BGleas

Looks like Thon Maker is going to announce his reclassification next week. I'd call it a long shot at best for IU to get him, but I'm hoping the trickle down effect of adding another stud big to the 2015 class would help us with Bryant. Assuming, UK is a real player for Bryant. That would have UK involved with Maker, Zimmerman, Bryant and I think Rabb too, right?

I think we're capable of an Elite 8 run, but I'd also be pretty shocked if it actually happens. It's certainly not probable or anything I would predict.    With that said, how far this team goes is irrelevant compared to what happened in 2012. The two teams and scenarios are completely unrelated. We may get favorable matchups this year, and our shooters may get blazing hot. In a 1 and done tournament anything can happen, especially with the way we can shoot the ball.   

I don't understand those saying Yogi's draft stock could only go down next year? I'm not saying it's probable, but if Yogi came back, along with Troy, JBJ and the core of this team, and Yogi led them on a Shabazz Napier/UConn type run, he could get into the first round. I don't think we'd need to even necessarily win the title, but just have a great season (highly ranked/Big Ten title contender) and make a run (Elite 8 or Final Four) and he could get in there. It only takes one team to fall in love with you.

Not sure if it's been mentioned, but I thought Blackmon played very good D on Trimble in the second half. Yogi defended him most of the first and he went for 13, in the second we put Blackmon on him most of the time and Trimble only had 5 (2 of which were free throws at the end).   

This might have been the worst 30+ seconds of coaching I've ever seen.

Am I being bitter, or should that have been over the back? Had his forearm all over the LSU guys neck.

That was atrocious.

Not really what you're looking for, but I remember watching Marquette and Pitt play in the Big East Tournament that year. Both Dixon and Crean were being mentioned on various sites as coaching targets for IU, and I'm watching these two guys act like maniacs on the sidelines and thinking "Wow, I hope we don't end up with either of these guys!"   Nothing really to do with their coaching at that point, they're both just ridiculous and annoying on the sidelines. 

What a scum-ball move by Boeheim. Penalize his current players, whom I'm sure would love to play in the ACC Tournament and even the NIT, just to hopefully save his own butt later. I'm sure some of his freshmen might not have committed if they knew this going in. Not that I was a big fan anyways, but just lost any ounce of respect I might have had for Boeheim.

That's being pretty liberal with the word "sustained". I could then say Mike Davis has had more sustained tournament success at IU because he's won more tourney games over his IU career. Neither coach has been able to prove they can sustain high-level success at IU. Crean still has times to prove it.    I'm down on Crean, but am less down than others, but since you're playing devils advocate IMO you're making comments to defend Crean that are a little over-the-top "like 'by far more successful'" which is causing the barrage of responses you're getting.    Completely get your "have a beer" comment. We're all just discussing backetball/IU, it's fun.   

I'd hardly call two years "sustained success", I'm not saying Davis is better than Crean, but the National Title Game appearance is the best thing to happen to this program in 20 or so years. 

"By far" seems a little strong. Mike Davis, while not the best coach in the world, did make a National Title game appearance. That kind of trumps anything Crean has done at IU to this point.    Just saying, "by far" isn't really accurate. 

You're leaving out the part that Donovan has two national titles and another Championship game appearance in the bank. Fans would be ecstatic with any coach that had Donovan's production at Florida at Indiana. If you transferred Donovan's resume to Crean at IU, fans would be doing backflips.

You get a little grace period when you have 2 Nation Titles, 3 total title game appearances, 4 total Final Fours and 7 total Elite 8 appearances. If Crean does that, people would perfectly accept an NIT berth now and then. Why? Because fans would have the confidence he'll get it back on track.

1 Final Four and 3 other Elite 8's?

You do realize the differences in the situation between our last coaching search and a potential one now or in the future, right?

Noah is definitely a blue chipper, but I didn't include him because I think he's more what SPQ was talking about. Noah is the top 10 guy that's probably more focused on being 1 and done and the NBA than anything else.   

Yeah, I guess we need to define "blue chip" for the conversation to make sense. I consider Zeller, Yogi, and JBJ blue chip players. I think our fanbase would be doing backflips if we could land players like Zeller, Yogi, JBJ, Creek, RoJo, Watford, etc consistently. On paper, most everyone was really happy with our 12 (ended up not panning out for the most part) 13 (losing Luke was a killer) and fall signing period of the '14 class. It's the Spring of '14 until now that people have problems with.

You kind of said it. You quoted the post that said it and added "I agree with your sentiments here" and then added the part about the best players not caring about those things. So, I took it to mean you thought that too. There are plenty of blue chip players IU can recruit. Crean's already recruited numerous blue chip players and has been a finalist for several others. I doubt he paid the ones he got, so the blue chippers are certainly available for IU. Maybe not all of them, but they're there. If Crean gets Bryant that's 5 years in a row with a McDonalds AA. You didn't say this, but I'm just having a hard time with the line of thinking that IU can't compete with the big boys for players because we won't cheat. Under that premise, basically all of MSU, OSU, Duke, UNC, Kansas, UCLA, Arizona, Florida, etc are all cheating?

There are plenty of extremely talented and highly ranked kids that care about morals, work ethic and academics. It takes a lot of hard work to be good enough to be a highly ranked player/potential NBA guy. Those traits aren't exclusive to 3-star under the radar guys. And, plenty of lower ranked kids have terrible morals, work ethic and academics.

This isn't meant to excuse the end of the '12-'13 season as I think we absolutely stumbled and missed an opportunity, but I agree with you on the lottery pick thing, especially for the year we're discussing. The 2013 NBA Draft is going to go down as one of the worst in recent memory. There really might not be a single All-Star in the bunch. Yes, that does matter. It means the talent gap between 2 or 4 in that draft isn't that wide compared to maybe 6 and 9, or even 12 and 15. Take the 2003 draft (LeBron, Wade, Melo, Bosh) or the Eric Gordon year, and you're potentially getting franchise/multiple All-Star guys at 2 and 4. There's a much larger drop off in talent after that. It's not the same as having two lottery picks in a weak draft, the talent gap in the weak draft isn't nearly as far. You pair Derek Rose and Kevin Love on a college team and you have a much larger gap of talent compared to other college teams that year, than pairing VO and Zeller in 2013.

What a collapse by NW. They gave that game to Maryland on a platter.

I care more about the standings. Would rather have separation from MD.

The Purdue game is huge. This loss was frustrating, but much like our win Thursday, it was just holding court for OSU. IMO our season will be dictated by holding court at home and stealing 2-3 of the games at Purdue, Rutgers and NW. Do that and we're in great shape.

We got real stagnant the first 10 minutes of the second half. Lost the game then. The problem with being a transition team is that you need stops to get out and run, and we just couldn't do it. Between the turnovers and not getting stops', it completely took us out of our flow. The encouraging thing was that with just a few stops down the stretch, we were still in the game.