IU Insider mailbag Q&A: On frontcourt depth concerns, Adidas, fan frustrations, scheduling
BLOOMINGTON – Turning the calendar to May means things are beginning to wind down for the folks up on 17th Street. Graduation is in the rear-view mirror, only a handful of sports still have active seasons and summer workouts are still a month away.
What better time to pause and answer some of your questions, including scheduling concerns, remaining transfer targets and the stressful concern on every IU fan’s mind: Who’s going to replace Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool?
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Let’s dig into the mailbag.
@PatSportsFeed tweets: “I’m concerned about frontcourt depth. What does IU’s lineup look like if (Malik) Reneau and (Oumar) Ballo are out? What are our 4/5 options after them? Do you anticipate the team adding bench big men with the remaining scholarships?”
I would be surprised if the staff doesn’t add a reserve big they believe capable of at least 12-15 productive Big Ten minutes per game. That might be it, though.
Between Mackenzie Mgbako’s return and the additions of Luke Goode and Bryson Tucker, I expect Indiana to run some smaller lineups this season, with Mgbako or even Goode at the four and Tucker or a third guard at the three. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think you prioritize the players IU’s brought in this spring just to go back to almost exclusively playing two-big basketball.
Now, I do think Reneau and Ballo will both start, and it will be up to Mike Woodson to figure out the right minutes combinations for these lineups I’m talking about. And if both are out, yes, Indiana will struggle for balance, but at a certain point you reach the limits of what you can reasonably roster-proof against. Any team missing two all-conference-caliber players would have trouble replacing them.
@Cabbyfromgreene tweets: “Pro and con of having Adidas another 10 years?”
I wrote something on this last week that I’d encourage everyone to go read, about the likelihood Indiana’s next apparel deal will look pretty different to its last, a reflection of the modern college athletics landscape.
Now, to the relationship itself: Indiana has deep ties with Adidas. IU alums work in significant administrative positions at Adidas. The department and the German shoe giant have maintained their current partnership for 20 years, with at least another 10 now to come. No relationship is perfect, but it’s probably fair to say both sides have become better partners to one another in the intervening time.
There’s a section of Indiana’s fan base that had hoped to see the department transition to Nike, which was briefly Indiana’s apparel partner in the early 2000s. While I don’t know minute specifics of any proposals from Adidas’ competitors, I would say two things on Nike. One, the Swoosh already has Kentucky, UConn, Duke and, of course, North Carolina, in addition to a host of other basketball-invested schools. Indiana sits behind perhaps only Kansas in the hierarchy of Adidas’ college hoops division, probably a more favorable position. Two, don’t just assume these companies all want things equally. You can throw yourself at the feet of Jordan Brand, sure, but to pull from a once-popular Facebook Wall quote, why make someone your priority if they’re only making you their option?
There are legitimate criticisms of Adidas, particularly around merchandising and product availability. But the longer I’ve been writing about these deals the more I’ve come to realize the stuff that’s perceived to matter doesn’t often match up with the mechanics of the deals themselves, if that makes sense.
Zach Rosenblatt writes in: “Social media is ripe with a frustrated Hoosier fan base. I often see the infamous triangle with, ‘I Get My Hopes Up,’ ‘I Get Disappointed,’ and then, ‘Start to believe Again.’ How do you perceive this frustration to be valid, or has the fan base's expectation of a program without a visit to the Final Four in over 22 years lost touch with the status of the program?”
I got into this debate with a colleague during the NCAA tournament. There’s no great answer.
On the one hand, when Anthony Leal called for the fan base to relax during his (first) senior night speech in March, while it was greeted with a fair bit of derision, I do think the words of an athlete living inside the environment around which all this orbits shouldn’t be so easily dismissed. Outside Bloomington, it is fair to say IU fans are perceived as sometimes unreasonable, or unrealistic.
On the other hand — and this is my general counterpoint anytime someone goes down that road — ask Kentucky fans, or Kansas fans, or North Carolina fans, to go 37 years without a national title, and then see where they get up to.
IU fans have every right, based not just on history but fan interest, program revenue, brand recognition, etc., to expect more of their basketball program than it’s given them in the past two decades. Frankly, it’s a sign of Indiana’s staying power that those fans haven’t simply ebbed away in that time, as they would with most programs.
That doesn’t mean frustration never boils over. Leal’s “you guys gotta chill” deadpan wasn’t said tongue in cheek. The air around the program can become toxic far too quickly, and too often without justification. But Indiana also needs to be willing to swallow some of the bad with the considerable good. Because again, the loyalty this base shows and the intensity of its interest are two of the things still anchoring IU basketball to expectations higher than the ones earned, frankly, since the turn of the century.
@FornBredFornFed asks: “Other than Atlantis, what can we expect from IU November/December scheduling, including do you think they go after a high-caliber ‘secret scrimmage’ as Woodson mentioned?”
Working backward here.
I think a closed-door scrimmage is always a possibility, and perhaps a better fit for this team given all its new pieces. What might be trickier is making up the numbers in season-ticket packages.
IU is guaranteed to play three of its 11 nonconference games at Battle 4 Atlantis, and Woodson has always seemed fond of getting a game in Indianapolis. That leaves seven nonconference games to play with, which is at the low end of total home dates Indiana will want to commit in season-ticket packages, for revenue-planning purposes. Sometimes, the department makes up for the shortfall by adding one or two exhibitions that at least up the package price somewhat and get a few thousand souls more in the door. So, maybe IU opts for a blend of both.
I worked backward through this answer because the second part feeds into the first — if Indiana does add another marquee opponent, a home game would make far and away the most sense. The department can’t really sacrifice another home date (especially if Woodson wants at least one closed-door scrimmage), and there’s always been a desire to provide season-ticket holders at least one game on par with a Kansas, North Carolina, etc.
The ACC/Big Ten Challenge used to provide a built-in solution to this problem. Now, IU has to figure it out for itself a bit more. I don’t know that you’ll see another Kansas-level opponent come to Assembly Hall (not impossible, just unlikely), but I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a genuine effort being made somewhere to bring a meaningful nonconference opponent to Bloomington this season. Doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed to happen, but that’s my best guess.
@paulolson5 tweets: “With six or seven scholarships available, is there not one high school player that loves IU and could have been signed that might stay four years and help build a more consistent culture?”
This is a fair sentiment, with a layered answer.
First of all, it’s worth pointing out IU did commit pretty heavily to signing a robust 2024 class. The Hoosiers were aiming high on that score, no doubt, and ultimately, once Liam McNeeley asked out of his letter of intent, they’d struck out completely.
But your point is understandable, and to some extent I think a valid model for modern roster building. There will always need to be room in your program for transfers, but there’s also inherent value in the institutional knowledge of players who arrive as freshmen and stay for a career’s worth of cultural fortification.
Now, the trouble is finding those players. Even ones that love Indiana aren’t always going to stay four years in the portal/NIL era. It’s not necessarily as simple as committing to a certain number of high school players every year, because they may still (for any number of reasons) transfer.
It’s also worth saying, transfers aren’t always fly-by-night players. Myles Rice and Kanaan Carlyle each still have as many as three years of eligibility, should they choose to use it in Bloomington. Nick Zeisloft stayed for two years, Josh Newkirk three, Xavier Johnson three. I do think it’s possible to get some of the foundational impact you’re talking about from transfers as well. But you will always want some developmental pieces in your program that can be counted on long term, and that’s why to me it makes sense to try and grab at least a couple high school players annually.
@chipsharpdotcom tweets: “Since small-school success rarely translates immediately to Power Five success, I’m forced to ask, can Coach Cig’s roster and coaching really compete (and win?) in the B1G against the likes of Ohio State, Michigan and Wisconsin, or are we over-hyping the new and shiny? Is he the PT Cruiser of IU football?
The PT Cruiser of IU! What a reference.
First of all — and I don’t say this flippantly — the job isn’t to compete with Ohio State and Michigan. Using next year’s schedule as a rubric, the immediate challenge is to beat at least six of FIU, Charlotte, Western Illinois, Maryland, Northwestern, Nebraska, Michigan State, UCLA, Washington and Purdue. And then to repeat the process in 2025, and so on.
Yes, at some point, if you want to raise your overall station in the Big Ten, you need to start regularly competing with (and occasionally beating) the big schools. But growth for Indiana starts with taking the lessons of recent bowl seasons and building a more consistent program from them. Tom Allen was fired in no small part because it felt like he’d lost his grip of that, and would struggle to regain it.
You’re right that moving from the Group of Five to the Power Five (really Power Four; probably Power Two) doesn’t always translate immediately. Jerry Kill and P.J. Fleck each needed three years to really power up Minnesota, for example. The same is true of Gary Pinkel trading Toledo for Missouri.
There are outliers in both directions, but to use another Mizzou example, while Eli Drinkwitz’s tenure has not been perfect — he lost more games than he won across his first three seasons — he took the Tigers to a bowl in each of those years, and last year won 11 games and the Cotton Bowl. That’s the track you hope Curt Cignetti can put Indiana on.
@jriethmitweets: “Has the excitement for Coach Cig translated into more season tickets being sold?”
As of mid-April (the last time I checked in), IU had seen an 8% rise in across-the-board football ticket sales from last year to this one, with sales increased in 14 of the department’s 15 price points for football.
@BarrelRider2024 tweets: “Who will Liverpool hire to replace (Jurgen) Klopp?”
Much to the chagrin, surely, of IU women’s soccer coach — and lifelong Feyenoord fan — Erwin van Bennekom, it looks like the mighty Reds will be taking Arne Slot from Rotterdam to Anfield.
Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Fans questions for IU basketball offseason, Indiana football hopes
