May 1, 2025 • 47 mins
On this episode, Alex Bozich is joined by Zach Osterman of The Indianapolis Star to recap a whirlwind spring for IU basketball.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Welcome back to a new episode of Podcast on the Brink.
It's Thursday, May one. It's a busy end of March,
all of April for IU basketball. To help us discuss
the month, it was, Zach Austererman and the indie star
Good Friend of the show, Good Friend of Mine, back
(00:38):
on Podcast on the Brink this week. Before we get
to Zach wanted to take a moment to let you
know that this episode of Podcast on the Brink it's
brought to you by Visit Bloomington. As always really appreciate
our friends at Visit Bloomington. Just because the basketball season
is over doesn't mean the fun stops. Spring is the
perfect time to explore everything Bloomington.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Has to offer.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Hike the trails at Griffey Lake, natures the refuel with
local flavors on tap at Upland Brewing Company. Don't forget
about the many music festivals coming to Bloomington this spring.
Whether you're into outdoor ventures, food, or just relaxing in
a vibrant college town, Visit Bloomington's got you covered. Start
planning your Spring getaway now at visit Bloomington dot com.
(01:20):
Zach is battling a sinus infection, but he has been
gracious enough to join us on this episode of Podcasts
on the Brink. First of all, Zach non IU related
wanted to take a moment to congratulate you on the
Jim O'Connell Award that you received last month at the
(01:41):
USBWA luncheon down at the Final four. I know that
was something maybe that you're not going to talk about
too much publicly on your own podcast, but did want
to take a moment here on on Podcasts on the
Brink as someone who has known you for a long time.
You know, at one point you uh carried a potted
plant in your front seat of your car, wrote about
(02:04):
that friendside the hall. So you've come a long way,
and I just wanted to take a moment to congratulate
you on that well deserved I know a lot of
IU fans are feel very lucky to have you covering
the team, So I just wanted to say that before
we started this week's episode.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Well, thank you, friend. I really appreciate that. I you know,
I mean it, It meant a lot. I'm still confident
there are people that were more deserving that I was.
But you know, you and I have both been hammering
away this long time. I think you remember the USBWA
before I was. I'm pretty sure you told me you
(02:40):
showed me out of sign up, so you know where
we go back to many a Moses Abraham recruiting update.
So I appreciate that. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
And the Gee Mark Michelle contract.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Remember that that was all investigation, one of one of
the most in depth investigations I've ever been a part of.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
So I have had you on the show since the
hiring of Darren Derees. You've obviously had a chance to
sit down with them, talk with them a little bit.
You've covered the portal, everything that's gone on. You're at
the final four kind of a whirlwind. What six weeks
for you here? Just what was your reaction to kind
of where Indiana landed in this coaching search and what
(03:26):
we've seen so far. Just in terms of the the
roster that they've assembled, the coaching staff, it seems like
things are really starting to come into place and you
can see a clear plan in place in Bloomington for
this first roster for Debrees.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Yeah, I mean, I think in terms of the coach
you know a lot of I mean, I know I
was to the people I know I was focused for
a long time. I've been McCollum. You know. Frankly, I
think I'm not saying Degrees will be a better coach
than McCollum long term. Debris certainly has a better resume,
(04:02):
you know. I think I, in my own sort of
evaluation of like the field as it were, Debrees felt
like the kind of person that you pushed to one
side because he just he'd just taken the West Virginia job.
You know, at that time he was he was doing
fairly well in it. I think, I mean, we were
(04:23):
all broadly speaking, surprise West Virginia didn't make the NCAA tournament.
And you know, you think, you know, if you want
to maybe a comparison point, you think about Dusty May.
And there were a lot of people who said, you know,
Dusty May wouldn't leave Michigan after one year because coaches
don't do that very often, and that the only real
(04:45):
sort of justification for believing it might happen was his
background with Indiana. And of course you know that the
fact that he was a e alum, So you know,
I wasn't I didn't necessarily like push a pin into
Darren Devrees is the absolute home run higher. I just
kind of looked at him and thought, coaches don't leave
jobs after a year very often. Now, there are a
(05:09):
variety of reasons why it makes sense when you just
sort of sit and think about it, you know, sort
of in a cold and analytical way, why he would
do that. But I think that you know, certainly from
the point he was hired, and the number of different
people I've talked to or observed or listened to, you know,
(05:31):
West Virginia people upset about losing him, people that I
know in the sport who have you know, very little
obfection for Indiana basketball, who think it's a pretty good hire.
I think, you know, at least early on, my reaction
was I think probably something agin to Okay, let's see,
(05:52):
let's see how this works, let's see what this looks like.
And to your point, I think, thus far, while all
you know, I've seen too many of these sort of
you know, portal roster remakes, uh makes sense on paper
and then not come together in practice. There's there's a
(06:13):
lot in theory to like about what you know, kind
of the the the trajectory Indiana is on for next
season based on the players that Indian has been able
to bring in based on I think some in different
cases and fairly obvious fits to what Devrees Devrees teams
(06:35):
have kind of done historically. I don't think Indiana is
gonna be the perfect team by any means, but it's
not hard to sell me on the idea that it's
going to be a better team. You know that it's
than it's been the last couple of years. And I
think you've certainly seen Indiana flexus financial muscle in the
roster building process. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
I don't think anyone should apologize for that. That it's just,
(06:57):
you know, part of the equation for success in college basketball,
you know, in twenty twenty five. But I think there's
alstill been you know, quietly, I think there have been
a number of different sort of data points or mile
markers in this process that have been encouraging. I mean,
you know, when was the last time you saw Indiana
(07:18):
hire an assistant coach off an the Laite eight team?
You know? I mean that that we've seen Indiana try,
but we've not seen Indiana do it. And that's not
that alone doesn't mean this is all going to work.
But it's things like that, and it's it's if you
just sort of if you sit down and you you
array out everything that we've seen over the last what
(07:39):
probably six weeks since Devres was officially confirmed. There is
a lot I think to be encouraged by, whether it's
devrees on background, the players he's recruited, the extent to
which it feels like you can track, you know, kind
of this this this raw process and you can see,
(08:02):
I mean not to buy into a Twitter alignment, you
can see the vision a little bit. I just think
there's you know, I'm too old and I've seen too
many false dawns to sit here and promise anybody that
you know, this is a home run and it's all
going to work out. But I think there are reasons
(08:23):
for encouragement as we sit here today on one Bay one.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Yeah, it's been interesting just to trying to compare this
situation to the last two coaching hires, because, as you said,
I feel like when Archie Miller was hired, there was
a ton of optimism for many reasons, you know, coming
off of his tenure there at Dayton, and it felt
(08:49):
like he assembled a really strong coaching staff. There's also
a much different time in college basketball without the transfer portal,
and then Woodson obviously came in and kept Trace Jackson
Davis around, which was a huge, huge recruiting win. I
think it really helped prep him for his first two
seasons and what he was able to do there get
(09:09):
into the tournament. And you mentioned sometimes we fall into
that trap of, you know, judging a higher. I think
quite frankly, you know, people have asked me like, what
do you think of this higher? I'm like, I can't
really tell you right now, because you know, anything I
say would be a complete guest. I think all of
us are guessing we can. We can do things for
clicks and say this is an A higher, this is
a B plus higher. But kind of, you know, looking
(09:33):
at this and maybe comparing it to what Indiana did
the past two highers, is there anything you can point
to in terms of the process to where they arrived here,
It feels like it was a little bit more, maybe
more data driven in terms of the work that they
did in the background and kind of the profile that
they were looking at. Is there anything maybe that that
stands out different from this search and where they arrived
(09:54):
compared to the last two, I.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Think there, yeah, I mean, I think there were some
some data driven elements. I I thought the Mike Woodson hire,
for a lot of reasons, was kind of a piece
undo itself. And you know, I know there's a lot
of people that want to get into kind of the
palace intrigue of you know, who was flexing their muscle
in that, and trustees and whatever. I'd also point out
(10:19):
like Indiana was hiring somebody in the middle of a pandemic,
you know, I mean, and we were about to enter
an NIL world we have no idea about. I mean,
like I remember in those first days.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
Of NIL, people getting really excited about partnerships with like
banks and you know, like like restaurants, you know, I
mean that the idea that you look back now and.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
That all seems so quaint, but we had no idea
what any of that looked like. And we were living
in a very uncertain world then, and so the Woodson
hiring almost as kind of a piece undo itself. But
I think that Indiana, you know, certainly was trying to
use a mixture of sort of data and research. And
(11:00):
when I said research, I mean both numbers research and
calling people that that that various sort of you know,
stakeholders trusted to quiz them on what do you think
of this coach or do you think that could work
or whatever. I think it was a combination of both
of those things. I think I think in particular, like
this was not the necessarily the thing that convinced me,
(11:22):
oh this is this is this higher this process was
ideal and this will absolutely work. But I think, for example,
Indiana took some steps to try and ensure that it
wasn't hiring I don't want to call Archie Miller fools gold.
I think that's unfair. Like he went to four straight tournaments.
That's not an easy thing to do. But one of
(11:44):
the data points that Indiana kind of came to with
Darren Devrees that I think it was looking for in saying,
is there something that we're missing? Is there something that
we missed in hiring Archie Miller that can inform whether
or not the next guy is the right guy. And
(12:05):
one of the things that they found was that basically
that Archie Miller had success at Dayton, but that there
was an extent to which that success had been carried
over from Brian Gregory, and I think actually Gregory had
he hadn't gone to the tournament, I don't think, but
he'd won more games in his last four years in
Dayton before taking the Georgia Tech job than Archie Miller
(12:28):
won in his first four years in Dayton. It was
it was still a healthy number both ways. It was
like ninety five to ninety. But the point was, you know,
there was already a structure in place at Dayton that
Archie Miller was able to inherit and refashion and you know,
kind of remake in some aspects according to his own
(12:50):
designs and then carry that forward and have success. Whereas
Darren Devrees at Drake, the number was the numbers were
something like forty and ninety six. I think Drake had
won forty games the four years before he got there.
The number was somewhere in the nineties. I don't remember,
ninety four, ninety five, ninety six, somewhere in there. Those
That was how many games he won in his first
four years. And when you looked at just in general
(13:13):
the six year run he had it, Drake Drake had
really never in the modern structure of let's say, the
modern NCAA tournament Drake had never had a run like that.
You know, you have to go back to the late sixties,
early seventies, back when you know, the NCAA Tournament only
led in like twelve teams or sixteen teams, and the
NIT was very competitive, and there were other postseason events
(13:36):
and things. You know, if we say the modern era
of college basketball, that probably starts either at thirty two
teams in the NCAA Tournament, or I think there was
a brief period where there were forty eight teams in
the NCAA Tournament. I think in eighty one, Indiana's second
natural title learn of Bob nine. I think that was
a forty eight team tournament. You know, that is probably
(13:58):
kind of the quote unquote modern era of college basketball,
and Indiana's research showed that basically Drake had never been
successful at anywhere near that level consistently in that span
until Darren Devrez arrived, and there were other I think
marker points too, and then I think there was probably
some encouragement over what he did at West Virginia. Was
(14:19):
only there for a year, but obviously, you know, they
win nineteen games, you know, probably would have won more
if his son hadn't gotten hurt again. We don't need
to hash up what happened on selection Sunday, but everyone
sort of felt like if there was a team that really,
you know, got you know, kind of shafted in the
selection process, it was almost certainly West Virginia. So I
(14:43):
think there was a slightly more note. Let me also
say I don't think Indiana didn't take an analytical approach
in hiring Archie Miller. I do think Indiana tried to
identify both marker points for what had made coaching hires
(15:04):
successful at similar institutions in the recent past. And I
think somewhat importantly, Indiana had also tried to identify why
its own hires had not worked out. And I think
that that sort of self reflection and that willingness to
be a little bit self critical, I think should give
(15:27):
fans at least a little bit more comfort around how
and why Indiana landed on Darren DeVries that this wasn't
just a this wasn't just a process of you know,
let's go find the guy who nailed the interview and
you know, has the best references and whatever, but let's
ask the question of what have we gotten wrong in
(15:49):
the past? That is that has gotten us onto this
this this carousel of you know, three or four years
new coach, three or four years new coach, and how
do we correct that in the way that we evaluate
the candidates that we consider for this job.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Looking at just kind of the roster right now, eleven
scholarship players, I think I think that's right if you
include Trent Cisly, ten portal commitments, eleven with Sisily, the
potential maybe for Luke Goodie depending on what happens with
the waiver process. Just just a big picture, this roster
that they've put together for year one, What what maybe
(16:32):
stands out to you in terms of some of the
just the way that the roster was built positionally. You know,
some people have asked me, well, is there going to
be a rim protecting big man. I'm not sure that's
going to be something that's added from this point forward.
I'm not saying it's not going to be, but it
seems like in some ways that they're they're they're somewhat
comfortable with what they have right now in the front court.
(16:55):
What what just from a roster construction standpoint, has it
out in terms of the pieces they put together and
also how competitive does it do you think this team
can be in year one? Obviously we've seen it in
the last cycle with some big time programs hiring coaches,
(17:16):
getting to the tournament right away.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Some of the recruits that they've.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Landed I've talked to and they've all referenced, you know,
the goal is get to the tournament, competing in the
Big ten in year one. It certainly seems like they've
got the pieces to do that. Albeit some guys are
betting on coming up from a lower level. So I'm
just kind of curious for where you think this roster
stands right now, are their needs for other positions, and
(17:41):
just in terms of competing next year.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
What do you think is realistic for this group?
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Well, it's I mean, listen, it's it's obviously difficult. I mean,
like it's never been harder to evaluate like that question,
when so much turns over everywhere, like there should be
I think a robust amount of belief and dust again
going back to Justin May at Michigan. But on the
other hand, I mean, Dusty May lost some of his
(18:08):
most important players like that. That old team in a
lot of respects was built around Danny Wolf, Vlad Golden
and Trey Donaldson and they're all gone. Donald In transferred.
I'm not losing my mind, right.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Brian and I He's gone to Miami.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
But they brought in some really promising transfers. They've got
one of the best, you know, on paper, one of
the best transfer classes in the country. So you look
at it and you say, well, Dusty May has earned,
you know, sort of the trust to the right to
be believed in until proven wrong, even if he's turning
over the roster. But on the other hand, you know,
if we're sitting here and we're evaluating, I mean, the
(18:51):
only two guys on that team that had a usage
rate above twenty two percent are gone, so is so
is that team's starting point guard. So you kind of
have to see it to know for sure on paper,
and I pull I'm pulling up your scholarship charge just
to remind myself because it's so easy to forget with
(19:12):
all of these new names on paper. A lot of
it makes sense, and especially when you when you think
back to Debrees sort of outline of his own team.
You know, when we talked to him the day was hired,
there was a lot of discussion of motion principles, I mean,
(19:35):
I don't think he used the term positionless basketball, but
that's kind of what motion offense is, right Like, it's
the idea that the ball keeps moving and you're not
you know, like to use the Mike Woodson offense, which,
let's be fair to it had some successful years, especially
under Trace Jackson Davis. With Trace Jackson Davis in the.
Speaker 5 (19:56):
Post once your transition options were exhaust that offense was
built around posting up a big throwing in the ball
and then letting everything operate off of that a lot
of the time, or choosing to bring that big out
into a ball screen situation and then letting.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
That operate out of a lot of the time. The
way that Devrees talks about his offense and every you know,
it's it's a lazy comparison, but every time I see it,
or every time I hear him talk about it, I
think about Creighton is a little bit more motion based,
(20:34):
certainly a lot less post up based. I think there's
gonna be plenty of ball screen action, but you can
have ball screen action with motion concepts. And when you
look at up, of course, you know you got three
players on this roster you would probably describe positionally as
point guards or at least as lead guards in Connorway
and right and drink. You've got multiple wings your bigs.
(20:57):
You know, we'll see what kind of what Josh Harris
maybe becomes long term, but you know, functionally your bigs
right now can can fit a fairly specific sort of
set of roles at both ends of the floor. Protect
the rim, rebound screen, lob you know, finish well, et cetera.
(21:18):
You know it, It's not hard to make a lot
of this makes sense sort of functionally under what Devrees
has has sort of said. These are my sort of philosophies,
especially offensively. These are, you know, the concepts that I
kind of draw from. But and I suspect this is
(21:41):
where I'm gonna sound really boring for the next few
months until you see it work, especially with a completely
new team. I mean, we'll see if Benniana gets Loup
Goodie back, you know what we'll see. But it is
going to be at very least damn near a completely
new team until you all of these pieces sort of
(22:02):
arranged on the floor and you can look at and say,
this guy sets the tone defensively. These are the players
that make sure Indiana is rebounding the ball at the
level that it needs to. The shooting, the scoring has
translated up from the mid major level for a Lamar Wilkerson,
you know, for I mean Tucker Devrees is a little
(22:27):
bit of kind of a halfway house there, right because
he it was looking I mean, he was looking encouraging
at was in my mind it was Virginia. But that's
a small sample size. But a Nick Dora and adjacent
drake until you see it and you know, and this
is where I think Indiana going on a preseason tour
is maybe one of the easiest decisions for Debrees in
(22:52):
you know, kind of the first few weeks of his tenure,
you're just not sure. And the flip side to that
is you can say that about you know, all manner
of teams in the Big Ten, and I think back,
you know, some of the comparisons I found myself making
going in both directions is, you know, nobody really knew
(23:14):
what to expect from Kentucky last year and Mark Pope's
first season, similar situation. Not maybe not quite the same
amount of roster turnomber, but a lot of players pulled
in from from somewhere else. Amari Williams. Was it, Drexel,
Tega Oway, was it Oklahoma? You know that? I mean
I think Jackson Robinson was it? What was it BYU?
(23:34):
I think with Mark Pope, and that found up working
really well. I mean, you know from from kind of
early on. You know that team, that Kentucky team beat
Duke in November, at beaton Zaga. At December, it beat
what turned out to be a pretty good Louisville team
that same month, and and beat Florida, the eventual national champion,
(23:55):
to start conference play. And you know, I mean, it
ends up ten and eight in the SEC. But if
right now I promised you, let's say eleven and nine
in the Big Ten and twenty four wins in a
Sweet sixteen appearance next year, that would be a substantial,
you know win for Indiana in Darren DeVries first season.
On the other hand, the other example I've used, and
(24:16):
I understand that in the end they wound up in
the Sweet sixteen, but we could have told a very
similar story about Arkansas, you know, in John Calipari. And
you know, I think a lot of people were getting
a lot of mileage out of that that clip of
cal part saying I've talked.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
To the team there is there is no team.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
You know, and that team again similarly turned over. Of course,
Cal brings some players with him from Kentucky, so it's
a little bit of a different roster building process. But
if anything, that should make everything go a little bit smoother.
And yet that team starts one and six in SEC
play and spends the entire year swimming upstream before, to
(24:57):
its credit, it gets into the tournament and makes a
little bit noise. I'm not predicting Indiana's gonna wind up
in Sweet sixteen. I'm using those as two sort of
sort of opposite examples of when you turn your roster over.
As much as as Indiana has, there's just no way
(25:17):
to know for sure. A lot of this makes sense
to me on paper. A lot of this makes sense
to me positionally functionally, you know, I even like kind
of the pieces that Indiana's got that should have years
beyond this year. So you can you can talk about
a little bit of a pathway for someone like Nick
Dorn or just sigh Miles to say, you know you're
gonna be this this year, but you're all gonna be
(25:38):
this next year something different next year. You just need
to see it, and like I said, I probably am
going to become a boring broken record in the next
few months when I talk about this, But I just
don't really know of any other way to talk about
it except conceptually to suggest that, you know, the proof
(25:59):
will be in the putting one way or the other.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Do you think I've had some people ask mere readers
of the site various emails things like that, just asking
about the fact that Indiana has so many guys moving
up from the mid major level to the high major level.
Concerns about that. Do you do you think it matters
all that that matters all that that much now and
(26:22):
kind of the modern system that we're in in terms
of the portal and player movement, it seems like.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Rather than trying to reach for maybe a guy that didn't.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Produce as much at the at the high major level,
it maybe make more sense to go and get a
guy that was, you know, the Sun Belt Player of
the year or an all freshman guy in a lower
level league and.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Bet on that production.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Maybe translating, I'm just curious what you make of the
fact that you know, you mentioned mentioned Derees having kind
of their trial run at h in the Big Twelve,
but he was two time Missouri Value Player of the Year.
You look at some of these other guys, I do
realize they did get transfer from Florida, but most of
them are kind of unproven at this level, and I'm
(27:04):
curious if there should be any concern or are how
do you think that translates with so many guys coming
trying to move up?
Speaker 3 (27:12):
No, I mean, like listen, it's I mean, there's I
had somebody suggest to me that, like Indiana was using
a Signetti esque approach to building its roster, and I said, well,
where do you think most of these transferred are going
to come from? Like Kurt Signetti didn't invent the idea
of going out and finding players with proven production and
(27:33):
betting on the idea that enough of that production will
translate up a level, you know, for that player or
that group of players to be successful. So you know,
maybe this is obviously completely you know, hypothetical, but you know,
maybe Lamar Wilkerson doesn't quite shoot or score at the
level that he did at Sam Houston State, but maybe
(27:54):
Nick Norn, you know, his numbers translate pretty cleanly from
Elon and then in the aggregate you get a better
roster kind of on the on on the you know,
in the overall, when you finally boil it all together,
you know, I mean, go back and look at that
Kentucky team. Alway comes from Oklahoma, but Williams comes from Drexel.
(28:15):
Lamont Butler comes from Wake Forest.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
San Diego State. I think San Diego.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Sorry, san Diego State, thank you. I think Andrew car
can work Forest, you know, I mean, go go look
at Auburn. Chad Baker Mazzar comes from San Diego State.
I think people forget like because he was at Auburn
for so long, but like jenn I Brewin started his
career at the mid major level at Morehead State, it's
not a And the flip side is I can find
(28:42):
you examples. I mean, like, you know, Houston's too, and
I'm using Final four teams here. Houston's two major sort
of impact transfers. L J. Crier came from Baylor, milis
Use Milos Jus came from Oklahoma, so you know, can
go both ways. And the flip side is to take
(29:03):
you back to last year when Indiana went out and
recruited a whole bunch of In a lot of cases,
you know, pretty statistically successful high major players. You know,
Canon Carlisle averaged eleven and a half points roughly a
game at Stanford as a freshman. You know, Miles Rice
was was packed twelve Freshmen of the Year, first team
(29:25):
All Conference, Umar Ballo, you know, had a resume as
long as you are of you know, individual achievements and
successes at Arizona. Lou Goodie, and you know, Goodie is
maybe the the outlier in that transfer class in the
sense that he winds up being exactly what Indiana needed from,
if not even maybe a little bit more, a little
bit better pagularly, offensively. But my point is one way.
(29:52):
It's it's not that one way is right and one
way is wrong, Like increasingly I have just come to
believe that it is. It is basically just a question
of whether the coach is is capable of taking the
players that he decides hit what he's trying to do
(30:14):
and put them in the right positions to succeed. Again,
it's you know, there's always this temptation to use teams
that were in the previous season's final four as the paradigm,
but it is interesting to kind of go through those
rosters and think about Like I said, Houston didn't take
a ton of transfers. That's not Calvin Sampson's way. The
two high profile transfers in his rotation both came from
(30:35):
high major conferences. On the other hand, you know, Florida
and Auburn are two programs that had you know, I
think Florida's two primary guards. Maybe it's maybe, I mean,
we can have this discussion, but maybe it's two most
important players just in terms of raw production and ability,
(30:55):
came from FAU and IOTA. So like it. What my
anecdotal experience tells me is number one, it makes perfect
sense because that is where the majority of your talent
is going to be in the portal. If you're a
(31:16):
team like Indiana, to look at players who are trying
to up transfer. That's Luke wins old praise from when
he was at Sports Illustrated up transfer from a mid
major program to a high major program. There are gonna
be a lot more for a program like Indiana, and
it's always looking for, you know, players at the top
end of the talent pool. There are gonna be a
lot more of those players than there are gonna be
(31:37):
productive high major players because productive high major players. Their
teams will have tried their best to retain them. It
makes all the sense in the world to target those players.
This proster, yes, leans heavily into that. Right again, Let's
go back to the scholarship question. Samuel Xiss from Florida,
but go down the list from there, Davidson Troy, West,
(31:58):
Virginia one year at the Paul. But before that, Drake.
The name can be said for Tucker Devrees, Sam Houston
Elon Draftsoul, North, Florida. You know, yes, this roster leans
a little bit heavier into the mid major sort of
talent pool than most. But my experience, and like I
(32:22):
said before it is anecdotal, has taught me that really
it just comes down to the coach. And if the
coach has a firm, clear eyed idea of what his
team needs and his confidence in being able to identify
it and then and then adapt it into the overall,
you know sort of team, then you'll be fine. And
(32:43):
if the coach doesn't have that, it doesn't really matter
what you recruit. It doesn't matter if you recruit guys
with McDonald's all American pedigrees or guys that were all
you know, first team All Conference at a high major
conference a year ago or whatever, you'll struggle because the
team just won't make sense. And again, there's a lot
(33:04):
that I can look at in Darren Debrie's past and
sort of overlay onto this roster and make it man sense.
But you just kind of have to. I mean, seeing
is going to be believing.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Yeah, I mean I think what I've kind of told
people is there's a finite number of those high major
contributors anyway that are going to be willing to transfer
because a lot of them are, like you said, either
getting paid handsomely by their current school, or some of them,
the best ones are going pro. You look at some
of the price tags that we've seen assigned to some
of these higher profile guys, I mean, three or four
(33:37):
million dollars for one player. I'm not sure how much
that makes sense when you're trying to completely overhaul your
roster to the extent that Indiana is. And I also
think that it's smart to take guys that have proven
it one year or two years somewhere else to have
remaining eligibilities and then reach for freshmen in the a
(33:57):
freshman or two in the spring. Not saying that a
fresh couldn't be added, but I don't think those are
guys you want to depend on necessarily next year when
you're trying to get in tournament a year one. So
I think they've kind of hit the sweet spot of
who knows, this could all be wrong, they could underperform,
but I think they've they've done a solid job of
(34:19):
identifying guys who've produced at their level.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
You look at all the three point percentages of the
guards the wings that they brought in.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
It's clearly they had a marker there and we're not
going to take guys that can't shoot from the perimeter.
That's a welcome change, I think for a lot of people.
You look at some of the advanced statistics, offensive, rebounding percentage,
block percentage, some of the front court players, they got
a lot of them, you know, top fifty, top one
hundred nationally in those categories. Those are strong indicators that
they're going to be able to do the things that
(34:48):
they need out of the front court. So, you know,
I like the approach. I think it's been a sound approach.
I think there's been a clear plan. I think that's
the one thing I keep coming back to, and this
is nothing against Mike Woodson is nothing again and how
he built his teams certainly had a lot of talent
produced NBA players, but you didn't always feel like there
was a rhyme or reason to the pieces that they
(35:08):
were putting together. It kind of felt like sometimes just
collecting talent and trying to throw it all out there.
We'll figure it out once the games start. This feels
much more just organized in terms of who they're targeting
and what they want to put together, and I think
that gives you a chance to really have more success
in the long term. The last thing I wanted to
(35:29):
ask you about, and this is kind of a thing
we could probably have a whole show on, so I
don't want you to take too long. I know you're
battling a cough over there, but just the whole house
settlement that's kind of lingering over college sports right now.
What what's the.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
End game for all this is?
Speaker 3 (35:49):
This?
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Is this something that's going to be resolved here in
the next couple of weeks in terms of the roster limits.
From from everything you've you've heard and read, what what
maybe are the next things we're looking for just in
terms of this getting put in to place and how
that impacts things moving forward, because I think a lot
of us were operating on the idea of, well, we
have this April seventh, d eight, this is going to be
(36:10):
a big marker, and now that's kind of all coming on,
and it seems like there's still some negotiations going on
as to whether this actually gets gets done.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
Yeah, so, I mean, you're right, like the long form
answer to that question is probably not just complicated, but
above my pay grade. I think what does seem to
be holding it up right now, primarily is this question
of roster caps. And I think you know, I tried
to write an explainer on this last week that you know,
(36:42):
sports scholarship limits as they existed before the House Settlement
remained the same. So football canna have eighty five scholarship players.
Mens women's basketball are full counter sports at thirteen you
still have your equivalency sports and so forth. What the
House Settlement is going to land is for schools to
(37:02):
commit if they choose two and a half million of
the twenty point five million of their revenue sharing pool
toward more scholarships, and per my understanding, and this is
primarily by Kurtzignetti, is You can't do it a la carte.
You can't say I just want one more football scholarship
this year. I got this kid, I think he's really good.
(37:24):
I want to stash it. If you go over by
one scholarship in any sport, you automatically, is my understanding,
trigger the two point five million, So you have to
have a plan for all of it. What the NCAA
and the conferences sphered was that if they allow such
(37:46):
substantial extra scholarship spending, then what would stop schools from
stashing players? So, and this is a very rudimentary history lesson.
I'm sure there was more to it than this, but
this was the way it was always told to me anyway,
growing up in Atlanta with the Georgia Tech alumnu's grandfather.
(38:09):
That Georgia Tech left the SEC essentially because Bear Bryant
got into the practice of signing like twice as many
kids every year as he knew he needed. But there
were rules, as there were for so many different conferences,
around transferring in conference. So what he'd do is he'd
sign a whole bunch more than he'd needed, cut a
bunch of them, and then those players wouldn't be able
(38:30):
to transfer to another SEC school, and Bobby Dodd, who
was Georgia Tech's legendary head coach, won i think three
national titles there in the fifties, basically went to the
SEC office and said, we have to stop this. This
isn't fair. The SEC Office wouldn't stand up to Bear Bryant,
and so Bobby Dodd picked Georgia Tech up and took
him out of the SEC. It went independent. What I
(38:53):
think there was again, I'm sure there's more to it
than that. That was the story. It was as it
was always related to me. What I think the powers
that be all feared was that in a more modern construct,
so if you added twenty five scholarships.
Speaker 6 (39:11):
In football, what would stop you know, a school that
did that from going out and using you know, it's
nil plus it's revenue sharing money, independent of the extra
scholarships to take a bunch of players and just stash
them on its roster.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
And then you know, you'd have even more centralization of talent.
The rich would only get richer, it would be harder
for you know, the talent to disperse, and the sport
would become even more homogenized. So they came up with
this idea of roster caps, and they said that, you
know your scholarship limits remain the same. We're going to
cap the total number of players scholarship and non scholarship
(39:48):
you can have on your roster at any given time,
and you can add scholarships up to that cap, but
you can't go past it. You can't go past it
for scholarship players, can't come past it for walk ons,
for anybody. What I think, justifiably some complainants in the
(40:09):
house case have argued is if we institute these roster
caps effective July one, a bunch of athletes are going
to get cut loose. And we're talking in the thousands,
you know, if not tens of thousands, if you want
to add up. Football is the example everyone uses, because
football's roster cap is going to be one O five.
(40:29):
Most football programs tend to have one hundred and twenty
five to one hundred and thirty players. They are a
handful that have even more than that. Obviously it's eighty
five plus walk on. What people who argued is and
what Claudia Wilkins, the judge providing over the House case,
seems to be endorsing, is the idea of grandfathering mes
in and stepping them down so you can let the
vast majority of these players just sort of graduate off
(40:51):
your rosters and then just not replace them. For the moment,
the NA and the conferences seem to be holding firm
against this. I think there's been maybe some suggestions of
movement this week. I don't think anybody really understands why
something this seismic and important, why.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
This would be the.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
Why this would be the hill to die on, you know,
to sort of to sort of kill the House settlement on.
Because listen, I mean the you know, the party that's
probably most motivated in the end by the House settlement
is the NCAA. Because if this goes to trial, recent
precedent suggests the NCAA will lose and that the financial
(41:42):
penalty could be much much larger. And I don't know
if it's a class action. This is where I start
to swim into deep water, you know, legally in terms
of legal ease. But I mean, it could just bankrupt
whole system and force us to start over. And I'm
not I'm not totally sure that there wouldn't be some
(42:03):
positive elements. I'm not not necessarily bankrupting the system, but
more kind of what we have here in general. And
this is where I will get a little conceptual. It's like,
if you've got a car that you know is breaking down,
and you don't really want to pay the two thousand
dollars to fix it, so you pay like a two
(42:25):
hundred dollars repair, and then a three hundred dollars repair,
and then another two hundred dollar repair, and you just
keep throwing good money after bad into it, knowing in
the end you're still going to have this, you know,
sort of this this band aid you got to rip off. Anyway,
That's kind of where I think we are with college athletics, Like,
and this goes beyond just the housecase, but to talk
(42:48):
about collective bargaining, multi year collegebacts, how to reform the
transfer windows, you know, how to create a wealth redistribution
system that that doesn't allow the rich to get richer
without any sort of compensation, going back the other way
to schools further down the financial ecosystem or further down
(43:11):
the financial pyramid. I mean, this is my moderately informed
opinion is that this the argument of a roster caps
and the extent to which, at least for the moment,
the NCAA and the member conferences, the defendants in the
House case have decided to kind of dig their heels
(43:32):
in and push back. Is just kind of representative of
that wider idea that all politics are short term, and
nobody wants nobody wants to do the hard thing that
might make everyone's life more difficult immediately, but make all
(43:53):
of this work better in the five year plan, in
the ten year plan, in the twenty year plan, and
maybe some of the people that take these tough decisions
have to wear them and maybe they wind up, you know,
ultimately pushed to one side because of the criticisms and
things that come win it, but it winds up working
out better for the whole system long term. I think
(44:17):
that this is just kind of like the most like
the latest example of leaders just not being willing to
sort of absorb a little more short term pain for
more long term gain. Now, what I'm talking about in
the wider conceptual sense is a pretty dramatic renovation of
(44:39):
college athletics and it's power structure, it's financial structure, all
that stuff. But I think we're going to get We're
going to keep getting pushed in that direction and the
house settlement is a really important, you know, almost like
pressure release valve that allows everyone to keep moving forward
(44:59):
with out the whole thing just collapsing on itself. And
I don't really this is just me speaking personally, I
don't really understand why there hasn't been more of an
appetite to compromise over something, excuse me, something as seemingly
you know, I don't want to say benign, but certainly
manageable as gradually introducing a roster cap so we don't
(45:25):
wind up in a situation where there are thousands of
athletes starting July one who are simply told you're not
on my team. You don't have a place on the
team anymore. Sorry, that was probably more.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
Than you were looking for. But it's like.
Speaker 3 (45:42):
The the here, like what is specific to the here
and now? At least in my estimation or my processing
of all this is symptomatic of a larger problem, which
is that we can all generally see where this is going,
and even more than that, we can probably all recognize
(46:04):
most of the benefits that we'd get by tearing off
that band aid and by you know, just just sort
of what's the old, what's the old? Irish phrase throwing
our cap over the walls, so that we have no
choice but the climate. But we ah in the in
(46:24):
the here and now as we're we're still dealing with,
you know, basically just constant short term gain with short
term pain attached to it. The house case does seem
to be resting on whether or not someone will give
on this question of roster caps. And if it doesn't,
(46:45):
I mean we could be talking about an even more
seismic event in you know, the the history and the
structure of college athletics, which is why I think eventually
there will be a compromise. Why I think eventually, you know,
everyone will will metaphorically speaking, put their guns down. But
it hasn't happened yet, and there's going to be a
(47:06):
lot of sort of worried fascination around here, and by here,
I mean just all of college athletics until it's resolved.
Speaker 2 (47:17):
For sure.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
Good stuff, excellent stuff as always, Zac, Thanks for braving
your illness to make time for us on podcasts on
the Brink. Always great to talk to you, Thank you.
Speaker 3 (47:27):
Thanks for having me. Sorry about my nasally voice.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
It's all good. Thanks everybody as always for listening to podcasts.
On the Brink.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
If you enjoyed the show, please leave us the rating
and review over on Apple Podcasts. Lead was a five
star rating over on Spotify, and we'll be back next
week with another episode of podcast on the Brink.
Welcome back to a new episode of Podcast on the Brink.
It's Thursday, May one. It's a busy end of March,
all of April for IU basketball. To help us discuss
the month, it was, Zach Austererman and the indie star
Good Friend of the show, Good Friend of Mine, back
(00:38):
on Podcast on the Brink this week. Before we get
to Zach wanted to take a moment to let you
know that this episode of Podcast on the Brink it's
brought to you by Visit Bloomington. As always really appreciate
our friends at Visit Bloomington. Just because the basketball season
is over doesn't mean the fun stops. Spring is the
perfect time to explore everything Bloomington.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Has to offer.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Hike the trails at Griffey Lake, natures the refuel with
local flavors on tap at Upland Brewing Company. Don't forget
about the many music festivals coming to Bloomington this spring.
Whether you're into outdoor ventures, food, or just relaxing in
a vibrant college town, Visit Bloomington's got you covered. Start
planning your Spring getaway now at visit Bloomington dot com.
(01:20):
Zach is battling a sinus infection, but he has been
gracious enough to join us on this episode of Podcasts
on the Brink. First of all, Zach non IU related
wanted to take a moment to congratulate you on the
Jim O'Connell Award that you received last month at the
(01:41):
USBWA luncheon down at the Final four. I know that
was something maybe that you're not going to talk about
too much publicly on your own podcast, but did want
to take a moment here on on Podcasts on the
Brink as someone who has known you for a long time.
You know, at one point you uh carried a potted
plant in your front seat of your car, wrote about
(02:04):
that friendside the hall. So you've come a long way,
and I just wanted to take a moment to congratulate
you on that well deserved I know a lot of
IU fans are feel very lucky to have you covering
the team, So I just wanted to say that before
we started this week's episode.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Well, thank you, friend. I really appreciate that. I you know,
I mean it, It meant a lot. I'm still confident
there are people that were more deserving that I was.
But you know, you and I have both been hammering
away this long time. I think you remember the USBWA
before I was. I'm pretty sure you told me you
(02:40):
showed me out of sign up, so you know where
we go back to many a Moses Abraham recruiting update.
So I appreciate that. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
And the Gee Mark Michelle contract.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Remember that that was all investigation, one of one of
the most in depth investigations I've ever been a part of.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
So I have had you on the show since the
hiring of Darren Derees. You've obviously had a chance to
sit down with them, talk with them a little bit.
You've covered the portal, everything that's gone on. You're at
the final four kind of a whirlwind. What six weeks
for you here? Just what was your reaction to kind
of where Indiana landed in this coaching search and what
(03:26):
we've seen so far. Just in terms of the the
roster that they've assembled, the coaching staff, it seems like
things are really starting to come into place and you
can see a clear plan in place in Bloomington for
this first roster for Debrees.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Yeah, I mean, I think in terms of the coach
you know a lot of I mean, I know I
was to the people I know I was focused for
a long time. I've been McCollum. You know. Frankly, I
think I'm not saying Degrees will be a better coach
than McCollum long term. Debris certainly has a better resume,
(04:02):
you know. I think I, in my own sort of
evaluation of like the field as it were, Debrees felt
like the kind of person that you pushed to one
side because he just he'd just taken the West Virginia job.
You know, at that time he was he was doing
fairly well in it. I think, I mean, we were
(04:23):
all broadly speaking, surprise West Virginia didn't make the NCAA tournament.
And you know, you think, you know, if you want
to maybe a comparison point, you think about Dusty May.
And there were a lot of people who said, you know,
Dusty May wouldn't leave Michigan after one year because coaches
don't do that very often, and that the only real
(04:45):
sort of justification for believing it might happen was his
background with Indiana. And of course you know that the
fact that he was a e alum, So you know,
I wasn't I didn't necessarily like push a pin into
Darren Devrees is the absolute home run higher. I just
kind of looked at him and thought, coaches don't leave
jobs after a year very often. Now, there are a
(05:09):
variety of reasons why it makes sense when you just
sort of sit and think about it, you know, sort
of in a cold and analytical way, why he would
do that. But I think that you know, certainly from
the point he was hired, and the number of different
people I've talked to or observed or listened to, you know,
(05:31):
West Virginia people upset about losing him, people that I
know in the sport who have you know, very little
obfection for Indiana basketball, who think it's a pretty good hire.
I think, you know, at least early on, my reaction
was I think probably something agin to Okay, let's see,
(05:52):
let's see how this works, let's see what this looks like.
And to your point, I think, thus far, while all
you know, I've seen too many of these sort of
you know, portal roster remakes, uh makes sense on paper
and then not come together in practice. There's there's a
(06:13):
lot in theory to like about what you know, kind
of the the the trajectory Indiana is on for next
season based on the players that Indian has been able
to bring in based on I think some in different
cases and fairly obvious fits to what Devrees Devrees teams
(06:35):
have kind of done historically. I don't think Indiana is
gonna be the perfect team by any means, but it's
not hard to sell me on the idea that it's
going to be a better team. You know that it's
than it's been the last couple of years. And I
think you've certainly seen Indiana flexus financial muscle in the
roster building process. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
I don't think anyone should apologize for that. That it's just,
(06:57):
you know, part of the equation for success in college basketball,
you know, in twenty twenty five. But I think there's
alstill been you know, quietly, I think there have been
a number of different sort of data points or mile
markers in this process that have been encouraging. I mean,
you know, when was the last time you saw Indiana
(07:18):
hire an assistant coach off an the Laite eight team?
You know? I mean that that we've seen Indiana try,
but we've not seen Indiana do it. And that's not
that alone doesn't mean this is all going to work.
But it's things like that, and it's it's if you
just sort of if you sit down and you you
array out everything that we've seen over the last what
(07:39):
probably six weeks since Devres was officially confirmed. There is
a lot I think to be encouraged by, whether it's
devrees on background, the players he's recruited, the extent to
which it feels like you can track, you know, kind
of this this this raw process and you can see,
(08:02):
I mean not to buy into a Twitter alignment, you
can see the vision a little bit. I just think
there's you know, I'm too old and I've seen too
many false dawns to sit here and promise anybody that
you know, this is a home run and it's all
going to work out. But I think there are reasons
(08:23):
for encouragement as we sit here today on one Bay one.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Yeah, it's been interesting just to trying to compare this
situation to the last two coaching hires, because, as you said,
I feel like when Archie Miller was hired, there was
a ton of optimism for many reasons, you know, coming
off of his tenure there at Dayton, and it felt
(08:49):
like he assembled a really strong coaching staff. There's also
a much different time in college basketball without the transfer portal,
and then Woodson obviously came in and kept Trace Jackson
Davis around, which was a huge, huge recruiting win. I
think it really helped prep him for his first two
seasons and what he was able to do there get
(09:09):
into the tournament. And you mentioned sometimes we fall into
that trap of, you know, judging a higher. I think
quite frankly, you know, people have asked me like, what
do you think of this higher? I'm like, I can't
really tell you right now, because you know, anything I
say would be a complete guest. I think all of
us are guessing we can. We can do things for
clicks and say this is an A higher, this is
a B plus higher. But kind of, you know, looking
(09:33):
at this and maybe comparing it to what Indiana did
the past two highers, is there anything you can point
to in terms of the process to where they arrived here,
It feels like it was a little bit more, maybe
more data driven in terms of the work that they
did in the background and kind of the profile that
they were looking at. Is there anything maybe that that
stands out different from this search and where they arrived
(09:54):
compared to the last two, I.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Think there, yeah, I mean, I think there were some
some data driven elements. I I thought the Mike Woodson hire,
for a lot of reasons, was kind of a piece
undo itself. And you know, I know there's a lot
of people that want to get into kind of the
palace intrigue of you know, who was flexing their muscle
in that, and trustees and whatever. I'd also point out
(10:19):
like Indiana was hiring somebody in the middle of a pandemic,
you know, I mean, and we were about to enter
an NIL world we have no idea about. I mean,
like I remember in those first days.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
Of NIL, people getting really excited about partnerships with like
banks and you know, like like restaurants, you know, I
mean that the idea that you look back now and.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
That all seems so quaint, but we had no idea
what any of that looked like. And we were living
in a very uncertain world then, and so the Woodson
hiring almost as kind of a piece undo itself. But
I think that Indiana, you know, certainly was trying to
use a mixture of sort of data and research. And
(11:00):
when I said research, I mean both numbers research and
calling people that that that various sort of you know,
stakeholders trusted to quiz them on what do you think
of this coach or do you think that could work
or whatever. I think it was a combination of both
of those things. I think I think in particular, like
this was not the necessarily the thing that convinced me,
(11:22):
oh this is this is this higher this process was
ideal and this will absolutely work. But I think, for example,
Indiana took some steps to try and ensure that it
wasn't hiring I don't want to call Archie Miller fools gold.
I think that's unfair. Like he went to four straight tournaments.
That's not an easy thing to do. But one of
(11:44):
the data points that Indiana kind of came to with
Darren Devrees that I think it was looking for in saying,
is there something that we're missing? Is there something that
we missed in hiring Archie Miller that can inform whether
or not the next guy is the right guy. And
(12:05):
one of the things that they found was that basically
that Archie Miller had success at Dayton, but that there
was an extent to which that success had been carried
over from Brian Gregory, and I think actually Gregory had
he hadn't gone to the tournament, I don't think, but
he'd won more games in his last four years in
Dayton before taking the Georgia Tech job than Archie Miller
(12:28):
won in his first four years in Dayton. It was
it was still a healthy number both ways. It was
like ninety five to ninety. But the point was, you know,
there was already a structure in place at Dayton that
Archie Miller was able to inherit and refashion and you know,
kind of remake in some aspects according to his own
(12:50):
designs and then carry that forward and have success. Whereas
Darren Devrees at Drake, the number was the numbers were
something like forty and ninety six. I think Drake had
won forty games the four years before he got there.
The number was somewhere in the nineties. I don't remember,
ninety four, ninety five, ninety six, somewhere in there. Those
That was how many games he won in his first
four years. And when you looked at just in general
(13:13):
the six year run he had it, Drake Drake had
really never in the modern structure of let's say, the
modern NCAA tournament Drake had never had a run like that.
You know, you have to go back to the late sixties,
early seventies, back when you know, the NCAA Tournament only
led in like twelve teams or sixteen teams, and the
NIT was very competitive, and there were other postseason events
(13:36):
and things. You know, if we say the modern era
of college basketball, that probably starts either at thirty two
teams in the NCAA Tournament, or I think there was
a brief period where there were forty eight teams in
the NCAA Tournament. I think in eighty one, Indiana's second
natural title learn of Bob nine. I think that was
a forty eight team tournament. You know, that is probably
(13:58):
kind of the quote unquote modern era of college basketball,
and Indiana's research showed that basically Drake had never been
successful at anywhere near that level consistently in that span
until Darren Devrez arrived, and there were other I think
marker points too, and then I think there was probably
some encouragement over what he did at West Virginia. Was
(14:19):
only there for a year, but obviously, you know, they
win nineteen games, you know, probably would have won more
if his son hadn't gotten hurt again. We don't need
to hash up what happened on selection Sunday, but everyone
sort of felt like if there was a team that really,
you know, got you know, kind of shafted in the
selection process, it was almost certainly West Virginia. So I
(14:43):
think there was a slightly more note. Let me also
say I don't think Indiana didn't take an analytical approach
in hiring Archie Miller. I do think Indiana tried to
identify both marker points for what had made coaching hires
(15:04):
successful at similar institutions in the recent past. And I
think somewhat importantly, Indiana had also tried to identify why
its own hires had not worked out. And I think
that that sort of self reflection and that willingness to
be a little bit self critical, I think should give
(15:27):
fans at least a little bit more comfort around how
and why Indiana landed on Darren DeVries that this wasn't
just a this wasn't just a process of you know,
let's go find the guy who nailed the interview and
you know, has the best references and whatever, but let's
ask the question of what have we gotten wrong in
(15:49):
the past? That is that has gotten us onto this
this this carousel of you know, three or four years
new coach, three or four years new coach, and how
do we correct that in the way that we evaluate
the candidates that we consider for this job.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Looking at just kind of the roster right now, eleven
scholarship players, I think I think that's right if you
include Trent Cisly, ten portal commitments, eleven with Sisily, the
potential maybe for Luke Goodie depending on what happens with
the waiver process. Just just a big picture, this roster
that they've put together for year one, What what maybe
(16:32):
stands out to you in terms of some of the
just the way that the roster was built positionally. You know,
some people have asked me, well, is there going to
be a rim protecting big man. I'm not sure that's
going to be something that's added from this point forward.
I'm not saying it's not going to be, but it
seems like in some ways that they're they're they're somewhat
comfortable with what they have right now in the front court.
(16:55):
What what just from a roster construction standpoint, has it
out in terms of the pieces they put together and
also how competitive does it do you think this team
can be in year one? Obviously we've seen it in
the last cycle with some big time programs hiring coaches,
(17:16):
getting to the tournament right away.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Some of the recruits that they've.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Landed I've talked to and they've all referenced, you know,
the goal is get to the tournament, competing in the
Big ten in year one. It certainly seems like they've
got the pieces to do that. Albeit some guys are
betting on coming up from a lower level. So I'm
just kind of curious for where you think this roster
stands right now, are their needs for other positions, and
(17:41):
just in terms of competing next year.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
What do you think is realistic for this group?
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Well, it's I mean, listen, it's it's obviously difficult. I mean,
like it's never been harder to evaluate like that question,
when so much turns over everywhere, like there should be
I think a robust amount of belief and dust again
going back to Justin May at Michigan. But on the
other hand, I mean, Dusty May lost some of his
(18:08):
most important players like that. That old team in a
lot of respects was built around Danny Wolf, Vlad Golden
and Trey Donaldson and they're all gone. Donald In transferred.
I'm not losing my mind, right.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Brian and I He's gone to Miami.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
But they brought in some really promising transfers. They've got
one of the best, you know, on paper, one of
the best transfer classes in the country. So you look
at it and you say, well, Dusty May has earned,
you know, sort of the trust to the right to
be believed in until proven wrong, even if he's turning
over the roster. But on the other hand, you know,
if we're sitting here and we're evaluating, I mean, the
(18:51):
only two guys on that team that had a usage
rate above twenty two percent are gone, so is so
is that team's starting point guard. So you kind of
have to see it to know for sure on paper,
and I pull I'm pulling up your scholarship charge just
to remind myself because it's so easy to forget with
(19:12):
all of these new names on paper. A lot of
it makes sense, and especially when you when you think
back to Debrees sort of outline of his own team.
You know, when we talked to him the day was hired,
there was a lot of discussion of motion principles, I mean,
(19:35):
I don't think he used the term positionless basketball, but
that's kind of what motion offense is, right Like, it's
the idea that the ball keeps moving and you're not
you know, like to use the Mike Woodson offense, which,
let's be fair to it had some successful years, especially
under Trace Jackson Davis. With Trace Jackson Davis in the.
Speaker 5 (19:56):
Post once your transition options were exhaust that offense was
built around posting up a big throwing in the ball
and then letting everything operate off of that a lot
of the time, or choosing to bring that big out
into a ball screen situation and then letting.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
That operate out of a lot of the time. The
way that Devrees talks about his offense and every you know,
it's it's a lazy comparison, but every time I see it,
or every time I hear him talk about it, I
think about Creighton is a little bit more motion based,
(20:34):
certainly a lot less post up based. I think there's
gonna be plenty of ball screen action, but you can
have ball screen action with motion concepts. And when you
look at up, of course, you know you got three
players on this roster you would probably describe positionally as
point guards or at least as lead guards in Connorway
and right and drink. You've got multiple wings your bigs.
(20:57):
You know, we'll see what kind of what Josh Harris
maybe becomes long term, but you know, functionally your bigs
right now can can fit a fairly specific sort of
set of roles at both ends of the floor. Protect
the rim, rebound screen, lob you know, finish well, et cetera.
(21:18):
You know it, It's not hard to make a lot
of this makes sense sort of functionally under what Devrees
has has sort of said. These are my sort of philosophies,
especially offensively. These are, you know, the concepts that I
kind of draw from. But and I suspect this is
(21:41):
where I'm gonna sound really boring for the next few
months until you see it work, especially with a completely
new team. I mean, we'll see if Benniana gets Loup
Goodie back, you know what we'll see. But it is
going to be at very least damn near a completely
new team until you all of these pieces sort of
(22:02):
arranged on the floor and you can look at and say,
this guy sets the tone defensively. These are the players
that make sure Indiana is rebounding the ball at the
level that it needs to. The shooting, the scoring has
translated up from the mid major level for a Lamar Wilkerson,
you know, for I mean Tucker Devrees is a little
(22:27):
bit of kind of a halfway house there, right because
he it was looking I mean, he was looking encouraging
at was in my mind it was Virginia. But that's
a small sample size. But a Nick Dora and adjacent
drake until you see it and you know, and this
is where I think Indiana going on a preseason tour
is maybe one of the easiest decisions for Debrees in
(22:52):
you know, kind of the first few weeks of his tenure,
you're just not sure. And the flip side to that
is you can say that about you know, all manner
of teams in the Big Ten, and I think back,
you know, some of the comparisons I found myself making
going in both directions is, you know, nobody really knew
(23:14):
what to expect from Kentucky last year and Mark Pope's
first season, similar situation. Not maybe not quite the same
amount of roster turnomber, but a lot of players pulled
in from from somewhere else. Amari Williams. Was it, Drexel,
Tega Oway, was it Oklahoma? You know that? I mean
I think Jackson Robinson was it? What was it BYU?
(23:34):
I think with Mark Pope, and that found up working
really well. I mean, you know from from kind of
early on. You know that team, that Kentucky team beat
Duke in November, at beaton Zaga. At December, it beat
what turned out to be a pretty good Louisville team
that same month, and and beat Florida, the eventual national champion,
(23:55):
to start conference play. And you know, I mean, it
ends up ten and eight in the SEC. But if
right now I promised you, let's say eleven and nine
in the Big Ten and twenty four wins in a
Sweet sixteen appearance next year, that would be a substantial,
you know win for Indiana in Darren DeVries first season.
On the other hand, the other example I've used, and
(24:16):
I understand that in the end they wound up in
the Sweet sixteen, but we could have told a very
similar story about Arkansas, you know, in John Calipari. And
you know, I think a lot of people were getting
a lot of mileage out of that that clip of
cal part saying I've talked.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
To the team there is there is no team.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
You know, and that team again similarly turned over. Of course,
Cal brings some players with him from Kentucky, so it's
a little bit of a different roster building process. But
if anything, that should make everything go a little bit smoother.
And yet that team starts one and six in SEC
play and spends the entire year swimming upstream before, to
(24:57):
its credit, it gets into the tournament and makes a
little bit noise. I'm not predicting Indiana's gonna wind up
in Sweet sixteen. I'm using those as two sort of
sort of opposite examples of when you turn your roster over.
As much as as Indiana has, there's just no way
(25:17):
to know for sure. A lot of this makes sense
to me on paper. A lot of this makes sense
to me positionally functionally, you know, I even like kind
of the pieces that Indiana's got that should have years
beyond this year. So you can you can talk about
a little bit of a pathway for someone like Nick
Dorn or just sigh Miles to say, you know you're
gonna be this this year, but you're all gonna be
(25:38):
this next year something different next year. You just need
to see it, and like I said, I probably am
going to become a boring broken record in the next
few months when I talk about this, But I just
don't really know of any other way to talk about
it except conceptually to suggest that, you know, the proof
(25:59):
will be in the putting one way or the other.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Do you think I've had some people ask mere readers
of the site various emails things like that, just asking
about the fact that Indiana has so many guys moving
up from the mid major level to the high major level.
Concerns about that. Do you do you think it matters
all that that matters all that that much now and
(26:22):
kind of the modern system that we're in in terms
of the portal and player movement, it seems like.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Rather than trying to reach for maybe a guy that didn't.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Produce as much at the at the high major level,
it maybe make more sense to go and get a
guy that was, you know, the Sun Belt Player of
the year or an all freshman guy in a lower
level league and.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Bet on that production.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Maybe translating, I'm just curious what you make of the
fact that you know, you mentioned mentioned Derees having kind
of their trial run at h in the Big Twelve,
but he was two time Missouri Value Player of the Year.
You look at some of these other guys, I do
realize they did get transfer from Florida, but most of
them are kind of unproven at this level, and I'm
(27:04):
curious if there should be any concern or are how
do you think that translates with so many guys coming
trying to move up?
Speaker 3 (27:12):
No, I mean, like listen, it's I mean, there's I
had somebody suggest to me that, like Indiana was using
a Signetti esque approach to building its roster, and I said, well,
where do you think most of these transferred are going
to come from? Like Kurt Signetti didn't invent the idea
of going out and finding players with proven production and
(27:33):
betting on the idea that enough of that production will
translate up a level, you know, for that player or
that group of players to be successful. So you know,
maybe this is obviously completely you know, hypothetical, but you know,
maybe Lamar Wilkerson doesn't quite shoot or score at the
level that he did at Sam Houston State, but maybe
(27:54):
Nick Norn, you know, his numbers translate pretty cleanly from
Elon and then in the aggregate you get a better
roster kind of on the on on the you know,
in the overall, when you finally boil it all together,
you know, I mean, go back and look at that
Kentucky team. Alway comes from Oklahoma, but Williams comes from Drexel.
(28:15):
Lamont Butler comes from Wake Forest.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
San Diego State. I think San Diego.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Sorry, san Diego State, thank you. I think Andrew car
can work Forest, you know, I mean, go go look
at Auburn. Chad Baker Mazzar comes from San Diego State.
I think people forget like because he was at Auburn
for so long, but like jenn I Brewin started his
career at the mid major level at Morehead State, it's
not a And the flip side is I can find
(28:42):
you examples. I mean, like, you know, Houston's too, and
I'm using Final four teams here. Houston's two major sort
of impact transfers. L J. Crier came from Baylor, milis
Use Milos Jus came from Oklahoma, so you know, can
go both ways. And the flip side is to take
(29:03):
you back to last year when Indiana went out and
recruited a whole bunch of In a lot of cases,
you know, pretty statistically successful high major players. You know,
Canon Carlisle averaged eleven and a half points roughly a
game at Stanford as a freshman. You know, Miles Rice
was was packed twelve Freshmen of the Year, first team
(29:25):
All Conference, Umar Ballo, you know, had a resume as
long as you are of you know, individual achievements and
successes at Arizona. Lou Goodie, and you know, Goodie is
maybe the the outlier in that transfer class in the
sense that he winds up being exactly what Indiana needed from,
if not even maybe a little bit more, a little
bit better pagularly, offensively. But my point is one way.
(29:52):
It's it's not that one way is right and one
way is wrong, Like increasingly I have just come to
believe that it is. It is basically just a question
of whether the coach is is capable of taking the
players that he decides hit what he's trying to do
(30:14):
and put them in the right positions to succeed. Again,
it's you know, there's always this temptation to use teams
that were in the previous season's final four as the paradigm,
but it is interesting to kind of go through those
rosters and think about Like I said, Houston didn't take
a ton of transfers. That's not Calvin Sampson's way. The
two high profile transfers in his rotation both came from
(30:35):
high major conferences. On the other hand, you know, Florida
and Auburn are two programs that had you know, I
think Florida's two primary guards. Maybe it's maybe, I mean,
we can have this discussion, but maybe it's two most
important players just in terms of raw production and ability,
(30:55):
came from FAU and IOTA. So like it. What my
anecdotal experience tells me is number one, it makes perfect
sense because that is where the majority of your talent
is going to be in the portal. If you're a
(31:16):
team like Indiana, to look at players who are trying
to up transfer. That's Luke wins old praise from when
he was at Sports Illustrated up transfer from a mid
major program to a high major program. There are gonna
be a lot more for a program like Indiana, and
it's always looking for, you know, players at the top
end of the talent pool. There are gonna be a
lot more of those players than there are gonna be
(31:37):
productive high major players because productive high major players. Their
teams will have tried their best to retain them. It
makes all the sense in the world to target those players.
This proster, yes, leans heavily into that. Right again, Let's
go back to the scholarship question. Samuel Xiss from Florida,
but go down the list from there, Davidson Troy, West,
(31:58):
Virginia one year at the Paul. But before that, Drake.
The name can be said for Tucker Devrees, Sam Houston
Elon Draftsoul, North, Florida. You know, yes, this roster leans
a little bit heavier into the mid major sort of
talent pool than most. But my experience, and like I
(32:22):
said before it is anecdotal, has taught me that really
it just comes down to the coach. And if the
coach has a firm, clear eyed idea of what his
team needs and his confidence in being able to identify
it and then and then adapt it into the overall,
you know sort of team, then you'll be fine. And
(32:43):
if the coach doesn't have that, it doesn't really matter
what you recruit. It doesn't matter if you recruit guys
with McDonald's all American pedigrees or guys that were all
you know, first team All Conference at a high major
conference a year ago or whatever, you'll struggle because the
team just won't make sense. And again, there's a lot
(33:04):
that I can look at in Darren Debrie's past and
sort of overlay onto this roster and make it man sense.
But you just kind of have to. I mean, seeing
is going to be believing.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Yeah, I mean I think what I've kind of told
people is there's a finite number of those high major
contributors anyway that are going to be willing to transfer
because a lot of them are, like you said, either
getting paid handsomely by their current school, or some of them,
the best ones are going pro. You look at some
of the price tags that we've seen assigned to some
of these higher profile guys, I mean, three or four
(33:37):
million dollars for one player. I'm not sure how much
that makes sense when you're trying to completely overhaul your
roster to the extent that Indiana is. And I also
think that it's smart to take guys that have proven
it one year or two years somewhere else to have
remaining eligibilities and then reach for freshmen in the a
(33:57):
freshman or two in the spring. Not saying that a
fresh couldn't be added, but I don't think those are
guys you want to depend on necessarily next year when
you're trying to get in tournament a year one. So
I think they've kind of hit the sweet spot of
who knows, this could all be wrong, they could underperform,
but I think they've they've done a solid job of
(34:19):
identifying guys who've produced at their level.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
You look at all the three point percentages of the
guards the wings that they brought in.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
It's clearly they had a marker there and we're not
going to take guys that can't shoot from the perimeter.
That's a welcome change, I think for a lot of people.
You look at some of the advanced statistics, offensive, rebounding percentage,
block percentage, some of the front court players, they got
a lot of them, you know, top fifty, top one
hundred nationally in those categories. Those are strong indicators that
they're going to be able to do the things that
(34:48):
they need out of the front court. So, you know,
I like the approach. I think it's been a sound approach.
I think there's been a clear plan. I think that's
the one thing I keep coming back to, and this
is nothing against Mike Woodson is nothing again and how
he built his teams certainly had a lot of talent
produced NBA players, but you didn't always feel like there
was a rhyme or reason to the pieces that they
(35:08):
were putting together. It kind of felt like sometimes just
collecting talent and trying to throw it all out there.
We'll figure it out once the games start. This feels
much more just organized in terms of who they're targeting
and what they want to put together, and I think
that gives you a chance to really have more success
in the long term. The last thing I wanted to
(35:29):
ask you about, and this is kind of a thing
we could probably have a whole show on, so I
don't want you to take too long. I know you're
battling a cough over there, but just the whole house
settlement that's kind of lingering over college sports right now.
What what's the.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
End game for all this is?
Speaker 3 (35:49):
This?
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Is this something that's going to be resolved here in
the next couple of weeks in terms of the roster limits.
From from everything you've you've heard and read, what what
maybe are the next things we're looking for just in
terms of this getting put in to place and how
that impacts things moving forward, because I think a lot
of us were operating on the idea of, well, we
have this April seventh, d eight, this is going to be
(36:10):
a big marker, and now that's kind of all coming on,
and it seems like there's still some negotiations going on
as to whether this actually gets gets done.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
Yeah, so, I mean, you're right, like the long form
answer to that question is probably not just complicated, but
above my pay grade. I think what does seem to
be holding it up right now, primarily is this question
of roster caps. And I think you know, I tried
to write an explainer on this last week that you know,
(36:42):
sports scholarship limits as they existed before the House Settlement
remained the same. So football canna have eighty five scholarship players.
Mens women's basketball are full counter sports at thirteen you
still have your equivalency sports and so forth. What the
House Settlement is going to land is for schools to
(37:02):
commit if they choose two and a half million of
the twenty point five million of their revenue sharing pool
toward more scholarships, and per my understanding, and this is
primarily by Kurtzignetti, is You can't do it a la carte.
You can't say I just want one more football scholarship
this year. I got this kid, I think he's really good.
(37:24):
I want to stash it. If you go over by
one scholarship in any sport, you automatically, is my understanding,
trigger the two point five million, So you have to
have a plan for all of it. What the NCAA
and the conferences sphered was that if they allow such
(37:46):
substantial extra scholarship spending, then what would stop schools from
stashing players? So, and this is a very rudimentary history lesson.
I'm sure there was more to it than this, but
this was the way it was always told to me anyway,
growing up in Atlanta with the Georgia Tech alumnu's grandfather.
(38:09):
That Georgia Tech left the SEC essentially because Bear Bryant
got into the practice of signing like twice as many
kids every year as he knew he needed. But there
were rules, as there were for so many different conferences,
around transferring in conference. So what he'd do is he'd
sign a whole bunch more than he'd needed, cut a
bunch of them, and then those players wouldn't be able
(38:30):
to transfer to another SEC school, and Bobby Dodd, who
was Georgia Tech's legendary head coach, won i think three
national titles there in the fifties, basically went to the
SEC office and said, we have to stop this. This
isn't fair. The SEC Office wouldn't stand up to Bear Bryant,
and so Bobby Dodd picked Georgia Tech up and took
him out of the SEC. It went independent. What I
(38:53):
think there was again, I'm sure there's more to it
than that. That was the story. It was as it
was always related to me. What I think the powers
that be all feared was that in a more modern construct,
so if you added twenty five scholarships.
Speaker 6 (39:11):
In football, what would stop you know, a school that
did that from going out and using you know, it's
nil plus it's revenue sharing money, independent of the extra
scholarships to take a bunch of players and just stash
them on its roster.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
And then you know, you'd have even more centralization of talent.
The rich would only get richer, it would be harder
for you know, the talent to disperse, and the sport
would become even more homogenized. So they came up with
this idea of roster caps, and they said that, you
know your scholarship limits remain the same. We're going to
cap the total number of players scholarship and non scholarship
(39:48):
you can have on your roster at any given time,
and you can add scholarships up to that cap, but
you can't go past it. You can't go past it
for scholarship players, can't come past it for walk ons,
for anybody. What I think, justifiably some complainants in the
(40:09):
house case have argued is if we institute these roster
caps effective July one, a bunch of athletes are going
to get cut loose. And we're talking in the thousands,
you know, if not tens of thousands, if you want
to add up. Football is the example everyone uses, because
football's roster cap is going to be one O five.
(40:29):
Most football programs tend to have one hundred and twenty
five to one hundred and thirty players. They are a
handful that have even more than that. Obviously it's eighty
five plus walk on. What people who argued is and
what Claudia Wilkins, the judge providing over the House case,
seems to be endorsing, is the idea of grandfathering mes
in and stepping them down so you can let the
vast majority of these players just sort of graduate off
(40:51):
your rosters and then just not replace them. For the moment,
the NA and the conferences seem to be holding firm
against this. I think there's been maybe some suggestions of
movement this week. I don't think anybody really understands why
something this seismic and important, why.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
This would be the.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
Why this would be the hill to die on, you know,
to sort of to sort of kill the House settlement on.
Because listen, I mean the you know, the party that's
probably most motivated in the end by the House settlement
is the NCAA. Because if this goes to trial, recent
precedent suggests the NCAA will lose and that the financial
(41:42):
penalty could be much much larger. And I don't know
if it's a class action. This is where I start
to swim into deep water, you know, legally in terms
of legal ease. But I mean, it could just bankrupt
whole system and force us to start over. And I'm
not I'm not totally sure that there wouldn't be some
(42:03):
positive elements. I'm not not necessarily bankrupting the system, but
more kind of what we have here in general. And
this is where I will get a little conceptual. It's like,
if you've got a car that you know is breaking down,
and you don't really want to pay the two thousand
dollars to fix it, so you pay like a two
(42:25):
hundred dollars repair, and then a three hundred dollars repair,
and then another two hundred dollar repair, and you just
keep throwing good money after bad into it, knowing in
the end you're still going to have this, you know,
sort of this this band aid you got to rip off. Anyway,
That's kind of where I think we are with college athletics, Like,
and this goes beyond just the housecase, but to talk
(42:48):
about collective bargaining, multi year collegebacts, how to reform the
transfer windows, you know, how to create a wealth redistribution
system that that doesn't allow the rich to get richer
without any sort of compensation, going back the other way
to schools further down the financial ecosystem or further down
(43:11):
the financial pyramid. I mean, this is my moderately informed
opinion is that this the argument of a roster caps
and the extent to which, at least for the moment,
the NCAA and the member conferences, the defendants in the
House case have decided to kind of dig their heels
(43:32):
in and push back. Is just kind of representative of
that wider idea that all politics are short term, and
nobody wants nobody wants to do the hard thing that
might make everyone's life more difficult immediately, but make all
(43:53):
of this work better in the five year plan, in
the ten year plan, in the twenty year plan, and
maybe some of the people that take these tough decisions
have to wear them and maybe they wind up, you know,
ultimately pushed to one side because of the criticisms and
things that come win it, but it winds up working
out better for the whole system long term. I think
(44:17):
that this is just kind of like the most like
the latest example of leaders just not being willing to
sort of absorb a little more short term pain for
more long term gain. Now, what I'm talking about in
the wider conceptual sense is a pretty dramatic renovation of
(44:39):
college athletics and it's power structure, it's financial structure, all
that stuff. But I think we're going to get We're
going to keep getting pushed in that direction and the
house settlement is a really important, you know, almost like
pressure release valve that allows everyone to keep moving forward
(44:59):
with out the whole thing just collapsing on itself. And
I don't really this is just me speaking personally, I
don't really understand why there hasn't been more of an
appetite to compromise over something, excuse me, something as seemingly
you know, I don't want to say benign, but certainly
manageable as gradually introducing a roster cap so we don't
(45:25):
wind up in a situation where there are thousands of
athletes starting July one who are simply told you're not
on my team. You don't have a place on the
team anymore. Sorry, that was probably more.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
Than you were looking for. But it's like.
Speaker 3 (45:42):
The the here, like what is specific to the here
and now? At least in my estimation or my processing
of all this is symptomatic of a larger problem, which
is that we can all generally see where this is going,
and even more than that, we can probably all recognize
(46:04):
most of the benefits that we'd get by tearing off
that band aid and by you know, just just sort
of what's the old, what's the old? Irish phrase throwing
our cap over the walls, so that we have no
choice but the climate. But we ah in the in
(46:24):
the here and now as we're we're still dealing with,
you know, basically just constant short term gain with short
term pain attached to it. The house case does seem
to be resting on whether or not someone will give
on this question of roster caps. And if it doesn't,
(46:45):
I mean we could be talking about an even more
seismic event in you know, the the history and the
structure of college athletics, which is why I think eventually
there will be a compromise. Why I think eventually, you know,
everyone will will metaphorically speaking, put their guns down. But
it hasn't happened yet, and there's going to be a
(47:06):
lot of sort of worried fascination around here, and by here,
I mean just all of college athletics until it's resolved.
Speaker 2 (47:17):
For sure.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
Good stuff, excellent stuff as always, Zac, Thanks for braving
your illness to make time for us on podcasts on
the Brink. Always great to talk to you, Thank you.
Speaker 3 (47:27):
Thanks for having me. Sorry about my nasally voice.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
It's all good. Thanks everybody as always for listening to podcasts.
On the Brink.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
If you enjoyed the show, please leave us the rating
and review over on Apple Podcasts. Lead was a five
star rating over on Spotify, and we'll be back next
week with another episode of podcast on the Brink.
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