Maedhros

If you're already at the Bottleworks, duckpin bowling at Pins Mechanical is a lot fun. I went there for my 40th, with my wife and my mother who flew into town, and all three of us had a great time. Just a few doors down from there, the Fountain Room restaurant is on my list of places to try. Could be a nice option if Tony's doesn't work out, or even for brunch. Definitely take some time to walk Mass Ave. All sorts of great places to eat and shop. Louvino is a nice place for wine and small plates, never had a bad dish there. Silver in the City is a fun shop for jewelry and novelties, all by local artists and vendors. My current wallet is from there, and it's made from the canvas roof of the old Hoosier Dome. Lots of great breweries nearby, like Metazoa, St Joseph and Taxman. Nicky Blaine's is an upscale cocktail bar, if that's more her speed. Happy to offer more suggestions, if there's anything you're looking for.

Potentially some good news for us today, as UConn picks up a commitment from Ahmad Nowell, 6'0" CG ranked 36 in the class.

I bought tickets to a different sort of beer festival. It's called Hops and Coaster Drops and takes place at Indiana Beach. It closes to the public for the festival, but the rides are still open and available while samples are being served. Sounds like a risky combination but I'm excited to give it a try.

My favorite entry on this list: a team with six NBA players, ranked 1st for all but four weeks that season, and still the only team to finish 1st in both offense and defense in the KenPom era... Your 2002 Duke Blue Devils

Ah. I get it. I do. I'm strongly against anyone proselytizing at work, and that's exponentially so coming from anyone in a position of authority. But that's a categorically different complaint than saying Clif's training is directly responsible for player injuries. For that charge to stick, you'd need data on frequency and injury type to demonstrate there's something unusual going on at Indiana. So far you've just had anecdotes and vibes. Thus the pushback.

Correllation is not causation, and even if it were it's hard to see much correllation there. Off the top of my head I can recall season changing injuries to OG Anunoby, James Blackmon, Jordie Hulls, Verdell Jones and Collin Hartman before Clif ever arrived in Bloomington.

😲

If it's just regular season, 20 is a very reasonable number. I expect we'll take some lumps in the non-con. We have four marquee games and splitting those would be a success. Losing three would be disappointing but not a surprising result, given the competition. From there, even a 12-8 finish in the Big Ten only gets you to 20 wins. Ideally we'd get a couple postseason wins to get us over that hump, but those can be hard to come by. I like the potential for this year's team. The conference schedule also helps. But while I like the talent, we're also unproven and young at a lot of positions. If we reach our ceiling, it's not going to happen right away. Stub your toe a few times, like in those December Big Ten games, and 21 games becomes less of a gimme. I voted 21-25 because I included postseason wins. But the path I laid out to 20 regular season wins seems as likely as not to me. FWIW, Bart Torvik currently projects us to finish the regular season 20-11; 11-9 in the Big Ten, tied with a handful of others.

Josh Smith didn't get to "one", but he will always be a part of the IU basketball family.

I got a chuckle out of that tweet. I saw it the day after the wife and I went to the store and saw a college age kid being taught how to shop for groceries by his parents. Real basic stuff, like how to even use the self checkout register and how to bag. My first thought was that he really should have known all this by that age, but in times like that I try to remember this XKCD comic. That day he got to be one of the 10,000.

That's a very dangerous spot. I keep hearing there are plans to develop an overpass and the sooner the better.

Agreed. I was in a bad accident once when I needed to turn left across two lanes of traffic. A car in the near lane paused to let me through, but an SUV in the far lane hit me at full speed. Likely the SUV didn't see me until I was already crossing their lane. It's easy to imagine a similar situation here, and why the investigators would determine the accident unavoidable. I cycle around town and I always prefer to stop for traffic rather than have traffic stop for me. For one, a car is going to be through and clear of any crossing much quicker than I will. When I stop I'm not disrupting traffic by behavior unexpectedly or forcing others to stop. And most importanly of all, I know I'm the one that would pay the price in any collision so I'm not putting myself in front of any car if I can avoid it. Hate this for the McCaffery kid, and for the family of the deceased. No matter what I think of the father, this is something you never want to see happen.

Only true when a decision is made. This race isn't over.

Jumping in as a Braves fan to remark on how insane this is. Best team in baseball this year, and set to be that way for a while: C Sean Murphy - signed through 2029 1B Matt Olson - signed through 2030 2B Ozzie Albies - signed through 2027 SS Orlando Arcia - signed through 2026 3B Austin Riley - signed through 2033 CF Ronald Acuna - signed through 2028 CF Michael Harris II - signed through 2032 Every one of those guys is an All Star this year, except Harris who was ROY last season and is still just 22. It's been great watching this team rake, AND knowing this core will be together for another 4 or 5 years at least.

It's fun to guess, so I'll give it a try. The first tweet, DMV, I'll bet he's hinting at a visit from Patrick Ngongba, from Fairax. Indiana has been talking for a while with him to get something set up. For a Florida visit, I'll guess Marcus Allen. Obviously we're in on a bunch of Montverde kids, but Marcus is from Miami originally, like Malik Reneau. Marcus is also AAU teammates of Liam McNeeley. Of course, I'd love if Adam were hinting at some commitments, like from Jaeden Mustaf, originally of powerhouse Dematha HS, like our own Victor Oladipo. Just doesn't seem likely that we've got two imminent, giving the guys we're in on.

Oh Lord. It's Field of 68, so I'm not ruling out that there might be ameliorating context and that quote was pulled to make headlines, but on its face it's ridiculous. Wes Miller just signed an extension to take his average salary to just about $3 million. If he feels he's being overworked, he's welcome to drop down a level, maybe even to the high school ranks. You probably get an off-season then, though you might also have to teach a health class or two. Ambition took him to where he is now, the head coach of a power conference school. He's being well rewarded for that ambition, better than many see in a lifetime. Playing the victim now is incomprehensible.

Committed to Kentucky.

If true, it serves as a remarkable demonstration of the diminished political capital Calipari has in this late stage of his Kentucky tenure.

Of course, that also means your bottle is empty, which is not ideal. 😜 Spotted Cow is one of my whales. Not that it's exclusive like a Dark Lord, where it's only one day a year and you have to be there in person to get it, but New Glarus requires a trip to Wisconsin so it's well off the beaten path for me to buy and try.

It's certainly more fun to go back and read this one than all the early optimism in the Archie Miller threads. No matter how this era ends up, watching Indiana play basketball is fun again.

I saw this in the replies to Ant Wright's tweet. The design is so damn beautiful, I'm just as stunned as B1G Hoosier that these aren't already a thing. Make this the main uniform for all I care. It's absolute fire.

Yes. Getting alerts about the air quality on my phone. It's nothing like the pictures I'm seeing from New York, but it's visible in the air here as a grey haze.

Can anyone think of a sequel that was actually better than the original? I'm looking forward to seeing the next Spiderverse movie in the theaters. But the first movie is one of my favorites so I'm prepping myself ahead of time that this new one won't be as good as the original. That's just too high a standard. I felt the same way about How To Train Your Dragon. Genuinely, even as a 40 year old man, that's my favorite movie. The two sequels were fine, but couldn't reach the heights of the first. I guess everyone acknowledges Empire Strikes Back as better than Star Wars. And the Dark Knight was better than Batman Begins. Not sure there are many others.

Don't think there's anything to it. Alec Lasley tweeted Anthony Walker is planned to arrive later:

It's not particularly random. It's between your win over Penn St and the loss at Indiana. Purdue was 22-1 before that date, 7-5 after. Pick February 3rd or 4th instead, the story is the same. 53rd isn't awful. Admittedly it's better than Indiana was over that stretch. But it's also quite a gap from being the 13th ranked defense up until that date. Something changed. We can debate whether Purdue's freshmen guards hit a wall, as freshmen are wont to do, or whether water found it's level. It's probably at least a little of both. But whatever your thoughts on the backcourt, I think an equal concern is the frontcourt. I think it took all season for teams to figure out how to attack a team with Edey in the middle. But they got there. Now the blueprint is out. I'll predict Purdue finishes ranked closer to 53rd in defense than 10th, which is where Torvik currently projects for 2024.