HoosierDom

So far NIL has been in place for about a year and during that time we have picked up 3 5-star recruits, we've got next year's number 2 coming to campus, and my guess is we hang on to our all-American big man. Too soon to say for sure, but it seems like it might help us.

I don't agree. There are small money deals out there that are actually business decisions, but the real money here is just boosters supporting their teams. Just as donations to an athletic program have never been about return on investment, so to NIL deals are not about making money. Donors want their teams to win, they want to feel like they're a real part of that winning and they want to be treated like big-shots.

It would be very easy to set these up as separate monthly contracts that dry up if the player leaves. At the end of the day, this isn't going to be a big deal. There are plenty of coaches that don't usually use their 13 scholarships, I don't see much value in going beyond 13 on a regular basis. There might be the occasional guy that it makes sense for, but there aren't 14 balls on the court, so this won't get used much. I could see it being a bigger deal in football, though.

Yeah, because if it's known for anything, the NCAA is known for quick and effective rule making.

This guy and Hood-Schifino seem to lack the elite athleticism that would quickly get them to the league, so they are either going to be very good 3-4 year players, or, if they do make it to the league sooner than that, it will because they are great college players, not merely good players with potential. TJD probably fits in that category as well, and it's exactly the kind of guy we should be after.

I'm trying to get on board with this (and I have never been terribly down on Kopp, I think he had an okay year and is a good guy to have for 15 minutes a game off the bench), but, looking at the game logs, I'm having a hard time seeing when the bulb went on. He didn't score at all in the tournament, missed a lot of shots against Iowa, was not existent against Illinois. Was solid against Michigan and Purdue, but I'm not seeing anything to suggest next year will be better than this year.

The negativity comes from the fact that coach didn't feel like he could play him at all last year. Even when we had 7 scholarship players available, coach still didn't think he was worth a try. Now, if he's back next year then coach must have hope and think he will help the team more than some transfer, so, if he's back, I'll regain a bit of optimism. Right now, I don't have a lot.

I'm not seeing anybody suggest it's a scandal, merely that we have some degree of interest. Not page 1 news, but still news.

While certainly against the spirit of the rules, I am fairly certain that is not against the letter of the rules. The bigger problem is just that the kind of big we will need if TJD leaves (one that can start from day one) is likely only going to come here if TJD leaves.

My guess is that it's more like monthly and they won't be offered another month if they leave.

I have to assume that both Lander and Rob leaving means that X is staying; seems like we would have to work hard to keep at least one option at pg. I'm sure Rob would have stayed if Woodson pushed hard to get him to - which he would have it he wasn't sure X was staying.

I can't speak to how many techs he got while at Pitt, but it wasn't much of a problem here.

Rabjohns seems to have supported Coach Woodson - I would think that would put him in good graces with Coach and others who support Coach. Assuming everything Rabjohns said came from legit information, I generally think the things he says do, then I have no problem with it at all. It's his job to report what he knows about IU basketball - that's what he did. There is a line to be drawn where things about a player's personal life don't need to come out, and a less forgiving line where things about a coach's personal life don't need to come out, but this wasn't about Fife the person, it was about Fife the coach.

I haven't heard people say this about him. I don't know much about him, but the numbers I have seen don't seem to back that up.

For the most part, I think the extent that creaning ever happened was greatly over-stated. The one exception being when Patterson (do I have the right guy?) was forced out after summer session. I think the current situation is different though: telling a guy he has to go after 4 years in college, even if he is eligible for a 5th, is perfectly okay in my book.

This talk of the tourney being a disaster for the BIG is a bit silly. DPU did a good job of breaking it down above. Put another way, the seeds predicted we would win 1 game in the play in round: we won one game in the play in round. Seeds predicted we would win 6 games in the first round: we won 6 games in the first round. Seeds predicted we would win 3 games in the second round, and we only won 2 games in the second round. It hasn't been a great tournament for us, but it's been just about what should have been predicted. This year's performance, even it actually was bad, will not influence how many teams we get in next year. There is no evidence it has ever worked that way, and lots of evidence that it is does not. As it should be.

I hate some of these official reviews. The Purdue guy was probably fouled, but I'm okay with the refs saying let's let it go since it's their ball anyway. If it happens to have hit the Purdue guy last, then you have to call the foul. Which you can't on review.

How do they expend so little effort trying to get the ball to Cockburn? Their defensive strategy is literally to tackle him, they don't even try to stop him and Illinois jacks terrible 3s instead.

I think Wisconsin has a very favorable draw to get to next weekend. As do we.

Watching Hunter Dickinson attempt to close out at the 3 point line really drives home how nice it would be to have big men who can shoot.

The big guy with a knee brace doesn't seem mobile enough to stay with TJD. I'm looking for a lot of lobs to him for easy buckets.

Going in to the half up 5 or 6 is not my dream scenario, but it's not a given that Wyoming even scores that many in the second half. If we calm down and run our offense, we will be more than fine.

This looks about how I was expecting it to look. They can't play with us. We need to settle down a little on offense, but they can't do the things they want to do on offense and we have a lot of mismatches to take advantage of when we have the ball.

Let me start off by saying, I had never heard of this Maldonado kid before Sunday, so I won't pretend to know how his game translates, but I look at all of the transfers in and out of the BIG this past year. You get a lot of mid-major stars coming in and averaging 6ppg when they get to the big time. Then you get a kid like Loyer, who sat the bench for MSU for 3 years, and is all of a sudden the leading scorer on 10th seed Davidson. I think the lesson there is most of these mid-major kids are just outclassed by power conference players. These kids spend their time in the gym too, so they could hit shots and obviously upsets happen all the time in March, but if we come to play and they don't shoot out of their minds, I think we win this comfortably.

It seems as though when Arizona blew these guys out, they used swarming defense to create turnovers and got out and ran. I think we showed that we can do the same in the 2nd half of the Michigan game - hope Galloway and Geronimo get some early run together and see if we can make them feel the heat.