Kdug

Of the guys ranked in the 16-25 range (Tucker is ranked 20th) from last years 247 composite, only 1 played more than 60% of his teams minutes. You can think whatever you want, but outside the top 10 or so guys, it’s very common for freshman to come off the bench as 20ish minutes per game type of players. He’ll get minutes, but I sure hope we’re not relying on him to start unless he has a college ready game - which most freshman don’t.

Contrary to popular belief, there are a lot of top 20-30 recruits that do not start or play starter minutes. There were only 19 high major freshman who played more than 60% of their teams minutes. About half of those weren’t top 20-30 guys, but instead were guys on bad teams.

There’s only 5 starting spots. If IU gets Ballo, Tucker will almost certainly be coming off the bench.

To me a shooter is someone who can knock down threes at a 35%+ clip with volume - i.e. 3 or 4 three attempts per game. Basically someone defenses have to respect so they can’t just pack the paint. In my opinion, if you don’t have at least two guys (and ideally three or more) who can do that, spacing starts to become a major problem. Bad spacing makes every other facet more difficult on offense. I’d prefer shooters who are multi-dimensional like Sears, but I wouldn’t expect anyone to put up those types of numbers or be that dynamic. If you go the Hulls sharpshooter route, they have to be more in the 40% to 45%+ range to make up for the lack of production in other areas.

I could see top 25 if things go well with that group. But I can also see how things could potentially go poorly. The highest 3% of those starters from last year is surprisingly Malik at 33.3%. I think Rice, Carlyle, and Mack all could/should be good shooters. But none of them have proven it yet, and I could see that being a big weakness if those 3 don’t improve to the mid 30% range.

Agreed. Not sure what his defense looks like, so that could change things, but his offensive numbers were poor last year from an efficiency standpoint. Seems like he was asked to carry a heavy load when he played, so maybe that played a part in it. But I don’t see him as a lock to start.

You mean the style of play that hasn’t won a championship since 2000? Yeah, I don’t mind if we play a different style than that. And let’s not pretend like the P12 is some mid major. Yes it’s typically slightly worse than the big ten, but it’s still a multi bid league that has really good teams. Again, WSU was significantly better than IU and at least half of the other big ten schools. He’ll be able to handle the big ten just fine.

WSU’s defense would’ve ranked 5th in the big ten. I don’t really care what the PAC 12 as a whole looks like, with Rice we’re getting a guy who played on a tourney team that had a solid defense. Fwiw, IU’s defense (and offense) would’ve been in the bottom half of the pac 12.

Washington State ranked 26th in defensive efficiency last year while IU ranked 84th. Playing some PAC 12 level defense would be a huge improvement over whatever we were doing last year.

Fantastic get. Young player who was one of the best players on a tourney team. Needs to improve his 3%, but he shot 81% from the line and shot just under 4 threes per game. Both are signs that there is room for improvement there. Using Bart Torvik’s PPRG stat, which measure offensive efficiency weighted for playing time and usage, the only IU guard since the start of Archie’s tenure who has had a better season than Rice’s freshman season was Romeo. This is the type of impact player we need.

One thing I like to look at with young players who don’t jump out with their 3 point percentage is FT%. That’s usually a good indicator on shooting potential. Rice shot 81% while Carlyle shot 78% from the line. There have been enough bad shooting IU teams recently for me to be at the see it to believe it phase for shooting. But I can certainly see how it could work with those two if their FT% is any indication of the quality of their shot. Also, Malik actually shot more threes than Ware last year in a similar number of minutes. I think he needs to continue to improve there, but he at least was willing to take them and hit them at an ok clip. I definitely understand the skepticism on shooting. But at least we appear to be adding guards this year unlike last year. That alone is an improvement.

Jones and Edey alone made up 44% of your scoring. I wouldn’t say you’re returning a lot of production with those two, especially Edey, leaving.

Yeah, UConn’s strategy was to play Edey relatively straight up, but not let anyone else get going. And they sure didn’t let anyone else get going. PU minus Zach Edey went 9/29 fgs (31%) for 23 points. The crazy thing is that was kind of just a regular performance from UConn. They were just that much better than everyone else.

Fletcher Loyer flops more than any player I can recall in recent memory. One of the least likable players in all of college basketball.

Based on the rankings, mock drafts, etc, seems like the consensus is McNeeley might be better, but I don’t think it’s that significant of a difference between the two. Feel like it just hurts losing his outside shooting which we’ll need to address in the portal now.

MR would have to improve from the outside for that to work well offensively imo. Feels like Williams would be able to replace Ware’s production on the boards and defensively - maybe a small step up defensively. But he’d be a step back on offense, and would cause even worse spacing problems since Ware could shoot well from 3. Feels like that’d be leaning in even more to the 2 post sets which I’m not a fan of.

Truthfully, I don’t think DQ would’ve fit well on next years team. I don’t think him and MR would compliment each others games very well, so he would’ve only made sense as a backup to MR imo.

KC shot 35% in conference from 3. Seems like he might have had a slow start like Mgbako. He shot 4.3 3s per game which isn’t crazy low, especially considering his minutes.

I think good vs bad is all relative. I always think of it as good/bad relative to other big ten coaches since those would be who we directly compete every year against. When factoring in the resources each school has, I’d say Woodson is probably in the bottom 4 or 5 at this point.

This is great news. I really hope we get to see Mbagko at the 4 some next year. Feel like that’d really open up things for him and Malik. Now that we got the guys we hoped for back, the real work begins. Need to add a lot of impact in the portal to go along with the returning guys.

Holmes is taking over in crunch time

They’re making Eddy guard the perimeter, which is exactly what everyone should do. Edey is a very poor defender if you get him out of the paint.

I’m not someone who thinks May should be our top choice. But making a knee jerk reaction because of an OT loss is a terrible way to judge a coach. Whatever your opinion of him was before this game shouldn’t have changed.

Not sure on the buyout. What would be your threshold? Again, using this year’s Nebraska as a proxy. They are an 8 seed, tied for third in the conference, and 26th in kenpom. I don’t see how you could look at a year like that and move on - unless there was some really fluky stuff, the recruiting momentum was still poor, and we’re still consistently getting blown out. That’d be the highest IU kenpom rating since 2016. If you don’t fire him after this year, I don’t see how you could fire him after a year like that.

I think top a 5 seed would be a good goal, I just think it’d be tough to fire him if we get something like an 8 seed. If next year IU has the same results as Nebraska did this year (disregarding style of play), do you really fire Woodson? I’d personally say no, assuming the other stuff I listed is true. I don’t think we’re that far off, the difference between an 8/9 seed and a 5 seed is really just one or two wins. There’d be some nuance to all of this.