Penn State Postgame Thread

[AxnJxn]

1 hour ago, IU Scott said:

To me it is a sad state of affairs when we as fans base that we live our lives through these kids and that our happiness is based on what a 18-22 kid does on a basketball court.  I don't care if any other fan base does it because it does not make it right and we should be above ripping kids on a message board or social media just because they did not meet some old guys expectations.

 

As for UK I would bet their fans had something to do with why Donovan kept turning them down every time they had an opening.

Welp, I'll just say this - in this day and age when social media is everywhere and kids are very familiar with it, if a kid goes to another school due to something someone said on a message board? Yeah, I don't have a whole lotta faith that kid's gonna go on the road in the B1G and win. 

[Brass Cannon]

2 minutes ago, mrflynn03 said:

I agree. I have always believed leaders are born. I dont believe it's a teachable quality. It's an inherent trait. 

Not sure I agree there. I was a terrible leader when I first got in a leadership role. But now my peers that struggle come to me and complain about theirs teams not being effective. 
 

I usually give advice once or twice. They dismiss it because it’s not their style and then I just shrug my shoulders.  
 

I will say with college players only having a few years to learn from their mistakes it would be wise to recruit players that have some of the traits. It’s a long painful journey to go from bad to good. 

[Leathernecks]

3 hours ago, IUFLA said:

Archie is trying to change the culture.

My biggest question is...what culture is he trying to create?

Super defense like Virginia?  They were the 5th ranked defense on Kenpom in his 3rd year.  4th year was 25th, and every year after that has been top 10, and all but 1 has been top 5.

Hard nosed and not accepting a lack of hustle?  How many times have we seen guys jog back after a turnover to get beat on the other end without coming out?

Even with Crean, everybody knew he wanted to play fast, shoot well, and hope for the best with everything else.

For anybody who has watched 5 minutes of Tom Allen, you know LEO is his culture.  He lives and breathes it, and he tries to get his players to live by it.

What in Archie's culture does he demand, and what is he unwilling to accept?  What does he want his culture to be that is taking so long to change?

[BGleas]

18 minutes ago, Shapopojoe said:

Multiple factors in play here imo...Crean kids may not like Miller...not onboard with his system..Some just seem to be “not as advertised” as opposed to the enthusiasm we saw for them during recruiting. Who knows. I give Miller next season with his kids to see how this unfolds but I’m not going down the road of excepting excuses and being happy with mediocrity.  Never going to happen 

I actually think the point is that Crean's recruits are as advertised. There not bad guys by any means, but was there really a lot of enthusiasm around Devonte Green and Al Durham? I mean, Crean was fired for several reasons, but at the end of the day they boil up to recruiting. 

There were certainly some good players in his last 4 classes (2014-2017) and some highly ranked ones (Blackmon 20th, RoJo 49th, Bryant 20th, Morgan 117, De'Ron Davis 40th, Curtis Jones 85th and Justin Smith 78th). That's not a bad list by any means, but let's also look at the list of guys that accompanied those classes.

Holt: 260

Max Montana: 364

Jeremiah April: 410

Priller: 436

OG: 294

Devonte Green: 197

Grant Gelon: 397

Al Durham: 230

Clifton Moore: 151

Over his last 4 recruiting classes at IU (yes, I'm attributing Smith, Durham and Moore to Crean) Crean had 9 players ranked outside the top 150, 7 outside the top 230 and a whopping 4 players ranked 300+ in their class?!?! This is freaking Indiana. That is absolutely insane at a blueblood, high major basketball school. 

When you see it in print it just smacks you in the face. Over a 4 year period at INDIANA, Tom Crean had fewer top 100 recruits than he did recruits ranked outside the top 230 in their class. 

Actually compiling this has me more stunned than thought I'd be before looking this up. Yes, I realize OG way outperformed his ranking, but that's more lighting in a bottle than anything else. 

[Leathernecks]

13 minutes ago, IU Scott said:

To me you have to recruit leadership because I don't think you can make a leader.

Leadership is not something that is set in stone.  It can definitely improve over time.  Not everyone can become a great leader, but everyone can improve their leadership abilities.  It is something that can be improved through teaching it.

Usually the people who don't improve it when they are taught are the ones who aren't good learners and shouldn't be around to hear the message.

Not saying everyone can be a great leader, but everyone can improve as a leader.

[Rogermci]

1 hour ago, IU Scott said:

To me you have to recruit leadership because I don't think you can make a leader.

There are no senior or junior leaders on this team.  If people wanna lay that on Archie,  ok.  If they think he should be gone after this year or next, that's ok.  I watched Archie here in Dayton and he can coach and lead.  Continue to bash him.  He will prove them wrong. 

 

[BGleas]

To follow that up, and while I still think Archie needs to up his recruiting game a bit, in Archie's first 4 classes at IU (counting Race in 2017 as a class for Archie, which isn't really fair IMO) he's locked up 10 top 150 recruits. So really, lets call it 9 over 3 classes and remember these are the guys that are sophomores, freshmen and not yet on campus (2020). 

[Leathernecks]

4 minutes ago, BGleas said:

I actually think the point is that Crean's recruits are as advertised. There not bad guys by any means, but was there really a lot of enthusiasm around Devonte Green and Al Durham? I mean, Crean was fired for several reasons, but at the end of the day they boil up to recruiting. 

There were certainly some good players in his last 4 classes (2014-2017) and some highly ranked ones (Blackmon 20th, RoJo 49th, Bryant 20th, Morgan 117, De'Ron Davis 40th, Curtis Jones 85th and Justin Smith 78th). That's not a bad list by any means, but let's also look at the list of guys that accompanied those classes.

Holt: 260

Max Montana: 364

Jeremiah April: 410

Priller: 436

OG: 294

Devonte Green: 197

Grant Gelon: 397

Al Durham: 230

Clifton Moore: 151

Over his last 4 recruiting classes at IU (yes, I'm attributing Smith, Durham and Moore to Crean) Crean had 9 players ranked outside the top 150, 7 outside the top 230 and a whopping 4 players ranked 300+ in their class?!?! This is freaking Indiana. That is absolutely insane at a blueblood, high major basketball school. 

When you see it in print it just smacks you in the face. Over a 4 year period at INDIANA, Tom Crean had fewer top 100 recruits than he did recruits ranked outside the top 230 in their class. 

Actually compiling this has me more stunned than thought I'd be before looking this up. Yes, I realize OG way outperformed his ranking, but that's more lighting in a bottle than anything else. 

Took me a minute on Max Montana haha.  Forgot he changed his name.

[IU Scott]

3 minutes ago, Rogermci said:

There are no senior or junior leaders on this team.  If you wanna lay that on Archie,  ok.  If you think he should be gone after this year or next, that's ok.  I watched Archie here in Dayton and he can coach and lead.  Continue to bash him.  He will prove you wrong. 

 

Never said anything about wanting Archie gone because I don't.  Just saying it is hard to get leadership form guys if they are not already have the leadership quality in them.

[IUFLA]

15 minutes ago, Leathernecks said:

My biggest question is...what culture is he trying to create?

Super defense like Virginia?  They were the 5th ranked defense on Kenpom in his 3rd year.  4th year was 25th, and every year after that has been top 10, and all but 1 has been top 5.

Hard nosed and not accepting a lack of hustle?  How many times have we seen guys jog back after a turnover to get beat on the other end without coming out?

Even with Crean, everybody knew he wanted to play fast, shoot well, and hope for the best with everything else.

For anybody who has watched 5 minutes of Tom Allen, you know LEO is his culture.  He lives and breathes it, and he tries to get his players to live by it.

What in Archie's culture does he demand, and what is he unwilling to accept?  What does he want his culture to be that is taking so long to change?

I'd say something like this...

Teams where there are upperclass leaders and they demand accountability

Teams that value the ball

Teams that are physical and play defense and rebound that way

Just an aside to the leadership debate, there are formal (Archie) and informal (players) leaders on every team or group, and their roles are different...Al and Devonte were voted team captains because the group perceived those 2 as informal leaders...

Informal leaders lead through example...

Archie cannot be on the floor with these guys...that's where the informal leaders come to the fore...

[Rogermci]

3 minutes ago, IU Scott said:

Never said anything about wanting Archie gone because I don't.  Just saying it is hard to get leadership form guys if they are not already have the leadership quality in them.

I agree with your statement Scott.  I was directing that comment to the guys who think Archie is a bust.  And they're entitled to think that.

[Radio Zero]

3 hours ago, IUFLA said:

Just a question for both you and billingsley...

Do either of you think that Mike Davis, as a head coach, would have recruited Tom Coverdale, Dane Fife, or Kyle Hornsby?

I don’t know the answer to that question, but regardless of who recruited them, Coach MD - not RMK - is the coach who led them to the championship game in ‘02.

 

And I’m a BIG RMK guy, just for the record.  But he wasn’t sitting on the IU bench for any of that season.

[BobSaccamanno]

44 minutes ago, Radio Zero said:

I don’t know the answer to that question, but regardless of who recruited them, Coach MD - not RMK - is the coach who led them to the championship game in ‘02.

 

And I’m a BIG RMK guy, just for the record.  But he wasn’t sitting on the IU bench for any of that season.

That's still an incomplete thought.  Sure, Davis coached them to the '02 championship game and great credit to him.  But Coach Knight designed the team, and assembled the roster.  To not recognize that is totally hiding your head in the sand.

Coaching is far, far, far beyond coaching the players on the team.  There are strategic considerations that go way beyond that.  To only talk about coaching the kids on the floor is telling only a portion of the story.  If you left Coach Davis with Justin Smith instead of JJ, or Al Durham instead of Dane Fife, or Marshall Strickland instead of Tom Coverdale, and that team wouldn't have done squat.

[Radio Zero]

4 minutes ago, BobSaccamanno said:

That's still an incomplete thought.  Sure, Davis coached them to the '02 championship game and great credit to him.  But Coach Knight designed the team, and assembled the roster.  To not recognize that is totally hiding your head in the sand.

Coaching is far, far, far beyond coaching the players on the team.  There are strategic considerations that go way beyond that.  To only talk about coaching the kids on the floor is telling only a portion of the story.  If you left Coach Davis with Justin Smith instead of JJ, or Al Durham instead of Dane Fife, or Marshall Strickland instead of Tom Coverdale, and that team wouldn't have done squat.

You’re correct that what I wrote doesn’t compass what was happening over that two year (or so) period.

 

 I guess I’m just saying that you have to give credit (or demerit) to SOMEONE in a given circumstance.  If Coach MD had only managed to win a handful of games over those first couple seasons, he would have (rightfully) been shown the door.

 

The reverse (or is it the inverse?  converse?) of that rather large responsibility is, in my mind, being credited with dealing with an almost unmanageable situation with quite a degree of success.

 

Coach AM doesn’t deserve to be applauded for what this year’s Dayton team has done IN ADDITION TO the praise (or blame) for what’s happening at IU, surely.  Does he?

[IUFLA]

1 hour ago, Radio Zero said:

I don’t know the answer to that question, but regardless of who recruited them, Coach MD - not RMK - is the coach who led them to the championship game in ‘02.

 

And I’m a BIG RMK guy, just for the record.  But he wasn’t sitting on the IU bench for any of that season.

I understand all that, but RMK did recruit them...and he looked for a certain type of player. They were coachable and had high basketball IQs. They played team basketball...

MD himself subsequently recruited a different kind of player...players he thought would exceed the success of the 02 team...they never came close and it eventually cost him his job...

You know, Bracey Wright was a good kid who could play, and was tough (played through a broken nose without a mask) but he did things that made me sometimes question if he had the overall success of the team at heart...him standing a foot behind the FT line when shooting foul shots use to bug me to death...to me it was him telling the coach "I'll do it my way."

 

 

[IUwins0708]

Coach Knight did assemble the team but no way he lets Coverdale, Fife, Hornsby, and others shoot the 3 balls like they did in the tourney that year.  Coach Davis gave them all freedom, which would later cost him his job down the line.  He was just fortunate on that run he had some upper class man leadership and they all got hot at the right time.

[IU Scott]

2 minutes ago, IUwins0708 said:

Coach Knight did assemble the team but no way he lets Coverdale, Fife, Hornsby, and others shoot the 3 balls like they did in the tourney that year.  Coach Davis gave them all freedom, which would later cost him his job down the line.  He was just fortunate on that run he had some upper class man leadership and they all got hot at the right time.

I have always said that if RMK was still the coach that team does not get to the finals.

[Lurker]

4 hours ago, Rogermci said:

There are no senior or junior leaders on this team.  If people wanna lay that on Archie,  ok.  If they think he should be gone after this year or next, that's ok.  I watched Archie here in Dayton and he can coach and lead.  Continue to bash him.  He will prove them wrong. 

 

I agree with you and it's frustrating going through these growing pains.  I've heard Dakich be pretty tough on Archie in the past and today he finally considered that perhaps it's on some of the players after he either heard or heard of the verbal spat between Smith and Green during either the OH St or Penn St game.  He made it sound like Green has the attitude problem with his cussing of Smith.

[IUFLA]

1 hour ago, IU Scott said:

I have always said that if RMK was still the coach that team does not get to the finals.

We'll never know...but he would have had the pieces...and he always did fairly well when he had the pieces...

[FW_Hoosier]

5 hours ago, BGleas said:

To follow that up, and while I still think Archie needs to up his recruiting game a bit, in Archie's first 4 classes at IU (counting Race in 2017 as a class for Archie, which isn't really fair IMO) he's locked up 10 top 150 recruits. So really, lets call it 9 over 3 classes and remember these are the guys that are sophomores, freshmen and not yet on campus (2020). 

In his last 3 recruiting classes (including 2017) Crean signed 4 top 100 players, 2 of which were in the top 50.  In his first 3 recruiting classes, Archie has signed... 4 top 100 players, 2 of which were in the top 50.  Recruiting hasn’t been nearly good enough.

[milehiiu]

6 minutes ago, IUFLA said:

We'll never know...but he would have had the pieces...and he always did fairly well when he had the pieces...

It was said, during his prime.  That Knight would beat you with his players.  And then turn it around and then beat you with their players.

[IU Scott]

2 hours ago, milehiiu said:

It was said, during his prime.  That Knight would beat you with his players.  And then turn it around and then beat you with their players.

Well he wasn't doing that as nearly as much his last 6 years.

[KoB2011]

On 2/1/2020 at 9:33 PM, Brass Cannon said:

Still doesn’t change the fact Crean started it by offering the scholarship. Yet Archie gets credit because he sealed the deal. Just like Dayton’s coach gets credit for sealing the deal with recruits originally offered by Archie 

Comparing the two recruitments is ignorant. Archie didn't come in and "seal the deal" with Romeo, he came in and started from scratch. Romeo wasn't considering us prior to his arrival, no matter if he had an offer or not.

Do you remember how many offers Crean gave out? Is that really the bar for stating Crean had us in a good position with a recruit? 

[BornHoosier]

On 2/2/2020 at 12:29 PM, Radio Zero said:

So a coach needs six to seven years?

In short yes, 4 yrs to remove the stank & 2-4 yrs to build your DREAM.  Shouldn’t be this way but the kids today play for the Coach and not the program.  Once CAM gets his guys as upperclassmen, he will succeed!