BobSaccamanno

The portal should be a plus for IU. You can prune the roster as you see fit and fill as many needs as you feel like it. Priller wouldn’t be able to absorb a scholly for four years today. With the amount of money involved at IU, with a good coach and proper infrastructure this can be a major benefit. It’s a pity we blew it last year but hopefully as a program we will reap rewards in the future.

https://www.si.com/college/indiana/basketball/indiana-basketball-in-contact-with-belmont-transfer-jakobi-gillespie

I saw that. I thought they got hosed. Money talks and that’s not ok. It’s sport. If you don’t have fairness, you have nothing. The NCAA has zero integrity.

Hopefully it’s to fine tune and confirm heavy scouting where the heavy lifting has been done. There’s no reason why you couldn’t have dossiers on high school kids and then follow through on them year after year when you’re in a portal era. You could easily have a full time admin guy (“gm”) with a staff of grad assistants who are dirt cheap but want to pay their dues to become a scout. You would be scouring every conference in the country for the few bubbling up who are worthy of discussion. Make your broad lists and whittle it down. If you’re identifying guys now off their basketball reference page it’s way too late. The competition would have mash ups ready on how the player would be used. This isn’t 1985 where the school owns the player.

You missed teaching big men to go up straight instead of reaching with their hands and committing fouls.

I agree that I’m not in favor of NET relative to head to head. Having said that, as a program it’s your obligation to play the rules as they are set up. Get your efficiencies way up. Learn your lesson.

I’d have to look at their stats but alot of those guys really know how to play and we have not had enough of those guys. IMO

No doubt. IU doesn’t run a well schooled system where you can take savvy guys who can come together like Hoiberg or Chris Collins or even Underwood does. That’s the opposite of IU. Throw it into the post and never see it again, no ball or player movement, etc etc. The hope is just fielding a team that’s respectable in terms of Ws and Ls even if the metrics are bad. My main hope, barring a miracle, would be for the program to build up enough talent that it’s easier for the next staff. It would be nice if we landed a core for the ‘25 class.

Yeah the first thing I’m looking at is 3 PT and FT shooting and then you have to make sure they can defend. Some of these guys who can rebound from the wing would be nice.

As teams drop out of the tourney, more winning players will become available.

He’d kick XJ’s ass 9 out of 10 times.

Not just that, unless they are a lifetime fan having it ingrained into them, you’d have to question the priorities of anyone choosing IU. These are the types of guys we’d roll in the past and now that’s us.

I agree at certain positions but it will be heavily dependent on scouting. You don’t want Parker Stewart but you do want the right guys but the staff has to dig deep. Personally I would not compromise on defense. Presumably we already have very detailed analysis on anybody who was a possibility for the portal so that we wouldn’t need to scramble. With an excellent process we are set right now to be decisive on who we pursue hard and in the right order. We need everything but high end point guard is mandatory. No shot without that.

Why didn’t IU look at Heidbreder when he hit the portal? Is it too late now that he’s at Clemson? Doesn’t he look like exactly what we need? If I’m right about any of this, add him to the list.

If Meyer can defend at this level, he looks like he would be a very good get. I’m glad our staff is finally digging a little deeper in their scouting. 15 points a game on 40% from 3 as a freshman. I would want to be reassured on defense but if you bring in 3 guards and he is one of them, that could work. We need a high end point guard though.

I don’t think it’s good enough. He came in promising big ten championships and competing for National championships. Those are his own words. So next year will be his fourth year to get to that level. That’s a fair period of time in the NIL era with his budgets. If he doesn’t get there, then he will have failed at his own expectation.

Lol that made my day

He will do better somewhere else, book it. It wasn’t going to happen here and that is damning to player development here.

Let’s clear the decks. Hopefully 2-3 assistants are sent packing too. The Admins. Get them out. Kenya Hunter has presided over a ton of mis-reads of talent across two head coaches. Re-do the entire program.

Foster. 29.7% from 3 with a large sample size.

Let’s say we get six new players. There should be no more than 2 juniors. The most logical would be to bring 2 juniors, 2 sophs, and 2 freshmen. Dolson will need to micromanage the roster makeup so the new staff in 2025 has a chance. PG SG CG SF SF Rim protector Free throw shooting is a prerequisite. Player skills should be complementary and not redundant.

Class. Love Tominaga. My favorite player. Go get ‘em. Very likable team.

Guys like Domask and Ace Baldwin and many others have proven that good mid major players can fill very good roles up here. I hope our staff has a much better handle on good, productive college players instead of the Anthony Walkers. We were not involved with some of these guys but our competition was running circles around us in player identification.

Agree. On the NBA issue, we would all like to have some of that talent. But since the beginning of time there have been dominant college players who aren’t high level NBA players. I haven’t gotten over Luke Harangody and Matt Howard. Great college players. We might have been happy that we signed Noah Vonleh but he wasn’t as good in college as those guys by comparison. I want the right mix. We have lacked that smart, tough, savvy Indiana boy. We produce them like it’s an assembly line yet they aren’t being recruited by IU. Sounds like Benter is in that mold. It’s sheer insanity.

I think player development is 100% an issue and so is managing the trappings of being big man on campus which at IU is a special animal. But we have consistently been mis-identifying in state talent for 20 years to the point that it’s not just luck or coincidence. It’s not being handled right, and this far pre-dates Woody. It’s not just in-state failures even though that’s the most acute issue. Foreign talent acquisition is also a zero. We need somebody in our player personnel group who needs to study Canada, Europe, Australia, etc Heck, isn’t Tominaga literally from Japan? I was reading about a 6’10 European kid in Canada. Of course we aren’t listed with him. We probably don’t know about him. It’s a department failure. Yes, we spend a ton on recruiting. This year we have exactly zero recruits. The process needs to be overhauled. When the head coach doesn’t get out and look at players, doesn’t know the names of on-campus visitors, etc., you need a player personnel department that is out looking at talent, figuring out that Conwell is better than Gunn even if Kyle Neddenriep doesn’t know it. He’s a writer, not a scout.