lillurk

https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/boxscores/2022-01-06-19-indiana.html

“First team all-hell” is a good one. Happy birthday, Trey.

Man. Familiar. Not to oversimplify, but shooting is basically the most important skill a player can have, and Archie either didn’t know that, couldn’t develop it, or both. The offense was never a thing of beauty, and the defense never reached the heights he (or others) surely wanted. But the teams were always close enough that if they’d just shot pretty well he’d have won a bunch more games. Alas. IU’s in a better place.

Part of the issue so far is he’s 2/10 at the rim, which I would guess is random statistical noise: https://hoop-math.com/Indiana2023.php by contrast he’s been 6/13 on 2 point jumpers, a much tougher shot. Small guards tend to struggle at the rim, but JHS isn’t small. Still may not be a one and done but if we assume he’d been better at the cup thus far the shooting numbers would look less bad. I was worried about 3s, and 30% out there isn’t great…but if you told me I could lock him in at 30% from 3 for the year, I’d consider taking it.

Pretty great when scholarship players 12 and 13 are non-freshmen guys who’ve looked at least competent. We’ve seen too many Crean- and Archie-era teams give minutes to walkons because that wasn’t the case.

Okay a couple more I meant to mention: 8. Huge deal that Reneau and TJD can play together. 9. related to #5 above, seems like XU has a genuinely quite good offense. So I’m not too worried about IU’s defense based on Friday’s performance. And actually, the offensive performance has me more optimistic about that side of the ball this year l, given they scored pretty well without many guys having strong games on that end.

Ok, some reflections from Friday’s game: 1. You expect role players, especially younger ones, to struggle on the road, moreso early in the year. I’m not worried about JHS, Bates, or Geronimo based on this game. 2. JHS had a nice game EXCEPT shooting. 3. Reneau did all that in 16 minutes. Very few teams have one big as good as he is, let alone more than that. 4. As we might’ve guessed, pretty clear the true rotation is the starters plus Trey, Geronimo, Bates, and Reneau. 5. I think XU is pretty good, as others have said. Seems clear they’ll shoot well but I would also suggest they outperformed shooting expectation on Friday. 6. Conversely IU may have underperformed slightly from 3. Kopp and Thompson, in particular, had open looks they’ll hit more than not and missed them. 7. haven’t mentioned the two stars yet…what’s left to say? Enjoy the ride.

Re the technical discussion, I think the point here is 1. What sort of actions deserve a tech but it has also become about 2. Whether those actions are obvious or less do. I don’t believe X or Malik deserved a tech, nor Freemantle, based on what we know. That is, they fail question 1 above. I.e. there should be no penalty for looking at the opposing bench, nor for barking “and 1” or whatever after you score. Given that, 2 is a moot point.

MSU looks better than I thought, although st this time of year Izzo is usually playing like ten guys or more significant minutes, and he’s a little tighter right now. They’ve got about 6 guys he trusts, two of whom — Hoggard and Sissoko — are also very up and down. Maybe Kohler comes around as #7, but they are not very deep. Fine unless they have injury issues.

Shout out to whoever made this comparison on here. I thought it was a little…bold at the time, but I stand corrected. I’m not old enough to remember Woody as a player.

People are laughing at this, and I know how it ended, but the team won the league and was a #1 seed. That’s success. The end wasn’t what we want, I’m not trying to rehash that. If you win the league and are a high seed often enough, you’ll play the first weekend of April eventually.

Hooting, hollering

Defense added a year, some physical specimens, offense is actually good…and swaggering for 40 minutes

I feel this, though based on what we’ve seen there may yet be one IMHO. It’s good to roster a development project though!

And yes — iffy guards plus no real wings, a bunch of 4s, and Edey seems teetering on shaky ground