lillurk

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.

Folks can complain all they want about institutional support but the facts are that IU was able to get one of the “next big thing” coaches at the time, would pay to keep a successful coach, and has the conference’s highest recruiting budget. It’s still a good job. USPS says best in conference, which I think is reasonable; it’s no worse than top 4 in conference (UM, MSU, OSU are the other contenders). It’s not an easy job, but the idea that moving on from Archie requires you to have the perfect candidate ready to take the job is just wrong. Beilein, Holtmann, Bennett, and Underwood had all succeeded in major conferences; Archie hadn’t. You can find a mid-major coach who could succeed, but having a famous brother and one elite eight run was too thin of a resume for me to be confident at the time.

Listen, no one wants a rebuild but that isn’t what we need. It’s not even what we needed when Archie was hired. College basketball programs change quickly, even those that don’t get 1-and-dones regularly, and it was a red flag when Miller’s media mouthpieces said it was. No one expects a ton in year 1. Take some sit out transfers, hit the trail hard, strike while you’re the new thing in town, watch literally one (1) good offense and figure out what they do, realize 3s are worth 50% more, etc. At a place resourced like IU, you may have some down years after early draft entries or whatever, but unless you have a Sampson-esque apocalypse, multi-year, miss the tourney rebuilds just shouldn’t be necessary.

That gives Nate Oats step tournaments to make a run that silences the one remaining knock some have against him

Right, I agree. Having a good, modern offense helps in recruiting, and it’s the side of the floor where you have more control over your fate, so you’ve gotta fix it. Archie also gives the impression of aiming for “good enough” on offense instead of trying to be greet.

Yep, Crean did more pre-IU than Archie, and Crean did more at IU than Arch. You used to occasionally see the pro-Arch folks mention all the woe-is-he stories about what he inherited...which was light years ahead of what Crean inherited. By year four Crean had a great team. By the time he was run out of town the well had been poisoned with Crean, but folks who were mad about one disappointing tourney exit and some volatility would do well to consider the extent to which that was a self-fulfilling prophecy based on the reaction to the Syracuse game and the following (Vonleh) year. Those were both disappointing but not disqualifying. So he got run out of town for a “defense first” guy who “recruits the state...” and then what?

Alford would be the wrong choice for off court reasons and I oppose the pick on basketball grounds, too. But I think it’s clear as day that he’d win more than Archie from Day 1 based on his track record.

What would actually be worse? Given the resources in play it’s hard to imagine a competent coach could be worse.

Now whose fault is that? [edited to change “who’s” to “whose”]

Like the win streak vs. MSU, the win at Iowa only serves to mask how truly bad things are. Those wins are anomalous good fortune, not signs of things to come.