Maedhros

If you're Asa Newell or Liam McNeely watching Montverde alum go off like that, just commit right now. Keep that pipeline going.

The only baffling thing is AP voter Michelle Smith dropped us from 2nd to 3rd. That's after a week where we beat her 16th ranked team on the road, her 17th ranked team at Assembly Hall, and guaranteed a Big Ten Championship against Purdue for good measure. She moved Stanford ahead of us. Stanford played only one game, winning close at home against a Southern Cal team that Smith didn't have placed in her Top 25.

New rankings are out. South Carolina remains #1, but for the first time all season it isn't unanimous. Receiving a first place vote this week, your #2 ranked Indiana Hoosiers.

Checking in from Assembly Hall

So. Here we go. Next game is the home finale, Senior Day, against Purdue. It's a sellout, and tickets are all General Admission. Anyone have advice for someone who doesn't get down to Bloomington all that often? Best places to park. Best guesses on how early to show up to get a decent seat (avoiding the balcony if possible). Are beer sales everywhere or do you have to go to a particular concession? Any tips to make Sunday a better experience would be appreciated.

This team is inevitable. I've watched every game that hasn't been relegated to a streaming service, and they're all the same. At some point you just know Indiana is going to make a run, often more than one. Even when a ranked team like Michigan keeps it close for a quarter, you know that run is coming and the lead is going to get comfortable real soon. It's a remarkably stress free experience.

I thought this as well. We were getting tackled in the paint in the first quarter, with no calls. My favorite was when Fino was knocked to the ground, the ball dribbled out, and Geronimo got called for a touch fall on the NW player who picked it up. In the second quarter you could see guys retreat a little bit, and throw up whatever bad shot they felt was close enough. It was bad officiating, and our guys responded poorly. I'm encouraged by the response though, and pleased by the change in attitude and approach to an adverse situation as much as anything else from last night.

Oh yeah. It's my third or fourth time at Winterfest specifically. Before that Sun King used to hold their CANvitational festival downtown every September, with brewers from all over the country.

I went to Winterfest over the weekend at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. It's a fundraiser for the Brewers of Indiana Guild and about 90 breweries from all over the state were in attendance. I made it a point to try some of the brewers that don't make it to Indy. Some of my favorites were Fran, an Old Ale from Damsel brewing out of Evansville, and Market Street Amber, an Altbier brewed by Parlor City out of Bluffton. I tasted over 20 different beers, and there were far more hits than misses. Really fun event.

Agreed. It'd be great if officials would stop calling charges on obvious flops, but college officials for whatever reason love to call a charge. Refs weren't changing this behavior, despite years of it being a point of emphasis, so you have to give them new instructions. It'd be great if players wouldn't flop. But they know college officials love to call a charge, so they know they're going to get rewarded for more often than not. The worst case for flopping had been that you might end up out of position on defense or get called for a blocking foul. If you're flopping it's because that was likely to happen anyway. So the risk/reward calculation was entirely in one direction. Introducing a technical for flopping makes it a riskier play. IMO it should be called more often to further swing that balance. I'm fully on board with the idea of banning the charge. There's little I hate worse than watching a defender grab his nuts and fall down. You're not making a basketball play, you're just abusing the rulebook. If referees have a hard enough job as it is, let's make it easier by taking this difficult judgment call off their plate.

Sport Reference recently updated their college basketball page to include Women's basketball. Now all the tools available for the men's side are available for the women, too. Here's a summary of all the AP polling this season: https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/seasons/women/2023-polls.html Big Ten teams ranked in the preseason were: 4. Iowa 11. Indiana 14. Ohio St 17. Maryland 22. Nebraska 25. Michigan

Steve Forbes is his guy, and Duke is his dream school. Sounds like it may be tough to pull this kid out of NC.

I paid the full $10 each for two a few weeks back, like a chump.

With the women's continued success, I hope that in coming seasons IU moves toward selling actual seats for these games instead of General Admission. I bought tickets to the game on the 19th, because it was last remaining weekend home game we could get to. But it's also senior day. Against Purdue. The place is going to be packed. My wife doesn't do well with crowds. If it's an assigned seat that's okay because we know where we're going to go and we know there will be a place for us when we get there. There's structure. That's my preference in most cases too, especially with crowds this size. GA is fine for concerts where you stand up and move. It's terrible for packed bleachers. With the noon start, the drive from Indy, and the need to scramble to find a seat when we get there, I don't think it's going to be a pleasant experience for us. I'd love to be at the game, but with GA seating I'm leaning toward staying home when otherwise I'd be there for sure.

It's a week late, but well deserved. Some big, big matchups to close the year: I would never pick against this team inside Assembly Hall. With the way Ohio State has been playing, they don't scare me at all. It's going to be Indiana vs Iowa to decide the Big Ten.

Gave Purdue the Ohio State treatment with that 3rd quarter. Great to pick up a road win over a team that had been playing well, though you would have thought it was a neutral court with the amount of Indiana fans in attendance. Definitely a Hoo Hoo Hoosiers chant in there at one point. FS1 even showed the Indianapolis skyline at one point when going to commercial, so I guess they were fooled too.

Here's the website for Iowa Group Tickets. https://hawkeyesports.com/grouptickets/ "Iowa Athletics offers discounted tickets to all groups". Doesn't matter whether the group is a charity or not. The Illinois student gave a false name, likely figuring Iowa wouldn't want the Orange Krush there. And he was right, Iowa doesn't want the Orange Krush there. Iowa looks petty because they'd rather cancel the order and donate the 200 tickets than have 200 students from the opposing team in attendance.

This place is more animated after a loss because that's human nature. We evolved to prioritize bad events because that's how you survive. It's certainly how news programs survive, and why true crime is a booming business. With regards to sports, there's just not as much to talk about after a win than after a loss. Happy fanbases are all alike; every unhappy fanbase is unhappy in its own way. I was shaking my head when I heard Jerod Morris trot out the old "it isn't that we lost, it's how we lost" on Assembly Call after this one. Pretty sure I've heard that after every loss this season. Maybe it really is just that we lost? Eventually had to shut it off, for the same things you see in this thread. Losing is frustrating. We all have different thoughts on why it happened, and it feels good to get those thoughts out. But sometimes losses happen. We had a bad performance and didn't get the result we wanted. It doesn't have to have anything to do with the last twenty years of the program, or the IU administration holding back the athletics department. You take the L and move on. On the road at Maryland is as good a place to do that as any. I'm pleased with the team I've seen over the past six games. Now get a healthy X back to provide another option at guard for ball handling, scoring, and perimeter defense, especially on night's when JHS doesn't have it. Let's see what this team has over the next six games. Improvement is never a perfectly linear path.

I mean, sure, the sub patterns were questionable, especially in the second half. But it won't be Ya (or Walsh) making those decisions going forward. Tough for me to get too worked up about a one-off situation that I don't expect to be repeated.

Per Twitter, credit to Andrew Mascharka (@MascharkaPhoto) for this incredible shot.

I didn't have a problem with the effort last night. Execution was just lacking, and at times decision making too. We had any number of wide open threes, blatantly so, and had just a few of those gone down the game isn't so close. Some poor passing created those live ball opportunities that Minnesota was in better position to come up with. But I don't think you defend as well as we did without effort. Guys were playing hard, just not always well.

This is like all those posts during our own skid about how it's not that we were losing but the way we were losing. Losing is always frustrating. Truth is, Ohio State has the eighth ranked offense on both KenPom and Torvik. Only Purdue and Iowa are higher in the Big Ten. At times this season OSU has been ranked first in the country. They finished top 13 each of the three seasons prior. That doesn't happen by accident. Yet now they've lost six out of seven so Holtmann doesn't have a system. It's all so reactionary.

Along those lines, there's a solid article in The Athletic today, spotlighting what Teri Moren has been able to build with this program: https://theathletic.com/4122351/2023/01/25/indiana-teri-moren-big-ten-womens-basketball/

That was methodical. Every time Michigan made a run Indiana would answer right back with one of their own. It got a little close at the end with Mack on the bench in foul trouble, but Grace is such an assassin. She played a quiet game until her team needed her, then it was bucket after bucket.

Jerry Palm is currently ranked 125 out of 148 entrants over at Bracket Matrix. I like the Eye on College Basketball podcast, but it's always funny when they cite Palm as an expert just because he's employed by CBS.