Kdug

1 hour ago, BGleas said:

I hear what you're saying. I think the difference there is that Hulls was just a bad defender due to several factors (not effort) regardless of his height. Yogi as a freshmen wasn't a good defender regardless of his height. 

I don't know what kind of defender Pack is, but XJ is a solid defender. If Pack is solid on that end, then I'm not too concerned. 

Plus, assuming in this scenario TJD back then he helps alleviate a lot of that with his shot blocking. 

I just watched St. Peter's beat Purdue and Kentucky with basically a 3-guard lineup. 

Ultimately, I'd love to have a backcourt of 6'4" guys that can shoot, create and defend, but at the end of the day I'm tired of not having multiple playmakers, shot makers and creators. 

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

8 minutes ago, btownqb said:

2013 is the last time I truly remember there being multiple top tier teams in the B1G. 

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

3 minutes ago, btownqb said:

The problem is... those were the expectations. And that isn't exclusive for this year. 

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.

4 minutes ago, IU_Realist said:

Both at the three:

Kopp isn’t quick enough to guard threes. He doesn’t handle the ball well enough to be a three.  He also doesn’t shoot it well enough to offset those deficiencies:

Geronimo - see above.

Analysis: Neither should be playing the three. 
 

Both at the four:

Kopp would make a nice four and handles it better for this position.  Can guard on the perimeter for this position. Problem is he cannot rebound and is kind of a wimp in the post. 
 

Geronimo was probably best at the four. Kid can rebound and use his athleticism.  Showed good at the high low.  Think he will continue shooting well.

Analysis: Thought our best lineups at the end included Kopps butt on the bench and Geronimo at the four with TJD or Race.  Analysis means dump having two bigs that can’t shoot because this isn’t 1970 and the Big Ten needs to reevaluate all the crappy things it does.  Also dump Kopp or make him a bench player 10-15 minutes per game 
 

 

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

6 minutes ago, IUwins0708 said:

My fear is we have to settle either in the portal or for some flyer freshman that isn’t as good as what we let go.  Not saying the talent didn’t need an upgrade because it did, but hopefully there was some promises from players that want to commit or we could be screwed. Again not saying I hate what’s going on but it could easily back fire as well.

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.

1 hour ago, IUCrazy2 said:

Probably last thing I will say on this because some of the replies are getting silly to the point of condescension.

1.  If Fife did everything he is being accused of exactly as has been portrayed, it is a bad look on him.  I don't think anyone is disputing that.

2.  If Fife did all those things, it would lead one to wonder how on earth he has lasted in the business this long, including 10 years at an in conference rival that has been arguably the standard bearer of the BIG since Knight was fired.

3.  Given those things, I believe this is not as black and white as most of the people here are portraying.

4.  The statement attributed to Woodson and released by Indiana was about as "aggressive" of a "we are parting ways" statement that I have seen.  Yeah, he is part of the Indiana Family (no duh, he played for the team and made an NCAA Final game, nobody can take that away from him) but they made sure that everybody knew he was fired.

5.  Rabjohns tweet was a hit.  It did not have to be released because some fans on a message board were questioning things.  That is such a cop out.  Rabjohns does not say anything like that without go ahead from IU.  It went over like a lead brick and someone called him and told him to delete.  That is all strategic though.  Just posting something for a minute gets that message out there.

6.  You can read some other guys (like Tom Brew) who are also "connected" to the program and they deliver a different picture that is more grey.  Woodson being uptight about the Coach in waiting deal.  Woodson not utilizing his own assistants.  Woodson trying to run things like an NBA team.  

7.  We all want Woodson to succeed and I was ok with how the season ended but we were 1/2 away from the NIT just 2 weeks ago.  We had 15 losses this year.  We were like 2-11 against the BIG teams with a pulse.  There were stupid roster management decisions all year long from the substitution patterns down to who got minutes.  We fell apart late in a whole bunch of games.

8.  Dakich was right in the Indiana way.  We dispose of people and character assassinate them on the way out.  And that comment hit at me too.  I have done that to players before.  And here we are doing it to another IU guy over what looks like 2 big egos that could not get along.  People go out of their way to make sure a guy like Romeo Langford was protected a few years back from comments and now they are on the pile on Fife train.  

9.  Fife was asked to come here.  Sounds like he was told things.  He is brutally honest and the honest truth appears to be that there were some things Woodson was doing well and there were some where he was lost.  Fife's mistake was believing that he could talk about that kind of stuff in confidence when this whole program from the AD, to the media, to the fans has all got to have their piece and say.  So we ran off a "member of the family" who left a 10 year job to move he, his alumni wife, and two small children here (and that happens sometimes) but then we character assassinated him on the way out.  IU is toxic.  There is a reason we have not been good for 20 years.  Coaches have come and gone but the AD culture and program culture remain the same.  

10.  This absolutely will be a "we should have seen" moment in 3 years IF things don't work out.  For all our sake, I hope that is not the case.

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.

1 hour ago, slojoe said:

#21 in DE San Francisco They Beat 69-64 and 72-70

#7 in DE Gonzaga they beat 67-57 but lost 2x 74-58 and 82-69.

#2 in DE San Diego St. they lost to 63-53.

They are #17 overall and IU #35.  Strength of schedule is 71 SM and 321 IU.

Opps DE for SM is #67 and #69 for IU.

Opps OE for SM is #48 and for IU #12.

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

Just now, KoB2011 said:

It might take them out. That’s a really bad loss. 

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.

44 minutes ago, Muddy River said:

I'm not sure Lander could make up offensively what he would've given up defensively last night.

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

14 minutes ago, NotIThatLives said:

Efficiency should go up towards the end of the season.  The game slows down in the tourney.  Each team that survives is usually playing at their peak.  6 out of 40 games is not generally going to massively sway 99.9% of teams numbers.  

If you want to pay the full kenpom script and show more than one outlier than off the top of your head knock yourself out.  Im not here to argue about this.  Not much else to be said.  

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

8 minutes ago, btownqb said:

One of X's turnovers was the technical. It counts as a TO. So, in 8mins/9mins X had 2 TOs... KL had 3 in 5 mins. I'm not upset about the way KL played jesus. To act like he was perfect or even close to it is laughable. 

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.

3 hours ago, NCHoosier32 said:

we can certainly agree to disagree.  i generally count on it.  

If you look at Bart Torvik's projections for our Non-Con opponents for this year and compare it to the Non-Con SOS from 2020, we would've been tied for 77th, which is almost the same as what IU's 2020 Non-Con SOS was ranked (70th). NIU, Eastern Mich, and UNC Asheville are the only teams he projects to be outside the top 200. There really aren't a lot of true cupcakes on the schedule, even if we don't have as many top end opponents.

10 hours ago, dgambill said:

Last thing and I’ll take it to nba thread. It isn’t so much the players resting...it’s the teams tanking for draft picks that bother me. Resting healthy guys and it starts even before the all star break. It makes for a poor fan experience at the game and home. 10-20 years ago with the same schedule I knew I had a Pacer ticket I could take my kid to see Reggie Miller vs say Michael Jordan or Patrick Ewing. In today’s nba...who knows if I’d even get to see Reggie Bullock. I know I know the differences but now compare that to the nfl....I’m almost assured to see Tom Brady. In the mlb I’m almost assured I know Walker Buehler is taking the mound or Mike Trout is playing the field...nba...who knows. That was kinda my point in all that. I buy IU tickets I know I’m going to get to see TJD. That’s my biggest beef with regular season nba. They treat it as it’s basically disposable...and I don’t get nearly the same product as the post season. I have no problem with nba playoffs....it’s Fantastic! (In Marv Albert voice) Lol

As a big baseball fan, this statement is simply not true. In the last full season there were only 5 position players who played every game. MLB players have rest days very frequently.

45 minutes ago, BobSaccamanno said:

Take out the best 30 year window for any program and what are you left with?  Would there be any blue bloods left?  It’s kind of a silly exercise.   The 30 years exist and happened.  Take out the Wooden years. Or Coach K.  Or 1980-2010 for Louisville.   Or 1990 to 2020 for UNC.

IU would still have two titles.  

100% agree with removing the most successful periods makes any program look bad, but I didn't take that as the main point of the article. The main point that I got from it was that it's hard to replace a legendary coach, but once you get the right coach in place, great programs win regardless of how long it's been. This article talks about OSU football, but Alabama football pre-Saban is also interesting to look at. Plenty of programs have struggled, to varying degrees, to replace legendary coaches for extended periods of times. But when they got the right coach, they got right back to the top of their sport.

Here's an interesting article from an OSU blog talking about the Woodson hire and comparing OSU football and IU bball. Makes some pretty interesting comparisons. https://www.elevenwarriors.com/college-basketball/2021/03/121964/an-emperors-shadow

5 minutes ago, KoB2011 said:

Haven't seen this linked, but could be helpful for this thread:

https://247sports.com/Season/2021-Basketball/TransferPortal/

Here’s another good link: https://barttorvik.com/playerstat.php?link=y&xvalue=trans&year=2021&minmin=0&start=20201101&end=20210501

This includes the stats from last year instead of recruiting rank and you can sort by each column