@hoosierific At this point in time, last year, the only person we had any clue about wearing an IU uniform for this upcoming season, was Sisley. At least right now, we know we'll have at least a few from Sisley, Dorn, Miles, Drake, Harris, Ritsic, Amisovic, Moody, Karvala. Lets say 5-6 of those guys end up sticking. Returning guys, and incoming freshmen like Moody and Karvala... that should give CDD a greater ability to land a few higher level guys, if he wants them, than he was able to this past year...because he had to build an entire roster from scratch.
4-5 starter level guys via the portal, foreigners, late HS signees
Sisley, Dorn, Harris, Miles, Ritsic, Moody, Karvala with them.
Assuming he learns from his mistakes last offseason, and that group above includes a couple B10 caliber bigs... That's potentially a pretty darn athletic and effective roster.
I know its easier to focus on the bad play right now, and that we weren't able to sign any obvious NBA guys last offseason. But when you take a step back, and think through it logically... 1)DeVries IS implementing some good stuff, right now. He's struggling to get his current roster to execute those things consistently, but they're pretty easy to see if you're open to positive signs. 2)I doubt he'll have "less" NIL resources than he had last year. So even if its similar...not having to build an entire roster, should allow him to go after a few NBA level guys this next offseason.
Even if we miss the NCAA tournament this year, that doesn't mean he won't be able to improve the roster, and have a very good team next year.
I always thought this was interesting. Clearly the coaching fraternity isn't high on DeVries.
And the same format picked Archie as the best hire when we hired him so not sure I'd put a ton of stock into that.
@surjay At worst, opinions and evaluations on DeVries as a basketball coach are mixed, at this point. Many, many people connected to college basketball, coaches and media people alike, lauded the IU hire. He was routinely referred to as one of the hardest workers, and one of the smartest young coaches in the game. Its an ongoing evaluation, and I'd say his early IU reviews should be mixed. But for whoever held those views about him coming in to IU, I wouldn't think he's already lost those good traits.
@hoosiers94 No, no big coach nor small coach will jump with the understanding they'll be fired after 1 year if cranky fans aren't happy. You're insane if you actually believe that.
Big coaches with egos? How many of them have bounced around recently? UofL, UK, and Mich all were just open and none of them hired a big name coach. UNC and Duke elevated assistants as well.
The old mentality that needs to go away is thinking the top established coaches will jump at these opportunities in this new era. They won't, there's no reason to anymore. They sure as heck won't do it for a 1 year contract either.
Cig is silly to keep bringing up. He is a unicorn. That is the exception, not the norm. Look at all the P5 football coaches who were just fired. How many of those teams are going to be the #1 seed within 2 years with their new hires? I'd wager none of them and I doubt they all fire their coaches after a year of not matching Cig.
1. I'm not comparing any future hire to Cig or rather to his results. Did you see the 60 minutes piece. He walked into facilities that looked like they were from 1980. He wasn't going to change his standards. Hes changed the whole mindset of the athletic dept. and the President. And don't forget the Governors involvement in the University. That I can tell with certainty is a major concern of his.
so that said we could make that move after 1 year.
2. any coach who thinks he's all that would certainly take a chance despite DD being fired after a shitty year. Because they don't believe they will fail and if they do I don't want them anyway.
3. Their contracts nowadays and the amount they are paid nullifies a lot of that uncertainty
4. any high level accomplished coach would attract better players that fit his system and could compete in any conference... that's the difference. I'm not sure DD knows which way is up right now. If he recruited players that fit his system then his system isn't going to work. Problem 1 or he couldn't attract the players we needed or wanted because he didnt have the charisma to do so : Problem 2
or he didn't have the funds to do it ::: which we've all been told otherwise so No Problem 3
being stuck in the old school manners dept doesn't win today. There is no image tainting to go after success anymore. Player movement via portal nullifies that it frees them from any commitment or any school if they don't like the results or vibe of the place. Which frees the university to change coaches if need be. It may sound foreign and against all logic but we are in new territory here. New world. Time to start embracing it just as Cig also mentioned on 60 minutes
@beez - yeah, adding Lea in there without fact checking was a gamble... 
good context, though the turnaround there seems to coincide with the advent of the transfer portal. 2-10 to 7-6 in the first year of the portal to 10-2 this year.
@beez And Kelsey was an 8 seed last year, which is barely above bubble status. If IU is an 8 seed this year, that wouldn't be seen as the same level of "turnaround" on this board, that Kelsey achieved last year. Heck, that's where we're sitting in the latest Bracketology. I think many are projecting things that haven't happened yet, and are leaning much more heavily on the bad play we've shown, and not factoring in the good play we've shown.
Myself included. I'm openly not impressed with what CDD and the team are showing, right now. And after supporting him through the offseason, and through the first handful of games... I'm now left with similar levels of bewilderment on why CDD didn't bring a guy like Hansberry with him to IU. Or go get a guy like Dioubute, or the Minnesota big... Bailey, Alexis, Harris was never going to be enough strength for the B10 schedule.
I think that was and is a looming concern. I don't think anyone has to "learn" what kind of players are needed to compete at a high level in the Big Ten and on the national scene. That should be common sense. So, the questions for me kind of shift to what was the plan and why?
Was it a budgeting issue having to spread out the NIL money for a whole new roster as opposed to what would normally be two, three or four guys? But how does that really differ from year to year budgeting?
Was the timing wrong? Were we always going to be too late or behind the eight-ball no matter how quickly we hired someone?
Did the goal pivot to a dressed-up bridge year or was it always the plan?
It would be helpful to know the answers to those questions when trying to figure out the direction of the program going forward. To that end, I have to say I'm a little disappointed DeVries, Dolson and Whitmer have not kept me in the loop. LOL.
@hoosiers94 No, no big coach nor small coach will jump with the understanding they'll be fired after 1 year if cranky fans aren't happy. You're insane if you actually believe that.
Big coaches with egos? How many of them have bounced around recently? UofL, UK, and Mich all were just open and none of them hired a big name coach. UNC and Duke elevated assistants as well.
The old mentality that needs to go away is thinking the top established coaches will jump at these opportunities in this new era. They won't, there's no reason to anymore. They sure as heck won't do it for a 1 year contract either.
Cig is silly to keep bringing up. He is a unicorn. That is the exception, not the norm. Look at all the P5 football coaches who were just fired. How many of those teams are going to be the #1 seed within 2 years with their new hires? I'd wager none of them and I doubt they all fire their coaches after a year of not matching Cig.
1. I'm not comparing any future hire to Cig or rather to his results. Did you see the 60 minutes piece. He walked into facilities that looked like they were from 1980. He wasn't going to change his standards. Hes changed the whole mindset of the athletic dept. and the President. And don't forget the Governors involvement in the University. That I can tell with certainty is a major concern of his.
so that said we could make that move after 1 year.
2. any coach who thinks he's all that would certainly take a chance despite DD being fired after a shitty year. Because they don't believe they will fail and if they do I don't want them anyway.3. Their contracts nowadays and the amount they are paid nullifies a lot of that uncertainty
4. any high level accomplished coach would attract better players that fit his system and could compete in any conference... that's the difference. I'm not sure DD knows which way is up right now. If he recruited players that fit his system then his system isn't going to work. Problem 1 or he couldn't attract the players we needed or wanted because he didnt have the charisma to do so : Problem 2
or he didn't have the funds to do it ::: which we've all been told otherwise so No Problem 3
being stuck in the old school manners dept doesn't win today. There is no image tainting to go after success anymore. Player movement via portal nullifies that it frees them from any commitment or any school if they don't like the results or vibe of the place. Which frees the university to change coaches if need be. It may sound foreign and against all logic but we are in new territory here. New world. Time to start embracing it just as Cig also mentioned on 60 minutes
Where were all these accomplished coaches with big egos the last few times we've had an opening? By all accounts Dolson went after Drew, Otzelberger, Dusty, etc. None would bite.
When Clark Lea was hired he was touted as one of the first to stress the player evaluation or almost general manager type of position. He hired his friend Barton Simmons. Lea said at the time that the way to win at Vanderbilt was do a better job scouting and evaluation and they felt they could use advanced analytics to do that.@beez - yeah, adding Lea in there without fact checking was a gamble...
But since, he has said that he made a bit of a mistake focusing too much on underrated freshman he could build up over several years, because of losing some to the portal. So in addition to Jerry Kill as an advisor and other changes he made to the offense, it seemed they used their evaluation talents to make a bigger move into the portal.
So I think Lea was similar to Cig in making evaluation a high priority, and seems to have paid off.
@hoosiers94 call Drew and ask him if he'd accept the job knowing he'll be fired in 1 year if we aren't making a tourney run.
with consideration of my friendship, I'm not willing to divulge exact words but the overall feeling from similar conversations is that , that wouldn't be a concern if his. Meaning give him their resources he's not concerned about missing the tournament.
@hoosiers94 he's not 'concerned' with missing it but if he knows he'll 100% be fired if he does in that first year I don't believe for 1 second he'd make that move especially after turning down other jobs and being engrained at Baylor for this long.
You won't get any other coaches to bite on that either unless they're a scandal-ridden retreat with no other options or another grifter like Randy Wittman for a year.
You can start keeping tracking of how many schools fire a coach after 1 year (without a scandal) and get back to me.
@surjay Outside some sort of scandal, its really not worth even talking about. Even if he has an absolutely awful B10 season, and finishes last in the conference, they won't can him after 1 year. Now, if he does miss the NCAA this year, doesn't address the size and talent issue with his next roster, and misses again next year... THEN, I could see them breaking precedent and moving on. But I think he'd have to miss the NCAA's in both his first two years, AND not have promising recruits in the fold heading in to his 2nd offseason... for them to move on him after only 2 years.
All of that is pretty "glass is half empty" type thinking, for a coach that's 8-3, and has his team ranked in the top 25-30 or so in nearly all metrics rankings.
@iunorth Yeah, I know. I know its a different world now with all the changes with the portal/nil but there's just no way anybody is canning a coach after 1 year unless its something extraordinary (scandal or 0-35 season, etc).
In the past I always said 3-4 years was more than enough to judge and now believe 2-3 should be sufficient. I can see teams moving on after 2 years if things aren't trending heavily in the right direction by then.
Now, I can also see an initial bad year basically creating a no-win situation for year 2. If we miss the tourney this year, we're definitely not getting more donor support (probably less) and even though we won't need a full roster from the portal we still need 3-4 impact players which is expensive and competitive. Have to show more than that this year if we expect momentum to move the right way.
@surjay Gotta think Dolson will figure out how to give the guy he chose for IU's most important job, enough financial support to give him every opportunity to be successful. If he misses the tournament this year, and NIL support sentiment is down, it'll be Dolson's job to convince all of them that DeVries needs the support to boost the roster.
Again... all this talk is very defeatist sounding, to me. As the guy isn't even through December yet, in his first season.
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