HoosierDom

Why does he "deserve" another year? Are you just saying that it's not fair to give a guy a job like this and only give him 3 years to prove himself? In years past, I might agree with that, but in the age of NIL, and given the cupboard he inherited was far from bare, I have a hard time seeing how that applies here and now. The results themselves are enough for me to hope the powers that be are putting out feelers for who might be interested. The repeated defensive breakdowns, the substitution patters and the inability of a huge lineup to rebound are enough for me to want to fire him regardless of what the plan is. Those things don't take 4 years to fix.

Again, Leal just got his head pushed.

Why not insist they review that play? It looks like our guy got his head pushed. Probably it wasn't a flagrant, but it could have been and the refs will see they missed a foul.

Ugh.

Fixed that for you.

This lineup is not looking good. Bailed out by a Cupps drive is not what I'm hoping to say again.

That's gotta be the best team in the history of high school basketball, no?

I didn't mean my post as an attack on yours. More of an agreement, really.

If the players come to a place like this, that's on them. This doesn't go out into the world, you have to want to read this to ever come across it and you know, or should know, that critical comments will be posted. Something like Twitter is different. Complaining about a player there goes out into the world for people, including the players themselves, to encounter even if they don't want to. There is no reason for a player to be here unless they want to know how I feel about them shooting long 2's. There are plenty of reasons for a kid to be on actual social media platforms that have nothing to do with my take on his game, so he should be able to go to those places without ever knowing my thoughts on his play.

Walsh's college page lists him as 6'5" - seems like this kid has 2 inches on him at the shoulder, loses an inch in the neck, and ends up at 6'6".

I feel like it's going to go the other way. Colleges with the help of the courts, and perhaps Congress, are going to expand the ways players can be paid. If the NCAA tries too hard to get in the way, the power 5 conferences will go their own way. I think doing so, or at least credibly threatening the NCAA with doing so, has been the main driver of conference realignment.

How long until you could shoot a basketball, though?

I can't believe we didn't have guys screaming about that. It seemed very clear.

I didn't see what happened to Malik, did it look bad? I can't imagine X comes back this year. I've hurt my knee and ankle before where it hurt real bad right away but then got better quickly and I was fine. Never had that happen to my arm.

Are we sure that dude didn't throw Galloway to the ground?

How does every player on the floor not see what just happened with Malik and realize the refs are going to make a call the next time things are even close?

Is it me, or are we helping less?

Man, Malik has missed some easy bunnies.

Looks like he hits 37% on 6 attempts per game and is 75% at the line. Only 41% from 2 point range.

They were a last second shot away from losing to a highly mediocre Memphis team in the first round. That shot goes the other way and I don't think I've ever heard of this guy. From there, they beat a bad FDU team and okay Tennessee and K-St. teams. That's a VERY easy road to the Final 4. I don't have an opinion as to whether he is a good coach, but he has a lot more to show before he should get a power conference job. Even more before we should look at him.

Anyone who doesn't think TJD and Reneau improved considerably in their time here either hasn't watched us play enough or is too blinded by their dislike of this year's team to see painfully obvious truths. It's never easy to know where the credit should be placed when guys get better, but they clearly got much better. The simple fact that TJD was drafted to a guaranteed contract when he had been told before that wouldn't happen is pretty strong evidence. As are his numbers. What I was most impressed by is the way he developed touch. He missed so many close in shots his sophomore year, but by his senior year he was deft around the rim. His assists and blocks point to his obvious improvements there. The difference was enormous. We saw them over a smaller window, so it's harder to say with Ware and JHS, but Ware's numbers make it clear he has improved and JHS outperformed his ranking. I'm open to the idea that last year's team should have been better than it was given the parts, but that's different than saying guys didn't significantly improve. They did.

I don't think we're dirty - I think we're just dumb. Gunn wasn't trying to hurt that guy. He didn't swing with any real force. The guy was f'ing with him, trying to get Gunn to do something stupid, and Gunn complied. X's I guess was dirty, but he thought he was doing the same thing the UW kid was doing - he was trying to goad their guy into reacting. He just wasn't smart enough to do it in a way that wouldn't get him in trouble.

Someone tell me what I have wrong here. As I remember it, Woody's first year, TJD's junior year, we were struggling down the stretch, but then really turned things around in the middle of getting beaten down my Michigan when we ran X and TJD on pick and rolls. I would put TJD on the list of the all time greats of college basketball when it comes to the ability to finish a lob. X proved more than capable of getting down hill and throwing that pass. That play, at least in my memory, led us to the tournament. Since then, we have seen very little of it. I remember precious little of it last year. Ware isn't an all time great with the lob, but he's in the 98th percentile. We had a brief run where I remember Ware getting some lobs this year, some from Galloway, some from X. Now that has again disappeared. Why?

What gets me about this team, and really every team that Woodson has coached at IU, is that we roll out a big heavy line-up, but still have a defensive philosophy that seems designed to clog the paint and help out bigs that aren't big enough. Either of those things alone, I think are defensible (they can easily be argued against, but I don't think they're definitively wrong) but to do both, and then throw in the kicker that we still can't rebound. It seems like two big bigs and packing the paint with help defenders would lead to strong rebounding. But, it doesn't. It's clear Woody values shutting down the inside at the expense of giving up 3s - I think you can argue for that if you're also owning the glass. I still don't understand how this team and last year's can be so bad at that despite personnel that should excel at it.

Was wondering that, too. Not a usual comment, for sure.