Kdug

Bad all around half, but only down 8 so it could be worse I guess. Need to step up in every facet.

Robbie Hummel even thinks these refs are bad lol

We’re struggling on both ends right now. Lucky to not be down more. This is the worst our defense has looked since the Penn state game, Maryland just didn’t capitalize early. Still time to turn it around though.

Him and Malik have been really bad on defense since they’ve checked in. We’re lucky Maryland hasn’t hit some of the wide open looks they’ve got.

I’m guessing/hoping they’ll air the start of the game on ESPN news.

I’ve never seen a team get away with more fouls than Purdue. 3 straight possessions with missed calls on them

The way offensive and defensive efficiency is calculated at the team level is the same in efficiency metrics, points scored or given up divided by the number of possessions, weighted based on quality of opponent. Rebounding, 2P%, 3P%, etc will obviously impact how good a team is on offense or defense, but ultimately efficiency metrics don't actually look at those stats.

According to torvik, you guys have had the second easiest schedule in the big ten so far, but have the second most difficult remaining. I do agree that you’ve made it through some of the tougher road games (MSU, PSU, OSU), but you don’t have any gimmies the rest of the way.

That's fair, but this is college basketball. Most good teams, even elite teams, have stretches where they struggle even when they're fully healthy. That doesn't mean that all of those teams have players who aren't listening and coaches that don't know what they're doing.

Yes we were bad, and should've been better, especially against Penn State. But saying injuries weren't one of the reasons we were bad is not accurate. It wasn't the only reason, and we had some issues (mainly on the defensive end) even before the injuries. But when you have two key players hurt, your performance is going to suffer. Just look at Wisconsin. Wahl missed 3 games and they lost every one of them, and that's just with one starter out, not two.

Thanks for sharing that article, I found some of the stats fascinating. One of the links in that article was to a tournament performance tool on bart torvik's site - https://barttorvik.com/cgi-bin/ncaat.cgi?conlimit=&yrlow=2001&yrhigh=2022&type=conf&sort=18. I found a couple of interesting tidbits: 1. The Big Ten has 10.8 more wins than expected based on the seeds they've received since 2001. That's second best among all conferences. Interestingly, the Pac 12 is the only conference ahead of the Big Ten, and they also do not have any championships since 2001. 2. The Big Ten has had a 96% chance of winning at least one championship since 2001. 3. Since 2001, the champions have been 15 #1 seeds, 2 #2 seeds, 3 #3 seeds, and 1 #7 seed. Morale of the story, get a #1 seed if you want to win a championship, and if you're outside the top 3 seeds, you have virtually no shot. 4. You can also look at those stats by coach. A lot of the coaches who have outperformed their seed expectations are the well thought of coaches (Izzo, Roy Williams, etc). However, the coach who has been the worst vs seed expectations is Tony Bennet, having 6.4 wins fewer than expected. I guess losing to a 16 seed will do that. On the other hand, having one successful championship run makes people forget about past tournament failures. A couple of other underperformers: Rick Barnes (5th worst), Steve Alford (8th worst), Tubby Smith (10th worst), and Brad Underwood (15th worst) 5. One last stat. The Big Ten has had 14 #7 seeds and 14 #2 seeds since 2001. The #2 seeds have lost more in the first round than the #7 seeds (2 losses vs 1 loss). I feel like that exemplifies the Big Ten in the tourney. Overperform as a low seed, underperform as a high seed.

Great game. I thought Coach Woodson’s timeout after we got down 4-0 completely flipped the momentum. Came out strong after that and never looked back. Also, Illinois’ game plan against TJD and unwillingness to double was great to watch as an IU fan. No idea why they didn’t start doubling him after he clearly showed he couldn’t be guarded straight up.

Obvious choice. But shoutout to Geronimo, he’s starting to look like the player he was at the end of last year.

I’m not complaining about it, but can anyone explain why Underwood didn’t start doubling TJD after the first 5 minutes of the game? Other teams have been very successful with that strategy, so I’m not sure why Illinois hasn’t gone to that yet.

Yup. This has been extremely one sided with the calls. As I type this TJD gets fouled on the dunk and no call. Ridiculous.

That was as clear of a charge as you’ll ever get and no call. Sheesh

The big 12 is the best conference, but it’s either the big ten or sec after that if you’re looking at top to bottom conference strength. Wouldn’t necessarily say that makes the big ten bad. But to your point, not a lot of high seeds in the big ten. It’s tough because the only game that theoretically should be easy is Minnesota, every other team is in the top 100. All the other conferences besides the big 12 have more bottom feeders.

This is could go to several guys, but I went with Geronimo. While the game was still in doubt, he played great all around, but he especially dominated the offensive boards and kept the offense afloat in the first half with some hustle plays.

Those first three losses are worse than you’re making them seem. It wasn’t the fact that we lost, it’s how we lost. None of those games were particularly close, and we got dominated for long stretches in each of them. But I do agree with parts of what you’re saying. With no injuries we probably have 2 more wins, and the season feels much different. It was still probably trending towards more of a upper middle of the pack in the big ten type of season and not big ten title contender, but that’s obviously much different than where we are now. I honestly understand that expectations need adjusted after the injuries. But again, it’s not that we’re losing, it’s how we’re losing. Our defense looks abysmal, which it didn’t look great even before the injuries, and penn state just ran us off the court. I’m certainly not giving up on the season yet, but it doesn’t look to be trending in a good direction.

Even though it’s on the road I still like our chances at Minnesota. They’re not very good. Honestly I’m just hoping we see some game to game improvement from here on out. Then if Race and/or X does return, we could hopefully make a late season run.

Lol, no. I was responding to an absurd analogy comparing investing and recruiting. If someone wants to make that ridiculous comparison, you can't ignore the time factor of investing.

I think it's fair to say IU has more talent than NW, but saying recruiting rankings and investing are similar is flat out wrong. Also, a lot of IU's talent is still very inexperienced which can be exposed by an experienced team like NW. I agree with the general premise that we should still be able to beat NW at home, but this isn't NW from 10+ years ago. IU has lost 2 of their most experienced/best players in the last two P5 games, that's going to lead to some bumps in the road no matter what team it is. Unfortunately for IU, it led to two 1 point losses in winnable games.

That's a bad analogy. With investing, you know exactly how much you start with. With recruiting, you have a few outside services saying how good they think each player is. That leads to players like Zach Edey, Oladipo, Connor Gillespie, and others as 3 star players or worse, while Khristian Lander is a 5 star. Also, NW started 3 seniors and 2 juniors, while IU started 2 seniors, 1 Junior, 1 Sophomore, and 1 Freshman.

I really don't understand how some think IU should still have the same expectations with the injuries we've had so far. So far we've been missing at least one of our top 4 players in all of our losses so far. The two P5 games we were fully healthy for, we won at Xavier (who looks very good right now) and vs UNC. Every team in the country gets worse if they lose a starter. Just look at Rutgers. At the start of the year when McConnell and Mulcahy were hurt, they had a bad loss vs Temple and lost there only other P5 game at Miami. Since they've been fully healthy, they look a lot better. Now that doesn't change the fact that IU needs to figure something out since Race and X will be out for awhile. Hopefully these last two games were growing pains and we start seeing some improvements with the new lineup.

Signs of life! CJ bringing some much need defensive energy