Bubble spot for the B10 tournament?? Lol get the f out of here with that. Woodson was awful and never finished worse than 9th.
DeVries has Assembled an Arsenal of Shooters
- Thread starter Pryght
- Start date
Agree with this overall. Obviously no way to really know how its all going to play out. But I think its pretty obvious that defending and rebounding will determine how successful IU is in his first season.
The reasons for optimism with those things... DeVries last 2 Drake teams weren't as long, probably not quite as athletic, as this team will be...and they were 40 and 73, respectively in KenPom defensive efficiency. Not elite, but actually pretty solid for the schedule Drake played. And then this past year, when he did get some better athletes, and played a better schedule, his West Virginia team was 15th. I don't think this IU team will be as athletic or as physical as his WVU team was, overall. But they will have a very good lead guard defender in Conerway...and then some size and length with guys like Wilkerson, Dorn, DeVries, Harris likely getting a lot of minutes 2-4. If taught, motivated, and demanded to be dialed in and in the right spots...I would guess they have the ability to guard fairly well. And then, if good, aggressive, team rebounding is part of DeVries system and culture, we do have some size and length in the 1-4 positions to make up for not having an elite rim protector/rebounder at the 5.
The reasons for pessimism... Many of the guys we have, don't come to IU with sparkling defensive records. Obviously anyone can be coached up, but the task is daunting when you have so many that appear to need it. And then not having a rim protector will limit how good IU can be defensively. Even if he is really good, and really effective at teaching his version of the pack line, in this day and age, not having a rim protector will end up costing you.
I'm hoping for much more attention on DeVries part, towards the defensive end of the floor than it looked like Fran ever showed. Fran, in my opinion, was a different type of weird version of Tom Crean. I hope, like hell, if IU struggles defensively, its mostly about personnel and not because DeVries can't, or isn't really interested, in coaching defense well...like Fran.
I wonder if our guys will get vewwwy vewwy tiwed at the end of the year, and lose 6 out of our last 9 games?
Who knows who will do what. As of today, IU will have a very good offensive team, they have question marks they need to answer defensively. The B10 is still relatively weak, in terms of overall depth, so IU finishing at or above .500 isn't a huge stretch, by any means.
I agree the Big Ten is very Top heavy, Michigan, Illinois, UCLA, Michigan St. and Purdue are all going to be top 15. But you have had some teams really have a good spring, USC, Washington, and Maryland have done well. Oregon is going to be good, Wisconsin is going to be Wisconsin. Indiana has a better coach, but the talent has gone from no miss 5* to a bunch of mid tier talent, they might be exiting but by the start of BT there is plenty of weakness in this player construction of IU to have a bevy of excellent coaches are going to abuse, also that Fact that IU may have one of the hardest road BT schedules. I'm not sold on the GREAT offense, there are a lot of BT teams that have players that can match IU's 3pt shooting and are actually better and have obtained their #'s against stronger P5 teams. I don't agree with TORVIK #'s for next year for the BT, but he has IU's talent rating at 29.9, higher than only Minnesota and Iowa. Not that I agree with that, but there is a lot of talent in BT. Pickel and Collins will have NW and Rutgers better than what people think. Washington and USC might be the most improved from last year.
