A word to the wise - A McCollum hire would remind me of the Woodson hire. Josh Howard came from the NBA and started off hot at Michigan. It influenced IU officials to do the same for NBA's Woodson. Likewise, thinking a successful, relatively unknown coach from a "lesser school" will translate to success at the next level is risky business. IU got lucky with Cignetti. Meteorologists inform us lightning rarely strikes twice in the same place. Ask Notre Dame what they know about Gerry Faust.
Sign me up for Ben McCollum…
- Thread starter Warison
- Start date
Maybe...but with 4 national championships and mutliple NCOY awards.
I suspect McCollum, and his system and program, are so good, that if he's not ready for the IU environment, he'd still be more successful than Archie was.
But I can't spend the last 3 years saying I wouldn't want IU to become a "Purdue like" or "Wisconsin like" program...and zero in all my coaching candidate focus on a guy that might do just that, at IU.
I WILL be excited if he's a main candidate, and ultimately the guy. But I will also be kinda wary about our "ceiling".
If we hire a relative unknown it's unlikely that he will have a huge salary or buyout deal. If he's clearly not building something attractive after a few years, we move on.
Not great with Archie or Woodson. Apparently very well with Cignetti. It's a risk. I'm just saying, if the guy checks all the boxes except having done it at another P4 school, and you decide to take the risk, structure the deal so that it's not impossible to get out of it if it's not working.
NIL at Villanova isn’t NIL at IU- we have more football revenue and conference revenue- but if it was principle more than uneven competition that drove him to resign then it’s a moot point.
I'm not even 60 and if I had even a fraction of his money and a cush job as a network TV analyst, no way would I go back to the grind. When I retire I'm never looking back. I do not have the drive or passion for work that it takes to be a head coach at that level though.
And the portal impact as well.
But I would fully support exploring that with Coach Wright.
Problem with McCollum is getting a bunch of high end talent to come in year 1 and not only gel, but fit his system. Just doesn't seem like a probable outcome. A guy like McCollum is going to want to come in, implement his system and find guys that fit his scheme. I could see a couple of growing pain years for the first couple seasons. And considering how desperate this fan base is, a couple growing pain years are going to mean sky high expectations in year 3. That's never worked out well here.
Yes. I would hope that if fans saw that the new coach was overachieving with the talent he had (something we've not seen here in many years), there would be more patience. Fans get impatient with seeing loss after loss, and either no attempts at change or apparent insistence on sticking with what's not working.
A lot of successful coaches have started out their tenures multiple years with poor results. It usually takes longer than what it did for Cignetti. At some point, our basketball coaching merry-go-long needs to have the brakes applied. It's not a good look! Throw sh*t at a wall enough times and you might find a turd that sticks, but it sure creates a mess to clean up in the meantime.
I don't know...
Stirtz
Rice
Tucker
Mgbako
Maybe the foreign kid that we just got
A couple "system" bigs... Not saying he'd win a Natty, or even B10 title in year 1 with that...but nothing in his history suggests that he wouldn't be successful.
And before responding on the "fit" from any of the guys I mentioned... McCollum, from everything I've read, is a very, very process driven, detail oriented guy. So we have no idea what a guy like Mgbako might look like defensively under a coach like that...and conversely, we have no idea how impactful Tucker would be, shot selection, using his athleticism correctly, under a coach like that.
And further...there's already an established track record for quick, fairly high levels of success, with lesser heralded HS and portal kids...leading a highly successful P4 team. Iowa State has zero "blue chip" guys on their roster, Texas Tech has turned things around quickly, now multiple times, under different coaches, without obvious elite talent.
My concern wouldn't be that McCollum wouldn't come in and obviously improve our program immediately. I think he would. My concern would be more longer term, that he'd settle in to being a more "Purdue like" or "Wisconsin like" program. Solid regionally, always B10 competitive...but that maybe his program wouldn't consistently attract Final Four levels of talent.
And we've never had that dynamic.
Archie Miller might be the closest thing to it. But his overall attitude, symbolically shown in how he acted during the Purdue "RMK" game... because of that attitude and "mood", it became obvious, that he wasn't a good match for IU.
So...maybe our fan base would get ancy with someone that was building it more slowly, but maybe not? We've all gnashed our teeth about how it shouldn't take a handful of years, any more, to make a program like IU elite. But "we" haven't been given that opportunity.
I suspect if we progressed over the next few years from a "Northwestern-ish" program in year 1...solid fundamentally, but bubble ish... to Wisconsin - ish in year two. Obvious NCAA team, but also obvious non factor for Final Four... to an Illinois ish program... contending B10, could maybe make a Final Four with the right breaks and draw... If that process took 3-4 years to play out, and the actual games were all filled with solid play, the coach made solid decisions...I think IU fans would rally behind that coach fairly well.
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