1. Josh Schertz Shouldn’t Have Gone to Saint Louis
Who would’ve thought the Billikens would be the villains of this college basketball offseason?
No fault to Saint Louis, of course. If you have the chance to hire Josh Schertz, you hire Josh Schertz. No fault to Josh Schertz, either. I know his salary is higher than it would have been even with an Indiana State extension. I know the facilities and resources are better at SLU than in Terre Haute. I know retaining his current—err, now former, I suppose—starting five would have been difficult to retain with the NIL structure Indiana State currently has. I know Josh Schertz would not have stayed at Indiana State forever in any universe in which Indiana State continued to succeed. But I also know this:
There’s a high probability the Indiana job opens in the next year or two.
Indiana State is not a tiny school. Their enrollment is roughly 50% larger than Saint Louis’s. The bigger difference in NIL resources is not how much money is out there, but how streamlined the process is of mining those resources. SLU donors are used to being SLU donors. Indiana State donors need to be recruited. But recruitment is possible.
Given the choice between sticking with their teammates or scattering to the winds, only some of them following Schertz to the A-10, I think a lot of college basketball players would make some minor sacrifices when it comes to pay. The brand power of these five guys, had Schertz stayed, would have been higher at Indiana State than anywhere else. The same is true of their basketball potential. There’s a lot to be said for continuity. The expectations would have been sky-high, and Indiana State would have likely delivered, especially with the DeVries family out of the MVC. The margin for error would have been gone, but the upside was infinite. This was a 2009–10 Butler situation. (Speaking of jobs people thought weren’t good ones…)
A lot of college basketball media folks are accusing those of us criticizing this move of not understanding that SLU is a better job than Indiana State. We understand that. We also understand that the gap isn’t that wide, and that in this specific case, there are a lot of factors which made the 2024–25 season in Terre Haute a better job for Josh Schertz than it would have, on average, been.
Also?
Saint Louis isn’t some titan. If you compared all the ceilings of all the Atlantic 10 programs, Saint Louis’s would be in the bottom half. It might be a better job than Indiana State, but it isn’t a good job. Top 100 nationally? Maybe. I understand why those with SLU ties disagree. But as someone without a dog in the fight, I wish Schertz had waited. I hope he succeeds and then immediately leaves to coach in Bloomington. I understand I’m being a bit sentimental. What some others don’t understand is that sentimentality still fits into a utility function.
An update, two things: First, I accidentally looked at Indiana State undergraduate enrollment vs. Saint Louis total enrollment in an earlier version of this post. My apologies. Second, I dug more into the “top half ceiling” question in this post. I was wrong about the ceiling not being in the A-10’s top half and wish I had said the ceiling is not in the A-10’s top three. That is a big difference. Again, my apologies.
2. Eric Musselman Is a Good Coach
Eric Musselman’s tenure at Arkansas ended badly, but I’d expect him to do well at USC. The resources should be even bigger than those he enjoyed at Arkansas, and while he won’t receive the same level of fan support, that’s accompanied by a more zoomed-out microscope. Entering the Big Ten—more of a basketball league than the SEC, at least culturally if not also in terms of quality—Muss takes his bus to Los Angeles at a good time. USC got bailed out of their Andy Enfield quagmire in spectacular fashion.
Still, there are a lot of challenges to the USC job. You’ll never be as big a deal in Los Angeles as you can be in Fayetteville. Nobody really knows what this level of travel will look like when it’s actually happening. In the transfer era, first-year expectations are higher than they’ve ever reasonably been. This is a tough situation, even if it’s a good move for Musselman, and even if it’s a great hire for USC.
3. How Alabama Beats UConn, How NC State Beats Purdue
Here’s a Zach Edey/DJ Burns thought:
Earlier this year, the concern about Zach Edey and the NCAA Tournament was that refs would ref him differently, giving him fewer calls on the offensive end while, more relevantly, employing a heavier whistle on the defensive side of the court. I’m not sure how reasonable that concern was, but if it carried any weight, a matchup with DJ Burns is when we should see it. DJ Burns is also hard to ref.
Here’s a thought about Alabama:
When you shoot a ton of threes, your potential is sky-high. UConn doesn’t play an especially deep bench. Donovan Clingan, admirable though his conditioning is, isn’t exactly built to run at an Alabama pace for forty minutes. This is a tough matchup for the Huskies, even if they’re deservedly a massive favorite.
All we’re saying is that there’s a chance.
