HoosierDom

6 minutes ago, OGIUAndy said:

I would say they were a consensus top "teen"  or 20. I don't think top 10. That would have been a stretch. And I would agree. Basketball is always about guard play and we haven't had a lot of those the past few seasons. 

We were 13 pre-season in the AP and 14 from the coaches. 

AP had us ranked all but 3 weeks of the year.

2 hours ago, iuhoopsfan90 said:

I know a lot of people don't like the Ballo fit with MR, but Ballo is a beast.  He is a double/double machine and gets a lot of his points on putbacks.  He had 281 offensive rebounds last season.  The entire IU team only had 288.  He also doesn't get in foul trouble.  He only averages 2.1 fouls/game.  No way IU can pass on this guy.  

That number puts him at 8-9 per game. I'm certain that's not correct. Still, a no-brainer that we want him.

With all the stuff they have let go tonight, how is that Purdue bump a foul?

5 minutes ago, DWB said:

Even though I hope PU loses this, I'll love to see the match up between the Big from UConn against Edey. UConn big is athletic, only 2" shorter than Edey, and has just as much bulk.

Edey just might get exposed big time for the slug he is.

I'm afraid you're giving the UConn guy too much credit.

6 minutes ago, ForHumanity said:

No, there are a few teams out there that can give them a run.

The announcers are getting carried away with, " Can anyone stop UConn".

It's obvious, that the Iowa State game took it all out of them.

While UConn had it easy against SDSU.

 

Agreed. If Illinois could hit a few shots, they would only be down 10-15. UConn's defense hasn't been amazing this game. It's just shameful shooting. UConn is certainly dissecting the Illini defense, but they look beatable to me.

29 minutes ago, 13th&Jackson said:

I get it, but he inherited a team that struggled with shooting. In three offseasons, he's brought in one transfer who had any reputation as a shooter (Kopp) and none were guards (XJ only guard transfer). We'll see if that changes in year 4.

I don't mean to defend his roster decisions too much, but he did bring in Bates, Mgbako and Cupps - all of whom were billed as shooters coming in. Banks and Ware probably fit the bill, also.

It's unbelievable how many bad decisions Alabama has made.

1 hour ago, Kdug said:

I’m not someone who thinks May should be our top choice. But making a knee jerk reaction because of an OT loss is a terrible way to judge a coach. Whatever your opinion of him was before this game shouldn’t have changed.

If we're avoiding overreactions to a small sample size, he never would have been on our radar in the first place.

Let this officially put an end to the May talk unless/until he has success with a bigger program. He's an Archie level hire.

Was that last UK shot not a 2?

38 minutes ago, IUfaninIllinois said:

Don’t think this is true. He just changed his profile to Indiana Basketball 2025

ITH is saying it's done.

52 minutes ago, Danomatic said:

I hate to keep beating a dead horse here, but even kids in the portal with multiple seasons left will likely decline IU, knowing that there’s a good chance Woodson is gone after next season. Why delay the inevitable? Bringing Woodson back sets the program back at least two additional seasons in my opinion. The only potential scenario that plays out is that Woodson adds one and done types via the portal, and potentially a kid or two that backs out of their current LOI due to a coaching change, players coming back etc.

I think there are plenty of reasons to fire Woodson, but I don't know about this one. If Woodson leaves, kids will just transfer again. I don't think kids mind that much. 

Just now, Kdug said:

More high ball screens, pick and pop with Ware (who shot 42% from 3), or literally anything so teams couldn’t just pack the paint. Last year we were one of the best 3 point shooting teams in the country, but we still were in the bottom 10 in 3 point attempts. So it clearly doesn’t matter who we have on the wings, Woodson doesn’t value 3 pointers and wants to pound it inside at all cost.

Why do you think we had a good percentage last year? Do you think Galloway and X were among the top shooters in the country? To me it's obvious that we had good numbers because we didn't shoot many. We took the open ones and passed up the rest. Most of the open ones were open because teams had to pack the paint against TJD. 

Just now, HoosierDPU95 said:

I know you're not defending him and agree that he tried to run a system with what he had BUT....

If he knew he didn't have what he needed, why was there an open scholarship? Even if you fill it with a gaurd that wasn't quite big ten ready you at minimum have a red-shirt player with a year of practice in "the system". Instead, that scholarship sat empty and we have 0 incoming recruits. I would love to hear QBuck's take on how that's acceptable and not justification for making a change.

I started this season on the "hope he figures it out" side of the fence but that hope went away quickly and it became obvious that he won't/can't and a change is needed.

I agree, he should have filled that spot. I don't agree that red shirting a guy makes any sense. If you're not good enough to help this year's team, why would we think you will ever be good enough to play at this level? Red shirting for non-medical reasons never happened often, and it's going to happen even less in the age of transfers.

As I remember it, he talked a lot last off-season about looking for a guy that would move the needle (I think that was his phrase) - clearly be an upgrade over the guys already on the roster. He struck out on them. I certainly would have just brought a guy in just in the hope he would out-compete our current guys, and Woodson didn't do that. I don't get it, but it's not like he didn't want to upgrade - he tried and failed.

3 minutes ago, Kdug said:

I feel pretty confident on what Woodson wants to run since he’s run the exact same system for all 3 years, and the fact that Mike Woodson himself said he was happy with the way the offense was run, the team just needed to make more shots. Even with getting Ware last year, he could’ve gone for different transfers to run a different system instead of getting Sparks and Walker.

Again, what system do you run with the guards/wing we have had? Do you not play through the guys who are your best offensive players by a large margin?

What is he supposed to say in his press conference? "I don't want to play this way, but my guys suck"? To me, his comments have always indicated that he was going to run that system because with that roster, it's all he sees fit to do. I don't see anything in his comments to suggest he would run that system with Golden State, or even Nebraska, but he will run it with this year's IU.

I don't want to come across as a Woodson defender, I'm not - if I were in charge, I would do everything I could to hire Bruce Pearl, but I don't understand why people think they know what offensive system Woody wants to run.

He inherited an all-American big man, and no guards worth playing. He went out and got an aggressive, up-tempo pg and a shooter with size. Neither of those guys turned into guys that can win the conference, but that's who he sought out. That was before the age of the transfer, so options were limited. Was he supposed to run an offense that featured guards that were barely playing at a power 5 level or go through his superstar? That doesn't tell me anything about how he wants to play, it just tells me he's smart enough to play to a strength.

His biggest recruits have been a big pg who could create shots, and, before he decommitted, a shooter with size. His other big win was a big man who fell in his lap - was he supposed to turn that down? He tried to get scorers from the wing and guard, he just failed. I'm all for criticizing him for that, but I don't get how you can judge his system.

His decision this year was to get the ball to his NBA big man rather than what? Have Leal and Galloway rain 10 3's a game? Have X and Gunn create off the dribble? That's not going to work. Again, want to criticize him for not having better options, I think you should, but I don't see how we can think we know what next year's offense will look like. 

Taking a quick look around the league, I see 9 teams, probably 10 (I don't know Illinois well enough to judge some of their guys) that have a starting pg that is unquestionably better than X. And that's for the half the games X played. For the other half, we had the worst pg in the league. It's hard to win with that. It's even harder to do anything other than throw the ball in the paint. Again, you want to criticize Woody for putting us in that situation? Great, as do I, but, if you want to say based on that, you know what we're going to do on offense next year? I don't see any logic in that.

2 minutes ago, HoosierDom said:

Wasn't this the point against Michigan two years ago where we determined X running a pick and roll with a big man charging the rim was virtually unstoppable? Maybe try that again?

C'mon, tell me coach didn't read my post!

Wasn't this the point against Michigan two years ago where we determined X running a pick and roll with a big man charging the rim was virtually unstoppable? Maybe try that again?

3 minutes ago, Hoosier4Life53 said:

Embarrassing, we haven’t been able to guard the 3 all season.

We do give up the 3rd lowest percentage in conference.

"The extra pass to Walker" - couldn't sum up this year any better than that.

7 minutes ago, btownqb said:

 

8-15 mins of solid play a night is perfect... if XJ, TG, MM, MR, and KW do their job... along with Cupps and Walker. 

The word "if" is doing some heavy lifting there.

1 hour ago, 5fouls said:

Teams evolve over the course of the year.  Putting so much weight on Margin of Victory in November while discounting a head to head matchup last week is stupid.

Margin of victory is so easily distorted, too. On either side of a decided game, I feel like we're always the team that dribbles out possessions and gives the other teams layups. Efficiency numbers are tightly packed, I'm sure that costs us 5-10 spots.

57 minutes ago, btownqb said:

What does,CJ Gunn allegedly having a high ceiling, have to do with what Indiana needed this year? 

sorry but this isn't the time to experiment, if you actually wanted CJ Gunn to be a contributor later on, the kid should have RS last year, and be playing crazy sparingly mins this season. 

For what we needed--- 8-15 mins a game of just being solid. Being in the right spot, doing the right things... those mins should have never gone to Gunn. 

I don't follow what you're trying to say here. 

We need a guard who can create shots for himself. Leal cannot do that. Gunn can. So, going into the season, I get why a coach would want to give Gunn a chance. I also get why, eventually, you have to stop giving out chances. I'm not suggesting Gunn should be playing now. The time for experimenting is in the first month or two when you don't know what you have and you're hoping what you have will grow into what you need.

Not sure I agree that you should take a guy who doesn't clearly project to being a power conference player and aim to have him take a spot for 5 years. You never saw that happen often, and I suspect you'll see it less still in the transfer age.

8-15 solid minutes a game is not what we need. It's what we're setting for because we don't have what we need.

11 minutes ago, btownqb said:

I can't agree. I think giving Gunn a scholarship, let alone minutes on a B1G basketball team was one of the decisions that sealed the fate of our season. 

Leal's ability to be in the right spot is a huge plus, more so than the lack of athletic ability is a minus. There hasn't been one single time where I watched CJ Gunn and thought, "wow, I'd like to see him get more mins"

If we wanted to win dunk contests, by all means, PLAY Gunn... 

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I don't believe for a second Gunn outplayed Leal in practice from March-Oct. So either our HC didn't watch those practices, or he was too dead set on running offense with the 2nd unit through CJ Gunn (lol) to realize Leal is quite a bit more of an effective basketball player. 

This is Leal's ceiling. There was no way he was ever going to grow into a guy that can finish at the rim or create his own shot. Gunn's ceiling is quite high. I doubt he ever gets there, and he certainly isn't anywhere near it now, but he's a smooth athlete that could be a really good, multi-level scorer with the size and speed to be a force on defense. That's what we need, so we had to see if he could become that. Some guys click when given the chance.

3 hours ago, btownqb said:

After March-October, and then from what we've seen from Gunn, Banks, Cupps, no Newton, and an open scholly..  coupled with our horrible play early on... 

How in the world was it Dec 29th before Leal saw double digit mins? 

I've never been on team Gunn, so I mostly agree with you, but still, it's not hard to see why. Look at what happened every time, other than the game winner, Leal had the ball at the basket. His lack of athleticism is a huge minus. Giving Gunn opportunities made a lot of sense.