IUJoe

I seem to remember one of the selling points to the Woodson hire was the notion that the coaching in the NBA was such high-level that Woodson would have little trouble matching the coaching chops of most college coaches. The reality: even with 8 days to prepare, Chris Collins, once again, took Woodson behind the woodshed.

Great chance to win state in both girls and boys basketball. Luers will be tough, though. All their athletic teams have a habit of having decent to good regular seasons and then peaking at tournament time.

While I agree, he's also going to have to be coached to do something other than stand and watch his man collect offensive rebounds.

Not when you remove the vacated games

X is an enigma. I’ve seen him in warmups where, even with that broken shot, he’ll take a couple dozen three-pointers and hardly miss any. Next game he can’t hit the broad side of a barn. Floor game is the same way.

I am not going to be here clamoring for a firing, but if Dolson were to consider it, my short answer to your question would be both. After all, this season is a good chunk of his overall body of work. Personally, I can live with the first 2 seasons, although both were at the lower edge of my range of expectations. The first season was, even though our metrics weren’t a whole lot better, an improvement over Archie’s years record-wise, and we made the tournament. Second year, second in the Big 10. Tournament performance was disappointing, but I cut him some slack because X was out. Again, lower edge of my expectations but I could live with it. This year is different for me, and it goes beyond the record, which is disappointing by itself. And I still cut him a little slack because he couldn’t have known Newton and X would be out. But still, why leave a scholarship open when guard play is such a question mark? There had to be somebody that could have helped us, I would think. The things bothering me this year are nonnegotiables like effort. The lack of effort can be seen on TV and is glaring when you watch them in person. I don’t know if or how Woodson has addressed it, but it hasn’t changed in 24 games. Guys just standing instead of blocking out and getting the ball, etc. I remember Woodson acknowledging in his introductory press conference that “ the 3 ball has changed the game.” He has failed to recruit to that, and therefore can’t play to that. And speaking of recruiting, he has failed to sign anyone from Indiana and is in danger of losing some big time Indiana recruits in upcoming classes who supposedly aren’t enamored with his system. I’m not a proponent that all our kids have to be Indiana kids, but if we’re going to be elite again, we have to take full advantage of our fertile recruiting ground. So I would just say, beyond the two choices you gave, there are some big red flags that might justify Dolson’s decision if he elected to make a change.

I don't remember Branch McCracken, but I still care about and know that time is part of our history, and therefore part of our program. My boys are teenagers, with one heading off to IU in the fall, but they know about Bob Knight and are big IU fans. So are most of their friends. So, it matters. But I would agree with you, the further we get away from it, and the fewer people who actually witnessed the glory days, the less it will matter. We need to get those days back ASAP.

Well, I don’t know why in hell anyone would pretend to be a Purdue fan, lol.

I think people framing this as the “worst season in program history” are pretty high on the hyperbole meter. There’s little doubt we aren’t good, but there’s been plenty of worse seasons in my lifetime, and I only remember from the early 1970s. Regardless, Indiana’s college basketball program is still one of the most valuable in the country according to Forbes. Facilities, resources, recruiting base, alumni base…all still in place ready for the right coach to take advantage of. I doubt FAU was in Forbes top 300 when May took the job there.

I think you’re comparing apples to oranges. Florida Atlantic and Indiana are not comparable in any way. FAU was basically nothing when May took over.

As someone who produces these types of metrics, I can answer your question. The first NET rankings came out on December 3, well after we played Army. To produce completely unbiased rankings, it takes time for the teams to play enough games to “connect” with each other in the regression. Anything you see that is produced before that (KenPom, Sagarin, etc.) includes pre-season or previous year’s data and is not exclusively this season’s data. But by December 3rd, Indiana had played close games with Florida Gulf Coast, Army, Wright State, Louisville, and Harvard, and had been blown out by Connecticut. As a result, they were #137 in those December 3rd rankings. And while they have moved up some, those early games turned out to be a good predictive indicator that they weren’t very good.

Modern systems on both sides of the ball…uptempo….shot 23 3s today, 28 in their last game…pretty typical numbers for them.

I’m a realist, not a pessimist or optimist. Realistically, as of now, I don’t think we’ll be favored in any of those games. I can see us beating Nebraska because they haven’t been good on the road. But I would have to go under 2.5.

Unfortunately, they may be much closer than they realize to getting their wish.

Lots of thought going around that some guys are not gonna want to be head coaches in college with the NIL and transfer portal. They say there’s no time left to be a coach. Boston College just lost their head coach to a DC position with the Packers. Yes, it’s the NFL, but he still took a pay cut.

Close losses, routing bad teams, routing Baylor. I’d say they are about a 10 seed right now.

Strange. I honestly thought he’d shit-posting on social media during the game. Well, what a terrible boss and incompetent AD he is!!!

In case anyone is interested, Tim Carpenter, the QB from Dayton who de-committed from IU, signed with Kevin Wilson at Tulsa.

Technically, he has a small coaching tree, but no one from IU. For instance, Darrell Walker, who was on his staff with the Knicks, is currently the head coach Arkansas-Little Rock.

Matta is the guy we should have hired 20+ years ago. I don’t think he has much left in the tank at this point.

Probably a worse look to acknowledge/celebrate some commitments but not others. I’m guessing Cig wants them all believing they are big-time recruits.

The fact that you don't agree with their decisions doesn't make them amateurs or unqualified. Plenty of universities, including Notre Dame, have hired ADs without any previous AD experience. All of them, including Glass and Dolson, were certainly more qualified than anybody spending 18 hours a day on message boards criticizing them.

I think that’s mostly just some people’s way of venting. I certainly agree that we’ve had people in the administration who have not made good decisions, but to claim they don’t care about winning or want to devalue any of our programs is pretty ridiculous.

Have watched him play a few times this year in person. He can certainly shoot it and finish at the rim against Horizon League competition. Defense is questionable at best.

I get that. But if an NBA team was paying you $5-6 million, would you say in an interview, “I would consider coaching at Indiana if they offer enough?” I personally don’t put much stock in the answers to those types of questions. The bottom line is, if Stevens really had absolutely no intention of taking IU’s job, he was playing IU big time. And maybe he was.