Kdug

Idk, Gunn is still borderline unplayable most of the time. I guess he’s better, but to me going from unplayable to borderline unplayable doesn’t count as developing a player. I also don’t agree that JHS improved a lot, he was just really good from the get go. To me I look at development as substantially improving enough to change a players role. I.e. benchwarmer to rotation player, rotation player to starter, starter to all big ten, etc. From a guard perspective, only Galloway fits that mold imo.

Bigs have developed, but guard development has been bad imo. Gunn and Banks have shown little improvement. XJ has got worse each year, though injuries probably played a part there. Bates improved a little his sophomore year, but he really blew up after leaving IU. Galloway and Kopp are really the only two guards or wings who I’d say meaningfully improved the last 3 years.

The fan base excuse has always been ridiculous. Plenty of other big ten teams like Maryland under Turgeon, Purdue with Painter, Illinois with Underwood, Wisconsin with Ryan and Gard, even Iowa with Fran are able to make the tourney on a year to year basis. There’s no reason IU shouldn’t be able to do the same.

Getting blown out by almost every tournament caliber team is just exhausting. If we had this exact same record but managed to play closer games I’d be willing to give more leeway to this team. But this is just unacceptable. As to this game, it felt like a carbon copy of the home game vs Purdue. We tried to pound it inside like we normally do, almost like we didn’t realize they have a 7’4 dude down low. It’s frustrating because Ware feels like the perfect center to take advantage of Edey’s weaknesses. On offense it would’ve been nice to see some pick and pops with Ware (who is now shooting 45% from 3 on the year) to make Edey close out on shooters, which he’s clearly not comfortable doing. It also takes the best rebounder in the country away from the rim. Also, just like last game Woodson went with the 2 fouls auto-bench in the first half for Ware. We went from down 4 to down 12 by half, and Ware ended up finishing the game with 2 fouls. Not sure how many times this needs to happen for Woodson to realize that he’s letting games slip away by artificially fouling out his own players.

I really don’t think the refs have been bad. Nothing to get a T for outside of how his team had played

Yup, this feels eerily similar. Who cares if he doesn’t foul out if the game gets out of hand in the first half

It’s too bad Ware fouled out of the first half. We could really use him right now.

Definitely the depth, but even the starters. A guy coming off a major injury and had been inconsistent in XJ and Galloway who’s always been a role player was expected to step up into a lead role. There were big questions with both.

I get your point, but even before the season our guards looked like a weakness, albeit I didn’t expect it to be this bad. Bates was our best bench guard last year, and he left. We were relying on big jumps from Banks and Gunn them despite both having bad freshmen years. Cupps and Newton weren’t very highly rated recruits, and Newton missed significant time from injury in HS - so I always assumed he would take time to catch up developmentally. It was tough to imagine relying on either of them too much. Even XJ was coming off a major injury and had been inconsistent before that. XJ being as bad as he’s been when healthy wasn’t something I expected, but the rest of our guards aren’t too far off what I could’ve reasonably expected coming into the year. Having one player play poorly from expectations shouldn’t be something that tanks a season. We really needed Walker’s equivalent but as a guard.

There’s a difference between being mentally sharp and being willing to do the grind that’s required to be a successful college coach.

I understand that’s a flagrant by rule, but that just tells me the rule needs to change.

He was fantastic at Penn State, and Bray pretty much tanked ND basketball in his last year, so they’re basically a full on ground up rebuild. They have 4 freshman and 3 sophomores in their top 8 players in terms of minutes. I’m pretty sure ND has actually improved on their preseason kenpom ranking, which just shows how little they had coming into the year.

Never a doubt! What a difference Galloway and Leal’s performances gave us tonight.

Pearl is a great coach, but he’s turning 64 in a month. I’d rather not hire someone that would put us in a position to have to find another coach in 10 years or less even if things go well. I don’t think he’d leave Auburn at his age anyway. I’d also be shocked if Drew was willing to leave what he has going at Baylor, but it can’t hurt to ask and he’d be fantastic. I know Archie has scarred some peoples perception of hiring an up and coming mid major coach, but what Schertz is doing at ISU is impressive. If we got him we’d definitely have a modern offense which would be refreshing. Not sure what his defensive scheme is, but the hope is the defensive metrics - which are still slightly better than IU’s this year - would improve with higher level recruits. That’s really the big concern with him. But at minimum it’d be a fun brand of basketball to watch.

Last update I saw had us in the lead, but it’s been pretty quiet lately. He seems like a great player, but imo we need guards to fix our issues. DQ would be a good piece to build for the future, not necessarily next year.

Domestic abuse vs what Pitino got in trouble for are not remotely comparable. Pitino allegedly cheated to win basketball games, Beard allegedly beat his wife.

I think we’re pretty bad with and without X. The only stretch of games where I’d say we had good back-to-back performances were vs Maryland and at Michigan. X missed both of those games. If we had end of 2022 X, I’d agree with you. But against real competition this year, he’s essentially had one good game (vs OSU), a couple of decent games, and 5 truly horrendous games. If you’re squinting, you could maybe say that he was starting to play better in the last 3 games. But that’s partially because he had been a negative impact before that.

But we do have enough talent to beat a Penn State team at home without their best player. That’s what makes the last game so frustrating, the bar was incredibly low, and we missed it by a mile.

Most teams deal with injuries, and we have looked just as bad when healthy. Heck, the first exhibition game of the season we struggled for 25-30 minutes against a D2 team. With a healthy team I don’t think we’d be any different. The only person to miss significant time has been XJ, and we still looked very bad at the beginning of the year before he got hurt. I don’t see how there’s any argument that we’d be a top big ten team when healthy, when we haven’t looked like that at any point this year. Top big ten teams don’t struggle against Army, FGCU, and Louisville.

Eh, Archie wasn’t able to do anything with that same superstar, and TJD got noticeably better under Woodson. This year has no doubt been a disaster, and the program currently has a very negative trajectory. But there were still some good things the first two years under Woodson that he deserves credit for.

I’d say that’s a bit misleading. Realistically, you want top 10 kenpom teams (national title contenders), top 25 (sweet 16/E8 potential), or top 50 (bubble tournament team). Anything worse than that is a failure. Archie had 1 top 50 team in his 4 years, while Woodson has had 2. Neither have had any top 25 teams. Ultimately neither of those is good enough, but I’d take Woodson’s results over Archie’s.

Most analytics will give a win probability for each game. So if we’re given a 40% chance of winning 3 straight games, we won’t be predicted to win any of them individually, but collectively we’d be expected to win one. So that’d be how we’re underdogs in the remaining games, but still expected to pick up a few wins. The home games vs Nebraska and Northwestern are probably our best chances for a win, but I think we matchup terribly with both. And agreed, it’s tough to be hopeful that things will be better next year. It feels like there needs to be some fundamental changes with Woodson’s system, but it’s hard to see any signs that he’ll make the needed changes.

The scary thing is that home vs Penn State was by far the easiest game we had left. There’s a chance we’re underdogs in every remaining game on the schedule.

Our offense scored 1.14 points per possession and had an adjusted offensive rating of 123.5. Both of those are excellent. Meanwhile we gave up 1.38 points per possession on defense. The press wasn’t the issue, it was our inability to do anything defensively. edit: let me add, our offense wasn’t great in the second half. But in total, our offense did enough to win. But our defense was non-existent the entire game. It just didn’t seem as bad in the first half since our offense was clicking.

It requires unionization because it violates antitrust laws if it’s not collectively negotiated. If there weren’t so much money in sports like it was 80+ years ago, leagues could probably get away with it. But the leagues you reference have agreed to drafts with their respective players unions for the last 75 years or so. Implementing a draft without a CBA is a great way for schools to get sued into oblivion.