It’s time... Fire Archie Miller

[rico]

We need to cheat better...

[southsidehoosier]

I don’t want Crean back by any means but it’s crazy we were preseason #1 going into season 5!with CTC.

 

Watching documentary on Virginia’s 2019 run on ACC network isn’t helping anything either😂

[NCHoosier32]

24 minutes ago, RoadToZion said:

As much as you guys make fun of Crean, he at least accomplished something. Yeah he was a weird guy, but we are on year 4 with Archie and we haven’t done.....anything? 

Creans teams played with heart and knew what Indiana basketball was all about. Our team now looks like they could care less. I like the kids on our team and I like Archie as a man, but this team is terribly built. I’m not ready to kick him to the curb yet, but I’m very close. 

I was ready to get rid of Crean, but thought he did a very good job of repairing our program.  Did things the right way.  Got good players.  Embraced alumni and tradition.  The thought was that he had reached the highest level he was going to get out of this program and we needed someone to take us further, but... 

[dgambill]

1 hour ago, slojoe said:

After Sampson was fired in 2008, we went after him when he was coach at Washington State.  Many said he was our top choice.  Bennett was asked about whether he had an offer and if so, what was it?  He declined to reveal any of terms of an offer.  But I'm sure that they were much much more than he was making at WSU. 

There was some speculation at the time that he didn't go to iU in part because of the treatment his sister received at iU.  She was the women's HC for IU.  Dick Bennett his father was coach at Wisky.  Some said that was another reason he didn't accept iU's offer because he wanted to go to Wisky.

I imagine it was a combination of things. Mostly having to coach against your father twice a year probably high on the list.

[IU1969]

I think Dane Fife should be considered. Eight years under Izzo and most recently associate coach in charge of perimeter players. In 2002 I think he was the coach on the floor and mostly responsible for getting them to the Final Four. After all someone needed to be with Mike Davis on the sidelines. I know he is from Michigan but he is an Indiana guy.

[dgambill]

33 minutes ago, IUDan93 said:

Let's assume that there is nothing outside of the basketball program that would limit our success(i.e. IU administration), we have no way of knowing who would be a good to great hire.  Who is truly qualified to make this decision? RMK himself said Archie was a good hire. IU basketball was super frustrating under Crean, not least of which was that team that was ranked #1. It is still a program that is super frustrating.  I think we all saw positive signs here and there over the last 10 years under both coaches, only to follow up the good with the bad. We have only strung together scoring droughts and losing streaks. When is the last time we won 5 games in a row that didn't included cupcakes?  Add to this, it seems like commentators are always referring to IU basketball and Assembly Hall with reverence, but it also feels like they are talking about it as a museum piece, not something that is current and relevant.  We are like an aging fat and bald guy driving around in a cherry classic muscle car thinking we can still turn the young girls heads. We are turning their heads, but they are giggling and pointing. 

I love coach Knight but I’m not sure I would put a lot of stock into his current mindset. He isn’t exactly at his peak. I think it had more to do with just appeasing a crowd that come to see you speak imo. A throw away line.

[Brass Cannon]

4 minutes ago, dgambill said:

I love coach Knight but I’m not sure I would put a lot of stock into his current mindset. He isn’t exactly at his peak. I think it had more to do with just appeasing a crowd that come to see you speak imo. A throw away line.

College basketball had passed Knight. He didn’t win a conference championship his final 14 years. 
 

Archie Miller would have built a dynasty in the 70s.  Basketball has changed.  You have to be able to shoot in modern college basketball. 

[IUDan93]

1 minute ago, dgambill said:

I love coach Knight but I’m not sure I would put a lot of stock into his current mindset. He isn’t exactly at his peak. I think it had more to do with just appeasing a crowd that come to see you speak imo. A throw away line.

Maybe, but I don't think there were many reputable people thinking that Archie was a bad hire. Most of us were hoping for Donovan, and whether or not this had any chance of happening, many fans thought there was a chance. After a 2 time NC coach, most hires seem to be a little bit of a let down.  I think CAM checked many of the boxes as a hire, and the fact that he has not been able to succeed is a mystery. 

Something to consider in terms of comparing success of Crean in year 4 to CAM in year 4 may come down to this:  Crean started from zero, he didn't need to fight against an existing culture. Culture building is hard, but not as hard as changing a culture.

[rico]

We need to have a better +/- while cheating.

[dgambill]

I just don’t understand Archies vision...what he is building. The pieces don’t fit well...the units he plays...how he sees it working out. Maybe he just doesn’t have what he wants...I hope that is it. He realizes his team is offensively challenged so he just focuses on defense and tries to win 60-58 every game. That said what is stopping him from getting his players. In the A-10 you can get by without having great shooting teams if you are long and more athletic then your opponent you can hold them down...but in the B1G your opponents are just too good to expect to keep them down all game and shoot too good to allow them looks from 3pt line. Combine that with our lack of shooting and even with a top 10 defense we are going to be maybe just a little better than 500 with the offense we have. I’m hopeful that adding Stewart’s shooting along with our freshman growing up will be the recipe he has been searching for...but without Trayce we will have no balance. The way he has built this team...there is just so little room for error...it’s made his job so much harder...so why choose that?

[Fiveoutofsix]

One thing for sure, I have to apologize to Dan Dakitch.  I thought he was bitter because he wanted the job.  The fact is, he was right and objective from what he knew and what he watched from Archie at Dayton.  Furthermore, he is right the Indiana job is bigger than the person, it's not just a gig.  

Also, he brought up good points in his show yesterday about the assistant coaches.  

Man, I hoped Archie was the guy because I beleived in Glass and I love everything IU.  IU dished our $$$.....but, they need a big personality.

During the game thread I brough ip to Kev when Archie went off at refs, only after they walked away.  It seems like there is a slow reaction to everthing. 

What's EVEN more sad, the younger generation is losing interest in Baskeball.....they are watching IU football.  

[Leathernecks]

1 hour ago, RoadToZion said:

As much as you guys make fun of Crean, he at least accomplished something. Yeah he was a weird guy, but we are on year 4 with Archie and we haven’t done.....anything? 

Creans teams played with heart and knew what Indiana basketball was all about. Our team now looks like they could care less. I like the kids on our team and I like Archie as a man, but this team is terribly built. I’m not ready to kick him to the curb yet, but I’m very close. 

Crean catches a ton of crap for losing to Syracuse, but that Syracuse team wasn't really a typical 4 seed.  They were top 10 for the first 15 weeks of the season.  We still should have played better that game though.  Hulls having that shoulder injury hurt a ton.

Also, the previous year, we might have been a Final 4 team if we didn't hit that Kentucky team.  His other Sweet 16 appearance, we were playing well and lost to the eventual runner up UNC.  It was the down years that really hurt him.  When we were playing well though, his teams bought in and played hard, and we had a few really fun seasons.

And, it cracks me up that people are trying to say Crean basically fell into all that talent.  People don't think his system created some of that talent and some of that play?  His defense obviously sucked, but in his time here, we had seasons where we were the #2, #4, #6, and #8 offenses on Kenpom.  Not that I want to see us play that loose with the ball, but Crean's teams created flow on offense, and put a ton of pressure on defenses when they got out and moved.  It also created guys who felt no hesitation to shoot, and you could see how much confidence they had in their shots.  It was also a system that was attractive to talented shooters and scorers.

[Fiveoutofsix]

24 minutes ago, dgambill said:

. That said what is stopping him from getting his players. 

Great question! The pg is the most important position in college baskeball.  I thought, that being his position in college, and his dads connections....IU would have that position locked down.

For four years IU has lost out to every pg they went after except Rob. They lost to Purdue, OSU, etc.  That hurts!  They were able to talk a 17 year old Lander to reclassify during a covid year....only to ride the pine. 

I can't explain it, I have tried to rationalize and critically think about it.  It comes down to your development program.  

[BDB]

15 minutes ago, Fiveoutofsix said:

One thing for sure, I have to apologize to Dan Dakitch.  I thought he was bitter because he wanted the job.  The fact is, he was right and objective from what he knew and what he watched from Archie at Dayton.  Furthermore, he is right the Indiana job is bigger than the person, it's not just a gig.  

Also, he brought up good points in his show yesterday about the assistant coaches.  

Man, I hoped Archie was the guy because I beleived in Glass and I love everything IU.  IU dished our $$$.....but, they need a big personality.

During the game thread I brough ip to Kev when Archie went off at refs, only after they walked away.  It seems like there is a slow reaction to everthing. 

What's EVEN more sad, the younger generation is losing interest in Baskeball.....they are watching IU football.  

What did DD say about the assistant coaches?

[BGleas]

4 minutes ago, Fiveoutofsix said:

Great question! The pg is the most important position in college baskeball.  I thought, that being his position in college, and his dads connections....IU would have that position locked down.

For four years IU has lost out to every pg they went after except Rob. They lost to Purdue, OSU, etc.  That hurts!  They were able to talk a 17 year old Lander to reclassify during a covid year....only to ride the pine. 

I can't explain it, I have tried to rationalize and critically think about it.  It comes down to your development program.  

It really is puzzling how bad the guard play has been for 4 years with a coach that played guard in one of the best conferences in the country and comes from a coaching tree family. 

I've been posting this a lot over the last day, but Lander literally is the only guard on the roster that was rated higher than 120 in his recruiting class. You can't win in college basketball without really good guard play. 

I thought when Archie came we'd start recruiting high level, tough guards. Think guards in the MSU, Villanova, West Virginia (when Huggy really has it going), UVA mold. For whatever reason it just hasn't happened. 

[IUFLA]

4 minutes ago, Fiveoutofsix said:

For four years IU has lost out to every pg they went after except Rob. They lost to Purdue, OSU, etc. 

Just to be clear, are we talking about Carton, Quinones, and Curbelo?

I suggest you go look at their stats and see if any of them would be a significant upgrade over Rob...and that's not even considering the defensive end.

[dgambill]

5 minutes ago, Fiveoutofsix said:

Great question! The pg is the most important position in college baskeball.  I thought, that being his position in college, and his dads connections....IU would have that position locked down.

For four years IU has lost out to every pg they went after except Rob. They lost to Purdue, OSU, etc.  That hurts!  They were able to talk a 17 year old Lander to reclassify during a covid year....only to ride the pine. 

I can't explain it, I have tried to rationalize and critically think about it.  It comes down to your development program.  

Archie is too much a perfectionist on defense to open up the offense or let anyone do things differently. Give Cal credit for this he will ride with his 5* talent and let them learn on the fly. He lives with a TON of mistakes but knows experience is something you can’t coach...and by the end of the year his teams are prepared for tournament. If he was just a good in game coach he would be hard to beat. Archie can’t live with the mistakes and let kids just play. How bad does Illinois pg look...terrible most of the game but by the end of the year he will be ready to make big plays. When you are a defensive minded team like Wisconsin and IU and Virginia etc...you have no room for error. I just don’t like the system...it isn’t flexible and we have no margin for error.

[IUCrazy2]

1 hour ago, Threedom said:

Clearly Archie doesn’t have the same talent, but he built the roster just as crean did (From nothing).  Hopefully next year is better as you point out.  My comparison to the Syracuse game was more in terms of a watershed moment regarding the fan base. 

From nothing?  Crean had Tabor returning and pretty much nothing else IIRC.  Almost every returning player on the roster that Miller had his first year would have been the best player on Crean's first team.

What Crean did was get a strong supporting, but young, cast in year 1 to 3 and then he landed a game changing recruit for year 4.  He went out and filled the one spot his team was really missing with Cody Zeller.

Miller landed his game changer in year 2.  The game changer was hurt.  The second best recruit in that class was hurt and has never recovered back to the form he was reported to be in before that issue.  They missed the tournament and his game changer left.  He landed another really good recruit in TJD.  But TJD is not a Zeller and he is not a Langford.  He is a really good player who needs a supporting cast.  He is kind of like a Watford honestly (not that he has Watford's game but that he is a really good player who needs another really good player to truly see his potential).  And the surrounding cast that Miller has recruited has not panned out.  Phinisee being the biggest disappointment I think on that front.  He was recruited to run the offense and take the ball out of Durham's hands.  Having both of those guys initiating the offense hurts us quite a bit.  We are hoping Lander will fill that role but he just is not ready yet.  So you have a good TJD who is frustrated when he does not get the ball and when he does get the ball he faces collapsing defenses with guards who cannot hit shots to relieve that.

Miller just recruited himself into a hole IMO.  You cannot do that your first 2 or 3 years. 

[FW_Hoosier]

1 hour ago, Zuckerkorn said:

I'd like to see one fan that has had any expectation of whiffing a national championship in the past half dozen years.  True, we do have above average expectations but it's not like CAM is a disappointment because we haven't been to a S16.  It's because we've finished in the bottom half of league every year, lower each year in fact, and haven't played a single game in the tourney.  It's a lazy narrative by people who get paid to talk and act like they know everything about CBB.  Just in the last couple years I've seen talk of winning NCAAT on both purdue and UI message boards.  Right now our expectations aren't significantly higher than anyone else in the B10.

Any coach who would be reluctant to come here because the level of achievement we've seen under CAM isn't good enough isn't a winner IMO.

 

The expectations of the fanbase are completely different than they were 5-7 years ago.  Archie would get a 10 year contract extension and a parade on Kirkwood if he managed make the Sweet 16 even once, much less win the conference twice and make three Sweet 16s in five seasons like Crean did.

As it is, we’ve been so bad for the past four seasons that a good portion of the fanbase now celebrates losses as long as the players “gave it their all.”  We went from demanding that the program routinely compete for conference championships and deep tournament runs to praying that they can just finish in the top half of the conference and make the tournament.  The bar could not be set any lower.

[13th&Jackson]

4 minutes ago, BGleas said:

It really is puzzling how bad the guard play has been for 4 years with a coach that played guard in one of the best conferences in the country and comes from a coaching tree family. 

I've been posting this a lot over the last day, but Lander literally is the only guard on the roster that was rated higher than 120 in his recruiting class. You can't win in college basketball without really good guard play. 

I thought when Archie came we'd start recruiting high level, tough guards. Think guards in the MSU, Villanova, West Virginia (when Huggy really has it going), UVA mold. For whatever reason it just hasn't happened. 

Archie has never found his Scoochie Smith, who was a tough, smart pg from the Bronx. It isn't really about rankings. Smith was ranked 106th. McKinley Wright 229. How we'd love to have him.

[Threedom]

2 minutes ago, IUCrazy2 said:

From nothing?  Crean had Tabor returning and pretty much nothing else IIRC.  Almost every returning player on the roster that Miller had his first year would have been the best player on Crean's first team.

What Crean did was get a strong supporting, but young, cast in year 1 to 3 and then he landed a game changing recruit for year 4.  He went out and filled the one spot his team was really missing with Cody Zeller.

Miller landed his game changer in year 2.  The game changer was hurt.  The second best player on the team was hurt.  They missed the tournament and his game changer left.  He landed another really good recruit in TJD.  But TJD is not a Zeller and he is not a Langford.  He is a really good player who needs a supporting cast.  He is kind of like a Watford honestly (not that he has Watford's game but that he is a really good player who needs another really good player to truly see his potential).  And the surrounding cast that Miller has recruited has not panned out.  Phinisee being the biggest disappointment I think on that front.  He was recruited to run the offense and take the ball out of Durham's hands.  Having both of those guys initiating the offense hurts us quite a bit.  We are hoping Lander will fill that role but he just is not ready yet.  So you have a good TJD who is frustrated when he does not get the ball and when he does get the ball he faces collapsing defenses with guards who cannot hit shots to relieve that.

Miller just recruited himself into a hole IMO.  You cannot do that your first 2 or 3 years. 

Yeah I meant to convey  crean started with nothing...poor typing 

[Fiveoutofsix]

20 minutes ago, BDB said:

What did DD say about the assistant coaches?

So his show was on YouTube and last night after kids went to bed listened.

Said, IU use to have best Assistants in around... best high school coaches and teachers.  Used Meyers as an example and the guys from Illinois and indiana. 

Said, not a single assistant coach learned from a great coach, not a single one is a teacher.  No one is teaching.  Mentioned none are former head coaches at something.  I have to look for the link to share. Mentioned, including archie, there are no teachers and while up close at the game...only hears them yelling defense... and, they are all doing at the same time.  Assistants should be working with kids during the game not yelling and reacting to same thing as Head coach.  I'm missing some things....

[Fiveoutofsix]

21 minutes ago, IUFLA said:

Just to be clear, are we talking about Carton, Quinones, and Curbelo?

I suggest you go look at their stats and see if any of them would be a significant upgrade over Rob...and that's not even considering the defensive end.

Hunter included who did what he needed to do Thursday.  Morton hit a big shot as well. Regardless of their stats, IU is coming up 2nd or 3rd.....why?? OSU beat IU for a pg in the 2021 class as well.  

If anyone pulls up my old post, I always making up excuses and thought Rob would be great.  Part, because of hype.

And, he still and will be valuable....

I just don't know if he is a lead pg based on his ability to create offense for others. 

[Fiveoutofsix]

24 minutes ago, dgambill said:

Archie is too much a perfectionist on defense to open up the offense or let anyone do things differently. Give Cal credit for this he will ride with his 5* talent and let them learn on the fly. He lives with a TON of mistakes but knows experience is something you can’t coach...and by the end of the year his teams are prepared for tournament. If he was just a good in game coach he would be hard to beat. Archie can’t live with the mistakes and let kids just play. How bad does Illinois pg look...terrible most of the game but by the end of the year he will be ready to make big plays. When you are a defensive minded team like Wisconsin and IU and Virginia etc...you have no room for error. I just don’t like the system...it isn’t flexible and we have no margin for error.

Agree, but the defense needs work.  I think they are solid, but always has trouble against teams shooting the 3 well.  Adjustments have to be made there.  And this year, in late games, other teams know how to get a switch and get TJD to guard their quick guard.  It happens time after time...

D also needs adjustments.  

 

[IUwins0708]

7 minutes ago, Fiveoutofsix said:

So his show was on YouTube and last night after kids went to bed listened.

Said, IU use to have best Assistants in around... best high school coaches and teachers.  Used Meyers as an example and the guys from Illinois and indiana. 

Said, not a single assistant coach learned from a great coach, not a single one is a teacher.  No one is teaching.  Mentioned none are former head coaches at something.  I have to look for the link to share. Mentioned, including archie, there are no teachers and while up close at the game...only hears them yelling defense... and, they are all doing at the same time.  Assistants should be working with kids during the game not yelling and reacting to same thing as Head coach.  I'm missing some things....

And he’s correct