You're listening to the back home network presented by Home
Field apparel. Welcome back to Crimson Cask.
Alan Clavio, Scott Caulfield joining you.
Good evening good evening Josh Wilson.
Good evening, all of you Already in the crowd.
We we said we would get something pulled together.
We got Scott out of the vineyard.
And how are the grapes today, Scott?
Everybody's curious. We're we're doing, we're doing
bourbon tonight, man. We're doing a little 4 Roses
small Batch. Love it the.
Whole thing, but we have a new coach.
As a chronic Hoosier would tweet out, we have a smoke coming from
Assembly Hall White. Smoke.
Yes, white smoke it. Happened.
It happened quick, man Real. Quick, it did indeed real.
Quick, let's go ahead and do our last four coach preview.
Yeah. And well, the amazing the film,
Larry's thing about this. So for those of you who watch,
and many of you were in the audience for that show that we
did on Sunday night, we after that, Scott and I were like,
well, we're going to have another week or so.
We should probably do the coaches that are in the mix now
that we haven't done. And we realized that one of them
was Darren Devries, the new head coach of IU.
So we had this whole plan that tomorrow night we were gonna get
together and do a pod where we previewed Darren Devries.
Man, that would have looked prescient.
They were. While those guys are right on
it, they knew exactly what was going on and we didn't, we did
the the, the route that it's, it's out.
We're not part of Dolson's four people, right?
We're not part of the inner circle.
Unlike, unlike some other members of the media
establishment, we never claimed to know anything.
And as it was, it was, it was demonstrated no one knew
anything, right, right. So it is what it is.
But no, it's great to see everybody in the comments.
Feel free to leave your comments in the chat, we'll try to pop
some of them up throughout the course of the show, but for
those of you who are listening afterwards, we are podcasting at
9:45 PM Eastern Time on Tuesday, March 18th.
Indiana has a new head basketball coach, Darren
Devries, the now former head coach at West Virginia and prior
to that was the head coach at Drake and prior to that was a
long time assistant at Creighton.
We're going to talk all about the higher.
We're going to talk about some of the other items that are that
are out there. I know there's a lot of, I'll
say this, there's mixed emotions amongst a lot of people in the
IU fanbase. Scott and I have not talked
about how each of us feel about this to each other.
So you're going to get those feelings live.
I know that you guys love that. And we're going to talk about
the implications. There's already stuff happening
which I think is fascinating. So we're going to talk about
that. We'll talk about some of the
portal stuff that's already taking place.
First of all, just a quick reminder were brought to you by
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that that the home field would get something cooked up and you
know what? But the end of the day, home
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But back home network search for that on YouTube and we would
love to have you in the over 7300 people who have joined the
YouTube subscriber channel. All right, Scott, we haven't
talked, right? Let's talk about it.
I want to get your thoughts first.
What is your reaction to the hire?
So it's funny, I, I had a meeting today from like 4:00 to
6:00 and I was just, I was off the radar.
I couldn't have my phone made and my phone just starts, my
watcher's blowing up with like just text and text and text.
And I'm like, this cannot be happening right now, but it's
happening as I was driving away from that meeting and started
getting into it. You know, I will just completely
be honest. At first I was like man.
That. That can't have been our first
choice. Like after all we had went
through and all we talked about also a little bit like I can't
believe you and I didn't talk about it on the podcast.
It it was a little bit of disappointment probably based on
me being over optimistic for who I, you know, the names that I
was thinking of in my head and all these things I was going
through and I but to be honest, I hadn't fully thought about
debris much at all. And when you look at it on its
surface, you know, it's like, man, I didn't make the
tournament last year. I'm like, that's who we're
hiring. Like somebody just went, you
know, 19 and 13. But I'm I'm, I'm coming around
as I most IU fans should. I will say this, and this is
probably like the not the fun podcasting answer and not the
fun hot take, but this is my real honest opinion.
We're going to know in three years.
And, and what I mean by that, I was kind of looking back, like
if you go back and look at, you know, Nate Oates before he went
to Alabama, you look at it, it's like, well, he missed the
tournament. One of the two, you know, one of
the four years in Buffalo, it made it three of the four years.
You can, it's like a Rorschach test.
You can make it that if, if Nate Oates sucked at Alabama, you
would look at that and and be like, man, man, that team played
super fast, a little bit loose with the ball and like they
couldn't really do what they needed to do in the tournament.
Didn't make it a second year. You go back and look at it now,
it's like, man, he made it three out of four years because you
know, he was awesome. Same thing with Dan Hurley.
Like, man took him, took him four years to get to the
tournament in Rhode Island. Like, if he's such a damn good
coach, why did it take so long? But now you look back and it's
like, man, he took over a crummy Rhode Island program and got
them to the tournament in two years.
I, I feel the same way about debris and that the answer is
we'll know in three years. And in three years we'll look
back and see one of two things either, you know, man, this is a
guy who took Drake to, you know, the tournament three of his last
four years, similar to Nate Oates and and took over a West
Virginia team that was Scott Check's notes 9 and 22 the year
before he got there and got them.
You know, you could say they missed the tournament.
You could also say there's an asterisk because they made 99%
of the bracket matrix tournaments, but I mean like
right on the edge. And so if he's great, you'll
look back and back. Of course, the guy turns stuff
around quickly. If it doesn't work, you could
look back and be like, man, it took him a while to get it going
at Drake. And it's a guy who went to West
Virginia and couldn't even make a tournament his first year.
So I know that's not the Super hottest take.
I'm much more on the positive angle now, and we'll get to
that. But as I look at it, you know,
honestly, at this point, I don't care about winning the press
conference. I don't care about, you know,
other fans and other in the Big 10 being like, oh, Indiana,
screw whatever they can think whatever they want.
We will know in two or three years.
I hope that it really works out. And if it doesn't, you know,
we've we've been here before, we can do it again.
But all that said, I am definitely turning the corner
and I'm way more positive than I was even an hour or two ago.
Yeah. You know, it's one of those
things where I'd say about a week ago we started to see
Devries's name pop up in relation to things related to
this search is a possibility. And it was a name that frankly,
we should have done a recap on earlier and we didn't just
because like, we wanted to cover some of the bigger names 1st.
And we wanted to cover, you know, names that were popping up
regularly in the search early on, you know, in terms of what
was being reported. So you know you're going to
cover Mick Cronin and you're going to cover Mark Biington,
people like that, but. We had to hit Lawrence, Frank
and Mike. We did and Mike and Lori, yes,
absolutely. But when, you know, I would say
about 7 or 8 days ago, it, it started to feel like there was
going to be potentially some momentum here if IU didn't, you
know, hit their top choices. And I and I agree with that
tweet that that Father Kavanaugh put in the chat about this
wasn't Indiana's like first choice or second or third.
But the more I dug into debris and this was before the hire, I
think you and I even talked about it as like, I think this
guy actually is a legitimately good hire.
Potentially. I've had people from other
schools, people that know basketball be like, wow, that's
a really great hire for you guys.
And you know, we'll see if it's actually a great hire.
But I had started to warm up on him as a possibility among that
kind of like next tier of coaches.
If you took out obviously the the moon shot candidates, as our
friends at X's and Joe's talked about, if you took out the, you
know, the Brad Stevens is there the Jay Wrights or, or even like
the Scott Drews or TJ Otzel burgers, It's like, all right,
what's the next grouping of candidates?
And I think ultimately, when you look at debris, there's a
really, really nice record there that I think is to some degree
getting obfuscated by the way that Drake is playing this
season where everybody just assumes, well, hey, you could
just win a bunch of games at Drake.
That's that's no big deal. Our friend Mike Weemuth from the
X's and Joe's podcast, which if you folks love college
basketball, you really need to go watch that.
That's a great show. Listen to that show.
They do a great job of breaking it down.
You know, he noted that from 1974 to 2024, you know that that
span of time, Drake outside of the Darian or the Darian Devries
era, by the way, it's Darian Devries apparently not Darian
Devries. This is going to take a lot of
getting used to given that there's an extra I in there.
But he noted that I for Indiana, outside of the outside of the
Devries era, Drake averages 12.5 wins per season over that span
of time, that 50 years during the Devries era, he averaged 25
wins a game. I mean, that's, that's a, that's
a, a staggering statistic. And, and you go back and you
look, and I mean, they, they had some really interesting coaches.
They had one great year that a lot of college basketball people
remember, which is that one year that Keno Davis took over for
Tom Davis 'cause that was Tom Davis's retirement spot.
And they went 17 and five. They were a five seed.
They lost in the first round. That was the 2008 tournament.
It came out of nowhere. And then Keno Davis left, went
to Providence, and then they had a series of coaches that just
didn't measure up, including Nico Medved, who a lot of people
like, who's a Colorado State right now.
He bounced after a season. And Devries comes in, wins
2420262527 and 28 games, makes three tournaments where Drake
had made one in the previous 20 some years.
I had forgotten this until somebody reminded me they had
Miami on the ropes in the 2023 tournament.
The same Miami team that beat Indiana in the second round and
went to the final four. They were up 9 I think with 5
minutes to go and just ran out of gas at the end of the game.
That was a popular upset pick that year.
Goes to West Virginia and you maybe.
Couldn't get over the hump, sorry.
Ultimately true goes to West Virginia, you know, and I saw
some folks looking at the West Virginia season and they're
like, I don't get it. Like West Virginia went 19 and
13 this year. Indiana went 19 and 13.
Why are we hiring a guy that had the same record?
But the difference is like Indiana improved their win total
by zero wins from last year to this year.
And they repeated all the same mistakes in terms of roster
construction, in terms of style. Debris comes into a West
Virginia program that was in absolute shambles of people
forget this. This was a program where Bob
Huggins had gotten fired right at the beginning of the previous
season for another DUI. They have an interim coach and
then they have to basically rebuild the roster.
Improves their record by ten wins.
They go from nine wins to 19 and literally got screwed out of the
NCAA tournament because of reasons.
There's there's a significant difference there in terms of of
how I would look at those two performances.
And you know, ultimately when you look at Devries's overall
profile, it's an interesting one because it is a little more
defense oriented than offense oriented, but it's interesting
because he's won with both styles in 2021 coming out of
COVID. They go 26 and five.
They're 33rd in the country in offensive efficiency, and then
they go to the tournament in 23 and 24 at Drake, and they're
40th in defensive efficiency in 2023 with the worst offense, but
then in 2024 they're 40th in offensive efficiency.
I'm really impressed with his ability to kind of switch around
what he does. The one thing his teams
consistently did well at Drake, they didn't do particularly well
this year at West Virginia. But I would look at that as a
bit of an outlier given that it was his first season.
But his team's always shot really well at West Virginia,
excuse me, at Drake, they were, you know, in the top 100, five
of the six years in effective field goal percentage.
While he was there, they shot well from 2.
They shot well from three this year at West Virginia.
They were 44th in the country in three-point attempt percentage,
meaning the number of three-point attempts compared to
their overall offense. So, you know, when I look at at
Darren Devries, he's not the type of coach that's already won
a lot at a high level. And I think that was the kind of
coach that some IU fans and to be honest, you and me both
thought IU should go after. They like, you know, we're like
go after one of the big fish. We don't know the full back
story. I'm sure we will learn the full
back story as we go along. But for whatever reason, IU
didn't land one of those coaches.
What we talked about, if you go back and listen to the podcast
we did at the very beginning of this coaching search, we talked
about where do coaches come from?
And we talked about how if you look at most of the coaches that
are having a huge level of success at the college level
right now, most of them came from the exact same background
that Darren Devries is coming from.
You know, and you can go down the list.
I mean, yes, you can talk about Bruce Pearl had prior success at
a Power 5 conference, but Todd Golden did not.
Todd Golden was at San Francisco, had a good 3-4 year
run, goes to Florida. You know, Nate Oates had a good
four year run at Buffalo. It's it's hilarious.
You mentioned Oates and Hurley. That was the comp I was going to
give. It's like the record that, and
I'm saying Devries is going to turn into Oates or Hurley.
That would be amazing. I'm not saying it's going to
happen, but if you were to look at the record that Devries had
at Drake, it's not a whole lot different from the record that
Oates had at Buffalo. It's not a whole lot different
from the record that Hurley had at Rhode Island.
And you kind of go down the list and you say to yourself, well,
what IU hadn't tried up to this point was trying to get a big
fish and bring them in. If that doesn't work, it's not
the end of the world. Because if you look down the
roster of the top teams in college basketball right now,
it's generally filled with two types of of coaches.
It's coaches that were assistants and stepped up into
the head job. And then it's it's coaches that
were at smaller schools, had a good 3456 year run and then step
up. And with this guy, you're
getting a guy that was an assistant coach under Dana
Altman at Creighton and then was an assistant coach under Greg
McDermott at Creighton. That's unusual that a guy would
carry over like that. You're getting a guy who has now
seven years of head coach experience, including one year
of head coach experience at the Power 5 level.
He's under the age of 50. He was relatively inexpensive in
terms of the contract. I think the number I saw was
that Indiana was paying like 5 million a year or thereabouts
over a six year span of time and seems to have a long runway in
front of him. He's already recruiting.
Well, he's he had the top, he had a top 25 recruiting class.
It was 25th, but it's still top 25 at West Virginia.
Two of those guys have already maybe all three.
I haven't seen about the third, but two of the guys have already
opted out of their National Letters of Intent to West
Virginia. You can kind of read between the
lines there. Hopefully Indiana's able to pick
them up. But a guy brings in 3-4 stars to
West Virginia. I don't know when the last time
was that Indiana brought in 3-4 stars in the same class at
Indiana under multiple different coaches.
So I just, I look at all of it and I say I understand the
skeptics and I've got several people who I respect who are
long time IU fans, including our buddy Doctor Hoosier in the
chat, you know, and, and my friend Mark and a couple of
other folks who have expressed some concerns.
And I get it 'cause this is not a sexy name.
It's a name that you know if you follow college basketball.
It's probably not a name that you know if you don't.
And yet you look at the profile and what I see is a younger
coach who's clearly in his groove as as far as recruiting,
just took a big step into a power conference and handled it
really well. I think there's a lot of reason
to be excited. It's not a for sure hire, but
I'm not sure if there was a for sure hire even among the big
fish. That's the thing that I was kind
of grappling with over the last couple days is that once you get
those big fish out, everybody had some form of, I don't want
to say warp, but just some form of concern.
Whether it was, you know, somebody who had been a Brunel
who'd been at AD one level for a while and hadn't really
accomplished what I felt was enough or thanks 5 dusty
banners. I think is that is that it?
I saw that the most concise is that that's gas lighting.
That's just not a nice thing to say.
I'm going to take it as a compliment until.
It's proven otherwise. It's fine we're.
Done. That's it.
We're podcast done in 18 minutes.
Sorry. It's all you get, you know.
But the other ones were like McCollum, who it just would have
been funnier to hire just to see Galen talk about it for two
years about that. That would have been a tough,
tough Rd. for me. I didn't.
Have a lot of experience so you know there's there really wasn't
anybody out there where I'm like that is the absolute perfect
hire even you know heresy to say like even Stevens hasn't coached
like the college level in 15 plus years.
So everybody had some kind of little minor concern on there.
Here's the thing I want to talk about with Devries is everything
you just said about Drake. You know he goes three of the
last four years and makes the tournament.
Let's just and and stay with me here.
Archie's COVID year kind of can go either way, depending on the
the argument you want to make with Archie.
I think the same thing with this year in West Virginia, But just
go with me a little bit on this, you know, counterfactual future.
Look, this is a West Virginia team.
As you said, debris took over in 2024 that went 9 and 22 four and
14 in the with the Big 12 and he brought no players back.
So this year he has zero. Like I started looking at the
player. I just Ken Palm has a number a
thing called minutes continuity 0% brought no players back 0
minutes from the year before took that team, which by the
way, living in Indiana under Woodson, I thought that's not
possible was able to take that team.
It had not possible to have success with that had took that
team went 19 and 12:10 and 10:00.
There's a world where next year let's just pretend that he goes
24 and 8. And gets a eight seed in the
tournament or like somewhere in that range or even what if he
could even get to a six seed in the tournament and again I'm
future casting but if he does that you would look at this and
be like man, this is probably the hottest coach one of the
hottest young coaches in the country.
It's like look when he did it Drake and my God, he just turned
around West Virginia. No, next year hasn't happened
yet. Barry Mel, this, this team could
fall on its face next year. And it's like, wow, he missed
the tournaments 2 years in a row in West Virginia, but all
indications are he turned it around pretty damn fast.
And if he gets that, if he were to get West Virginia the
tournament next year, we'd all be looking at it and be like,
damn, why couldn't we have got degrees the next year?
And maybe we just kind of got lucky getting him a year early.
And that that's another way to frame this as well.
Because I, you can't understate and even for me, I didn't, I was
just like, man, WV to make the tournament.
Once you look into it, you know, taking a team that is that bad
and has no returning players and you're restarting everything.
And by the way, you're West Virginia.
It's not even like Crean at IU where you have the, the, you
know, 17,000 people in the stands and you have the, the
power of IU behind you trying to rebuild it.
This is West, no offense, this is West Virginia.
Jerry West doesn't walk through that door anymore.
I mean, it's it's not like you have people.
Kevin Pitsnoggles. Not walking through that door.
Pitsnoggle, can we get him as an assistant, I mean.
Well, they're, they're, they're there's though, I think you, you
make really good points and I think some of the folks in the
chat have have talked about, you know, this feels like a guy that
is on the come up career wise. And, and I think you make a
really good point. I mean, the guys won 71% of his
games and it was at 73% before this year.
And they went 19 and 13, which is a a perfectly respectable
schedule. They should have been in the
tournament. The and if they make it next
year, everyone would have been like, oh, they should have been
in twice. Sorry, go ahead.
Right, no, well, right. I mean, it's, it's one of those
things where the rationale. For why they didn't make the
tournament this year was, was ludicrous because this is a team
that, you know what West Virginia lost?
Tucker Devries, Darren Devries's son, who's a, a, you know, a
sharpshooter. I think is, is actually
underselling him to some degree. Was shooting 47% from three in
the 8 games that he played this year before he was knocked out.
You probably saw him in Maui. So, you know, not their best
player. Javon Small was their best
player, but that want they beat Iowa State twice.
They beat Kansas, you know, despite the fact that they
restructure the entire team on the fly and there's a lot to
like about what we see him bringing to the table.
When you look at there was a question from from doctor
Hoosier how committee committed as either analytics and data.
There's a so I'll answer that first by saying there's a really
good breakdown, which I kind of feel bad about now by the West
Virginia 24/7 site that breaks down his approach to offense and
his approach to defense. I think you'll like what you see
there. I I heard some people worrying
that he was a pack line guy. That does not appear to be the
case from what I've seen. When you look at what he does
analytics wise, four factors wise, it's clear to me there's a
couple of things right off the bat his teams.
First of all, he runs a four out offense, which for those who
aren't familiar, it's a very perimeter oriented offense,
which is one of those things that a lot of IU fans I think
have been pining for in terms of like we're tired of playing
this, this slow, methodical 2 post offense.
We want guys that can shoot. I think you're going to get that
with Darren Devries and what he wants to do.
I mean it. It's very clear he values
shooting. He values taking care of the
ball. If you look at the last four
years he was at Drake, his teams were 13th, 38th, 31st and 13th
in the country in offensive turnover percentage.
That means a team that takes care of the ball.
For all the people that loved Ben McCollum and love the fact
that Ben Mccollum's teams were like supposedly hyper efficient,
by the way, they were not hyper efficient.
But we'll leave that. I think McCollum gets a job in
the Big 10. I just thought, I'm going to get
the job at Iowa for years, probably going to get the job at
Iowa, which is going to set up a fascinating like retrospective.
Five years from now, we'll be doing a podcast be like, hmm,
how did these things go for both teams?
We'll come back to that. Where his teams have generally
not focused on a lot is offensive rebounding.
But I'll be frank with you. I don't think offensive
rebounding amongst the four factors on the offensive side is
that important if you can shoot the ball.
The other thing they don't do, and this will be a little bit of
a change and this is the one thing that's like a consistent
thread. They don't really get to the
free throw line a ton, but when they do get to the free throw
line, they hit shots again. Wallet Drake.
You know, I'll take four of the six years as an example.
They never shot under 71% from the free throw line, which you I
might need to have a very IU fan listening to the podcast.
Sit down before I say that again.
They never shot less than 71% from the free throw line in the
six years that they were at Drake, and they didn't shoot.
They shot 72% this year at West Virginia, but they were in the
top 50 in free throw shooting percentage in four of the six
years. When was the last time we shot I
I know the answer I'm looking at right now.
The last time we shot over 72% from the free throw line, 2013,
2016 shot 73.1 but 2017 were 2272.9.
Yes, it's been a long a long slug for a while.
Defensively, his teams really do more often than not do a good
job of forcing the other team to not shoot particularly well.
This year at West Virginia with not a lot going for them and
missing their second best offensive player, they held
opponents to the 18th best effective field goal percentage
in the country 46.3%. They forced a ton of turnovers
and they they really limited their opponents from the
three-point line like to. So for those of you who are
worried about the pack line and you know everything that we grew
to hate about that in the Archie era, this is not a defense that
plays the three-point line that way.
Like they allowed their opponents this year at West
Virginia shot 29.7% from 3. I'm all for that.
That's, that is, that is exactly the kind of defensive things
that you need. They also really forced the
opponent into one-on-one. They, you know, historically,
one of the things that I've noticed about his teams is that
they really limit their opponent's assist percentage.
And, and that's important because if you're if you don't
have a lot of assists, you're really forcing teams to, they're
having to rely on individual shots.
They're not necessarily relying a lot of kick outs or a lot of
penetration passes and things like that.
Now, how will those transfer to Indiana?
It's hard to say. But I think if you're looking at
statistics and metrics and you're trying to figure out how
does this guy approach him from the analytical perspective,
there's a lot there to like. And then if you look at the
recruiting in his first year at a power conference, he was able
to pull in 3-4 star guys. And that was at West Virginia,
which as you said, is A, not a garden spot.
And B, doesn't have a ton of NIL.
And I think, honestly, one of the reasons why we're talking
about Darren Devries as the head coach at Indiana is because West
Virginia doesn't have a ton of NIL and because Iowa does not
have a ton of NIL either. But you know what?
Indiana has a ton of NIL, lot of money here.
And so I am really giddy to think through what he can do in
terms of bringing players in. And the interesting thing,
Scott, is that we're talking about a coach that is going to
come in perhaps with some recruits already.
We haven't seen, we've seen a couple of players from IU under
the portal, Gabe Cups, which everybody figured that was going
to happen regardless of whether there was a coaching change.
Malik Renew, which hurts a little bit.
Although Malik when I think about a four out offense and I
think about Malik as the sole post, I'm not sure if that
necessarily works. Maybe, but Malik or excuse me,
Miles Rice, who I know a lot of people are down on, but Miles
Rice from a skill perspective, like, oh, there's a reason
people were excited he was here. I think it a lot of Malik's or a
lot of Miles issues were confidence issues, which to me
stemmed from a real clear disagreement between him and
Woodson about what the offense was supposed to look like.
You might get Luke Goody back. You're going to get Tucker
debris transferring over. There's a non zero chance that
they might be able to perhaps reopen the Mullins recruitment.
You're going to get Trent Sisley and you're going to have a
couple of other players that you grab in the portal.
Like what I'm excited about here is you've already got a little
bit of a core. You might be able to add some
exciting pieces. And I do think that there's a
real possibility that, you know, given the fact he's already had
to assemble a team from scratch, he's going to be able to do
something similar here. And we saw that happen with Pat
Kelsey at Louisville as well. And so you, you take all these
things into account and I'm really excited about the
possibilities. I, I don't have any guarantees
it's going to work, but I am excited about the possibilities.
And I, and I think again, if you can get over the name
recognition issue and you start digging into what this guy has
done, you know, it's easy to like I someone said earlier when
they were talking to me, well, he hasn't won a conference
championship. And that's true.
They finished fourth in the Missouri Valley Conference, but
he finished, excuse me, second four times in the Missouri
Valley. But they won two Missouri Valley
Conference tournaments, which is really what you need to do.
There's a ton of people that have won Missouri Valley regular
seasons that never went to the NCAA to get Drake again.
Not a historically good team to three NCAA tournaments in four
years. And each time they were good
enough profile wise that they would have made it as an at
large. They did it once in 2021 as an
at large. The last two times they would
have made it as an at large, but they ended up winning the, the,
the tournament title. I, I, I think there's a lot of,
of runway there and there's a lot of pieces that we haven't
heard from yet. I don't know what happens with
McKenzie and Bacco. Somebody mentioned him in the in
the chat. I don't know what happens with
Bryson Tucker. The fact that Bryson Tucker went
on to Twitter the other day and said I haven't decided yet.
I think it's really interesting. So you could be starting with a
nice pool of talented players and I'm really fascinated given
what we've seen already profile wise out of him to see what he
can do with do with that group of people.
I'm just excited because he issued a press release like what
a novel idea coach issuing a press release to his fans about
what he's thinking about things that are going on.
Sorry, shouldn't throw too much dirt on him, but hey, Mike, talk
to the press, talk to Fisher. You can do it.
You know, here's the other thing too, is that I I think you
you're right on the name recognition piece, but
everything you're saying is dead on.
I mean, like he he just used those same muscles to rebuild an
entire team. He can do most of that.
Again, I would also say I, I don't keep up with the the
portal that much 'cause renew's in the portal.
I saw that he could come back. I mean, guys, go to the portal,
they test it. He might not find what he wants.
He might come back. So I would just, I'm not saying
I know anything, but just 'cause someone enters the portal
doesn't necessarily mean they're not coming back to Indiana.
The other thing that I would say too is, you know, hopefully this
works out, but the fact that he went to West Virginia, hold on.
And you know, year 1 with a brand new roster and I want, I
want to get to this is, is a question I have for you with a
brand new roster. They go to Atlantis and they go
2 and one they had the result. I mean, it was a bunch of
overtime games. They had the result in Atlantis.
I think that we we were hoping for.
They took it from us. You know, he started in West
Virginia. They were 11 and 2 on January
4th. And then then things didn't go
as well for them. That point.
I mean, think about we haven't really Archie started with a
what, 15 point loss to Indiana State like that wasn't
immediately like, whoa, this is not what we're expecting.
Imagine if he comes to Indiana and starts 11:00 and 2:00.
Those two and one in a non exempt in an exempt tournament.
That'd be awesome. Now Woodson started off pretty
well the first two years. Although you're you're I just
want to note you're giving Archie way too much credit.
He lost by 21. To Indiana State, not 15.
OK, fair enough. Sorry.
I know, Arch. Sorry.
I know you're listening, Archie and Sean.
I know you're both listening. I apologize.
Sean's sweating through his shirt.
He's so nervous. You know Woodson started off
well the first two years, but was always in the back of your
head, like we were getting blown out by good teams.
Obviously, the last two years were not as good.
All I'm saying is the runway is there.
Now what I think is interesting with the Atlantis tournament is
Indiana was there, West Virginia was there, Scott Dolson was
there and Devries was there. Do you think some of this
started at that point? I mean the conversations for for
where we're at now between Dolson and Devries, like do you
think there was something that all all there or you think it's?
Complete happenstance. I think it was happenstance,
although I, I, I don't know how you could be in Atlantis and not
see the difference between. I mean, there were two teams in
Atlantis that had no business being as successful as they
ended up being in Atlantis. One was Louisville and I would
have been really happy if they've just nabbed Pat Kelsey,
but the other was West Virginia. And I mean, you know, when you
go back and look at that tournament and the fact that
West Virginia was as competitive as they were in that tournament
from the beginning didn't make a ton of sense.
You know, And I think for a lot of people, it was like, well,
you know, why is Indiana not being, you know, why are they
not more successful in this tournament?
They got blown out in two of the games.
You know, and you look at what West Virginia did in that
tournament. They beat Gonzaga in overtime.
They lose to Louisville in overtime, and then they beat
Arizona in overtime. I mean, it was a, it was a
really surprisingly effective set of games there.
And, and I'm, you know, when you think about that and then you
think about the fact that they, they win at Kansas at the end of
that month, I'm sure that, you know, whether it had been fully
formed in Scott Dolson's mind or not, that this was a guy they
might want to look at. Ultimately, surely they, that
made a little bit of an impression, which made it a
little bit easier 'cause you've seen the guy's team play.
And so, you know, I'm, I look at it and I say, you know, when you
perform as well as they did, relatively speaking, and what
was a very tough, you know, season for the Big 12.
I mean, there were a lot ton of good teams in the Big 12 this
season. And I mean, think about it like
Houston was a one seed, Tech was a three seed, Arizona was a four
seed, BYU was a six. To finish last.
They were fixed to finish last. They finished.
They finished tied for seventh, right and you know the and then
again, they got screwed out of the NCAA tournament for that,
you know, which was unfortunate for them, but I was, you know, I
don't know that you could look at that and not say, well, this
is a guy that's clearly got some really fascinating things going
for him. You know, again, we'll go back
to what we said earlier. Was this the first choice?
It probably was not. Almost certainly was not.
And I will be curious as we unpack the timing of all of
this, 'cause it seemed like it happened pretty quickly.
But you know, for, for it to happen the way that it did and
for all of the different things that we heard and all the
different names, whether it was Brad Brownell, whether it was,
you know, we heard a lot of Ben McCollum this, you know, if you
got past the top group. And I and people have asked me
like, well, who was your favorite?
And I, I think I've been pretty clear on this, but just to, just
to reiterate, like, I really, I really did what Ben McCollum,
you know, no, I really, I really wanted to see Indiana go after
Scott Drew, TJ Otzelberger, Tommy Lloyd, like that triad.
It was, it ended up being a Big 12 coach, just not any of those
Big 12 coaches. But I I also said, and we talked
about this on Sunday, it's it's not a foregone conclusion that
you were going to go to a place like Indiana, if you can win at
the place that you're already at, at a high level.
And that's where I think for a lot of the coaches that might
have in a past generation said, oh, Indiana's open.
Well, I have to go get that job because that's where I
ultimately can win a national title.
I mean, you know, you're not going to get a Grant Mcaslin
necessarily out of Texas Tech because you've proven previously
that you can get to a national title game at Texas Tech.
You're not going to necessarily get an A, a, a Bruce Pearl out
of Auburn because you've proven you can get to a Final Four with
Auburn. You're not going to leave
Alabama for Indiana or North Carolina necessarily because you
can go to a Final Four from Alabama.
Like all of these things have happened recently.
Even Iowa State, which hasn't made a Final Four, but they've
been knocking on the door. The thing with Iowa State and
the other, the other, the other three that you mentioned is like
I, I was kind of putting more, more weight on that.
You know, Big 10 and SCC schools are just going to continually
have more resources year over year just on the TV money alone
that it's going. I think it's going to be harder
and harder for those schools to compete that are outside of the
Big 10 and the SCCI. Do think Arizona might be an
outlier. I don't think Iowa State is I
think, you know, if you're Scott Drew, you've already built a
fiefdom in Baylor. So it's like, why do you want to
leave? But that that's where I was
looking at those guys. And that was always my argument.
I was talking to you. I was like, you're TJ
Otzelberger, like, can you really compete at Iowa State
over the next 10 years when any Big 10 school is going to have
more resources than Iowa State year over year?
But that sorry, just but that's I I thought that might have been
enough to pull it over. But maybe that is enough to get
what what we got to Reese. Yeah.
So look at, you know, I know we've got some folks in the chat
that aren't happy and I I get, and I think Brian missed the
first part of the show where we tried to explain things.
But look, I think there's going to be people and I, I get this
perspective, I really do, who are like, why are we hiring a
coach from this level? There'll be a lot of well,
Indiana isn't the job that they think that it is.
There's you know, but again, I'll go back to the first
podcast we did on this front. You take a shot at the big
coaches, you take a shot at the moon shot types of candidates.
If they don't come, it's not the end of the world.
Because again, when you look at the pathway that most successful
coaches have, where they start is about where Darren Debris
started at Drake. And again, you go down the list,
you've got, I'll do this again, for those who weren't with us in
that podcast back in February, let's let's just go through the
Ken Palm top 20. Duke is coached by John Shire,
who was a career assistant at Duke before becoming the head
coach. Todd Golden at Florida coached
for three years at San Francisco and then his first year at
Florida they missed the tournament in the second year
they bounced out in round one as a seven seed and now they're a
one seed. You know, Calvin Sampson, we
know his back story. We that's a little bit of a
different route. Bruce Pearl at Auburn was at a
division two school and then spent four years at Milwaukee
before being hired by a moribund Tennessee squad which he then
lost because he had a BBQ with Aaron Craft and then came back
and got hired out of a show cause at Auburn.
Rick Mark. He also had a bunch of years as
AD One assistant like Devries. He did.
Rick Barnes, obviously long time regular, you know, coach at
relatively top levels. Nate Oates was at Buffalo for
four years before getting hired at Alabama.
With a similar profile as what Devries had to drink.
Grant Mccaslin. Lot of people wanted Grandma
Chasm from Texas Tech spent looks very similar frankly to
Darren Devries, spent a year at our Arkansas State and then
spent six seasons at North Texas.
And to our friend Brian in the chat, Grandma Chasm made one
tournament in that whole period of time.
Probably would have made a second one.
We can give him a second one. It's less than Darren Devries
did at Drake, which is arguably not arguably definitely a worst
school to coach at. Than than than than North Texas
is Tom Izzo, career assistant, Mark Few, career assistant TJ
Otzelberger, who I was certainly very much on board with.
Three years at South Dakota State, made 2 tournaments, 2
years at UNLV, made 0 tournaments and then got hired
at Iowa State at a discount. I might note Kevin Willard kind
of a sneaky path through the college coaching ranks.
Spent like 9000 years at Seton Hall, was not terribly
impressive. He's got Maryland as a four seed
now. We can keep going down the list.
I mean, what you see more often than not is that if you're going
to get coaches who are going to take off like on their own
runway, this is generally the profile that they fit.
I do not blame anybody who looks at this and says underwhelming
hire guy hasn't done nearly as much as you would want.
I get all of that. I'm just going to tell you, when
you look at the profile, it fits a ton of what you see in other
hires that end up being really good.
And I know everybody throws the Archie Miller thing at it, and I
get that. But I was talking to Will
McDermott and Matt Press at at upstairs earlier before the the
show started. And I told them what I'll tell
all of you, which is that you can't let the fact that Archie
failed be the reason why you don't consider these particular
types of hires. It didn't work, Archie didn't
work, and there were a number of reasons why it didn't work.
That doesn't mean that similar profiled coaches don't work.
And this is where we've said Archie was a good process, bad
results hire. Ultimately, you're going to have
situations where things don't work and there's a litany of
coaches when you go through the history of college basketball
that got hired and didn't work out.
I would point to our friends across the border at Illinois.
Do you remember the, the, the John Gross era?
You know, John Gross got hired and everybody was like, wow,
this guy is the next big thing. Coach four years at Ohio.
He had that one great year in 2013 and it was great year.
They were a seven seed in the tournament and then didn't make
the tournament the next four years.
And now he's at Akron doing pretty well.
I had a bunch of people be like, why aren't we considering John
Gross? And it's like, well, it didn't
work at the highest level. The fact that you you hired
debris at West Virginia and he does A10 game improvement right
off the bat. That doesn't happen by accident.
It really doesn't. I know people think that it
does. That doesn't happen by accident,
especially as you said, Scott, when you're starting from
scratch. I know it sounds like I'm trying
to sell this higher, but you know, the more I've talked about
it and thought about it, the more I'm like, this is really a
fascinating move by IU. And the fact that I'm, you know,
I look at where he's been and what he's done and, and the fact
that Dolson, again, kind of brought out the Devries, checked
all the boxes when we interviewed him.
The fact that he had that same reaction to Signetti, it doesn't
mean it's going to be the same level of higher as Signetti was.
But I think we have to at least put some trust in Scott Dolson's
evaluative processes here 'cause it's already worked once and
there's a possibility it could work again.
And that's enough for me at this point to be like, yes, let's get
behind this. Yeah.
No, I I agree. I mean, there's definitely
there's things that are concerning, there's concerning
things about everything. In the end, we're all fans.
Like I'm not going to say I'm going to get in line, but it's
like, all right, I'm going to try and find the positive, try
and find ways and I want to go in the next season with a
positive attitude and and be proven correct that this is
going to work out again. We'll know in three years.
The kind of the other way to look at it too is, you know,
let's just call it what it is. Like outside of Brad Stevens,
Billy Donovan, Jay Wright and like Scott Drew just to the the
upper absolute tier of guys. Everybody else had some kind of
question mark there, you know, you know, to be like, oh man,
you really settled. It's like what?
Like as you mentioned, man, TJ Oltzenberger didn't make the
tournament at UNLV. You know, Ben McCollum had like
we're we're really splitting hairs if we're like at this
level, like, yes, we didn't get Brad Stevens.
I don't think we're going to get Brad Stevens.
I don't think Brad Stevens wants to coach college.
I just want to coach college here.
Like at some point we can't just it's not like it's no one's
fault. It's just that's not an option
that those guys aren't. Guess what?
Neither is going back in time and getting Phil Jackson in 92.
Like he's no longer a coach either.
You know, I'm just. I'm speaking suspicion that Phil
Jackson at the college level probably wouldn't have worked.
I did too much too much weed at that point to really make it
work. Also no Jordan big.
Big, big issue. No, No, Jordan, no.
Kobe kind of an issue, yes. Just this idea of, you know, we
settled. It's like because what, because
you, you couldn't like, I don't think Brad Stevens, they did
whatever they could to try and get Brad Stevens in one of these
two or three cycles. It didn't happen.
It wasn't going to happen. I don't know if they tried Billy
Donovan or got turned down, but maybe it just wasn't even since
like I, I, I pushed back on me. Like you settled it it because
if you're just going to sit here and tell me, oh, like, you know,
whatever, you know, Mcculliver will wait.
Like that would have been the dynamite higher.
It's like, well, we're really splitting hairs.
Like there's there's concerning things.
There's also ways to spin everything to be positive, and
that's what we're going to do. I mean, and that's this is where
you know, the X's and Joe's thing.
This is what a new coach allows you to do is you get a cultural
reset. Everything.
You know, you can start to look at things in a positive way and
you get there and, you know, I don't know how the future is
going to go, but you just need to look down the road at a
school in Kentucky who they felt like they got pissed on and
turned down by every coach they went for.
And like to them, no question Mark Pope felt like a real
settlement. They went 22 and 11 and they're
a three seed in the tournament this year.
I don't know how they're gonna do moving forward, but I'll take
that. I'll take that right now for
next year. So we had a request to stop
defending the higher and move forward, which I think is fair.
I appreciate it, Joey. Thank you.
So let's let's move to that. So what happens next and you
know this is where it's going to be interesting.
So first and foremost, I don't know if you guys have released.
Sorry, I got to go. What?
What happened today? Is there a Woodson press
release? Do we well?
No, I don't think that's ever happening at this point.
I mean, I mean, there's still as I don't think there's been an
announcement of the, the time of the press conference going to be
11:30 tomorrow. I do know that from from like
off off track betting in terms of media the his assistants at
West Virginia it it's like the ghosts of Christmas past for
IUI. Don't know if you folks have
seen this, but his three assistants at West Virginia are
Tom Ostrom, who of course was one of Archie Miller's
assistants at IU. Chester Frazier, who many of you
remember in an Illinois uniform, I believe shoved Eric Gordon.
I don't know if he'll be coming. Maybe what that would be a
fascinating one. I'd love to see Chester Frazier
in an IU polo just for the lows. And then Corey Barnett, our old
buddy four year walk on, who was the original human victory cigar
as Dan Carell mentioned earlier on.
Corey, I think is definitely coming.
I think we can count on Corey Barnett being on the IU coaching
staff. The other two, I'm not totally
sure and I am I'm fascinated to see what Devries does in terms
of his staff. I will say this like that's
going to be the starting point that alongside the recruits that
we will have to wait and see what it that what happens now.
We just there were a couple of notes that happened earlier and
I want to kind of run through all of them.
So first of all, Trent Sicily immediately retweeted and said,
let's let's go to work. We knew he was gonna be here.
I don't think that was a. Surprise.
And we can always already assume Devries son is gonna come here,
right? I mean, and I and Tucker Devries
will be here. You know, Zerno, the the Bosnian
kid, the immediately there was notes like he's gonna like
getting interest from elsewhere, which is what happens when the
coach's son plays the same position that you do.
Someone tweeted that. I don't know who it was.
It was a great tweet. Then you've got a bunch of
questions on the roster and, and this is where on the IU roster,
if we start with the IU roster first, I think you, you know,
you look through just because a guy's in the portal doesn't mean
that a guy can't come out of the portal.
But let's go through who the guys are, who we don't know
about one way or the other. So Malik Renu is in the portal,
but it's possible he could potentially come back.
Trey Galloway is out of eligibility.
Omar Barlow is out of eligibility.
Miles Rice haven't heard anything from.
I still maintain Miles Rice can be a good point guard at the
Division One level. You know what?
I I, I think a lot of it has to do with the confidence issues
that he had with Woodson this year.
Oh, and. I've, I've always felt with
Miles Rice this year, it, it felt like everything that he is
good at. We didn't play to that style
that you know, he's, he was very quick and brought the ball up
quickly and has a lot of pace and you're asking him to be slow
and deliberate and he's just not that kind of point guard.
He seems like a perfect Tom Crean type point guard, like
someone who could just run and gun and shoot.
It's like, no, we just slow down, be very efficient, don't
turn the ball over and pass the ball to the post.
And it's like you're asking him to do all the things that he's,
I don't want to say, not good at, but not as advantageous for
him. And so I, I think at a different
system with a different coach, he he could flourish.
I mean, there's, there's a lot of.
Here's the thing. As much as Woodson deservedly
got credit for coaching up big men, the guards really struggled
under Woodson. Even Jalen Ochofino, who frankly
like as as well as as he played at IU at times, you know.
I mean, he was at. His own, it was very much like
do it yourself. Absolutely.
You look at the other players that are question marks on the
roster. We have McKenzie Mbacco, who I'm
I'm really curious to see what he does.
I won't be shocked at all if Mbacco transfers.
I'm actually very surprised that I haven't seen his name in the
portal, which makes me wonder, well, does he look at this
offense and say, wait, a four out offense?
That's like what I am made for. That's a guy who I would love to
see him with, someone who can unlock whatever defensive
potential he has. He may have none.
I don't know. I know it's a dumb take.
I wouldn't be surprised either way.
I, I I wouldn't be surprised if he left.
I wouldn't be surprised if he stayed Canon.
Carlisle, I'll be surprised if he comes back.
I won't be shocked, but I'll be a bit surprised.
Bryson Tucker. I'll note, like earlier on this
week, it was announced by other media members that he was in the
in the portal and that he he himself took to Twitter and said
that is not true. And his family.
And his family also took to Twitter and said that is not
true, which makes me think that there may be a a future for
Bryson Tucker at IU. So we'll see what happens with
that. Luke Goody obviously is suing
for an extra year of eligibility.
And God, if we could get Luke Goody back.
As kind of a, an emotional anchor and another 3 point
shooter to plug into this. How know you know the NCAA
better than most? How where would you put your
your chances of of him coming getting that extra year?
Well, let's put it this way. When when the news was announced
he was going to try my immediate tweet was let's get him some
great lawyers because I think at this point, I don't know how the
NCAA says you're not going to get this extra year of
eligibility because they know they're going to get sued And
and that so that's what gives me some hope on Goody.
I I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
That would be amazing if we could get Luke Goody back for
another year. Doesn't sound.
Optimistic about it though. Yeah.
So anyway, Matt Norlander, this is Jr.
ES. Matt Norlander is reporting 7
million plus an nil and revenue share.
Does that sound accurate? Yes, so the, the question on the
money, I actually saw a number that was going to be closer to 8
million, which is going to be close to the top of the Big 10.
You need that in this day and age.
And it's, I don't know if they actually like if debris actually
went to Iowa and said that, hey, I need an IO money.
And they said, no, we only have this much 'cause I mean, there's
reports that Iowa rolled into this year with $300,000 in NIL,
which is incredibly Iowa. I mean, that's, that's, that's
the most Iowa thing I've heard that they would do like that
little money in in, in NIL. We put it all in Bitcoin that we
had two million wait. Wait, wait, it's corn coin in
Iowa. But but 8 million to play with
and and that is about what you're going to be going for.
I mean, this is the thing. Indiana's got a ton of
resources. They've poured a ton of NIL
money. They're going to pour money and
more money into it next year. Also Jr. asked, do you think
Debris will get AGM to help build the roster and effectively
allocate those resources? I do.
I don't know if AG Ms. gonna get announced immediately but I do.
We're gonna start doing 4G Ms. A A a podcast.
We're gonna do our GM search. That's right.
We're gonna start with Lawrence
Frank. Actually, he's gonna leave the
Clippers and gonna come here. That's exactly right.
Anyway, so you've got that group and then you've got the group
that's at West Virginia. We've talked about Tucker
Devries already, who who's an excellent player, and I'm really
excited to see what he can do in an Indiana uniform.
And then you've got the recruiting class.
So there were three recruits in the West Virginia recruiting
class. They were, I misspoke earlier.
They're 23rd in the country. Now you've got one West Virginia
native, Braden Hawthorne. I I don't know if the chat can
help with this. Did he go in the portal yet or
not? Because I saw announcements for
the other two. They both have entered the
portal, which makes me they may not come to Indiana.
We'll have to wait and see. But I got to think with
Indiana's NIL money and if Devries believes in them and
thinks they can play at this level and and let's be honest,
if you recruited them to West Virginia, he probably thinks
they can play at a high enough level.
The other two. So I'm being told that by the
chat, they are not in the that the that Braden Hawthorne's not
in the portal. The other two also four stars.
You've got Kelvin Odie, I I'm probably butchered that name. 64
small forward out of Socal Academy in Castaic, CA 75th in
the country. And you know, a smaller small
forward. But that's fine, especially
since Devries likes to play a smaller style.
And then you got another full circle moment for for us Scott
Trent McClain, 141st in the country, 69 power forward.
He is the son of Don McClain, who if you are a long in the
tooth IU fan, you remember Don McClain was the leading player
on that IU, on that UCLA team that IU just like obliterated in
the 1992 NCAA Tournament. And so that's fascinating to me.
If you go back and watch the tape of that, there's like this
weird, like Don, like the the other Don McClain, the guy that
wrote American Pie intro during that broadcast, like where they
they redid the American Pie lyrics to try to match like
something basketball related. And then and then, you know,
that was the first like really great Jim Herrick UCLA team and
they just got like bludgeoned to death.
That was also the game where like, you know, famously Knight
had gotten in trouble earlier in that tournament for like having
the bullwhip out and then like Calvert Chaney does like the the
whipping of Knight with the towel on the sidelines at the
end of that. That's that game.
So it's hilarious that we might potentially get Don Mcclain's
kid to come to play it. Indiana.
That's like a perfect circle as far as I'm concerned.
Perfect circle. It's also funny.
I don't know why I remember this intro songs of that tournament
when we played in the final four that year when we played Duke
that next game in that same tournament, the intro to the
final four included a musical parody of Bohemian Rhapsody with
Wayne World. And then it went into a like
devil with a blue dress intro music showing all of its I I
used to have it on VHS tape, but it was like it showed Cincinnati
was playing God. Who'd they play in the But there
was Duke and us and they, they were showing the Christian
Watford or the Christian Oh, did you put that?
I I did put that game on YouTube.
Yes yeah, Christian Leightner, not Christian Lander.
I know it's it's getting late more 4/4.
Roses, baby. Like we don't yesterday I had
that shot with like devil in the blue dress like I yeah, yeah, we
do not we do not 90s for a wild time.
I want to give Scott 4 roses before he podcast.
We've learned. You know they're saying names,
right? It'll like, well, I like them.
Out. I'll hit a certain I like.
EJ here. I need to rhyme Chevy Levy and
DeVry. This is great, great content.
I love it. But anyway, we talked about that
and as has been mentioned elsewhere in the chat, there's a
non. Quinn Buckner and Great Gumble.
I, I was watching another Gumbel Buckner game from a it was the
UCLA Princeton game. I watched that clip this morning
and I was like, well, that's, that's great.
That's Quinn Buckner doing that game.
That's wild. Anyway.
There's also Pacers color, by the way.
We still still got to have them. Among other things, as we've
learned, there's also I, I think it's interesting, and this is
something that I think a lot of IU fans are going to be
interested in, is, is it possible to potentially talk
Braylon Mullins into coming back to Indiana?
And I do believe there's at least a crack in the door there
for a variety of reasons. Because you know, again, why,
you know, why wouldn't you go play for the two time defending
national champs? But on the other end, a lot of
the reason why Braylon Mullins didn't want to come here was the
coaching staff, or at least the head coach in terms of like, you
know, that there just wasn't a desire to play there.
And and now that's changed. So may not happen, but man, that
would be a really fascinating collection of players.
And, you know, we'll have to see how the rest of the roster comes
together. It may be that a bunch of
players still transfer out, but the fact that we've only seen a
couple of names in the portal, I am really fascinated by that.
And the fact that that hadn't, I mean, you know, you've seen a
lot of players announcing that they were going to be in the
portal in other schools. And the fact that Indiana
without a coach didn't have a bunch of players jump into the
portal until today was a really interesting one.
I sort of saw somebody ask early about Jakai Newton.
I have no idea what happens with Jakai Newton.
I just don't know what his health situation is with like
two major knee issues with I think it's knee issues within
the last two years. It's like, that's a tough one to
project. But ultimately, look, I, I do
think that the, the, the, the timetable on all this has been
weird, but the fact that Indiana ends up making this higher two
days before the bulk of the NCAA tournament starts and almost a
full week before the portal opens does give them a huge
advantage. And, and, and look, I'm all, I'm
all for what Newtonian's saying here, you know, go re recruit
Jalen Harrelson. I mean, it's, it's one of those
situations where IU had a bunch of players that were in the mix
that were interested in coming to IU.
And this is I, you know, if you want to call this piling on, I
don't care. Clearly something wasn't working
in the recruiting process that turned a bunch of guys who were
otherwise interested in coming to IU off of coming to IU.
Does that change with a new staff?
Especially if Corey Barnett and someone mentioned he might be in
running for the Oral Roberts head coaching job.
But if he ends up not getting that and he ends up coming here
as an assistant, does that re establish the relationship with
Indiana Elite? Does it help to re establish the
relationship with the recruiting here in the Midwest?
Roberts says odds on devries attending the Indiana State
championship game? I would say very high.
Certainly. I'm sure someone has it written
down a list of like dear Darren, here's the things we would
highly suggest that you do for appearance purposes at the very
least over the course of the you know the next month or so, I
have a sense that they're going to give them some some Intel as
far as like what's going to go over well with the families.
We'll see what happens with that.
But you know, when I've talked about the, you know, the
personality. Showing up high school games,
just go to a couple Indiana high school games like don't be known
as Bigfoot. Just just be know, be be known
with the the players know with them.
And I mean, if that number is true, if it's if it's an $8
million NIL budget again, I'm I'm Braylon Mullins.
If you're going to get recruited by UConn, they've won
back-to-back titles. They could win three in a row.
I mean, you have a hell of a coach there a hell of a system.
I, I, you probably lost that one, but maybe you now come in
and, and from all accounts, it sounded like he kind of had
interest. Of course, everyone in Indiana's
like always, but had interest and Woodson showed no interest
back. Maybe you just come in and say,
hey, I'm here, you know, but I also have a check for 2 million.
Dollars. And we we now have interest and
sorry, didn't work out before, but there's still an option to
come and do this. Maybe it doesn't work, but yeah,
I'm I'm with Robert on that one. Like Indiana State title game, I
this has got to be a must. You got to start actually
recruiting the state of India. And a lot of it is just energy
and look, you don't go out and get 3-4 stars to come to West
Virginia if you're not putting a lot of effort into things.
I mean that it's just kind of just how it works.
So by the way, I keep seeing this in the chat and I'm sorry,
I'm going to have to put Brian in time out because he's he's
just being unrelenting. But, and I appreciated Brian's
spiritedness, but like enough's enough.
You can't criticize a guy for going one and three in the
tournament when all three times you're projected to lose.
You just can't do it. I'm sorry that that's that's not
how things work in college basketball.
Like if you want a guy that had a really good tournament record
before he got to the next level, Archie Miller had a great
tournament record, went to an Elite 8.
You know, like the, the, the idea that, hey, you're a 12 seed
or an 11 seed out of the mountain Missouri Valley, which
has not been a great conference for a while.
I'm sorry, Matt Blaska, but it has not been.
And, and you go to three tournaments, you win a game,
you're you're leading with 5 minutes to go against the team
that went to the final four. I'm OK with that.
Natos went. Two and three at Buffalo.
No, Natos went two and three in Buffalo.
By the way, Scott, you got chided by one of our friends
about saying, well, you know, you know, Dan Hurley only you
know what? What did you say about his time
at at Rhode Island? You used like he only made the
tournament twice. It's like making the tournament
twice at Rhode Island is essentially an act of God.
Fair enough. But he, I mean, also he went two
and two. Like if we're going to start
throwing out, yeah, you're not talking.
It's it's incredibly rare to have a coach.
I'll note shock is smart went to a final four at VCU, which
looked like a miracle of the time and then couldn't cut it at
Texas. So the tournament success at
that level a lot of times is luck rather than anything else.
And you're I I'm still a firm believer.
You have to look at the the records.
We were talking about Jay Wright earlier today and it's like,
look at Jay Wright's record without Jaylen Brunson and it's
like. It's not that great.
So a lot of tournament stuff tends to be luck, but you need
to get those. You stack the 20 to 25 win
seasons on a regular basis and. Again, last I I don't want to
keep defending it, but it's like, I know it's dumb, but like
we'll know in three years in. 3. Years if we're not if, if we're
struggling to make the tournament in year 3, then you
look back and it's like, all right, you were right.
One in like one in three. We got to look somewhere else.
But you know what, I, I go back to what you, I don't want to
keep defending it. Like what you said, when you
look at the profile of the top 2025 coaches in the country,
very few teams hire that elite #1 coach even.
You look through history, it just hasn't happened.
A lot of times. Like Kentucky got Calipari.
I would say there wasn't really a Calipari out there this time.
You know, Kansas got Roy Williams.
There's a lot of or no, sorry, North Carolina, I flipped that
up. North Carolina got Roy Williams
from Kansas, a lot of extenuating circumstances that
wasn't there. Like as you said, this is the
profile of coaches that win. And again, it's like Archie
didn't work fine. Like, what does that mean?
You can never hire a young coach again who might be good?
Like we just have to keep trying new things.
Like we just like no. Look, I mean, and, and I'm sure
we will get in one way or another the inside story about
how all of this went. And we talked a bunch about this
and, you know, we talked about how it felt like it was a long
tail thing and, and we keep getting yelled at to stop
defending the hire by certain people in the chat, which is
fine. But I look, ultimately I'm, I'm
optimistic. I'm fascinated to see what we
hear tomorrow and I'm fascinated to see what the roster ends up
looking like. And I do think like ultimately,
you know it, you do have to with a coach that not that many
people were familiar with ahead of time, you do have to
essentially establish their bona fides in a way that makes sense
to everybody. And I thought, Bob, let's put
the comment up again, made a great point.
When you get to the tournament three times out of six seasons
in a single big conference, it's damn impressive.
That's the ceiling for Valley teams.
And when you make it as essentially an at large, when
you're in 11 or 12 seed, you're essentially in at large
territory, that's even more impressive.
So anyway, as we move forward, those are going to be a lot to
talk about. We're not going to go terribly
much longer here. This was kind of an impromptu
podcast. We're still gathering a lot of
information. But I'm, you know, this is a
good question by Nick, though. Would this have been the guy of
West Virginia made the tournament?
I was, that's a great question. I was thinking the same thing
and. I, I don't know, I mean, I, my,
my thing is this, the timing on this, this is the one thing I
find peculiar is the way that this went down and, and I can't
reveal yet because I, because I don't want to betray any
confidences. But like the, the idea that that
a press higher was going to be announced today and a press
conference was going to be announced tomorrow was a huge
acceleration of the timeline that most people thought that
this was going to go. And so that I do wonder, was
there a, were there some bids on the table where Indiana was
like, you know what, maybe our first or second choice didn't
hit, but this is the guy that we want and we need to go ahead and
move. Or did Indiana just say, we're
going to hire this guy? We thought he was going to be in
the tournament. He wasn't in the tournament.
And everybody was shocked by that.
We can't make a hire on Monday, but we're going to try to get
this going as quickly as possible because we want to get
on with it. Because as we talked about on
the podcast last week, you really need a coach in place.
You really need to have someone. This is why Miami went ahead and
hired Jai Lucas. It's why what was the other the
other opening recently? But like, it's why a lot of
these like North Carolina State's rushing to try to figure
out who they're going to hire 'cause you just have to have
somebody in place. You have to have somebody who's
like, we're here, this is our roster, this is our thank you.
Florida State was the other one. We have to have somebody in the
mix so that we can talk to our current players, we can talk to
future players, we can put ourselves in a position where we
are competitive in the portal because this is where you're
going to be as we move forward. And you know, look, the question
of who was the mystery guy, that's what I have to go find
out and bring back to all you folks on the podcast.
I don't know, I've got some theories and I have AI do have a
theory that there was another candidate that might have been
the lead and it's something like there was and again, I don't
know how much of this to believe and that I haven't talked about
it on the show. I haven't talked about it on
Twitter. There was a ton of back channel
talk on Saturday that a guy had either signed or was about to
sign and then it all changed in about 48 hours.
And and whether that was one of the names that just got
mentioned in chat or another name that hasn't been mentioned
in chat, I don't know if any of that was true.
It's possible there was no mystery candidate and there was
just a smokescreen. But I do think it's fascinating
that this kind of fell together so quickly.
One of the things we talked about and we've talked about
throughout is how tight of a search this has been under Scott
Dolson. And I was just suspicious for
most of the day that this was the name that kept spilling out.
I was like, that seems like a smokescreen.
And apparently it was not this time.
But it's clear that like, you know, the all the Chris Beard
talk was a smokescreen and there were other names that got thrown
into the mix. Brad Brownell, No idea.
Not sure what that situation was.
So we'll dig into that. We'll see if we can get some
more information. Of course, anonymously because
that's how you have to do things these days.
But it is interesting that it came to together the way it did.
But given all of that, it's almost all like in the past now
and we almost can't concentrate on it because we need to focus
on things moving forward. I'm going to be really
fascinated to see how the press conference goes tomorrow, what
the roster looks like at the end of March, almost to the point
now where it's like, well, damn, now I wish Indiana hadn't backed
out of the crown because I would kind of like to see Darren,
Darren Devries like coach an early version of this team and
see, you know what that would look like.
But the crown would still take us.
I I probably would. I'm sure their rules are very
flexible if they wanted to just add a team.
I don't know if you've seen the roster for the crown tournament,
but yeah, it's it's a little bit of God forbid it.
What if they lose a crown game? It's like, man, how could you
hire a guy who's O and one in the crown?
It's kind of like This is why new head coaches hires in
football don't coach the bowl game, right.
You know, you never want to leave a bad taste in people's
mouths at the beginning of things anyway.
Well, look, great audience, over 730 people in the in the
audience right now. And and many of you have kind of
of come on and dropped off. We wanted to get something out
there tonight, yes. I want to and I don't want to
defend, but just what do we have ahead of us here is, you know,
Signetti has to, I'm getting larger point with what Dolson
may have done for for IU. You know, Signetti has to kind
of, I don't say prove it, but, you know, can't come out with
another Allen 2021 season. We can't go 3 and 10 in
football. But I don't see that as being
something that happens if Signetti has another successful
year that's not making the College Football Playoff.
But if it's if it's he comes out and, you know, wins 7-8 games
and it's like, all right, we have something here.
And you know what he's done with baseball and with women's
basketball. And if Devries can can get IU
back to it. I mean, it's awful to say, you
know, I'm the the king of I just want us to be final, you know,
final four bus. But it's like if we can just be
back to making the tournament every year safely, You know, if
he can get you there, you know, you, you got to look at Tulsa's.
This is the best, you know, athletic director we've had in
25 years. Like he, he really got this
right. You would have to say he's going
to get IU as healthy as it's ever been across all athletics
since maybe the the Mallory night days in like the late mid
80s. So that's saying a lot.
That's what's on the table right now because Dolson has done such
a good job in all other areas. Now it has to keep going, you
know, it's, it's all, but that's where we're at right now.
And I think that's a really cool place to be.
And that's a the, to me, the real positive outlook I'm going
to have going forward. Had this conversation with our
friend Tricia Whitaker at the Big 10 tournament last week.
She said if if he nails the basketball higher the way that
he appears to have nailed the football higher, like he could
go down in history, it's like the best athletic director in IU
history. There's a lot of space between
now and then. But you know, I do think, you
know, what I would advise everybody is let's not get over
our skis. Let's, you know, let's see how
the roster shapes up. Let's beat Indiana State first.
What's fascinating about everything as we move forward
into the next, the the spring and the summer, like this is
recruiting time. It's it's Huber's time.
It's, you know, golf outing in French Lick time.
It's like, let's get people excited.
Let's get the NIL war chest up. Let's talk about what the
philosophy's going to be. And then you hit the ground
running A20 win season for IU in next year.
I mean, that sounds like a low, it sounds like a low bar.
But if you think about it like, you know, Indiana's had 320 win
seasons in the last eight years, I think, or nine years.
I mean, it's it's kind of like that statue uncorked on Sunday.
Well, you know, where it's like, well, you know, only Penn State
and Washington and a couple of other teams have made the
tournament less than Indiana has in the last decade.
So I I think the nice thing now and, and again, I'm curious to
see how the press conference goes tomorrow.
But the nice thing now is that there's first of all, the
coaching search is over. And Scott, I couldn't be more
thrilled. I'm tired of talking about the
coaching search. I'm ready to just talk about
basketball again. We got it done before the
tournament, so we don't have to like break up the middle of one
of the tournament days so that we can go talk about the higher.
And now he gets to work on the roster.
The guys that are here, the guys that are coming in.
I'm fascinated to see what happens as we move forward with
all of that. And we'll have a lot to talk
about and we'll talk about it as well.
Our friends at Assembly Call as well, our friends at the X's and
Joe's podcast. There's so many great venues
through which you can have legitimate, calm, sober talk
about IU basketball. I hope that you stick with us
here at the Back Home Network. We certainly appreciate you
folks for sticking with us. Yes, but I mean.
Can't say sober on the night we're drinking big glasses of
bourbon and whiskey. I'm not sure but hello to Well
hey, this is where you get it's Crimson cast after dark.
Yeah, we've seen it off. From Assembly.
Dude, Ryan just joined. He's gonna go back and tell
Jerry we can't steal the the After Dark.
We gotta come up with something else like the the Crimson cast
Mansion, Crimson Cast PM or like Advil PM.
That's that's a you go. You're going to marketing jail
for that, Scott. Anyway, put you to sleep.
That's Yeah. All right.
We're gonna wrap it up. Thank you all for joining us.
And thank you to Four Roses for property liquefying.
Scott here. Throughout the course of the
podcast, we will catch you folks on the Flip side IU with a brand
new basketball coach, Darren Devries.
Welcome. Coach Debreeze, looking forward
to seeing what happened to the Crimson cast.
Adult Swim. That's very hilarious.
Thank you. All right, for Scott.
I'm Galen. Thank you all for joining us
here. We'll see what happens tomorrow
and beyond. And all I can say, folks, is
stay never daunted and bring back the Bison.
We'll catch you folks on the flip side song everybody.
And goodbye, YouTube. Bye.
YouTube. It's been fun.