NashvilleHoosier

Depends on what's actually in those records. Does the mid major that won 25 games have many, if any, high quality wins? The team that won 19, including 8 conference games, have any bad losses. It's likely that the mid major, with 25 wins has about 8 or so losses and some bad ones included in there. And if you take this year's IU team, we could very well end up at 19-12, 9-11 with no bad losses and many great wins. Its exactly why there shouldn't be any criteria like total wins set, so the true resumes can be compared and debated. That said, I'm all for increasing the amount of "play in" games. Add another site like Dayton and start including mid and low major teams that win their conference but don't secure the auto-bid through the conference tourney. And to be clear, I'm not simply advocating for expanding the tournament. There are plenty of mediocre bubble high majors included. Only expanding the play-in system to include those cases where a team dominates the conference through the season but loses in the conference tourney.

Thanks for sharing. I gather you put a lot of time and effort into this and got feedback from folks on here in the process. I probably disagree with you on here more often than not but for that to be the first response you got after posting this was very unwarranted. Again, thanks for the effort and for sharing.

Great. Yet your system would reward a team in a mid-major with 20+ wins over a team with 19 wins and a better resume, completely contradicting the fact that a better resume actually matters.

It's funny to me how many people still think Lunardi is the go-to guy. Then it occurred to me that us IU fans have sort of been forced to understand the system and bracketologists a little more than others have over the past 2 seasons. I've personally become far more familiar with how the quad systems and NET rankings work, which bracketologists to pay attention to while laughing off Lunardi. I work with 2 Kansas fans who last season and this season have only talked about where Lunardi predicts us to be, and last season were still even talking about RPI. They're knowledgable college hoops fans, but they've never had to care about being on the bubble so they just see what Lunardi says and assume it's accurate enough.

Andy Katz's bracket is interesting. I hadn't really looked at tournament locations very closely, but started wondering, at risk of putting the cart well ahead of the horse, what the most ideal yet realistic location would be. https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2020-02-08/2020-ncaa-tournament-bracket-predicted-using-top-16-reveal He has us in the 7/10 matchup in Cleveland. Not a terrible drive for a lot of the state and even the mid atlantic/east coast alumni base (cheap flight from Nashville as well). I'd guess a good portion of the fanbase is itching to travel in support of a postseason team (if the Gator Bowl is any indication, that is very true) so hopefully we could get a solid crowd there for the first weekend. Of course, that bracket feeds in to Indianapolis. Again, cart well before the horse here and the likelihood that we are second weekend team is low. Still have plenty of work to do to ensure we even have a chance to. My apologies, everyone, for cursing this possibility from ever happening.

15:50 mark or so in the 1st half when its tied 8-8. Deron steals an entry pass to the post and get it to Rob for the fast break.

I just went back and watched it several times. I'm not sure he was talking to the Minnesota player, but I'm more convinced they were all just having fun. Trayce seemed to be telling Justin he should have dunked it, not just to go up strong. Justin did have a hint of a smile when he responded, and another thing I noticed was Rob was laughing when he turned back around after giving Justin a five. This very well could have been Trayce giving him a hard time and saying if Rob passes that to me I'm dunking it. Rob very well could have given him a good natured jab as well, and Justin responded like many college kids would. Neither Trayce or Rob reacted in any way to Justin saying that. Justin has taken quite a beating on this board for a few days. If that wasn't the case, I can see the board reaction to this being, wow did you see the guys were out there having fun with each other this game? Nice road win! And wow, I can't believe how much time I put into this sleuth work this morning. Was it the first thing I did when I got to my desk at work? No comment.

Hmm....I just pulled it up on the replays on foxsports.com and all it required was my directv login, not a BTN+ subscription. Maybe a refresh and log back in will take care of it?

Same. I seem to remember getting beat by exactly 50 points one year? And was the Barn where we threw a long out of bounds pass off the scoreboard one year?

For someone who knows nothing about Pat Shoulders, what's the scoop? Why is this good specifically for the basketball program? (not questioning it, I just truly have no idea)

Can't argue with this, but it would be short sighted to say that is a requirement to be considered. When people started to want Brad Stevens, his sample size was small.

I do as well. And that's fine. Implying that you're trying to throw out the season altogether was strong, my bad. But when you say what if Aaron Craft's shot goes in, eliminating them in the first round, you are kind of throwing away the significance of that season. He did still win the game and two more after that. Yes if you eliminate it, his resume isn't as good and won't be as sought after. Just b/c I thought about it and concluded something doesn't mean its not still kind of a silly hypothetical to even consider. That's a lot of times how it works with hypotheticals.

Sampson was also 51? when we hired him with, what, 20+ years head coaching experience? Archie was 38 w/ only 6 years head coaching experience. Not exactly a similar sample size to take the biggest accomplishment away from. IUc2016 covered Archie's track record well already and it passes the "consistently make the tournament" test while also adding some league titles. When you're talking about a young coach like that, you can't just cherry pick his best season and get rid of it. And for the record, I am answering his/her question. If that season ends in the first round instead of the elite 8, is he considered for the IU job? Likely not, and that applies for most any big time job he was mentioned with. I'm just saying its kind of ridiculous to throw that season out.

You're still pretty much making the same point here. He DID win that game against OSU in which I assume they were fairly significant underdogs. And he went on to win two more to complete the elite 8 run. If that doesn't happen, then no, of course he's probably not as popular of a candidate in our search, if even mentioned at all. My point about other schools considering him is that he was literally one of the most sought after young coaches at the time. He wasn't just mentioned in IU's search out of nowhere. If that elite 8 run doesn't happen, by default, he is simply not as hot of a commodity. And the larger point is you can take away every single coach's largest accomplishment, regardless of how it happened (i.e. winning a down to the wire game) and they will seem less accomplished. This just isn't much of a thought experiment.

This isn’t much of an experiment. Your question is essentially, if you take away someone’s greatest accomplishments, are they seen as being as accomplished? Remember, Archie’s name came up with nearly every single college hoops opening of any significance before we hired him. If you take away his elite 8 run, and make that a 1st round exit, yeah his name simply wouldn’t have come up in near as many coaching searches. So, a similar question, if Brad Stevens loses any of his first weekend down to the wire games both the years he went to the final game, would he still be at the top of everyone’s list?

Think about this. Not only were we 15-4 but we were 15-4 and up 7 points on Maryland with 2:30 to go. Close that out and it’s 16-4, 6-3 in conference coming off of a week beating MSU and Maryland with other wins against OSU and FSU. There would have been a number beside our name that next week. Not that one single basket in that game would have changed the outcome, effort, or anything else of the games we’ve played since. At the time I remember thinking how miserable it would be if that game came back to haunt us. I also didn’t think it would happen. Now, I’m more confident that one single basket we needed will be the difference between in and out. (Yeah, yeah I know we’ve blown tons of opportunities and if it really comes down to that game we don’t deserve to be in and all that...)

Well we won by 12, so.....(me no like maffs).....yep, that checks out. :-)

One of my kid's teachers at daycare is an Iowa fan. He's convinced we win tonight. That's the most positive thought I've had all week....him thinking we'll win. Here's hoping.

Even if we don't pull off that upset, 6-1 going into that game is not inconceivable at all. And if we start the year right outside the rankings, we'd likely move in by that point. And just like that, months ahead of even the spring game, I've set myself up for complete and total disappointment this upcoming season. Sorry everyone.

Man...I find myself following ND far more than I ever thought I would these days. I think they were #51 in the NET today. A road win at UVA almost surely would have given us another quad 1 win, for the moment. Not that I’m confident it will even matter anymore, but certainly intriguing.

I still think we check nearly every box as an elite job. Now if there are legs to the administration handcuffing a coach in certain ways that doesn't happen elsewhere, I would guess that's a huge check box against us in a potential coach's mind. I also have tended to agree with what you're saying here in that regardless of why a coach would be fired after 3 years, it will make it less likely another coach would uproot everything from an already well paying job. I've also argued that its pointless to talk about firing Archie this year b/c of the buyout. Needless to say, my thoughts have evolved a bit watching this 4 game stretch (call it a 3 game stretch as I could actually stomach the Maryland game). If the trigger were indeed pulled after this season, it likely only happens b/c we miss the tournament again. Surely a new AD and whoever else that is having conversations with potential candidates can get the message across that this didn't happen simply because we had some sort of requirement to make the tournament by year 3. This happened because by the end of year 3, no improvement was shown. We do have high expectations, we do expect not only tournaments but success in tournaments. We're willing to be patient, you're the guy we want, but as with any high level job, you have to show progress along the way. And I would also hope that high level coaches out there would look at our situation, understand that, and say to themselves....well, yeah, it shouldn't have taken 4 years to make a tournament. I'm up to that challenge. But, I could be very wrong too.

Hmm. What was the additional context? I'd lean toward what he meant was...we have two open scholarships this year that we chose not to fill, therefore holding them for next year. Those two are being filled by two of the three signees we have. Which, if true, just means his wording was a little misleading and there was no hidden intent. Unless he said this line in the context of talking about the three incoming signees and said we've held two additional scholarships open.

This is pretty random, but do you happen to know if social media is ever discussed? I still see players reposting things on their instagram stories after we lose. Individual shout outs and maybe one good play they made. It drives me absolutely nuts, and quite frankly makes it seem even more like they don't care. Do you know if this gets discussed at all? Social media activity rules or anything like that? I know its part of the world we live in now but a little discretion would go a long way.

Is the possibility of donors paying the buyout actually a thing? Forgive my ignorance on this subject. I assume it is. But specifically is it possible for Cuban or a collection of donors to bring a check to the athletic department and say this is to be used for the very specific reason of paying the buyout on the basketball coach's contract? Or is it a more "official" process where they have to donate money to the athletic department and the AD gets to decide how best to use it?

Yeah we’re f&@&ed now. I officially don’t see the 4 wins we need coming anymore. The one positive in my opinion is that the old bitter curmudgeon won’t get credit for somehow saving the program. He came back, fine. Whatever.