lillurk

If they’re all dressed and all but Stewart warming up, wonder if it’s a partial-game suspension (?), as we assumed happened the game Stewart sat the whole first half

Lakers wanted him last summer iirc

It does to me for personal reasons!

14-6, +/-1

Not sure who’s officiating Kansas @ Texas but it’s being called like a B1G game

All fair, but one reason I’m positive about this year’s team vs. last years: this week last year the team was 5-6 in conference with a negative efficiency margin in conf games, 8th best by that measure. The current team is 7-5 with the fifth best efficiency margin in a better conference. (Note the charts at the bottom of those posts.) I know that’s not everyone’s cup of tea but it’s the best predictor there is for a team going forward.

This is all fair, though I would say that the losing streak team was “in” so early as to be meaningless, and the 2020 team was perpetually in that 9-10 seed range once things got close to the end and went like 9-11 on conference. Not a team that could let up in its first conference tourney game. Not to say early season games don’t matter; they clearly do. Maybe it would’ve been more accurate to say IU was never so secure this late in the season.

I love him, think he’s probably got a long NBA career as a bench guy ahead of him

I think we all wish IU was a B1G contender this year, and most years that means a final four contender too. I hope that’s the next step. It’s hard to be patient!

I don’t think the gameplan (or perhaps execution, based on the post-game comments, but my hunch is both) was very good Saturday. The offense is structurally better but still dealing with talent deficits. In general I think those issues have been addressed pretty well in ten months on the job. Do you think things are no better than they were under Archie? If so I’ll say this: IU spent Arch’s entire tenure either on the bubble or clearly out of the tournament, save about twelve hours between Fred Hoiberg wrenching on the bench and the 2020 tournament getting cancelled. And in year one, they are already nowhere near the bubble, which we literally could not say at a single point in Archie’s tenure.

I tend to think IU will split the next four, too. I realize they’re tough, but I think they get tomorrow’s game at NW and then you’ve got 3 shots are the second win. Probably WI. I don’t think either @ MSU or @ OSU are totally a bridge too far, though. I don’t blame anyone, but I feel like a lot of the loss reactions here are still programmed by the way things went during the Arch years.

Sometimes it happens for dudes from 3. Check Kenny Goins career MSU game log

Yeah I wasn’t trying to mislead, just got it twisted around in my head

You’re right, you’d have to specifically flip the Illinois game to put us in second. As for performance against expectations and schedule strength and win totals, Torvik has IU as 4th best team by adjusted efficiency in conference only, and finishing with the 13th (of 14) easiest schedule. Projected for 21-9 (12-8). Without revisiting the season predictions thread, I’d be surprised if anyone had better than 13-7 in conference…plus predictions and expectations aren’t the same. Did anyone really expect conference contention? I don’t recall that.

But in the macro, did anyone think IU would be a much better team this year? Maybe they had higher expectations for specific players, sure. But if IU had simply flipped one of their conferences losses — two of which came down to the final minute — they would currently be one game out of first place. I understand frustrations but the idea that in year one cleaning up they’d be a contender in conference? That wasn’t anyone’s expectation.

I have been really impressed with CJ’s play since his return from injury

Oh I should add: totally agree there’s nothing magical about y3 or 4, I was incredulous anyone thought that under Arch. I do think the players projected to be on the roster in year 3* have the outlines of a pretty special nucleus. Guards/wings win, that’s part of what limits IU’s ceiling this year. *see the 23-24 scholarship chart here, though of course there are names there that surely won’t be on that team, starting w/TJD

I see your point but it’s a tough to imagine the talent on the roster could’ve been upgraded a ton more from where he started for year one. IU’s losses this year basically fall into three categories to me thus far: 1. Cuse, Iowa: too many TOs; torched by a player type we struggle to guard for roster reasons (big, versatile wings); road games. 2. UW, PSU: close road losses where Galloway would’ve made enough of a difference but was hurt. 3. UM, UI: more talented teams and/or uniquely bad TJD matchups. Also badly outshot from 3 in these two. (Depending on your perspective you could move UW to category 3, though predictive models don’t really indicate they’re much better and aside from Davis their talent level isn’t clearly higher.) The good news is the TO issues seem to have been cleaned up and Galloway’s back. The bad news is there’s no midseason talent infusion coming. IU certainly stands to lose a few contributors to graduation at least, but I also think part of the talent issue is that Archie was allergic to identifying, attracting, developing, and implementing guard and wing talent, and CMW is picking up the pieces. To even be where IU is so far is good. The job isn’t done. But a couple of impact transfers and/or spring additions based on roster need can be had, and I’m bullish on next year.

Yeah, good point, and there’s a compounding effect to X having the toughest defensive assignment all day on the other end.

Not making excuses, I thought the offensive gameplan and/or execution was mediocre at best. But I also think you saw the difference between a coach’s year 5 roster and a year 1 roster today. IU’s wings are mostly compromise players (pick either defense, ball-handling, or shooting, almost never more than one of the three), it has one dependable guard. That’s a recruiting and development issue. I think we’ve all been pretty pleased with what CMW and co. have done so far but you’re pretty limited on how quickly you can build. By contrast, Illinois has three dudes who’ve played a ton of games for U of I who are great in their roles (Kofi, Frazier, Williams), and pretty much everyone who plays with those three is a good shooter and defender (they may not do much else; Plummer adds some ball-handling and gives back some D). Illinois has a roster that fits their program and coach, and it worked today. IU is still building.

Didn’t shoot in 16 minutes tonight and was averaging like 4.4 ppg in conference games coming in. Bates and Galloway didn’t play great. Phinisee’s out. Starting matters less than minutes, and less than finishing. But it’s time to dial up sets for Kopp to shoot, or make a change.

Yeah occasionally you see uncalled “gather steps,” where a guy is still catching the ball; I don’t have a problem with that, really. It happens fast, you have to possess the ball to travel. But just totally blatant, feet set, now they’re set somewhere else…c’mon

I can’t recall IU guarding a stretch big with TJD this year and if he’s not on Cockburn he’ll be guarding one. So don’t hold your breath that Race will start the half on Kofi

On the Plummer three near the end of the half where he was fouled, he caught, pump faked, clearly moved both feet: no travel called. Easy to exaggerate but that’s probably a top 5 all-time travel no call I’ve seen, and neither Benetti nor Hummel mentioned it, either.

Hoosiers hitting > 40% from 3 today, confirmed