NashvilleHoosier

True. I guess the positive I take from it is most good teams prove they can win multiple ways. We've proven we can win with our defense many times. At least we proved we can win with offense as well. I don't think PSU is terrible. Not great, but not terrible. It wasn't an impressive win, but if it built enough confidence to build on, great, and it will just show up in the W column at the end of the season. I'm moving my confidence level to 9%.

I haven't read any of this thread at all but what did you expect :-)? Dumpers be dumpin' On a serious note, I didn't like the way we we won at all. Gross. Lots to not like. But every team has ugly and terrible wins. For the most part the offense got going a bit. Hopefully this was a blip on the D's radar. If the D gets focused back in and the O gains some confidence then I'll consider this "a win is a win". No choice but to move on and build from this. I'm about 8% confident we'll do that, but with 17 games left and only one football game left, pumpers gotta pump.

Well they were really on to something huh? (Farley voice in Black Sheep) Boy do I feel like a horse's patoot...

Ugh...how foolish of me to jump on that instead of waiting to see who opts out. I didn't realize it was 3 important offensive players.

Who's into the gambling apps? What am I missing on this OU/Florida game? Is it just the opts outs Florida has had? It's swung from Florida -2.5 (which I stupidly took right out of the gate) to Oklahoma -7.5.

I love the fact that if you just simply want to have threads, on a discussion board, that aren't bombarded with the same negativity over and over again, and instead use those threads to actually discuss things, you are pumper. I also love the term pumper. But I move to refer to anyone who is not a pumper as a dumper. It's the pumpers vs. dumpers everyone.

I wouldn't put it past Kiffin for this to all be pure gamesmanship. Talk about more opt outs at key positions, not knowing COVID numbers and barely having enough players to play just to try to get some sort of edge. They are 4-5 and have nothing to lose. Earmuffs and blinders. Oh, and I assume he'll have the most open playbook in the history of bowl games.

These next 2 very well may be as close to must win games (both, like we have to win both, not just one) as there has ever been with 18 games left in a season. For confidence alone. As a matter of fact, I think it need to win 4 of the next 5 to feel okay. After that, 12 straight games against currently ranked teams and then Purdue on the road...yikes. If we just win 2 of the next 5 or something like that, and go into that 13 game stretch at 7-7, we may have won our last game. Go into that stretch at 9-5 with some confidence and momentum, we stand a chance.

Agree to disagree that I’m missing the big picture. Your second paragraph though, is very similar to the trajectory thing, which again, I don’t disagree with. I’ll say again that I’m not happy with where we are under Archie and it’s hard to see much positive looking forward. If you’d like proof of how uninspired I am right now with IU hoops, to an earlier point you made, about looking at our remaining schedule and finding wins, my answer is that I’m confident about exactly zero of them. I don’t think we go winless, but I have little confidence we find more than about 6 or 7 wins in conference. Which is not in any way acceptable to me. But my thoughts on where our program stands right now was never part of the point I was trying to make. That said, eliminating Ayo and Cockburn, which is entirely possible, along with 2 other Sr. starters doesn’t have me convinced about their future either. Although I never imagined I’d think it would be a bad thing to eliminate a Cockburn.

Sheesh this is exhausting. Just go back to the start of our exchange and do it all over again if you desire. But thanks for the reminder why I stopped engaging a long time ago. I’ll just shift gears and go with something a little more up your alley....ya know if you just eliminate some if Illinois wins, they didn’t have as many.

I’m not following what your first paragraph is telling me I’m missing. So maybe I am missing something. But I really don’t think I am.

Ahhh!! I’m kicking myself b/c I nearly typed this exact message out, knowing it would be your response. The discussion was how little separation there was between 4th and 10th, or 11th if that’s what we finished. When I give you evidence of how little the separation was, you just skirt around that. Of course they won the games. And we lost them. Someone has to win and someone has to lose every game believe it not! But that wasn’t the point.

Yeah I get that, and once again, I’ll say that I get (and to some degree agree with) the trajectory angle. I’ll go back to my original post on this. If Underwood was at IU, in year 4, and his first 2 seasons were losing records (the 2nd worse than the 1st), things turn around in year 3, then he brings back everyone, is ranked in the top 5 but slips to #18 after losing to the hated (and unranked) border rival and Rutgers (never!!!) and the only good win doesn’t even look that good.....oh, and since we are so bad, add in that we had to come back in the second half and need a bunch of missed layups to beat a bad (insert whoever IU is in this situation)...you’d all be pretty pleased, huh? Yeah right. These same threads would exist.

Quite an oversimplification. Half of that 4 game margin was decided by 1 point (our head to head). If Trayce’s shot falls at the end of the Maryland game that’s another game. So 3 of that 4 game margin is separated by 2 points. A quick glance through Illinois’ schedule last season shows they won 5 other games by 4 points or less. Is it still quite a bit?

Like I said, there was not much separation between the 4th and 10th place teams in the big ten last season. Hence why we were projected only 2 seed lines apart. They appear to have more separation from us this season, yes. But you’re still not defining what would be seen as doing “a lot more” to justify being enamored with Underwood.

I don’t think I’m the one smoking something. I said, in the post you quoted, that I’m fine with statement that Illinois’ current trajectory appears better than ours. And I’ve also said in other posts that I’m not happy with where Archie currently has things.

I literally said the exact words earlier that if you want to say the trajectory of Illinois under Underwood currently looks better than the trajectory of IU under Archie then fine. And people have been responding to me all day justifying their praise for Underwood including one comment that stated “we are enamored with him because...”.

I agree with you. I’m not enamored with Archie right now either. I’m sure most people who are labeled as sunshine pumpers aren’t enamored with Archie at the moment either. But that doesn’t have anything to do with my point. Which is constant coaching change talk that includes being enamored with a coach who hasn’t done much of anything to be enamored with by people who we know would have these exact same threads blowing up if we had that coach.

Absolutely. The brand is still there. We still rank very high in attendance, we still play in an elite conference, we still have a ton of talent coming from our own state to recruit from, we have great facilities, we still get great TV exposure.... Living down here in college football land, I can’t tell you how many times when I tell somebody I went to Indiana, their immediate response is something like “oh so you’re just looking forward to basketball season?” I wouldn’t say we are a top 5 job anymore. But you can make an argument we are still top 10.

So this is “a lot”? They beat us by 1 point in their home court last year and there was not much separation from 4th and 10th place. You’re lying to yourself if you think there was. They were projected as a 7 seed, us a 9. You’re saying this year is looking to be about the same. This all proves my point. People are enamored with a coach that they would not be enamored with if we had him. Yet those people are surprised that others question their coaching change arguments.

Yes, my point is that people are enamored with a coach that they wouldn’t actually be enamored with if we had him. And “done a lot more” is a bit of a stretch. If you want to say it appears at this moment in time that the trajectory of Illinois under Underwood is slightly better that IU under Archie, then fine. But that story hasn’t been fully written. And saying he’s done a lot more, to warrant being enamored with, is again, quite a stretch.

Hah! Sure, you’d all approach that scenario totally level headed. I wasn’t comparing him to Archie. Just pointing out the newest example of a coach people seem to be enamored with, which suggests we’d be so much better with him rather than Archie, yet it’s laughable to think those people would be up in arms blowing up these same threads if we did have him.

I’ve seen Underwood mentioned several times on this board this season. I’m not knocking what he’s done, but if he was at IU, in year 4, doing the exact same thing here....brings back a ton of talent and experience, starts as a top 5ish team, slips to #18 while losing 3 of their 4 games against good teams while the 1 win doesn’t look that great anymore and the losses include one to our hated border rival who wasn’t ranked and to Rutgers!! (I mean I don’t care how good they are we just have to beat Rutgers right?!?). Don’t kid yourselves. All the usual suspects in these threads would be in a complete and totally full blown meltdown wanting him fired.

This couldn’t wait until December 26th? All we wanted for.... kidding, of course

Yeah, to @Golfman25's point, you're kind of contradicting yourself here. We're being held back by the administration, who should just hire someone and let them cheat, yet you acknowledge that our (far less attractive, far less supported, far less historically relevant) football program can be successful under the same administration under a coach who instills a great culture and player development? I asked about this earlier but I'm not fully following what people are referring to when its insinuated that our struggles in basketball start with the administration. Is that really what people mean? The administration prefers someone who runs the program clean, and therefore, it's understood that you cannot be a successful program in college hoops unless you indeed cheat?