BGleas

That's exactly what Woodson did to TJD at halftime of the Michigan BTT game. Not like Woodson doesn't do it.

Pickett scares me. He can completely control a game and with Race out and JG being basically unplayable, we have nobody that matches up well with him.

Agree completely. The largest reason for the current struggles is crystal clear, we're missing two of our best players. It's not rocket science. With a healthy team we're 2-0 in Power 5 games. I promise if X and Race were healthy we would not have the record we have. Before people get upset and say I'm "making excuses", the injuries flat-out matter and have negatively impacted the season, but with that said we still should not be losing to NW at home and should be able to beat Iowa on the road. Regardless, none of this has anything to do with Dane Fife.

Something that I thought was interesting, and someone please correct me if I'm wrong because I didn't read everything, but from I saw the comments on TJD's post where he shared the fan letter were 99% fans telling him how much they loved and appreciated him. Did TJD share any of those? Did he reply to any of those fans thanking them?

There is a ton to complain about with college officials, but IMO the biggest gripe is how NCAA officials just hunt out charges to call. It's ridiculous.

Agree. This isn't some trend. We've been fine against zone otherwise.

One more note, I hope we destroy them in Bloomington and that in the post-game every IU players answers every media questions with "it seemed like their coach had no clue what he was doing." Literally answer every question with that.

Completely agree. We haven't had a guy that could take over and had the confidence to do it since Yogi, really. We haven't had a guy that could just sense and feel moments and take them over in a long time, certainly not on the road.

89 is plenty, but wasn't enough. Several reasons we lost, but one was absolutely that our offense stalled the last several minutes.

Agree. I think the biggest issue was the lack of movement. For some reason 4 guys were just standing around with no movement trying to force feed TJD. That seems to always happen late in close games, and that is absolutely on Woodson ultimately.

Thanks for sharing! Good to understand the reality with data and not just emotion.

Is there any data supporting the idea that we did poorly against the zone, other than Connor McCaffrey running his mouth? I dont know, I haven't the advanced metrics or anything, but do know we scored 89 points and from what I've read we scored something like 61 points after they went to the zone.

Not sure where you specifically stood on it, but I was in debates with people on this board last summer that were saying Galloway shouldn't even be in the rotation this season, yet now we're going to expect there to not be a big drop-off from XJ/JHS to him? I've never been high on JG as anything more then a energy backup 4 in 10-15 minutes, so no I don't expect him to replace Race Thompson without a dropff, though admittedly I also didn't expect the train wreck like performance he put in Thursday. I do agree with you though, that it does seem odd that so many young players that aren't super highly ranked seem to come into some other programs and contribute right away, and it seems like at IU unless you're a McDonald's AA, we don't get much from you, especially early. For whatever reason, we just have not recruited "dawgs" for years. We haven't recruited super confident guys with just massive swagger, etc. I dont know why that is. There is something there and it's spanned multiple coaches, so I do hear what you're saying about something at the program level. With all of that said, very few teams if any are going to survive the injuries we've had to the players we've had them too. You can't just dismiss that. But again, I do hear what you're saying and don't totally disagree.

Agree, and when you remove JHS and/or XJ it makes a big difference.

We also haven't had XJ and JHS together really since really the UNC game. That's a pretty massive blow to our perimeter defense that i don't think should be minimized.

I've always thought JG was a pretty bad perimeter defender, which is what defending Murray is. He's really strong typically on the block and as a weak side shot blocker, but he's always been rough on the perimeter. I think losing Phinisee and Stewart has hurt defensively as well. I don't love those guys as players, and think many fans overrated Phinisee, but no denying he was a phenomenal perimeter defender for IU.

He was the most glaring one though, by a pretty wide margin. Did you watch the clip on that link, it was really bad.

Yikes! Pretty damning indictment of JG and how bad his defense was Thursday.

What's puzzling to me is that towards the end of last season it was crystal clear that the offense was much more effective when we were using TJD in the PnR game with XJ vs most of the season when it was post up TJD and everyone stand around. With XJ back and adding JHS, along with what I thought we learned at the end of last season, I thought the offense would be much more dynamic and perimeter oriented with using TJD like most NBA teams use their bigs (PnR, rim runs, etc). Very little of that had happened and it's pretty disappointing.

And far too often neither brings energy or effort on the road. Both were brutal in transition today and just slow and nonchalant in their movement.

And they were down 7-0 early and then something like 12-3, but while watching I never doubted they would come back. You just knew watching their guys that they were mentally tough and wouldn't panic. When was the last time IU was like that?

I just wonder with this core group, and especially TJD and Race, where does the on floor leadership and mental toughness come from? Games like today on the road and the at Rutgers game have been far to common the last 4-5 years and it doesn't seem to change. Who are the guys, if any, that are really pissed off after some of these recent performances? Who is the guy, outside of the coach, losing his crap in the locker room and getting in guys faces? I don’t think IU has that and I don't think we've had that in a long time.

I would he extremely surprised if that happens. They may get more run but mainly because we're playing Elon and Kenneesaw.

I was told after the Xavier game that you can't expect calls on the road!?!?

Agree. No issues at all with JHS hunting his shots tonight a bit after a tough shooting night at Xavier. We need him to get comfortable and going offensively to reach our potential. This was a perfect game to try and get it going.