Maedhros

Swartz is announcing Sept 5, so the IU visit on the 15th is no longer happening. Hard to think he'll announce for IU, given that.

I'm agnostic on most of these changes. The one change I'd like to see is the move to four quarters. The pace of the woment's game is so much better. All the stops and starts in the men's game are exhausting. I'm absolutely against advancing the ball after a timeout. I don't understand how this makes any sense at all, or why it's done at other levels. In what other sport is a timeout allowed to change the entire geometry of the game? It'd be like if after a touchback in football, the receiving team used a time out and got to start at the oppent's 25 instead of their own. College basketball's most thrilling moments have included the urgency of getting the ball up the court. Conversely, it felt cheap as hell last year when Iowa just had to inbound the ball to the wing and throw up a prayer to knock off our women's team. I'd also like to ban the charge, but at least they've taken steps to make it less common. Change the signal for a charge to a silly dance, or an L on your forehead, something goofy like that and maybe college refs won't find it so fun to call anymore.

Archie was in over his head at Indiana - most people would be! - so I don't want to necessarily pile on. But I think his recruiting was an issue, even within the state. Talent evaluation was a big part of that. Archie did great to land Trayce and Romeo, no doubt! But his record is spotty after that. Give him credit for landing Lander, share some blame along with the recruiting services for not recognizing the kid would struggle transitioning to college. Having Lander reclassify was an awful decision, seemingly born of a need to get talent into the program quick. After that, none of his other in state recruits were top 100 kids. Those were some lean prep classes for the state, but still some gems to be found. Yet we took Damezi Anderson over Aaron Henry, Anthony Leal and Trey Galloway over Jaden Ivey and Nijel Pack. You look at who we got, and it's like Archie knew fans wanted him to recruit the state, so he started at the top of the rankings and worked his way down. No apparent thought to roster building or eye toward development. As BGleas noted, it's not that Archie rocked recruiting the state. It's that he missed on damn near all his out of state targets and had to take what he could get at home. It's easy to recruit the state when you're the only big fish swimming in some of these ponds. I like the Bill Self quote, that if you're not hearing No a lot on the recruiting trail, you're not targeting the right caliber of guys. Of course, you do have to hear Yes a few times as well. Still need to see Woodson bring this class home. Hopefully that starts soon with Liam.

I wonder what odds you could get on whether he makes that Texas visit.

Lots of pushback on that graphic. There's danger in numbers without context:

I have no grievance with ESPN, I just think it's a bad product. I only ever watch to see a specific game important to me. Every time I do ESPN is constantly running promotions for the rest of their schedule, or talking about players not involved in the current game. They constantly want me to be interested in something other than the game I came there to watch. It's as though they want to be the channel you put on in the background and leave on all day, the channel of airports and barbershops. That's why the current thing is never as important as the next thing; they already have you and now that want you to stay. That's not my viewing habit, and certainly not worth $35 a month to me.

Sounds like it 😂

Just picked up my own pack from the Payless at 116th & Allisonville on the north side. Now, can I make it last a week until kickoff?

This is why the "reversible jacket" joke coming from Purdue fans is so silly. Lots of sports fans out there who didn't go to college, or to one with a high major program. Those folks could choose to be fans of any school they want. They chose Notre Dame for football and Indiana for basketball. Because those were the most successful programs, and the biggest brands, when those fans were choosing their allegiance. It's actually a remarkable self own. Every time they bring this up it's an admission that Purdue has no appeal among independent sports fans in the state. If Purdue had a better program in either basketball or football, maybe Purdue would be on those reversible jackets. But they're not.

You don't hit on every recruit, and The Movement class missed on more than most. But landing an All Big Ten point guard who became the program's all time assist leader is a big deal, a bigger hit than most classes have. Both things can be true. Would I throw out The Movement class if it meant getting rid of Yogi? I'm not sure I would.

Earlier this month I met up with three old friends for a boys trip to Bourbon Country. I'm not a regular whiskey drinker, but went with some friends who are. Spent a day in Frankfort, did tour and tastings at Buffalo Trace, Castle & Key and Woodford Reserve. I picked up some Bourbon Cream from Buffalo Trace, that pairs with root beer to make a wonderful float. Also grabbed some gin at Castle & Key; maybe it's because it was different than all the bourbon we were drinking, but they mixed us a great gin & tonic on the tour. I'd say Buffalo Trace puts the most emphasis on having a great tour and gift shop, but Woodford and Castle had their own charm, nestled in the hills on the south side of the city. Castle & Key was probably the neatest experience, it's literally a castle. Imagine Kentucky's Great Gatsby building his own novelty place for parties, then over a century later someone decides to buy it and get it running again. Definitely worth a visit.

Hey '24 recruits! 👀

Nah. Easy to talk like that when you win the conference every year and have a clear path to the playoff. But booting teams like Indiana changes that dynamic. Once they get to the CFP and play their peers, Ohio State is 3-4. 27-28 in their bowl history. Against the SEC, OSU falls to 5-13 all time, and just 2-12 against them in bowl games. What Buckeye fan is going to be happy with seasons of .500 ball, or worse, just so the athletic department can pocket a bigger revenue share? Fans don't care about finances, they care about wins. And that revenue isn't going to lead to wins when it's the teams beating you that you're now splitting even shares. Besides, there's just not much financial benefit, if any, to booting an Indiana. In the streaming age that's millions of subscribers you're cutting off when you don't have to, and inventory just being tossed away. Ohio State can keep those subscribers and the wins by having Indiana in the conference. Easy choice.

Mikayla Blake's, 6' guard ranked 16 in the class by ESPN/Hoopgurlz. https://twitter.com/goodmansport/status/1687990840751439872

Off the board to Nebraska

Someone let us know Scalia's status as soon as you hear it. I'm real excited for this team, depth could be a real difference over last season, when it was largely a rotation of just six. That depth gets tested quick if Scalia's out for significant time.

No, we don't, and he probably wouldn't. Between stints at Ball State, Jarron also spent a year in the SEC at Missouri. He averaged 30 minutes a game in conference play, with nine points and four rebounds per game. His efficiency was rough, with a slash line of 38/33/68, but that's more production than we've ever seen from Anthony Leal after three seasons at the high major level. I'm not terribly in favor of adding Jarron because it's tough to find anything he does particularly well. But as a depth piece, let a lone a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency type, he'd give us more than we have now.

I was born September 25, exactly nine months after Christmas, so... yeah.

Fantastic news. I'm always happy to have terrific wings nearby.

All celebrity requires a platform. If Steph Curry were one of the top actuaries in the world, I wouldn't know his name. Instead, he's one of the top basketball players in the world, so I do. And because I do, Steph Curry has market value.

NIL is just an acknowledgement that players have value in the market, and that the NCAA cannot act to prevent players from accessing that value. Steph Curry has value to Subway and so he appears in their ads. Malik Reneau has value to Big Woods, and he gets a burger named after him. But Malik has more value to Indiana Basketball than to Big Woods, or to anyone else. When Ke'lel Ware or Mackenzie Mgbako pick Indiana, the institution that stands to benefit the most financially from that decision is Indiana Basketball. Yet the one institution that has chosen not to compensate Ware or Mgbako is Indiana Basketball. For a while that worked. NCAA member instituions could pocket that excess value for themselves. Athletic Department revenue could flow to coaches, staff, even other departments within the university. Now the rules have changed. Players expect to see that value they produce come to them directly. Schools have to adjust accordingly. Incentives matter. Those unhappy with the current state of things often focus on players picking schools based on the highest bidder, as though that were the problem. But schools & coaches respond to incentives as well, and both are incentivized financially to land the best players. Those incentives don't go away through the NCAA mandating their ideal of the amateur student-athlete, which is how you get "cheating". Nor do they go away by the NCAA trying to make a distinction between "good" compenstation and "bad" in the NIL era. So long as the NCAA continues to prohibit their member institutions from compensating players directly, those institutions are going to have to find ways to do so indirectly. There's too much value involved, for both parties, when a player makes the decision to pick one school over the other. In the NIL era, that's why collectives exist. That's why you get fundraising emails asking you to donate to the collective instead of just to the university. The school can't pay the player, so the school would like you to pay the player, and the school hopes to benefit from that transaction. It's a weird farce, but as long as the NCAA enacts rules that stand in the way of the market, the market is going to do what it always does and find a way around that obstacle.

Y'all know that Kentucky has the top recruiting class in the country for 2023, right? With three top ten kids and another ranked top 20? Because you're talking like Cal can't get talent anymore.

For me, I knew him from 10 Things I Hate About You. My first thought seeing him was, uncharitably, that he's gotten fat, but that happens to more than a few of us in our 40s. Lots of "hey, it's that guy!" reactions for me during Oppenheimer, like Tim DeKay as a senator, or even Josh Hartnett, who I don't think I've seen in anything since Penny Dreadful. It even took me a few scenes to realize I was looking at Robert Downey Jr. Good movie, but perhaps half an hour too long. Lots of exposition in the second half, when the film has to resort to monologue as a device to tell you what's happened. There's an aide who doesn't even get a name in the credits who has to stand in as the audience surrogate to basically get the story dumped on him. The film wants to be about two things, the witch hunt against suspected communists, and the morality of researching and developing the bomb. I found the latter more interesting, as the former has been done in any number of previous movies. Would have been a tighter movie if Nolan had focused on one or the other, instead of wanting to have his twist.

Guys. It was a grammar joke. The word "apart" was used incorrectly.