Kdug

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.

FWIW, Evan Miya has transfer portal rankings that rates every transfer on both offense and defense. No idea how accurate he is, but he has Pack rated very poorly on defense...The flip side is he has the 2nd highest rating on offense

I’d argue 2019, but mostly agree outside of that. Not unrelated, 2013 is the last time IU was an elite team.

Eh, I’d disagree that it’s a consistent issue. last year there were 4 1 or 2 seeds from the big ten, and then everyone but Michigan severely underperformed. 2019 had MSU in the final 4 and PU in the elite 8. 2018 Michigan made the finals. Point being, there’s usually at least one top tier team in the big ten, if not a few teams. That just wasn’t the case this year.

I really think it’s being overstated how bad the big ten was in the tourney this year. Here’s a summary of each team: Wisconsin - 3 seed, R32; underperformed by 1 game. Really shouldn’t have been seeded that high, had mediocre efficiency metrics for a 3 seed Purdue 3 seed, R32; met expectations. With the way the bracket shook out, you could argue they underperformed. But St Peters has shown they’re no fluke. Illinois - 4 seed, R32; although according to the seed line, they should make the S16, they had the worst possible 5 seed in Houston. According to efficiency metrics, Houston should’ve been a 1 or 2 seed. I’d say they met the tourney expectations, and just got a really bad draw. Iowa - 5 seed, R64; underperformed by 1 game. Seems worse than that since they were a popular pick to make a deep run Ohio St - 7 seed, R32; met expectations Michigan St - 7 seed, R32; met expectations Michigan - 11 seed, S16; exceeded expectations by 2 games Rutgers/IU - play in 11/12 seeds, R68/R64; grouping IU and Rutgers together since both were in the play in games. Play in games are supposed to be close to a 50/50 matchup, so you’d expect 1 of 2 teams to win. Combined met expectations. So based on the seeds the big ten got, it basically matched expectations with a few higher seeds underperforming by a game, Michigan over performing by 2 games, and everyone else doing exactly what they were supposed to based on the seeding. The big ten just didn’t have a top tier team this year, even though Purdue looked like they were going to be early in the year. There was just a lot of depth in the conference.

I agree with a lot of this, but 2 comments on Kopp: 1. I think in the right matchups, he was a better defender than most give him credit for. He did a particular good job at chasing pure 3 point shooters and limiting their open looks. He’s definitely not the quickest, so he can struggle with athletic wings. 2. Although he’s known as an offensive player, he was pretty bad on offense this year, mainly because he was horrible at shooting 2s. He shot 35% from 2 and almost shot as many 2s as 3s. He either needs to get better from 2, or he needs to be a pure 3 point specialist. If he’s a 3 point specialist, he’s definitely a bench player at this point. If he develops a pull-up game and can shoot 2s at closer to 50%, I think he can be an adequate starter. If he doesn’t do either, I don’t think he should get many minutes at all

I liked all of our players last year, so it is sad to see them go. But here are the offense ratings of the players that have left so far: KL - 78.5, RP - 83.5, MD - 89.9, PS - 102.0. For reference, an average player in the big ten would have an offensive rating of 107 or 108. None of the players we have lost thus far were particularly productive last year on offense, and I'd argue rob was the only good defender out of the four. In addition to that, all of the players but Khristian had been in college at least 4 years, so I wouldn't expect huge jumps in production next year. It's tough because they all seem like really good people, but this team needed to shake things up a bit if we want to be good next year.

These aren't numbered in any particular order, but figured I'd respond to some of your thoughts since several people have seemingly been saying some similar things. 1. I have no idea what event actually happened, but at this point most of the stuff about Woody is pure speculation. It all boils down to there were some leaked rumors that he is stubborn and hard to work with. People keep complaining about IU leaking stuff about DF, but leaking info is a 2 way street. At this point, it seems pretty clear where the leaked info about Woody is coming from. 2. Some of the info about DF is also pure speculation, but some of it came directly from DF tweets. He publicly (drunkenly?) tweeted about his former school having a better student section - which is not a big deal imo, but still a bad look. More importantly, he tweeted some negative comments on NIL. Whether he was trying to get a different point across or not, having the perception of being an anti-NIL will kill recruiting high level players. If you're an anti-NIL school or staff, you are immediately out of the running for almost all 5 star and a lot of 4 star recruits. Whether you like NIL or not, it's here to stay and IU needs to take advantage of it. 3. If that was an "aggressive" parting ways announcement, I'm assuming you don't follow sports very closely. That was about as benign as it gets. Also, more broadly speaking, I disagree with some that say IU should have said it was a mutual parting of the ways. I prefer an organization actually have the courage to say what happened. It sends a strong message internally and externally about what expectations are and what happens when expectations aren't met. 4. We have our most successful season since 2016, and now all of a sudden Woody can't coach because he let go of a liked former player/assistant? Come on. I have no idea if Woody will be the answer long term, but this is as optimistic I've been about IU bball since the start of the 2017 season. Also not sure which two of the following B1G teams are the ones with a pulse: Purdue, Ohio State, Michigan, and Illinois 5. Rabjohns is not an IU employee. He does not need to ask for approval to post stories/messages about what he has heard.

Good info. The overall strength of schedule ranking you listed is just for non-conference though. Overall, IU's SOS is at 39 (including last night's game) and SM is at 60.

Too bad Iowa didn’t miss this many open shots against us

They’re definitely close, and they don’t have very many good wins. Their best are probably at Virginia and at Virginia tech. I think if we beat Michigan, but lose to Illinois we are ahead of them now.

Agreed on the defensive side. Even on offense, Lander's has a 40% TO rate this year, which has been the worst on the team. So on a night when we were struggling with turnovers as a team, I don't think he would have been the answer

Kenpom pre-tourney ranks for ncaa champs since 2010. All but 2011 and 2014 Uconn were top 10 in offense or defense, less than half were top 20 in both. 2010 Duke - AdjO: 4; AdjD: 5 2011 Connecticut - AdjO: 21; AdjD: 27 2012 Kentucky - AdjO: 2; AdjD: 6 2013 Louisville - AdjO: 17; AdjD: 1 2014 Connecticut - AdjO: 57; AdjD: 12 2015 Duke - AdjO: 3; AdjD: 37 2016 Villanova - AdjO: 15; AdjD: 7 2017 North Carolina - AdjO: 4; AdjD: 25 2018 Villanova - AdjO: 1; AdjD: 22 2019 Virginia - AdjO: 2; AdjD: 5 2021 Baylor - AdjO: 3; AdjD: 44

I don't think anyone is saying KL is perfect. And so far this year it's not just KL that's struggled with turnovers, KL, Rob, and X all have basically the same turnover rate this year. With how poorly Rob has started the year on offense, I just think it's encouraging to see we could have another option for backup pg minutes if he doesn't improve. Still need to see KL performs against better competition though.