First off, I must confess about something; this should have been done much sooner, but I deal with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Unfortunately, the general diagnosis of ADHD has me yield more towards what is regarded as the inattentive category of that disorder, meaning that important requirements get pushed off despite my desire to get to them. For an outsider, this is viewed as “procrastination,” but internally, I’m always screaming at myself for not getting the job done. However, given how we are kind of going to be in a drought for discussions for the next couple of months for the blog, perhaps this may be a blessing for the blog.
Anyway, after a relatively brisk search, Luke Bosso and the brass at IU Indianapolis managed to pilfer the head coach on the south side of Indy, grabbing University of Indianapolis’s Paul Corsaro, making him the sixth head coach of the program’s Division I era. With this, Corsaro brings along a rather capable pedigree, to say the least.
His tenure began as an assistant at Indianapolis in 2012, as assistant to Stan Gouard, ultimately replacing Gouard in 2020 following a tenure at Purdue Fort Wayne. During his four seasons at UIndy, Corsaro would lead the Greyhounds to several runs in the GLVC tournament as well as winning the GLVC regular season title in 2023, as well as two appearances in the NCAA Division II tournament, culminating with a record of 79-37. Not bad considering how the program usually complains about how they’re strapped for cash yet routinely pull off athletic success year in and year out in arguably one of the toughest conferences in Division II.
So, imagine him going to a school with the opposite problem where money, in theory shouldn’t be an object, but he must fight apathy and a lack of resources offered to the program. One should understand that the opposite of love is not hatred but indifference, as to hate something is to put effort into emotion, and there is a general malaise regarding the Jaguars that Bosso must contend with moving forward.
How do I feel about Corsaro as a hire, given how negative I was about Matt Crenshaw in my previous article? Well, he proved that he could win at a lower level, and IUPUI showed that they struggled mightily last season even against schools like Cleary University. So, at best, you’re bringing in someone who might be able to accomplish more with better resources (though, again, given student athletes must share resources with the general population, that’s not exactly a positive for recruitment), and at worst, it’s a lateral transition of coaches, which given a team that’s routinely positioned themselves deep within the 300s in NET rankings in the past few seasons, is not an ideal position.
Do I believe that Corsaro has the ability to get past 14 wins? Well, not in the first year, tragically. Despite the Horizon having to contend with a lot of turnover with the portal, I still see a lot of the upper echelon of the league (Oakland, Northern Kentucky, Milwaukee, and even Purdue Fort Wayne joining the pack) maintaining the quality of play that keeps the league viable in the middle of the pack, so that means we have to see how IU Indianapolis competes with the less effective opposition, like Robert Morris, Detroit Mercy, and perhaps even Wright State this upcoming season with all the rapid turnaround with their athletic department.
So far, five of his transfer players have averaged over 10 points this past season, including three of his starters from UIndy, which was much better than anything Crenshaw pulled off from the previous year, where the higher scorer he found was Kidtrell Blocker from Buffalo. Yet, all of them are from Division II, which kind of presents a different quandary than Crenshaw offered.
Whereas Crenshaw emphasized a focus on defense purely at the cost of everything else, Corsaro is trying to find the best players at a lower level and offering them a shot at a Division I school, likely aware that for some, they are going to graduate anyway so this is their last chance at the big time, and for others, if they do really well, they’re going to transfer to an even bigger school in terms of athletic prowess. How have I discerned all of this, you ask? Well, based on his interview with Greg Rakestraw last Monday, of course.
In addition to his focus on Division II transfers, Corsaro is focusing on players like Ron Rutland, who was part of Indianapolis Crispus Attucks this past season and scored 12.7 PPG for the Tigers. Attucks is essentially a few blocks away from IU Indianapolis, and Rutland originally had planned on playing with Corsaro at UIndy before he moved up to the Jaguars, so being able to retain him is great as far as being able to keep Hoosier players.
Now, as for Bosso himself, he has so far kept his cards close to his chest, and I have yet to get much out of the interview other than the fact that the program is moving back from the Indiana Farmers Coliseum to the Jungle for the upcoming season. For the most part, it’s kind of a neutral move, as the team struggled greatly with attendance, barely breaking a thousand per game, so moving back to a venue that can hold over a thousand in a place where they manage their own parking and not have to be beholden to a place with cryptic parking and baffling entrance requirements like the Indiana State Fairgrounds has to be a relief for the university.
However, I have to stress this mightily, the Jungle FREAKING SUCKS. As a court, IU Indianapolis goes back to one of the ten smallest Division I courts in the country, and it is a facility that lacks basic functions for fans, nor do I think it provides adequate resources for players. It’s the clown car of Horizon League venues.
And that’s about it for the hire. I’ll whip up something good this summer about the school’s actual history after I talk about their Division I history as it’ll give me an excuse to do some research.
