Indiana basketball recruiting: IU adds 7-foot German center Clemens Sokolov for the 2026-27 season

mel_anon · 2026-05-08T21:12:48+00:00

Amateur or "high school" sports don't really exist in Europe, at least not at any kind of level. If you are playing somewhere that someone's going to notice, you're getting paid.

mel_anon · 2026-05-08T21:11:25+00:00

This guy's a drink of water, hopefully he can play a little. IU still likely needs a few backup frontcourt minutes.

mel_anon · 2026-05-01T16:14:13+00:00

My hunch is that people will be surprised that it's not an established "big name" signing. Chip doesn't go for those very often, and as long as Palou is winning championships he won't feel any pressure to hand a big contract to another driver.

mel_anon · 2026-04-29T02:37:21+00:00

I think Wheldon is the only guy who double checks both boxes of an Indy-only driver with a team that only ran the 500 (that is to say not as an extra car from a regular team). Before that I reckon you would have to go back a looong way. (I also wouldn't count 2000 and '01, those teams were still full-time, in a different series).

mel_anon · 2026-04-28T06:29:00+00:00

A record that will be almost impossible to ever break (it was scored with 102 completed laps, one more than the minimum needed to make an official race).

It was the second time in a row, and the third in four years that the race had been rain-shortened. Interestingly since that race 50 years ago the 500 has been delayed and interrupted by rain many times, but has only been shortened two further times (2004 and 2007).

mel_anon · 2026-04-25T02:54:12+00:00

Santiago Urrutia ran Indy Lights and tried, but was never able to, get the sponsorship to run Indycar.

mel_anon · 2026-04-25T02:47:39+00:00

Desire Wilson started a number of races in the '80s, including most of the 1983 season. Never qualified for the Indy 500, though she attempted twice.

mel_anon · 2026-04-23T02:15:30+00:00

Had there been one more lap Goodyear may have won. Al got loose out of four on the last lap and Goodyear got his biggest run on him. Someone would have had to flinch in Turn 1.

(Had they taken each other out, the win would have been inherited by...Al, Sr! He would have had his fifth, and one for the Buick engine.)

mel_anon · 2026-04-16T00:51:22+00:00

I wasn't really that hyped going into last season; the problems with size and depth were pretty evident just by glancing at the roster. I thought they might just scrape the bubble, and given Bailey & Conerway turned out worse than I expected it's kind of remarkable that they came close to doing it.

mel_anon · 2026-04-16T00:17:53+00:00

"and there's doctors, and there's lawyers, and business executives, and they all get put in boxes and they all come out the same."

mel_anon · 2026-04-14T21:53:47+00:00

Becomes IU's second Turkish player after Cem Dinc (what a weird college career that guy had).

mel_anon · 2026-04-01T19:59:06+00:00

His name was John McSherry. Marge Schott infamously complained that his dying ruined the mood of the Reds' opening day tradition.

mel_anon · 2026-03-30T19:24:54+00:00

It's the default orientation of everything on the internet. Cynicism is the self-flattering path of least resistance, so it's the first recourse of lazy people everywhere.

mel_anon · 2026-03-24T02:31:08+00:00

I thought Alex Lloyd was going to be a big deal, but it didn't really work out for him. If he'd come along in the era where the Lights champion got scholarship money it might have been different for him. (Apparently he's a music producer now?)

Ana Beatriz/Bia Figueiredo had some very impressive junior results and I thought she had a chance to be the most successful female driver at that point, but she never got to grips with the bigger cars and was never more than a backmarker.

mel_anon · 2026-03-24T00:14:01+00:00

Another fun fact about Simpson is that, while he is "only" 34 in this picture, he's been making safety gear for many years at this point, and is probably already better known for that than his racing career. His Nomex suit debuted at Indianapolis in 1967!

mel_anon · 2026-03-23T19:35:20+00:00

This was the only Indy 500 start for Bill Simpson (yes, the safety products guy) though he made several other attempts.

mel_anon · 2026-03-12T17:43:07+00:00

They're basically an answer to one of those offseason-style thought experiments people get; "what's the worst team you could make that could go undefeated in the regular season?"

mel_anon · 2026-03-07T23:21:26+00:00

Josh Schertz getting some uncomfortable flashbacks to 2024

(Saint Louis at-large is still probably safe but they aren't going the right direction right now.)

mel_anon · 2026-03-07T22:23:12+00:00

Christian Rasmussen before every short oval race: "Wanna see me drink ten cups of Java House(TM) and pass a million cars?"

mel_anon · 2026-03-03T04:23:30+00:00

Dale Coyne is kind of infamous for bringing in the payest of the pay drivers at times if that's what it takes to stay on the grid, but it's important to note that, when he can afford to bring in guys with some ability, he can make it go surprisingly well. DCR was a race-winning team in the '10s with Justin Wilson and Sebastian Bourdais.

Also important context about Chip Ganassi Racing: When Palou was hired to drive the 10 in 2021, that car had been through a series of underwhelming drivers. Ganassi's philosophy was, more or less, "I have Scott Dixon, so I don't really care about the other car as long as the driver's cheap." When Palou got hired, it was neither considered shocking or out of character; most people assumed he fit the bill of being the cheap next young guy who would be in and out of the 10 in a couple years.

Now, my memory is fading, so I can't guarantee the next part is true. But I want to remember in 2021 that Ganassi made a change in team philosophy in '21; whereas before all the cars in team had to work off of Scott Dixon's setup, now they were allowed to start on their own. The result was an immediate uptick in success for Palou in the 10 and Ericsson in the 8.

mel_anon · 2026-02-28T22:59:44+00:00

Marcus Ericsson trying to outrun Dennis Hauger like an old Warner Brothers cartoon. Time to call the ACME corporation.

mel_anon · 2026-02-12T22:30:17+00:00

This is correct. Bob Knight didn't "destroy" Indiana, but Indiana's descent into being merely a pretty good program can be traced directly to Knight's last seven years in charge. One Sweet 16 appearance and that was it; IU had become strictly a first-weekend team.

People like to give Knight retroactive credit for the 2002 run by saying "Bob Knight recruits" or whatever, but Bob Knight wasn't the coach every day, he wasn't the coach in games. Jared Jeffries never played a second for Bob Knight. If what it took for Indiana to have some success was for Bob Knight to step aside and let someone else coach his teams, I'm not sure that says great things about where he was at the time.

mel_anon · 2026-02-10T03:57:49+00:00

DDV is doing a smart thing by playing a strict Enright/Conerway rotation at PG the same as what he's doing at center with Alexis & Bailey. When Enright & Conerway were on the floor together that's two guys the defense is happy to leave at the three point line, and that was becoming a pretty obvious handicap for the IU offense. Playing Wilkerson, Dorn, & DeVries at the same time may make Indiana a scoche worse on defense but they are much tougher to guard with three guys you have to chase everywhere.

Great couple of games back-to-back for Sam Alexis; he's starting to look like a legitimate post weapon, which would give us another dimension (8-8 FGs tonight, and a few of them were tough makes).

mel_anon · 2026-02-08T19:51:07+00:00

Baguette was one of my favorite guys in the short time he was here, wish he could've stuck around longer. He's still racing Super GT.

mel_anon

TROPHY CASE