lillurk

I gotta say, thanks to @Chris007’s activity this morning, I have moved from “IU needs to move on” to “IU is going to move on sometime in the next 14 months,” and it feels good to let that wash over me.

I’ve kept quiet re: Matta but I think he’s riskier than a coach with his track record seems. Who knows how the back is, and not only can you map back health with OSU’s decline, but with recruiting decline at OSU, too. If he can’t land top-tier talent anymore, can he win? Probably more than Archie has, but maybe not as much as he did for awhile at OSU. On the other hand, he recruited Indiana well, his teams were good on both sides of the ball, and if the back’s fine, 53 is young enough to give you twenty good years if he gets it cookin’.

If TJD comes back, Lander makes a leap, and we’re only top 20, I won’t be impressed. Top 20 in year five after an all-American and most of the rest of your roster returns? That’s not a high bar at IU, especially when it’s your best work of the five years. It would also make a difference what comes after. If recruiting is middling, development of the other freshman is just average, say TJD leaves as does one of Lander or Franklin...well then we’re back on the bubble. Arch has to prove he can do more with the resources he’s got, because half this board could be a bubble team with the resources at IU.

I think there’s a reasonably likely scenario that’s an even more extreme version of this. Stumble into the NIT or barely the NCAAs this year...but then TJD unexpectedly comes back a la Donsunmu and IU is quite good next year as this year’s freshmen contribute more and Stewart adds some dependable backcourt scoring. So then Arch gets an extension, Lander and TJD leave, and we’re right back where we’ve been for three years.

It would be nice to have a “great coach,” but merely average-to-good coaches have gotten IU to the national championship game, made three sweet sixteens, won two conference titles, etc. in the last twenty years.

Like if you hire Archie Miller and it fails, most folks will shrug. If, four years ago, they’d hired a successful NAIA coach and gotten identical results, it would be seen as an unnecessary risk and major failure.

Yeah, actually hiring an NAIA coach doesn’t happen at a place like IU because if it fails it seems like a boneheaded move in retrospect.

Today seems like a good time for a reminder that IU probably could’ve had Aaron Henry, but they slow-played an offer for him in deference to Damezi Anderson

Yeah, and the hand-wringing about who’s next misses the point. There are the usual high-profile suspects we all know, @Stuhoo’s list of under-the-radar mid-major coaches, and so on...a good coach can make it work at a place with IU’s resources. There are dozens of NAIA coaches who could do it if given a chance.

As I was saying: a defining issue of the Miller era is an inability to win the game that might put you at ease.

I think the positive scenario “what if” stuff is within reach. However, every time IU has had such a scenario under Archie they’ve failed; that’s the inherent problem. year 1: if they simply beat the mid-major teams they lost to, maybe also win a B1G tourney game against a bad Rutgers, they might have been at least a bubble team. year 2: literally win one more game from the absurd stretch of losses or beating an evenly-matched OSU in the B1G tourney and you’re in. year 3 and 4: any time they’re one win from being ranked, one win from avoiding a letdown, one win from feeling alright about the direction of the program; frustrating underperformance. So yeah: this is a flawed team. They should be better, though, even with what’s on the roster, injuries, etc. They can salvage this season, and point to a brighter future. But we’ve been in this spot before with Miller. And that’s to say nothing of next year. I could make a case for them, even assuming Trayce leaves, to be pretty good. But let’s at least meet expectations for a season before we assume we might exceed them.

I’m pretty familiar with UM football...if we had a Harbaugh situation in basketball there would be complaining but we’d be better off than right now (this past season was certainly a rough one for them, though). Harbaugh at UM is like if IU had gotten Stevens, but if Stevens had played at IU and had, I dunno, Alan Henderson’s career? But before this year, UM football was basically doing the football equivalent of if IU basketball: 1. Immediately had more success than his predecessor ever did 2. Ramped up recruiting 3. entered every season roughly top 10 4. Was annually blown out by UK (OSU in this comparison) 5. Lost far too often to PU (MSU in comparison) 6. Never even finished second in the B1G or won the B1G tourney 7. entered the tourney between a 2 and 5 seed and underperformed. 8. Big picture, had some diminishing returns over time So we’d have things to complain about. But Harbaugh’s water level at UM seems much higher than Archie’s at IU.

The problem is hiring based on literally one deep tournament run. I didn’t want Underwood and did want Holtmann. They both had high-major success prior. Compare the year-over-year Kenpom or Torvik numbers to Arch pre-hire and it’s easy to see why we missed

Archie is the last person on earth to see one of those graphs showing the points per possession strongly correlate with the amount of time left on the shot clock

Holtmann doesn’t have a true center and only plays his PGs backup minutes and he’s got a team with less talent than Archie ready to be a 1 seed. They’re a photo negative of IU: run crisp offense, hit shots, know what they’re doing....

There’s a middle ground where most of us can agree: 1. Archie coached a perfectly fine game against NW but it wasn’t perfect 2. a coach bears much responsibility for the things that went poorly for IU in that game: roster/personnel, slow starts, player confidence/motivation, bad and regressive offense. Lots of this happens out of our sight but we see results 3. Overall the results have not met any reasonable standard at IU, this year and through Archie’s whole tenure 4. winning cures a lot. I’ve been clear about my preference on all this but I think it’s fair to say there’s a version of this season that ends well enough to give those of us skeptical some optimism.

See if the hoop math data helps answer your hypothesis: https://hoop-math.com/Indiana2021.php

Yeah, I agree. The best-case scenario is probably that lineup backed up by Rob/Parker/Leal/Trey, Hunter, Duncomb. Off topic but if that’s the squad, you could really use another sturdy 6’8” 4 man grad transfer....

I’d agree. If his ball-handling comes along I’d love to see him start at the 3 next year. It’s nice that he can slide up and hold his own defensively but Hardwood’s right, that’s not the best full-time deployment.

I like those names, Stuhoo. I was initially cool on Matta but I could be convinced. My worry is he’s lost his fastball recruiting.

Yes, agreed he’s good and has gotten a raw deal a couple times. Missouri seems like it could be a long-term fit. I didn’t mean to suggest he wasn’t good, simply that there are lots of good coaches out there.

Martin’s not the guy for IU but he’s a good object lesson in why IU needs to move on even if we don’t know yet who the successor is. Martin took over an 8 win team the same offseason Archie took over here. Point being: nobody thinks of Cuonzo Martin as a top-tier coach, but he’s at a harder job than IU and started with less. (And he’s already been to one tourney at Mizzou.) There are lots of coaches who could do better.

Also 30% from 3 is ugly and no good, but it’s worth as many points as 45% on 2s. We have plenty of possessions where a 3 with a 30% chance is better than what we get even if we don’t know our chance of an offensive rebound. As an example, Juwan shot 29.7% from 3 at IU.

The offense runs zero plays to free shooters, all the action is designed inside. (You don’t have to believe me, Tony Adragna, who runs IU Film Room, said it on Crimson Cast.) That’s bad. Someone tell Arch 3s are worth 50% more than 2s.

By the way, OSU beat Iowa and shot 32 3s tonight. Meanwhile IU runs the offense of a 1994 middle school team coached by a moonlighting music teacher.