IUCrazy2

It shouldn't. Malik is really our only true big on the team. You can't have just one guy.

I see what you did there.

His NIL valuation was $900k, that is showing it dropped by almost half for some reason.

She has 330,000+ social media followers. TJD had less than 200,000. She has posted a few bikini pics and that helps probably but I went and looked her up really quick and at least on Instagram she isn't putting those types of things out there often. She isn't the Miami twins. When it comes to the social media aspect, pretty girls who show the goods are usually going to out perform guys and girls who aren't as attractive and don't. She also is or was dating an NBA player and has two college fan bases that got to know her which would spread her footprint online. ETA: Compare the number of followers for the ladies to the men. https://www.on3.com/nil/rankings/player/womens-nil-100/ https://www.on3.com/nil/rankings/player/nil-100/

Stats are for nerds and this is an example why. Yogi would have eaten Smith for lunch. The win share stat is lame as hell because it all revolves around your team winning and you being on the floor. Every Purdue player (and most Indiana players this year) has an inflated win share because of 1 guy on the team. Yogi>Smith and it isn't even close.

Agree. I don't think you look for potential in the portal. Potential is the HS recruiting.

Bad positioning, bunch of long rebounds from 3's being put up, we would lose a driver and Trayce and Race would come over to block the shot and no one rotated in for rebounding...all sorts of things.

Was that coaching philosophy though? Seems like we put up the shot and 1-3 were told to get back on D.

It is a potential issue but it is almost worth the risk at this point. There are several guys on the team that have had years to show something and the growth just hasn't been there. If we want to truly compete next year, I think we have to roll the dice on some new guys...probably a bunch of new guys.

People like the upsets and Cinderellas and this has definitely provided that.

Oh yeah, it always came into play but it was something that you couldn't be that blatant about. Even the most egregious payments we knew about in the under the table pay for play days amounted to $250,000? tops and that was for guys who likely would have gone straight to the pros if not for the NBA rules. Pack got paid $400k this year as the 3rd or 4th best player on his team and likely a very slim shot at playing in the NBA. Just looking at thia from a non-sports fan perspective, we have a huge student loan debt issue in this country and the institutions that basically cause a large portion of this debt are setting up schemes to get millions of dollars a year into the pockets of people whose endeavors are being subsidized (through school fees at most institutions) by people who end up saddled with this debt. And at the end of the day they aren't offering much more value to the school because everything they generate gets fed back into them. Big time college basketball and football programs are now minor league teams. There has been a blurry line that was maintained for a long time with the whole "amateur" thing. I think the line is gone so now the question becomes, what value do these add to the educational mission of the school and at what point are they detracting from that. And I also agree with Swarbrick that many of these NIL collectives are fraudulent. People are deducting "charitable" donations to fund their local minor league sports team. That isn't real charity.

Frustrating in that, I think it is validating approaches that I believe will eventually be the death of what made college basketball different from the pros. Taking away my irrational attachment to Indiana basketball, my rational side has a hard time squaring the true value of these programs to their respective schools anymore. There used to be the argument they drove donations to the school. I believe this validates that if you want to watch your team win, you need to get the Nijel Packs of the world money, not be donating to some vague athletic or academic fund. And most of these athletic programs lose money. Indiana being self sufficient and operating in the black most years is not the norm. I turn 45 later this year. Maybe my "Get off my lawn" phase is starting to kick in but I view Miami doing what they are doing as being just as yuck as what Kentucky did in the past. It is just out in the open now. ETA: And I forgot the selfish side that btownqb mentioned up above. This Thing was open for the taking, maybe not as much as Scott May and Alan Henderson injuries, but that Johnson injury will have people playing some what ifs about this year given the Final 8 teams left right now.

Not 1 #1 seed left in the Elite 8. Has that ever happened? Seeing this tournament play out is just frustrating from so many angles.

College athletics as we have known it will be destroyed in 10 years IMO. It will be the two super conferences operating minor league teams.

I expect 6 or 7 new faces. Cupps and Newton and then 4-5 portal guys or guys who decommitted and became available. (Race, TJD, Kopp, Duncomb, Geronimo, JHS, and maybe one other).

Geronimo. We don't need to tip toe around it. This should have been a breakout type of year for him. He ended the previous year on an up note. There were injuries that afforded playing time and he couldn't get on the court. I think there was the expectation (hope) going into the year that he was going to be a contributor off the bench and that just didn't materialize...like at all.

Wasn't that around the time that Grandma got into the sauce and started posting on Twitter? I figured when that happened that the writing was on the wall.

Being honest, how long do you guys think that kind of spending is doable?

Galloway, Leal, Gunn, and Banks are the 4 I would bet are coming back and feel comfortable. Reneau worries me a little because I think JHS is likely to go pro and homesickness could come into play without his buddy here. The rest I think greater than 50% chance they move on.

Sheehey vibes for me. And that is a good thing.

He'll probably make both our teams miserable for 2 years.

How would he compare to Duncomb and Reneau and Banks? That is probably his competition on the IU team at the moment.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/247sports.com/Article/College-basketball-transfer-portal-Ball-States-Payton-Sparks-garnering-substantial-interest-207019799/Amp/ Was 40% from 3 (but only took 5...)

Looks like the Sparks kid from Ball State is back in the portal. He went in and then pulled out last year....could he maybe be one of the guys that wanted to come here last year but we couldn't make room? (Sorry I know nothing official linking him to IU but seemed like there was smoke around him last year). https://247sports.com/Player/Payton-Sparks-46103128/ https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/player/_/id/4898008/payton-sparks Sounds like Ohio State and some SEC schools are sniffing around. He seems like the type of athlete we probably feel we were missing this year. Also hit 40% from 3 last year. Not volume but he would potentially be a court spreader. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.saturdaydownsouth.com/college-basketball/payton-sparks-ball-state-center-transfer-hearing-from-3-sec-schools-per-report/amp/

If he can put the ball in the hole from deep without having to have 10 feet of open space and be perfectly set, I am in.