NashvilleHoosier

I believe it's official now. Are we nervous? I really don't think we should be. Joe Rexrode, who writes for the Athletic down here, pushed Allen's name a while back as someone UT should go after if Pruitt were let go. Yet the fanbase seemed to remember the end of the Gator Bowl too much to get on board. Good. I have a feeling TA is too locked in to be interested in a job at a program under investigation, especially knowing where he has the IU program in comparison at this point. Now if they get turned down by their first 3 choices, I'll get nervous.

Goodman and Dauster did about 11 minutes on their podcast about the current state of IU hoops. Nothing terrible fascinating about it but at one point they said who do you bring in if you’re gonna fire Archie and Goodman put Beard in the same category as Stevens in terms of reality. I think his comment was something like “no chance Brad Stevens is coming...you’re not getting Chris Beard to come to Bloomington.” No shocker at all to here that about Stevens, and I’m not that surprised to hear he thinks that about Beard, I was only surprised to hear how definitely he said it. Your post seems to support that.

It baffles me how much more ready Purdue always seems to be to play us, and how much more they seem to care about this game. I said it last night, but what was even more concerning last night is their players carried a look all night that they already knew they were going to win this game. We seemed to want to get excited and gloat and flex if we cut a lead down to 2 or 3 points. Then PU just got back to business and put us back in our place.

This is where I'm at....reeeeaaaaallllly testing my limits and ability to pump. Though my main motivation for what comes across as being a pumper is that I truly don't believe he'll be fired after this season. So constant negativity doesn't serve much purpose.....yet. I was even more defiant last season about talk of Archie being fired b/c it was as productive and reasonable as claiming that I have a great head of hair (that ship sailed many years ago). A common misconception of us who get labeled as pumpers is that we are 100% on board with Archie being our coach. When in a lot of cases, like me, we are not pleased at all with where we are, but accept the reality that he's not getting fired after last season, or after this season, so we focus on what can be done now. So have I hit my breaking point? Well, not really b/c my thoughts haven't changed. The job isn't getting done but person trying to do the job isn't changing no matter how badly some people want it to. Shaka Smart is also likely killing any small chance of a change after this season now that he's having success in year six.

I’d be hesitant about anyone in the 65+ category. Pitino, Sampson, Barnes, Belein. It’s no guarantee that it’s an immediate turnaround. If they are pushing 70 or already there by the time we are winning at a level we want to, we are already getting close to a coaching change again.

My apologies if not. I must be thinking of another common dumper.

I’m 99.9999% sure also suggested we hire Fife on multiple occasions. Take it for what it’s worth...

Holy cow If Treesh is jumping of the wagon I’m springboarding off!! Dumpers here I come!! In all seriousness if anyone mentions Chris Collins i personally move for an instant ban from the board. I’ll stick to who I think is realistic. Beard. If he says no, as questionable as it might be, Dane Fife.

I just fast forwarded from the 10 minute mark b/c it was so painfully obvious how this was going to end. It amazes me how much more ready PU seems to be for our games and how much more they seem to care than we do. The most concerning part is this game you could tell their players knew they were going to win the entire way.

I like the detail of your post, but I've fixed it to capture his real issue, though it's being quite generous. I can't for the life of me understand how he sees any enjoyment whatsoever in posting on this board.

I guess Alabama played a lot of rigged games this year. It's almost like that guy was worthy of being the most outstanding player in college football.

Yeah right, I mean if you take away Smith and Harris and their stats OSU actually won the game.

Right. I hope we approach this offseason the same way OSU approached theirs last year. Post the bowl score all over the place. I hope this is a time where the staff allow the earmuffs and blinders to be taken off for a while to add as much fuel to the fire as possible. Now, if we've gotten to this point...close loss to OSU where we shot ourselves in the foot too much, disrespect from the CFP committee, pushed aside for OSU to play in the title game, not getting to curb stomp PU, getting passed up for a NY6 bowl, getting pushed down the bowl pecking order, and flopping like that in the bowl game. If anyone on the team still needs to find some bulletin board material, they need to be sent instructions on how to enter the transfer portal.

This ^^ got me curious. I've never cared about way-too-early rankings for college football. But I sure do now :-) ESPN - #10 Klatt - #7 Sporting News - #16 CBS - #13 Bleacher Report - #10 247 - #16 Stadium - N/R (technically #30) this is the wackiest of top 25 rankings I've looked up so far for what it's worth It also looks like we landed at #12 in the final AP poll. All in all, incredible. Yet a convincing win in the bowl game and we probably end up #6.

Joel Klatt has us #7

It's amazing how providers have made things less accessible over the past couple of years. It looks like you have to pay for a subscription of BTN+ in order to get access to replays. Don't even get me started on NBC's handling of premier league replays on Peacock....

A quick glance through the remaining schedule, and current NET rankings tells me we have 9 Quad 1 games left and 5 Quad 2 games left. That could move around as the season progresses, but I honestly doubt it moves much. Finding 7 more wins....I can't see any reason your projection isn't spot on (lock for a pretty good seed). Now, we need to be Stanford fans for the remainder of the season as they are teetering on the edge right now as our only Quad 1 win. If they fall and another future opponent falls, and we rack up 6 quad 2 wins, and only 1 quad 1 win.....well we'd have a phenomenal Quad 2 record and still get in, but it's harder to see that we get a decent seed in that scenario. Also, what do I know? USPS is the expert on this, and my analysis should be mostly ignored.

Even though this sounds crazy....it’s kind of...not crazy at all? No idea what OSU’s QB situation is behind Fields, but regardless, there will be no Fields. I think PSU will be better but I don’t think they’ll project to be better than us. Michigan won’t take that big of a step forward, and Sparty is a mess. With a chance to knock off a top 10 Cincy early, and a real shot at getting to Indy, that means yeah....national title aspirations aren’t that crazy.

What makes this one such a gut punch is that we've put ourselves in the position to need that win so badly. This game in its own context....I can totally handle that effort, losing to a top 10 team on the road in double OT without Franklin. I can handle it even more in the context of a season where we closed out the home win against NW and stole one on the road against FSU or Illinois. Still a lot to build off of from that game, but damn that was a heartbreaker.

I've been wondering if they would adjust the quads at all to adjust for limited or no fans but I can't find anything saying they have, but it sounds like the door may be open to do so? Have you heard anything about this? I suppose that may be too difficult to account for places where there is partial attendance allowed. Good news is our schedule is absolutely loaded with opportunity, and only one chance at a bad loss. I hope by seasons end, the Butler win will be at least a Q2 win.

I see where people would want to think this, but I really don't think that will be the case. I think our loss in this bowl game will make a lot of people think that our #7 ranking was a fluke, but I can't see us dropping below somewhere in the 15-20 range in the final polls. Starting next season with a ton of our production returning, including the QB who mainly got us up to our #7 ranking, will not be outweighed by so many previous years of futility. I think the worst case is we end up somewhere just inside the top 25 b/c pollsters will want to include names like PSU, Oregon, Auburn, probably some other sexier names back into the polls, but I don't think we'll just be ignored entirely. If so, well fine. If there is anything else possible to fuel the fire, maybe a preseason ranking snub will do it, but geez I really hope the chip on our shoulders doesn't need to be any bigger at this point.

What message would it have sent to the big ten by us skipping? Regardless of feeling snubbed or not, it was still the best bowl game we’ve been to in 30 years. Yes, we were put in a no win situation, but it was not something we could say no to. We had to take it on the chin, and go out and win. We choked, but our image would not have been salvaged by taking our ball and going home. And remember we haven’t won a bowl game in 30 years. No matter the margin of victory, a win ends our season at 7-1, ranked in the top 10 and getting that bowl victory monkey off our back. We should still be ranked going into next season regardless of this loss. If Penix is back, we should still go in ranked in the top 15. Nothing good could have come from sitting out. Good things could have come from playing and winning. We just choked.

I think you nailed it here. This is the detailed version of why I said we got our ***** shut the hell up. And you’re right about the no win situation. Our only choice was to win big. But in the end what makes it a million times worse is if we drive down and score to win 27-26, it would have counted for just as much b/c we came back and won with a backup QB with a separated shoulder while limiting a prolific offense. We deserve a roasting. And to answer your last question, this.....this loss is way worse.

I aimlessly picked up dog poo in the backyard for about 40 minutes. I don’t know why. Maybe my kids said they wanted to play out there, but they didn’t. Feel like I found about 3 years worth of poo. It’s pretty cold here today. I was only wearing a t-shirt. I guess what I’m saying is, I hear ya buddy. Here’s to drinking it off.

This seems a bit contradictory. I get what you’re saying but Off the top of my head...penn st, Michigan, Michigan st, Wisconsin...all of them likely had their last 4 recruiting classes ranked higher than ours. We didn’t need better players to win today. Better players across the board will be needed to sustain a high level of success. But this team was fully capable, and should have won today with the players we have. We choked. I don’t really get the LEO gimmick comment. Programs are built on culture, something we’ve gone from not having in a very long time, to something so good that it gets talked about nationally and many programs would kill for. And isn’t getting players to buy in and perform at a higher level....coaching? I don’t think it’s gimmicky at all.