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Hovadipo

IUBB vs. Eastern Washington Post Game Thread

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Yes, it's embarrassing. Yes, it's even disgusting. SMU thumped EW a few days ago, and after we played so well against SMU we now see this. But this stuff happens to young teams. I mentioned after one of our other games that we'd see some crash-and-burn situations this year. When you play that many freshmen and sophomores, some of that will happen.

 

Could Coach have made a difference? Maybe, maybe not. I see a lot of mention of the time outs that weren't taken, but there will be situations where we don't have time outs to use, and I think in meaningless games such as this one, letting the players do it is a necessary test. Learning from this trumps winning this particular game IMO.

 

Hopefully Crean has concluded that Hoetzel might be a Big Ten player someday, but he's definitely not good enough now. He bites on fakes, he can't create his own shot with enough space to be successful shooting, and his ball handling is limited to "let me get rid of it." Hanner isn't the answer; he might be good off the bench for a few minutes in each half, but to expect him to carry the load is unrealistic. I do like the fact that we tried a lineup with Troy as the big man, even if it didn't work. At least it demonstrates that Crean has seen that Hanner isn't always ready for prime time. We need to see Holt AND April out there, maybe even both at the same time with the three shooters. They might fall on their faces. At least it would be different faces mashed into the hardwood.

 

Young teams lack in-game intelligence, and it showed in spades Monday night. When EW exploited something and it worked, they went back to it time and time again, and it continued to work because our reaction to it was non-existent. We hear this crapola about how far beyond their years JBJ and RJ are and how Yogi can settle down the guys on the floor like an extra coach. We need to can all that as the bs that it is and move on with the idea that these are just-out-of-high-school kids and they need to be spoon-fed every ounce of basketball they can hold.

 

We have five weeks before the real games start, and frankly what we do before the Big Ten season doesn't matter to me if we can find the right mix-and-match to be competitive in the B1G. Say what you will, I think this loss can be used as a lesson to the players and coaches alike. Nobody likes to lose, and I'm part of that dynamic. But we obviously were not getting better by winning, and maybe being hit in the mouth will be good for this team. I don't feel any less (or any more) optimistic than I did before last night's tipoff. 

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Young teams should not lack effort and that's what caused the L last night. They would play hard on defense for a bit and then take extended breaks. My 9 year old daughter's team plays better on the ball defense then that crap last night.










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He dunked and rebounded well.  Everything else was his normal mess.  He was bad defensively, he forced a couple terrible shots, and someone NEEDS to tell him to get the ball to the gaurds when we are breaking.  I've seen absolutely zero improvement from him this year, which is really frustrating when you look at his physical attributes.  He just doesn't understand the game, and doesn't understand how to play under control.

 

Watching Troy Williams on the basketball court is like watching a blind man in a race car.

Yea, and guys were talking about him going to the NBA early. Troy is a great athlete but really doesn't have a clue.

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My thoughts:  We saw a team that looked like they wanted to win and put forth maximum effort to do so, Indiana was there too.  Kind of.

 

Defense was atrocious.  Rebounding, pathetic.  Effort after the good start was non-existent. 

 

Still trying to figure out why Crean didn't use a timeout to try and stop their momentum and regroup the team instead of waiting until we were behind and momentum was 100% in EW's favor.

 

Just a bad loss.  EW looked like a pretty decent team, but we should still be able to defend our home court against them.  If we play like that against UL it'll get ugly.

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So who else is going to go over to 247 to see how HTD spins this into some positive about Crean? 

I actually went over there.  He avoided that thread from what I could tell (probably because not even he could defend Crean after that), although he did go out on a limb and predict we beat UNCG.

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I think the worst part of all of this is that the fanbase is legitimately getting sick of the program. Obviously no one here is going to stop watching and cheering, but people are sick of watching this program fail time and time again since Knight left. This is beyond just Crean. He's just another failure to add to the long list of failures this program has had in the past decade.

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Could Coach have made a difference? Maybe, maybe not. I see a lot of mention of the time outs that weren't taken, but there will be situations where we don't have time outs to use, and I think in meaningless games such as this one, letting the players do it is a necessary test. Learning from this trumps winning this particular game IMO.

Have we ever been in a situation where we didn't have time-outs to use? Crean has horded them like health potions in Final Fantasy since he got here. If time-outs carried over from game to game, the screen would literally be filled with little bars for how many time-outs IU has left. I can't even count how many times he hasn't used his "use it or lose it" time-out until the last minute or less in the first half.

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I think the worst part of all of this is that the fanbase is legitimately getting sick of the program. Obviously no one here is going to stop watching and cheering, but people are sick of watching this program fail time and time again since Knight left. This is beyond just Crean. He's just another failure to add to the long list of failures this program has had in the past decade.


True but the Davis and Sampson hires we conducted poorly. Do those properly and you likely get better results. The Crean hire was limited because the team wanted someone who had been to a FF. That seems like a good idea but it may have limited some up and comers.

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