Purdue Post Game Thread

[IndyResident16]

9 hours ago, Hoosierdave said:

Maybe, Coach Cig hasn’t coached a single game yet haha. Didn’t some people think Archie Miller was a “home run” too? Also, not sure if it was him or Glass but they went full moron and gave Tom Allen a big raise or extension after the Covid year. I know Dolson went full moron recently by giving Woody an extra million each year.

Going to continue to be the laughing stock of the (expanding) Big Ten with reckless decision making like that. 

Archie checked nearly all of the boxes for a young coach, except for one: winning at a big time program. He failed miserably at that. Every elite coach at one point was an up and comer, I get that. But for every elite basketball coach who wins at the highest level, there's a hundred failed up and comers who never make it at the top level. It's a risk every single time you go this hiring route. 

If you had to bet on someone succeeding at IU in the next 5 years who would you put your money on (or in the AD;'s case your job): Dusty May or somebody like Bruce Pearl/Chris Beard? That needs to be the only approach going forward. 

[iuthruandthru]

10 minutes ago, tdhoosier said:

Seriously. What is wrong with you? You are disturbing, even for a troll. 

Yeah not sure what his game is.  Whitten is not woke or liberal and loves sports.  She likely be one of the first ones to ask questions.

[KoB2011]

14 minutes ago, tdhoosier said:

It’s tough with comparisons, but in Painters third year, his team was ranked as high as 14. The next year he had 27 wins and won the conference tournament. The year after that his team won the conference and had 29 wins. 

In year 3, his teams were progressing and the future looked bright.

Currently with Woody, the program is in a regression. He did progress in his first 2 years, developed players and had a moderate amount of success, but right now the cupboard looks bare. I do think it’s a tad too soon to determine if this is currently a bump in the road or a trend downward. The issue is clearly personnel - lack of back court talent and mismatched skill sets. Luckily, Woody can save himself with the portal. He failed last year getting the guys he needed. I think this staff needs to prove that they can turn this thing around in the Spring and build a balanced roster. 

An additional problem is that our program has a history of changing coaches. Combine that with this year’s poor performance, and Woody getting close to being in recruiting purgatory. Blame who you want for these circumstances, but it is what it is. I think that’s why many say that in our program, who is desperate to get our team back into upper echelon of college basketball, a new coach has to come in and win quick. With the the portal, that timeline is now even quicker. 

I would add he needs to show he can adapt to his personnel better than he has.

If we really reflect back on last years roster, we didn’t get the most out of it at all. You had the best player this program has had in 30 years, a lottery pick point guard, a REALLY good shooter on the wing that was completely misused (see what he’s doing playing against pros for reference), a sixth year senior 4 that was playing pro ball this summer before getting hurt…

The highlights of the season were a 4 seed and sweeping Purdue. We didn’t actually win, or even come close to winning, anything with that roster makeup. How much better of a roster makeup can we reasonable expect so we can actually try to win something?

So yeah, he needs to nail the portal but he also really needs to think long and hard about his approach. It isn’t good enough. 

[KoB2011]

2 minutes ago, IndyResident16 said:

Archie checked nearly all of the boxes for a young coach, except for one: winning at a big time program. He failed miserably at that. Every elite coach at one point was an up and comer, I get that. But for every elite basketball coach who wins at the highest level, there's a hundred failed up and comers who never make it at the top level. It's a risk every single time you go this hiring route. 

If you had to bet on someone succeeding at IU in the next 5 years who would you put your money on (or in the AD;'s case your job): Dusty May or somebody like Bruce Pearl/Chris Beard? That needs to be the only approach going forward. 

Look at how Tennessee approached their coaching search - seems to be working out. 

[IndyResident16]

6 hours ago, Maedhros said:

Recruiting is my concern as well.

Coaches need to be allowed bad seasons. Matt Painter is the media's darling now, but he had some rough years after the baby boilers class. A decent portion of their own fan base wanted him gone, and it's fairleigh likely he would have been fired from IU after nine years, just as Crean was. 

Painter learned. A few recruiting misses, misevaluations, and a roster won't come together the way you want. Could very well be that's what happened to Indiana this year. There have been some concerning long term trends in the Woodson era, sure, but I would argue lack of complementary skills and overall team chemistry to be the reasons we aren't having the same success as the past two seasons, and those can be solved through recruiting.

But more than the results of any one game, or this season, the recruiting results haven't been what we needed. Jalen Hood-Schifino and Malik Reneau were great gets. Kel'el Ware has been mostly fantastic, and Mgbako is rounding into the player we expected. But three of those four were or are likely to be one year rentals. Where are the pieces around them? Liam is a great get, with seemingly a combination of skills we haven't seen in Bloomington in a long time. He's not going to fix this roster himself. 

It's possible to write this season off as one where things just didn't come together. Maybe Woodson bet big on Xavier Johnson, missed on some other guys in the '23 prep/portal class, and now has play the roster he has, not the roster he wants. I hope so. But after some bad bets and misses in the '24 prep class, it's starting to become a trend. This gets turned around in the '24 portal window, or it likely doesn't get turned around at all.

Woodson can recruit top individual talent. That's where his NBA connections come into play and our NIL budget doesn't hurt either. But he is completely in over his head constructing a roster. This isn't the NBA where you can trot out the 5 best players and talent wins out more than not over the course of an 82 game season. He hasn't figured this out yet and most likely never will. 

Edited January 17 by IndyResident16

[dbmhoosier]

33 minutes ago, Maedhros said:

Woodson took us back to the Tournament for the first time in four tries, then and followed it up with an encore that earned a 4-seed, our best in ten years. Not a chance you fire that guy after one bad season in year three. Good grief.

Regardless of how you think it will go, Woodson has earned some runway to get things back on track.

Was 100% Trayce Jackson Davis.  Woody was hired on 3rd and you think he hit a triple.

[13th&Jackson]

12 minutes ago, KoB2011 said:

I would add he needs to show he can adapt to his personnel better than he has.

So yeah, he needs to nail the portal but he also really needs to think long and hard about his approach. It isn’t good enough. 

Not his style:

“I probably should’ve played Mack a little bit more, even with the two fouls, but I elected not to do that,” Woodson said in his post-game press conference. “That’s hindsight. I hate coaching that way, thinking back to what I should’ve done.”

[KoB2011]

1 minute ago, 13th&Jackson said:

Not his style:

“I probably should’ve played Mack a little bit more, even with the two fouls, but I elected not to do that,” Woodson said in his post-game press conference. “That’s hindsight. I hate coaching that way, thinking back to what I should’ve done.”

That is just such a troubling quote. 

[jojo123]

27 minutes ago, tdhoosier said:

Seriously. What is wrong with you? You are disturbing, even for a troll. 

The truth is often disturbing to those on the wrong side of it. 

[BobSaccamanno]

It’s our guards.  They aren’t good.  We can stomp our feet all we want but nothing will make them good.   I like the guys individually but collectively they aren’t good enough.   If a Bailey or Edwards or Alford was in there, then others would look better than they are.  X would be addition by subtraction.  

This is not a problem this year only. Phinisee. Devonte.  Durham. X.  On and on.  The one solid year we’ve had in the last several, we had JHS.   Again, it doesn't matter if we like each of these guys one by one, as a group our guards have not been good enough and it puts a ceiling on us.   If you have really good college guard, you aren’t getting spanked by a lowly Rutgers squad.  You are not getting your ass handed to you at home by Purdue etc.  

Lance Jones.  Domask, the kid Illinois got.  Michigan State gets guys from lower levels.  There are ton of mid major kids who stepped up to this level.   Indiana State is 15-3 and way ahead of us according to all the metrics.  They have two in-state guards who are filling it up from 3 and they are fifth in the nation from 3.  There is absolutely no way it’s justified to turn your nose up at guys like that because it was Dalton Knecht or bust.  Supposedly they learned their lesson and we will get an influx this year.  

I like Newton and Gunn but this is a collective issue.  They aren’t shooters.  We need SNIPERS and guards who can carry the load.  

Look at X’s stats from yesterday.  Good grief.  He’s a low 3 star guard and that’s what he’s been.   We’ve all hoped he would play consistently and look at that debacle.  

Edited January 17 by BobSaccamanno

[Cbp4IU]

1 hour ago, Hoosier987 said:

Powell get it. Everyone does. Why the hell Woodson decided to put all his eggs in the X basket, I’ll never understand. Everyone in the entire world knew what we needed except the Staff…so here we are. If we had any semblance of a guard play, we’d be good.

So blow up the roster at the end of the year after this disastrous construction and get all the top portal guards. Keep Mgbako, Reneau and Cupps and move forward. 

I would keep Galloway too. 

[BobSaccamanno]

8 minutes ago, 13th&Jackson said:

Not his style:

“I probably should’ve played Mack a little bit more, even with the two fouls, but I elected not to do that,” Woodson said in his post-game press conference. “That’s hindsight. I hate coaching that way, thinking back to what I should’ve done.”

You can’t get better unless you confront your mistakes.  

[KoB2011]

1 minute ago, btownqb said:

Which was quite a bit worse than last night.  

It wasn’t. It was a 3 point game with 11 minutes to go. Last night we were down 20 at halftime. The final margin was almost twice as bad last night  

Everything surrounding the RMK game made it feel really bad, but yesterday was without question a worse performance. 

[IndyResident16]

4 minutes ago, btownqb said:

Which was quite a bit worse than last night.  

No way. The Bob Knight return game was at least competitive for a half. Last night's game was over by the 2nd media TO.

[btownqb]

1 minute ago, KoB2011 said:

It wasn’t. It was a 3 point game with 11 minutes to go. Last night we were down 20 at halftime. The final margin was almost twice as bad last night  

Everything surrounding the RMK game made it feel really bad, but yesterday was without question a worse performance. 

It was. But I deleted it.  

[KoB2011]

2 minutes ago, BobSaccamanno said:

It’s our guards.  They aren’t good.  We can stomp our feet all we want but nothing will make them good.   I like the guys individually but collectively they aren’t good enough.   If a Bailey or Edwards or Alford was in there, then others would look better than they are.  X would be addition by subtraction.  

This is not a problem this year only. Phinisee. Devonte.  Durham. X.  On and on.  The one solid year we’ve had in the last several, we had JHS.   Again, it doesn't matter if we like each of these guys one by one, as a group our guards have not been good enough and it puts a ceiling on us.   If you have really good college guard, you aren’t getting spanked by a lowly Rutgers squad.  You are not getting your ass handed to you at home by Purdue etc.  

Lance Jones.  Domask, the kid Illinois got.  Michigan State gets guys from lower levels.  There are ton of mid major kids who stepped up to this level.   Indiana State is 15-3 and way ahead of us according to all the metrics.  They have two in-state guards who are filling it up from 3 and they are fifth in the nation.  There is absolutely no way it’s justified to turn your nose up at guys like that because it was Dalton Knecht or bust.  Supposedly they learned their lesson.  

I like Newton and Gunn but this is a collective issue.  They aren’t shooters.  We need SNIPERS and guards who can carry the load.  

Look at X’s stats from yesterday.  Good grief.  He’s a low 3 star guard and that’s what he’s been.   We’ve all hoped he would play consistently and look at that debacle.  

Overall agree, our guard play hasn’t been good enough since Yogi left. But we have also really misused the perimeter players we have had under Woodson. Woodson needs to adjust his approach - something he claims he doesn’t like to look back and do. 

[BobSaccamanno]

10 hours ago, KoB2011 said:

 

 

These stats are sickening.  Not much else you need to know about last night.  You have a liability like that and how do you win?

[btownqb]

Just now, BobSaccamanno said:

These stats are sickening.  Not much else you need to know about last night.  You have a liability like that and how do you win?

And he won't even look at the basket, like he's pouting/proving a point, and then only shoots/ creates when he has to late clock. It's an impressively stupid habit he's already picked up in his new role.  

[BobSaccamanno]

2 hours ago, IUCrazy2 said:

We need to jettison some of the assistant staff.  All they do is recruit and frankly they haven't done that well.  Cheaney gets mentioned as a guy that is developing players rather frequently.  We aren't always seeing the results but he is someone we hear.  Our last few big recruits were landed by Walsh.  What exactly are Rosemond and Hunter doing other than collecting a check?

We need an X and O guy and a development guy in those spots who also recruit.

This should be looked at.  It’s hard for fans to know the inner workings of the staff.  But the collective play tells you a lot.  There is probably redundancy on the staff.  

Also I wonder how much Wittmann is engaged this year.  I think last year he got involved from and X’s and O’s standpoint and helped with solutions.  

You have to have questions about the staff.  They are paid a lot of money to produce.  Upper six figures.  

[Artesian_86]

14 minutes ago, BobSaccamanno said:

It’s our guards.  They aren’t good.  We can stomp our feet all we want but nothing will make them good.   I like the guys individually but collectively they aren’t good enough.   If a Bailey or Edwards or Alford was in there, then others would look better than they are.  X would be addition by subtraction.  

This is not a problem this year only. Phinisee. Devonte.  Durham. X.  On and on.  The one solid year we’ve had in the last several, we had JHS.   Again, it doesn't matter if we like each of these guys one by one, as a group our guards have not been good enough and it puts a ceiling on us.   If you have really good college guard, you aren’t getting spanked by a lowly Rutgers squad.  You are not getting your ass handed to you at home by Purdue etc.  

Lance Jones.  Domask, the kid Illinois got.  Michigan State gets guys from lower levels.  There are ton of mid major kids who stepped up to this level.   Indiana State is 15-3 and way ahead of us according to all the metrics.  They have two in-state guards who are filling it up from 3 and they are fifth in the nation from 3.  There is absolutely no way it’s justified to turn your nose up at guys like that because it was Dalton Knecht or bust.  Supposedly they learned their lesson and we will get an influx this year.  

I like Newton and Gunn but this is a collective issue.  They aren’t shooters.  We need SNIPERS and guards who can carry the load.  

Look at X’s stats from yesterday.  Good grief.  He’s a low 3 star guard and that’s what he’s been.   We’ve all hoped he would play consistently and look at that debacle.  

^^^^this!^^^^

[IndyResident16]

5 minutes ago, BobSaccamanno said:

This should be looked at.  It’s hard for fans to know the inner workings of the staff.  But the collective play tells you a lot.  There is probably redundancy on the staff.  

Also I wonder how much Wittmann is engaged this year.  I think last year he got involved from and X’s and O’s standpoint and helped with solutions.  

You have to have questions about the staff.  They are paid a lot of money to produce.  Upper six figures.  

This staff has two Archie holdovers (Hunter and Walsh) and a recruiter who doesn't seem to be pulling his weight. All being lead by a 30 year NBA guy who doesn't understand the college game. 

[13th&Jackson]

10 hours ago, KoB2011 said:

 

 

6th year senior co-captain. The fourth oldest player in CBB. He's Teddy Allen without the skills, just the negatives. 

[KoB2011]

1 minute ago, IndyResident16 said:

This staff has two Archie holdovers (Hunter and Walsh) and a recruiter who doesn't seem to be pulling his weight. All being lead by a 30 year NBA guy who doesn't understand the college game. 

I don’t think it’s fair to blame the failings on him being an NBA guy. The NBA is more complex from an X and O standpoint, the issue is the lack of adjusting. Theres a reason Woodson has never been highly sought after in the NBA. 

[Artesian_86]

1 hour ago, 13th&Jackson said:

Zero chance they fire Woodson. I just hope they don’t offer a contract extension. 

...he could be a dead man walking.

[jojo123]

1 minute ago, KoB2011 said:

I don’t think it’s fair to blame the failings on him being an NBA guy. The NBA is more complex from an X and O standpoint, the issue is the lack of adjusting. Theres a reason Woodson has never been highly sought after in the NBA. 

We don’t run a system formulated offense. We run a bunch of offensive sets. A bunch of individual plays. That’s not an offense. That’s a bunch of plays. That’s why we always seem like we are stuck in second gear on that side of the ball. If you have a great point guard you can get by with running the NBA style plays. We don’t so we suck by and large offensively.