Maryland Post Game Thread

[13th&Jackson]

32 minutes ago, FKIM01 said:

One other observation...poor Geronimo.  After three years at IU, he still looks like an athlete trying to learn to play basketball with pretty much zero instincts.  I honestly wish him well, but it's pretty easy to see why IU's coaching staff would be OK with him moving on.

He plays with more effort than most of the MD team (has been a problem with this group for a couple years), but he’s like leaving a 6 month old lab puppy alone in your house. 

[BGleas]

2 hours ago, IUFLA said:

Thanks...I posted that to show the experience difference, and how ridiculous it is to say that Maryland is "no good." They might not be playing well right now (and last night, we had something to do with that) but they have talent and much more experience than what we put out on the floor...

On our side, I see a team that is gaining confidence by the game...I see a kid, Ware, that had so many knocks against him playing like a contender for Big 10 PoY. Some talking heads said he was "soft' and "a finesse player" but I see a quiet, unassuming kid that has thrived under Woody, wants to be part of something big, and plays physical basketball. And he's damn good at it...

So you think Maryland is good? They're 4-4 with losses to Davidson and UAB. Their best win so far might be UMBC?

Its a long season and they may improve just like IU will, but right they are not playing good basketball and aren't a very good team. 

What I like, and posted earlier in the thread, was that it was great to see IU handle business against a team like that. 

It shows we're growing and improving. Rotations are tightening, we've made some offensive improvements and an identity is hopefully building. 

But yeah, Maryland is not a good team right now. 

[IUFLA]

2 minutes ago, BGleas said:

So you think Maryland is good? They're 4-4 with losses to Davidson and UAB. Their best win so far might be UMBC?

Its a long season and they may improve just like IU will, but right they are not playing good basketball and aren't a very good team. 

What I like, and posted earlier in the thread, was that it was great to see IU handle business against a team like that. 

It shows we're growing and improving. Rotations are tightening, we've made some offensive improvements and an identity is hopefully building. 

But yeah, Maryland is not a good team right now. 

The point was, they DO have talent... And experience, no? I said, they're not playing well right now, but Reese, Scott, and Young are all pretty good players...

Harris-Smith was the pick by many to be Big 10 freshman of the year...

That was the overall point... 

[BGleas]

7 minutes ago, IUFLA said:

The point was, they DO have talent... And experience, no? I said, they're not playing well right now, but Reese, Scott, and Young are all pretty good players...

Harris-Smith was the pick by many to be Big 10 freshman of the year...

That was the overall point... 

Yeah, they have some good players. They're not a good team, at least not right now. Their pieces aren't great together. They have a starter that hardly played on our team the last three years. 

I think we both agree that it was great to see IU handle business in a strong way. 

 

[IUCrazy2]

15 hours ago, Hoosierfan1215 said:

I haven’t watched enough of the other big ten teams to know that yet. Purdue obviously has the size and shooting and they are just good. I would say any team that can make 10 plus threes against us at a 35 plus percent clip has a better than average chance. I think our front line is awfully athletic and impressive and the more they play with eachother, the better they look. We have some muscle off the bench too. Ware is so long. I’ll go back to what I said. If we could find a way to make 6-7 threes a game. We would be in every game. 

Any team with guards that can drive and hit the three is going to give us problems.  Like Northwestern is going to be a pain.  Probably MSU as well.

[Kdug]

24 minutes ago, BGleas said:

So you think Maryland is good? They're 4-4 with losses to Davidson and UAB. Their best win so far might be UMBC?

Its a long season and they may improve just like IU will, but right they are not playing good basketball and aren't a very good team. 

What I like, and posted earlier in the thread, was that it was great to see IU handle business against a team like that. 

It shows we're growing and improving. Rotations are tightening, we've made some offensive improvements and an identity is hopefully building. 

But yeah, Maryland is not a good team right now. 

UMBC is probably the worst of the 4 teams Maryland has beat. Maryland was also coming off a 27 point win where they scored 103 points against Rider. Rider isn’t good, but that’s more points than Marquette scored against them with a similar margin of victory, and almost double the margin of victory as Nebraska.

After losing their 3rd game in a row by 17 points to Villanova, I would’ve agreed they were playing bad. But they’ve looked solid in the 3 games against lower tier opponents since then. It’ll be interesting to see how they look against PSU. That’s a game a decent team should win by about 10 at home.

We also dominated them for about 32 minutes of that game. You can only play the opponents in front of you, and that was easily our best win of the year in terms of opponent and how we looked imo.

[go_iu_bb]

23 minutes ago, BGleas said:

Yeah, they have some good players. They're not a good team, at least not right now. Their pieces aren't great together. They have a starter that hardly played on our team the last three years. 

I think we both agree that it was great to see IU handle business in a strong way. 

 

Yes, it's a team which is less than the sum of its parts.

[BGleas]

52 minutes ago, Kdug said:

UMBC is probably the worst of the 4 teams Maryland has beat. Maryland was also coming off a 27 point win where they scored 103 points against Rider. Rider isn’t good, but that’s more points than Marquette scored against them with a similar margin of victory, and almost double the margin of victory as Nebraska.

After losing their 3rd game in a row by 17 points to Villanova, I would’ve agreed they were playing bad. But they’ve looked solid in the 3 games against lower tier opponents since then. It’ll be interesting to see how they look against PSU. That’s a game a decent team should win by about 10 at home.

We also dominated them for about 32 minutes of that game. You can only play the opponents in front of you, and that was easily our best win of the year in terms of opponent and how we looked imo.

Yeah, I was just going off name there with UMBC, didn't look up rankings or anything. 

When they've played decent, to good, teams they haven't looked good. I don't put a ton of stock in how bad a team beats Rider. But to your point, they didn't struggle against Rider, where IU has against similar teams. 

But as @go_iu_bb said above, I think Maryland is less than the sum of their parts. 

[IUFLA]

18 hours ago, BGleas said:

I think we both agree that it was great to see IU handle business in a strong way. 

Absolutely...

17 hours ago, BGleas said:

Yeah, I was just going off name there with UMBC, didn't look up rankings or anything. 

When they've played decent, to good, teams they haven't looked good. I don't put a ton of stock in how bad a team beats Rider. But to your point, they didn't struggle against Rider, where IU has against similar teams. 

But as @go_iu_bb said above, I think Maryland is less than the sum of their parts. 

I don't think Coach Woodson has worried much about margin of victory versus the lower tier teams. He's played to win, but he has a new team and he wanted guys to compete for spots in the rotation. I know it screws up our analytics (which I think some people get hung up on), but I don't think that matters to Woody...The numbers at the end on the scoreboard do...He looks at the Big 10 standings, not Kenpom...

As far as Maryland goes, we know they can "wake up" at any time and start beating people like they did last year...They have guys that have pretty extensive track records doing just that...Thankfully, our guys played well enough for that not to happen...

It was as much what we did right that gained us the win...

And for @KoB2011...When we had 1:12 to go, and Woody took Trey and Kel'ell out, it was the right thing to do...Sure, I saw Michigan State-Iowa (when the Hawkeyes came back from 12 down with a little over a minute remaining to win in OT) last year, but That's a one in 1,000 occurrence...Had Ware or Galloway stayed in and twisted an ankle or worse, I'm sure the opinion of Mike Woodson's coaching would have taken another turn  

[BGleas]

50 minutes ago, IUFLA said:

Absolutely...

I don't think Coach Woodson has worried much about margin of victory versus the lower tier teams. He's played to win, but he has a new team and he wanted guys to compete for spots in the rotation. I know it screws up our analytics (which I think some people get hung up on), but I don't think that matters to Woody...The numbers at the end on the scoreboard do...He looks at the Big 10 standings, not Kenpom...

As far as Maryland goes, we know they can "wake up" at any time and start beating people like they did last year...They have guys that have pretty extensive track records doing just that...Thankfully, our guys played well enough for that not to happen...

It was as much what we did right that gained us the win...

And for @KoB2011...When we had 1:12 to go, and Woody took Trey and Kel'ell out, it was the right thing to do...Sure, I saw Michigan State-Iowa (when the Hawkeyes came back from 12 down with a little over a minute remaining to win in OT) last year, but That's a one in 1,000 occurrence...Had Ware or Galloway stayed in and twisted an ankle or worse, I'm sure the opinion of Mike Woodson's coaching would have taken another turn  

What we're all of these rotation spots he was tinkering with or having guys compete for? Nobody has had their role really change since the start of the season?

In the Army game 4 of our 5 starters played 30+ minutes. MM didn't, but it was because he was really struggling, not because Woodson was testing lineups or giving guys a chance to compete who shouldn't have been playing. 

Wright State, all 5 starters played over 20 minutes and 4 of 5 played 25+ minutes. 

 FGCU, 4 of 5 starters played 30+ minutes and 3 of them played 35+ minutes. 

IU was playing bad, really bad. It's OK to admit that. While we have new faces, we also have a 5th year (or is it 6th?) starting point guard, a senior guard, 2 McDonald's All-Americans and another high 4* sophomore forward. 

We weren't struggling against low-to-mid majors because Woodson was messing around with lineups or didn't care about scoring margin. We were playing bad against competition we shouldn't have struggled nearly as much against. 

It happened. We'll improve and are improving. The question will be how much can this team improve. What is the ceiling? Remains to be seen. 

[Drroogh]

51 minutes ago, IUFLA said:

I know it screws up our analytics (which I think some people get hung up on), but I don't think that matters to Woody...

In his interview he was pressed about 3 point shooting. His answer was ‘what IF we’re the team that can win that way?’  He didn’t say anything like that’s what we do, he said ‘what if?’ 
Seems to me he made it clear he’s not interested in those analytics. I know, I know I watched the movie ‘Moneyball’. I think Woody is interested in things like execution and communication!

[KoB2011]

59 minutes ago, IUFLA said:

And for @KoB2011...When we had 1:12 to go, and Woody took Trey and Kel'ell out, it was the right thing to do...Sure, I saw Michigan State-Iowa (when the Hawkeyes came back from 12 down with a little over a minute remaining to win in OT) last year, but That's a one in 1,000 occurrence...Had Ware or Galloway stayed in and twisted an ankle or worse, I'm sure the opinion of Mike Woodson's coaching would have taken another turn

I don’t really know why you felt the need to start this argument, but no, it wasn’t the right move to have CJ Gunn and Anthony Leal in the game when Maryland had been on a run and had forced a lot of turnovers that half.

I agree, likely wasn’t going to result in us getting beat but why even introduce the possibility?

The nicest thing you can say about that decision was it was unlikely to matter, but no, it absolutely wasn’t the “right” thing to do. 

[IUFLA]

3 minutes ago, BGleas said:

What we're all of these rotation spots he was tinkering with or having guys compete for? Nobody has had their role really change since the start of the season?

In the Army game 4 of our 5 starters played 30+ minutes. MM didn't, but it was because he was really struggling, not because Woodson was testing lineups or giving guys a chance to compete who shouldn't have been playing. 

Wright State, all 5 starters played over 20 minutes and 4 of 5 played 25+ minutes. 

 FGCU, 4 of 5 starters played 30+ minutes and 3 of them played 35+ minutes. 

IU was playing bad, really bad. It's OK to admit that. While we have new faces, we also have a 5th year (or is it 6th?) starting point guard, a senior guard, 2 McDonald's All-Americans and another high 4* sophomore forward. 

We weren't struggling against low-to-mid majors because Woodson was messing around with lineups or didn't care about scoring margin. We were playing bad against competition we shouldn't have struggled nearly as much against. 

It happened. We'll improve and are improving. The question will be how much can this team improve. What is the ceiling? Remains to be seen. 

Right now, we're playing 9 guys...9...double digit minutes per game...Do you think we'll still go with 9 once we get to the meat of the conference schedule? He's testing different combinations...He's even said so in his pressers...

No one said we played optimally in our pre-season schedule, but we did play well enough to win...And that's what matters...

 

 

[IUFLA]

9 minutes ago, KoB2011 said:

I don’t really know why you felt the need to start this argument, but no, it wasn’t the right move to have CJ Gunn and Anthony Leal in the game when Maryland had been on a run and had forced a lot of turnovers that half.

I agree, likely wasn’t going to result in us getting beat but why even introduce the possibility?

The nicest thing you can say about that decision was it was unlikely to matter, but no, it absolutely wasn’t the “right” thing to do. 

It was an unaddressed point of contention, not an argument  

And I told you why...If we were going to win, why risk the injury?

[BGleas]

11 minutes ago, IUFLA said:

Right now, we're playing 9 guys...9...double digit minutes per game...Do you think we'll still go with 9 once we get to the meat of the conference schedule? He's testing different combinations...He's even said so in his pressers...

No one said we played optimally in our pre-season schedule, but we did play well enough to win...And that's what matters...

 

 

That's pretty normal distribution of minutes, especially against low-to-mid majors. I mean, against FGCU, Wright St., and Army our starters played way more minutes then they should have needed too. There really wasn't any lineup tinkering. 

We played bad in those games. It's OK to talk about that and discuss what needed to improve. 

We didn't play bad because Mike Woodson didn't care or because of lineup tinkering. 

We played bad because our 3pt defense was bad, we were over-helping mostly unnecessarily and forcing guys to be out of position, etc., etc., and our offense was very one-dimensional. 

Other reasons as well. Some of those things we seemed to have already improved on, though remains to be seen. For example, our 3pt defense 'looks' better but we've also played two bad shooting teams in our last 3 games. 

But again, we will and have improved, but to what level remains the question. 

On the data and analytics, maybe Mike Woodson should care more. That stuff can cost you a seed line or two. Assuming we make the tournament, it can be the difference between a 5 seed and a 6 seed or a 7 seed and a 9 seed. 

It matters. 

[IUFLA]

5 minutes ago, BGleas said:

That's pretty normal distribution of minutes, especially against low-to-mid majors.

After reading some of the early game threads, I've changed my mind...I don't think Woody's motivation was to see what kids played well together...I think he had Mike Stump sitting behind the bench with an IPad monitoring this site, and was just trying to piss y'all off with his lineups  

 

7 minutes ago, BGleas said:

On the data and analytics, maybe Mike Woodson should care more. That stuff can cost you a seed line or two. Assuming we make the tournament, it can be the difference between a 5 seed and a 6 seed or a 7 seed and a 9 seed. 

It matters. 

Boy, would I have liked to hear someone say that to Coach Knight...LOL

Yeah, minimally it matters...But what REALLY matters is preparing these kids for the conference schedule, the score at the end of each game, and your place in the Big 10 standings...That's beyond debate...

We're not going to agree on this, so rather than go down the rabbit hole, let's just stop...Proof will be in the pudding at the end of the year...

 

[KoB2011]

30 minutes ago, IUFLA said:

It was an unaddressed point of contention, not an argument  

And I told you why...If we were going to win, why risk the injury?

So you think he was dumb to leave Reneau in? Can’t have it both ways…

[IUFLA]

1 minute ago, KoB2011 said:

So you think he was dumb to leave Reneau in? Can’t have it both ways…

I think at that point Ware had played 33 minutes, and Trey had played 34...Malik had played 19...And Woody wasn't going to have walk-ons playing...I'm sure he weighed his choices...

[KoB2011]

2 minutes ago, IUFLA said:

I think at that point Ware had played 33 minutes, and Trey had played 34...Malik had played 19...And Woody wasn't going to have walk-ons playing...I'm sure he weighed his choices...

Doesn’t matter, rolling an ankle is rolling an ankle. How many minutes you’ve played is irrelevant.

He wouldn’t have had to play a walk on to pull Reneau.

If he was worried about injuries he should have pulled everyone. I know it’s hard but just say it once “Mike Woodson is fallible human and can make mistakes”.

 

[IUFLA]

Just now, KoB2011 said:

Doesn’t matter, rolling an ankle is rolling an ankle. How many minutes you’ve played is irrelevant.

He wouldn’t have had to play a walk on to pull Reneau.

If he was worried about injuries he should have pulled everyone. I know it’s hard but just say it once “Mike Woodson is fallible human and can make mistakes”.

 

Well I'm damn sure not going to say @KoB2011 knows more about basketball/leadership than Mike Woodson  

[IUFLA]

I'll also say this, Woody took out the 2 kids who were most responsible for the win... Probably so they could get a nice round of applause from the grateful fans, which happened...

Small thing, but everything in leadership counts...

Edited December 3, 2023 by IUFLA

[BGleas]

32 minutes ago, IUFLA said:

After reading some of the early game threads, I've changed my mind...I don't think Woody's motivation was to see what kids played well together...I think he had Mike Stump sitting behind the bench with an IPad monitoring this site, and was just trying to piss y'all off with his lineups  

 

Boy, would I have liked to hear someone say that to Coach Knight...LOL

Yeah, minimally it matters...But what REALLY matters is preparing these kids for the conference schedule, the score at the end of each game, and your place in the Big 10 standings...That's beyond debate...

We're not going to agree on this, so rather than go down the rabbit hole, let's just stop...Proof will be in the pudding at the end of the year...

 

What Coach Knight would think is irrelevant. It's not 1992 anymore. Things have changed. 

So what is your point? Like, I'm struggling to understand what your point is? 

You think Woodson purposely kept multiple games against low-to-mid major teams close for the long-term benefit of the team?

You keep insinuating those game were close, not because we were struggling, but because Woodson was giving kids a chance or preparing them for conference play. 

How? What were these lineups he was tinkering with? Can you tell me? 

Because, I showed you that our starters played a ton of minutes, more than they should have needed to in those games. 

The only outlier in minutes from those early games was MM not being ready to play, so Cupps especially and some Banks got those minutes. 

It wasn't a purposeful tinkering, it was a necessity because MM wasn't ready. 

[KoB2011]

15 minutes ago, IUFLA said:

Well I'm damn sure not going to say @KoB2011 knows more about basketball/leadership than Mike Woodson  

I'm not going to say that either, but I don't see how that's relevant? Doesn't mean Woody would be right even close to every single time he and I disagree on something just because he knows more about basketball than me.

An appeal to authority is a logical fallacy. Just because Woodson is the coach and knows more about basketball doesn't mean he is right about everything he does. 

[KoB2011]

1 minute ago, BGleas said:

So what is your point? Like, I'm struggling to understand what your point is?

I think his point is "Mike Woodson is right, therefore if you disagree with him on anything, you're wrong."

It's an absurd point and a logical fallacy, but I think that's what he's reduced all his arguments to in these past few posts. 

[IUFLA]

3 minutes ago, BGleas said:

You think Woodson purposely kept multiple games against low-to-mid major teams close for the long-term benefit of the team?

No, I think he experimented with lineups not worrying about whether we won by 6 or 16. And that WAS for the benefit of the team.

4 minutes ago, BGleas said:

You keep insinuating those game were close, not because we were struggling, but because Woodson was giving kids a chance or preparing them for conference play. 

I "insinuated" nothing of the sort. If Mike Woodson had wanted to with by a larger margin than we did, he would have shortened the bench, but in the end, THAT would be to the detriment of the team.

I never, not once, said we played well. For Christ sake, it was 2 or 3 games into the season! If we looked that bad after 15 or 16 games, I'd be concerned... 

8 minutes ago, BGleas said:

How? What were these lineups he was tinkering with? Can you tell me? 

There no tracking of lineups in stats throughout a game, so that would be impossible, but go back and look at the game threads... As I said, y'all were more worried about the margin than the goal.

And I asked this before... Do you think we'll still be playing 9 kids double digit minutes in February?