day and age of NIL and portaling. Also that he has a ton of high level donor support. If last year happened under Archie or another former coach they wouldn’t have a job. You play the way we did last year combine with losing your only damn recruit there would have been no coming back from that….no big $$ donors to buy your players for you…they would just bought you out instead. Imo what has happened this offseason is simply the result of IU being IU…and little about who is the coach. I think there are 100 other coaches that could be running this program and have similar results with the $$ that has been thrown at this program. I had little faith that Woody would be fired but I still see little to give me faith that he is the right guy to be running the program.

Yes, definitely. Well, probably. Certainly, maybe.

Larry Brown just to name one... Link QUESTION: What makes Mike a good coach? BROWN: “He’s a terrific human being. He’s knowledgeable as hell. I mean his grasp of the game is as good as any. “You know, one thing, I never ever designated a top assistant, second assistant or third assistant. Because I always wanted to be able to recommend anybody on any staff. “If anybody called me up and said, ‘Tell me what your coaches’ strengths are. Is he a defensive guy or an offensive guy?’ I always used to scratch my head, thinking, ‘This isn’t football.’ “I always liked the fact that I could tell people, ‘No, they’re just coaches. They can just coach.’ “But Woody, aside from being an unbelievable X and O guy, he’s got unbelievable people skills, which today I think is more important than Xs and Os.”

Picked up my wife yesterday after her stint on the Appalachian Trail. She hiked 153 miles in 9.5 days, an average of 16.2 per day. The pics are of her finishing up.