IUCrazy2

Nobody is disagreeing with that. No one. So move past that, do you think anything should be done to Gard for his role? That is where the argument appears to lie because it doesn't seem like you do.

It is the exact same analogy. You just want a different set of rules because it is on an athletic field. So what if it does happen? I think words get exchanged quite often but it is not often that the grabbing occurs. You described a smiling handshake with "F you" statements after a game. This was not the situation you described earlier in the thread. If there are different rules on a basketball court for grabbing people after a game, then maybe there should be different rules for a slap fight too. That's how we end up in these places to begin with.

Yes, I could get on board with that. I don't think anyone is defending Howard, they are saying that other people need to do their time for their role as well. Removing objectivity from it, I hope they suspend enough people on Wisconsin to completely remove them from the Big title discussion. I would rather see Purdue win it this year then that group of hack artists and I hate Purdue.

Yeah, so he should get a larger punishment. I am fine with Howard being fired. I am just sick of what happens surrounding Wisconsin and I think Gard plays a part in that, played the main instigator role yesterday, and therefore also needs to receive some punishment. He should have to sit a game at least. Krabbenhoft as well. Additionally, I think the Big Ten needs to put together some of Davison's low lights from the past few weeks and suspend him for a game for constantly finding a way to do physical harm to a player on the other team (something that should have occurred before now). There were Michigan players throwing punches yesterday too. Suspend everyone who was involved. Just don't let this be a situation where only Howard bears total responsibility. He was the most egregious but other people played their part. Gard as the main guy who started it all being the next biggest.

I agree. I just also happen to think that if you replaced Howard in the above quote with Gard, it would also apply.

Let's change the scenario a bit. You and I are in the grocery store at the height of the pandemic. You notice I am not wearing a mask and make a comment about how I should as you are trying to get past in the aisle. I block your path with my cart, aggressively grab at you to "explain" why you are wrong and I won't let you pass. Is that acceptable behavior? If your answer is no, then Gard was also in the wrong in this situation. Krabbenhoft also waded into the scrum and was putting hands on Michigan players, which is why I think he got whopped. Throw the book at Howard, he should not have swung. What I think I and others are saying is that there is culpability on the Wisconsin side that needs dealt with as well. Finally, I blame the Big Ten and the fact that the richest conference in the country cannot afford to hire better officials. We have been spiraling towards an outcome like this all year because of how out of control they let players and games get. Davison had another "incidental" contact incident with a Michigan player's groin yesterday. Nothing happens to the guy and everyone knows he is a cheap shot artist. Wisconsin and Michigan have both led the way with some pretty unsportsmanlike conduct before this game and nobody has stepped in before things got out of control to restore order. You want this to stop? Start instituting review of plays after games and start sitting guys who taunt the crowd and have a knack for their hands "accidentally" punching people in every other game.

I said in our game that I wish TJD would have just let Stewart go.....

I agree with KoB. Watch the video, Howard is doing a blow by and Gard stops him. Looked like Howard probably told him where to go and then Gard grabs his shirt in his fist and right after that is when Howard starts pointing fingers. I think I and KoB agree with you all that Howard should not have thrown a punch but Gard clearly made the first aggressive move IMO. He should be punished as well. Additionally, if teams are an extension of the coach, then Gard is clearly rubbing off on his team because their antics on the court during games and then after games here as of late is some punk ass behavior too. Howard reacted in an immature manner, but I think the frustration he has with Wisconsin is shared by the conference.

If this was anywhere other than a basketball court, what Gard did could be argued as assault. It was obvious that Howard was pissed, all he had to do was the good game blow by and keep going. He grabbed him and escalated the situation. Then the assistant coach came over and escalated more and he was the one that got popped. Again, I am with Kob on this, Wisconsin has a style and style of play where they pus the envelope, constantly, and then play surprised when they get the reaction they were trying for. You don't want hit, keep your damn hands off the 6'10" guy after the game.

Wisconsin gets away with crap and other teams are getting tired of it. He shouldn't have done it, but I understand....

You have to realize what substandard meant in those days...about 20 wins and a trip to the NCAA tournament. The guy went to the NCAA tournament basically every year from the mid 80's to the day he was fired. He had also finally picked up recruiting before he was fired. Like I said in an earlier post, Newton and Leach were added the year before he was fired IIRC. We had just had a pretty decent year with Haston, Guyton, and Lewis that came up short in the tournament. Haston was hobbled in that last game against Pepperdine. So there was enough still happening to keep the majority of the fanbase around to see if a HoF, 3 time NCAA title holder had a bit more in him. Knight's failures at the end of his tenure are now THE goal for most of us the past 7 or 8 years. I would lay money that Knight, circa 1998/99 would have gotten just about every team we have had over the past 15 years into the tournament that missed it. Not those first Crean teams where we were running walk ons out there, but the majority of the others.

A few reasons IMO, one, the scandal and perception/reality of how he coached his team had caught up to him and two, by his own admission, he had kind of mailed it in when it came to recruiting for several years in the mid to late nineties.

I was on campus for those last few years and the thing that we lacked was interior play, particularly athletic interior play. Haston was just starting to blossom when Knight was fired and he had landed Jefferies, Newton, and to a lesser degree George Leach. We had a good system and a few pretty darn good guards we were just running William Gladness and Larry Richardson out there in the post and they were undersized and just more role players. I will say this, you look at the roster for 1998-1999 and I guarantee you that every coach we have had since Knight, except maybe Sampson, would not have won as many games.

Anybody who wants him gone next year is certifiable. If he leaves, next year is going to be rough IMO. If we could convince him to stay, I think we could build from this year and have a good year.

I'm sorry. I am 43 and was in 2nd grade when we last won a title but I at least can remember a whole bunch of years when this program was performing at a peak. The period you have experienced has been brutal.

My expectation was to make the tourney. We had a team that was kind of cobbled together but we have a pre-season AA candidate at center, one of the better PF's in the conference, a pretty decently experienced backcourt, highly rated Tamar Bates, well thought of Trey Galloway (also a pretty well rated player), a solid transfer who put up points for Northwestern so had experience in this league...and judging by today, we appear to be underperforming. Is that the end of the world? No. Does Woodson have his team in place? No. Would missing the tournament this year make his life difficult as a coach? Possibly. I think what people get worked up over is that Indiana never seems to have its crap together. Yeah, Wisconsin probably had the most dynamic player on the floor the other night in Davis but it wasn't like they were an uber talented team. They are just well coached and do what they have to do. Not gonna lie, the 5 player suspension really soured me on the year. I know that people say that it is nuts to believe that the fans care more than the players but....and I think that has been an issue for quite a few fans for awhile now, particularly the older ones. Seems like the players care more about the trappings of being an IU player than they do the work required. And it is not all of them but I don't think it is a coincidence that the last time I heard about having a team of gym rats was also the last time we were a really good team. I don't know, like much with this program, the players seem to be enjoying the benefits of a history they did not build and not enough urgency (collectively) to be a part of building on it. And before somebody jumps and says they are hard workers or such and such a player is this or that, sure, there are some of those guys in the program, but they aren't leaders and there is not enough of them to make a difference on the team at the moment. If we miss the tournament, Bates is the only guy out of that 5 who I would probably be open to returning, dumb freshmen do dumb freshmen things. Durr and Stewart would be bye-bye and Lander and XJ would have to convince me why I shouldn't move on.

Here is a stat, Assembly Hall has been open for 50 years. In that timeframe IU teams that played in the building have gone 612-132. Not bad. However, of that 132 losses, 64 have occurred in the last 15 years. 48%, nearly the same amount of losses in the last 15 years as in the prior 35. https://news.iu.edu/stories/features/celebrating-50-years-assembly-hall/index.html I would also like to point out that this is the type of hype I talked about above. We cling to the past because we have no present worth talking about.

You cannot go into these jobs anymore and tell people "prepare to suck for 3 or 4 years..." You just can't. You have to figure out a way to win with what you have early on so you can build on it. Even with all of this team's deficiencies, this should be a tournament team. One thing I will absolutely take Woodson to task for is that stupid NBA mass substitution we do in every game. It rarely if ever works out and on the off times it did seem to somewhat work out we were bringing in Galloway and Phinisee as part of that second group. Matta, Fife, or someone needs to get ahold of him and stress behind closed doors that he does not have a full NBA roster anymore. That philosophy is not going to work unless we have a significant talent upgrade at every position.

The sports programs are the tip of the iceberg for me. The other discussion goes into a verboten topic for this forum, and nothing about the new President, BOT, and current leadership at the school leads me to believe that is changing ever.

Good for you, at this point, I would have liked to win. And frankly I don't even believe it was cheating because the NCAA did not give a flying f about it. That is clear. Their most high profile teams were all in on balls to the wall cheating but it was all good because they were still getting the biggest piece of the pie. And the people who finally got busted were charged not with cheating, but with defrauding the Universities which is nothing but a sick joke. Anyone who has followed college basketball could tell you who was cheating for 25 years now. The universities knew, the NCAA knew, the players know, and the fans know and the only people that cared were programs like ours that cling to an era that stopped existing in the late 80's. And funny enough, that also coincides with the last time this program was consistently competitive in this sport.

Yeah that is annoying but recent history becomes more important. Those games from the 80's where we were in the middle of winning like 40 straight don't really mean much when a punk ass is on your court having won 22 of the last 25 telling your fans bye. The history is nice, but at a certain point you want to live in the here and now. I am 43. I was in middle school in 1992. I was 23 when we made our run in 2002. The only other years that were really worth much since then were because of Cody Zeller and even that ended in a massive disappointment. One that you could probably deal with if not for the fact that they were about the only years where IU was anything close to a contender in the last 20. And if you have certain beliefs, about the only attachment you have to IU anymore is the sports teams and your memories. I laugh when an 812-855 number shows up on the caller ID. Y'all aren't getting a dime from me. The whole school has been ineptly run for a long time. The people that run the place should be on their knees thanking the good lord they had the fortune of being grandfathered into one of the two big conferences because with our athletic teams of the past 20 years, we would be scrambling to build facilities and compete in the Big East. We should have paid players a long time ago. They threw out everything else about Bobby Knight but stuck with the one thing that would keep the sports teams from being competitive. Because we are a cheap school.

Woodson has a shelf life no matter what. We knew that when he was hired. I think missing the tournament this year would be a bad year. Even with the deficiencies on this team, we gave away several games we should have won. You have to roll with what you got. I was excited to get back into this year and now I am sinking back into the apathy. That doesn't mean calling for Woodson's head at this point, it just means not really fully engaging. I long ago gave up scheduling around the games. Then I started to DVR and only watch wins. Then I slowly moved to DVR and they just sat there unwatched no matter what because the games were frankly boring. I will probably be reverting back to that until I see a reason to be excited again. And frankly, "so and so is coming, help is on the way..." does not excite me anymore. We talk these guys up every summer and it is just a big disappointment when it matters. Think of the things we discussed this summer that were supposedly being worked on that would make us better. I can't really think of one thing that needed work that has consistently gotten better. Not one. And not one of the new guys that was getting hyped has proven to be that much of a difference maker. IU basketball is nothing but a hype machine anymore. All style and no substance. We got the social media game down pat. Gameday experience is there. And for the majority of the past 20 years that has all been lipstick on a pig. I would say run some guys off, but you are just going to end up with another group of castaways. We are Iowa now with the misfortune of having the older portion of our fanbase that knows what it is like to be Duke and Kentucky. Nobody is ever happy when you go from filet mignon to hamburger and hot dogs.

Ok, this is going to be petty and wrong...but after that loss it is where I am at. I wish TJD would have not gotten in his way after Davison hit him.

On #4, she was a annoying, her fiance is a douche canoe of the highest order, and we would not have known she was there if not for ESPN's constant need to have a narrative outside of the game. I don't recall them pointing out that Zeller was there. That (along with one other big thing) is a good reason why I avoid that channel like the plague outside of when my team is playing...and it used to be a channel that I had on quite a bit in my younger days. They do the Olympic model of sports broadcasting far too often where the side story takes away from the game.