Kdug

Again, let’s not overreact to one game. We’re 1-1 on the road, with probably the best road win of any big ten team. So yes, we still need to prove we can win away from home on a consistent basis. But let’s not act like the Xavier game didn’t happen.

Man, some of you really overreact to one bad game. As someone who actually watched the game, I disagree that we lost because we were soft. We played good enough to win on defense, we just couldn't hit an outside shot, which let Rutgers pack the pain. Defensive rebounding was an issue early, but it seemed like it was more because we were trying to get out in transition while Rutgers was sending everyone to attack the glass. We adjusted after the first 10 minutes, but it came at the cost of getting out in transition - which took away one of the areas that has been most effective on offense early in the year. We certainly looked bad and need to play better - especially on offense. But several other good teams have had some bad games. Tennessee lost by 12 vs Colorado, Arizona lost by 15 at Utah, Baylor lost by 26 at Marquette, etc. Good teams respond after a bad game, which is what IU needs to do in the next stretch of games.

Agreed, but the cut to Coach Woodson was pretty funny.

Clemson just choked away a win at the FT line

I agree with the premise that I’d like to see us play some more good teams before making judgements…but an away win against Xavier is a really good win based on how they’ve looked this far. Kenpom has them ranked around 30th, which would be a Q1 win

Ohio got fouled on that three. Michigan is lucky they got away with that

What's tough about Xavier is that they have a few different ways they can win. So far they've been a good rebounding team that's lived off getting easy 2s. But they also have a lot of guys that can hit 3s that they can beat you from behind the arc if you're too focused on rebounding/protecting the rim. I think our biggest advantage is our depth, so I'd say we can exploit that advantage by playing fast and physical, making them work on every possession. Tire out their starters/get them in foul trouble and I think we can pull away late

I voted for TJD for MVP of game 1. I thought it was close between him and Malik, but Malik having 3 turnovers vs TJD having 0 made the difference to me.

It feels like every call goes against IU. McFadden last year vs cincy was bs as was whatever the refs did there. WKU basically got multiple cheap shots with no repercussions.

Illinois flops more than any analogy I can think of

Yeah, that’s on the receiver. Hit him in the hands

Thoughts on the first half: 1. Bazelak looks decent. Missed a couple of throws, but was able to stretch the field. Seems like an improvement on what we had last year. 2. Our O-line and D-line do not look good at all. 3.These announcers are legitimately the worst football announcers I’ve heard in my life. 4. Can Camper looks awesome. 5. Big Lug makes some good beer.

I was curious so I looked up how many minutes we had without one of XJ, TJD, or Race on the floor. It was 127 minutes. That's 3.6 minutes per game, and is almost certainly inflated by blowouts. With all 5 starters out, it was only 80 minutes where none were on the floor (2.3 mins per game). The mass substitutions is way overblown, and in reality just didn't happen to the degree many think it did.

Fair critique. Although I think this shows a lack of depth rather than poor substitutions. We were at our best when X and TJD were in the game together, especially at the end of the year. If we’re trying to make sure one of them (or Race) is always on the floor, we’d have less time with our most effective duo. IMO that might help us during these stretches, but hurt us when we don’t have X and TJD playing together as much.

IU top 3 vs top 100 opponents: TJD: 83% of minutes Race: 74% of minutes X: 70% of minutes All high majors that are above 87.5% of minutes vs top 100 goes from 10 to 17 players with Wendell Moore (Duke), Ryan Hawkins (Creighton), and Collin Gillespie (Nova) being on tourney teams. There were 149 players vs top 100 that had at least 75% of minutes (30 mpg) vs 129 players when looking at games against all teams.

We really didn't try to play 10 players meaningful minutes, especially at the end of the season. When you look at the box scores after rob came back (excluding St Marys since there was a lot of garbage time), we typically would play 9 players with 1-2 players getting 5-10 minutes and 1 player getting less than 5 minutes.

I saw 35 mpg referenced, so I decided to look up how many good teams actually play anyone that many minutes. Of the high major teams, only 10 players total played at least 87.5% of their team's minutes (equivalent to 35 per game). Of those 10 players, only Eli Brooks played for a tournament team. With last year's team TJD played 80% of the teams minutes. That's about the most I'd expect for any player once you factor in fatigue, foul trouble, etc. For our other two best players, Race played 71% of the available minutes while Xavier played 67%. Race played less down the stretch due Geronimo playing better than him in a few games, while Xavier played less earlier in the year due to foul trouble and inconsistent play. There's nothing wrong with the rotations, we just didn't have anyone outside of TJD that consistently earned playing 30+ mpg throughout the whole year. In the stretches where Xavier or Race were playing well, they were also getting around 30 mpg.

I legitimately can't understand why anyone thinks TJD, Race, and JG playing together last year would've worked better than the lineups we used. Our biggest issues on offense were shooting and spacing. Taking MK out for JG would've made both of those worse, not to mention downgrading our perimeter defense. JG also struggled with fouling too much (averaged 4.6 fouls per 40), which would've just been worse if he had to guard quicker perimeter players that he certainly would've struggled to keep in front of him.

I keep seeing people reference fife to butler. Is that just because him and Matta were at IU this last year, or is there some other connection I’m not aware of? I’d think fife going to W MI would make more sense since he actually coached with Stephens for several years.

IU made his top 5. No idea what our chances are, but would be a huge get.

IMO this isn’t severe enough to kick him off the team, but ultimately it’s up to Coach Woodson. The other thing I will say is that we used to have a coach that repeatedly did much worse than this, yet nobody called for him to be fired because he was winning.

Not sure what kind of car he drives, but I don’t think most cars can even get up to 140

At this point, none of the impact transfers have committed anywhere. Maybe you could say the 2 Murray state players going to LSU were impact players, but LSU also lost their whole team. So to this point, there’s not really any team that’s done much to improve for next year. It’ll take awhile for the portal to sort itself out. But agreed that we need to add an impact player (or 2-3 impact players if TJD and/or race leave) if we want more than incremental improvements.

He looks very good. Absolutely dominating the first half of the championship game

He looks like the best defender on the floor. Hasn't really looked for his shot, but has done a good job facilitating the offense.